[HN Gopher] Why do older individuals have greater control of the...
___________________________________________________________________
Why do older individuals have greater control of their feelings?
Author : pseudolus
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-05-11 12:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| gatestone wrote:
| I experienced my worst emotionally stressfull events at age of 39
| and 55. The latter was harder, and the trauma is not really
| healed after three years. Everything that you can say shortly
| about feelings and age is going to be badly oversimplified.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| > Why do older individuals have greater/better .... ?
|
| Practice
| treespace88 wrote:
| Because I'm lucky. When I was younger I wasn't, nothing ever
| really went well for me.
|
| But after close to 30 years of gainful employment, and stability
| in marriage and work ( This is the good luck) I'm calmer.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I'm not sure how I interpret this. I am much more apt to show my
| feelings as I get older. As a kid I would bottle every emotion
| and attempt stoicism so I didn't look uncool or embarrassed or
| sad. These days I will be much more likely to show emotion unless
| doing so would be some sort of unprofessional or faux pas. To me
| that feels like the opposite of control of feelings.
| kcmastrpc wrote:
| Practice, lots of practice. Also, natural selection has a way of
| deprioritizing people who are emotionally unstable.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Trauma and desensitization would be my unscientific guess.
| Tycho wrote:
| One of my theories is that older people are just as impulsive as
| younger people, it's just that they have better impulses owing to
| a superior understanding of the world and other individuals
| (gained through experience).
| terminalserver wrote:
| Because when you're young, your feelings control you. So you end
| up doing and saying things that don't actually serve your own
| interests, or those of people around you. Also because when
| you're young you don't yet know that certain displays of, or
| acting out of, impulsive emotions, isn't acceptable in our
| society.
|
| So over time, to stop fucking your own life up, your
| progressively learn to say less, to hold your tongue, to decide
| later, to consider things from the perspective of others, to
| reserve and hold back. To give things time and think before
| acting or talking. To give people the benefit of the doubt. You
| earn that things are likely to change so there's less reason to
| respond in an extreme manner to right now.
|
| You learn that you're not as important as you think you were when
| you were younger.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Hormones go down and we get more experienced with all the crap
| life throws at everybody. Older folks tend to know themselves
| much better and also what they want in life, what actually
| matters and what is shallow bullsh*t.
|
| Enough reasons to be chill just about everything
| mycologos wrote:
| Yeah, I'm surprised that the article seems to just ignore the
| role of hormones. There's certainly a decline in testosterone
| as men age [1]:
|
| > Total testosterone levels fall at an average of 1.6% per year
| whilst free and bioavailable levels fall by 2%-3% per year ...
| [t]wenty percent of men aged over 60 have total testosterone
| levels below the normal range and the figure rises to 50% in
| those aged over 80.
|
| I know there's been a lot of pushback on the idea that
| testosterone is just a masculine hormone, but the link between
| testosterone and aggression [2] seems pretty well-accepted. So
| it seems reasonable that declining testosterone might make you
| more even-keeled.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2544367/
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Aggression_and_cr...
| xorfish wrote:
| Or it could just be that in societies, where aggression is
| rewarded with social status, testosterone will increase
| aggression because it increases the thrive for social status:
|
| > The relationship between testosterone and aggression may
| also function indirectly, as it has been proposed that
| testosterone does not amplify tendencies towards aggression
| but rather amplifies whatever tendencies will allow an
| individual to maintain social status when challenged. In most
| animals, aggression is the means of maintaining social
| status. However, humans have multiple ways of obtaining
| social status. This could explain why some studies find a
| link between testosterone and pro-social behaviour if pro-
| social behaviour is rewarded with social status. Thus the
| link between testosterone and aggression and violence is due
| to these being rewarded with social status.
| quesera wrote:
| I think it's simple: Perspective, and emotional fatigue.
|
| The first time <insert good thing> happens to you, you might be
| overwhelmed with excitement and joy. The 85th time, not so much.
| Hopefully you still appreciate it, but for the same dramatic
| response, the reward center needs _more_. Anything that happens
| to you 85 times isn 't special enough to be life-changing, by
| definition.
|
| The first time <insert bad thing> happens to you, you might be
| crushed. By the 5th time it happens to you, or you've seen it
| happen to others, you are just kind of immune. You know bad
| things happen, and you either decide to move forward or you do
| not.
|
| Interestingly though: seeing someone else experience the now-
| banal-to-you positive thing can be it's own reward. Watching a
| child's first taste of ice cream is somehow magical. Or a puppy's
| first experience of snow.
|
| And we try to have patience for the corresponding first-negative
| experiences too. A child who does not get exactly what they
| wanted for dinner, or who must go home from the park earlier than
| he or she might like...
|
| (Examples above intentionally light-weight. There are real bad
| things that happen to people, but the level of emotional energy
| elicited by the trivialities can be enormous!)
| niknoble wrote:
| If this were the whole story, it would mean that a man who had
| been in a coma his whole life up to 60 would have the same
| emotional control as a little kid. For example, he would cry at
| losing a board game. That's very hard to believe.
|
| I'm pretty sure the difference between old people and young
| people is mostly just energy. Old people can't feel intense
| emotions for the same reason they can't run a marathon. They
| just get fatigued too easily.
| quesera wrote:
| That's an interesting idea. I wonder if there is any data on
| that sort of thing.
|
| Anecdotally, though much less dramatically: When my Mom
| switched from glasses to contact lenses (and received an
| improved prescription), her sense of happiness and wonder at
| being able to see the details of tree leaves, etc, is
| something that I still remember a few decades later.
| williesleg wrote:
| Less soy and less internet.
|
| But we sure know how to play all you youngsters, look at BLM and
| all that horse shit.
| martin1975 wrote:
| I would not label this control - more like they gain experience
| in recognizing their own feelings, and for that split second
| after they register and become aware of their feelings, they
| choose an appropriate response. I remember Obama being heckled at
| a speech by someone - you could clearly see his irritation by his
| pause, a second or two of deliberate delay/processing what he
| felt, and then just gave a somewhat calm response to the person
| in an effort to defuse the tension in the room.
|
| Trump notoriously sucked at emotional regulation, and he's what
| you'd consider 'an older individual'. He too would give measured
| responses, it's just that they were more direct/less diplomatic
| than say Obama's.
|
| I used to be more knee-jerky in my responses, say 20+ years ago
| in my 20's, but after a lot of screw ups in life w/relationships
| (close/intimate ones in particular), a failed marriage, 2 kids
| and a lot of therapy, both group and individual, I've made
| progress in being aware of my feelings and responding in a more
| measured way, so outwardly that appears as if I have "greater
| control".
|
| The reality is I'm still a mess - I'm just responsible for my
| mess before I vomit it outward on someone else.
|
| LinkedIn Learning actually has this great one hour or so video I
| just watched that covers this nicely, I think it's called
| "Emotional Intelligence"... Some say it predicts how you will
| fare career wise far more than being just technically
| adept/skilled.
|
| It's a process of "finding oneself" and figuring out where we fit
| best. Mastering responses to our emotions is a life long process
| and we tend to end up "automagically" drawn to similar people,
| cultures, companies, relationships....
| nautilus12 wrote:
| I think its simple, we don't have as much to lose as we get older
| so we relax.
| eplanit wrote:
| And we've "been around the block" (i.e. cycles of life,
| relationships, career, health, ...) a few times. We've become a
| bit more familiar with the patterns, and familiarity reduces
| fear and anxiety.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| It's not older individuals, it's more experiences ones. An
| experience's impact is significantly dependent on its novelty.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| To expand on this, when you're a kid, things that affect you
| emotionally can seem to have disproportionate impact on your
| life. When you're older and more experienced, you've been
| through many crisis situations, and you've seen that things
| usually work out OK. You know better how to deal with various
| situations, and you have a much more realistic predictions of
| how things will eventually unfold.
|
| You probably also know, from experience, that even if you have
| an initial emotional reaction to something, that doesn't mean
| you should trust those emotions and roll with them. Getting
| angry rarely fixes anything, feeling sad is normal but it
| doesn't mean your life is going to shit, and getting excited
| about something is good, but you know it might not be worth
| getting excited too quickly.
| Hitton wrote:
| > _When older people say, "This is the best time of your life,
| enjoy it while you can," that's a form of abuse._
|
| I guess that these days anything can be called "abuse".
| scsilver wrote:
| So much anxiety in my life is about thinking Im wasting years,
| not just comparing my life experience to someone else's but
| comparing it to everyone else's. I wonder if this is an
| american saying, notably from "It wad the summer of 69"
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Imagine all the people who will only have twitter and FB to
| look back to.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| Please don't single out gratuitous provocations in an article
| and then copy them into the thread to complain about them. It
| doesn't lead to interesting discussion. Best to just leave the
| provocation in its native habit and find something interesting
| (e.g. deeper or more surprising) to talk about. If you don't
| find anything like that, there are plenty of other articles to
| read.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Gadiguibou wrote:
| Maybe I understood the context improperly, but I thought
| "abuse" was used in the sense of "improper use of something".
|
| In this case, it would be the improper use of your life
| experience giving advice that causes more harm than good.
|
| Maybe "misuse" would have been better suiting here.
| quesera wrote:
| "Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally.
|
| Watering down the language a bit, I can see how a reasonable
| person would be mildly offended if another person told them:
| "you're living your life improperly".
|
| Which is, ultimately, the received message. Yes you can't get a
| job in your field and your relationship is trashed, but your
| 20s are objectively the height of many metrics in your life. So
| are your 30s. (Unspoken: "I wish I still had the things you do,
| which you do not see/value. I also want all the things I have
| accumulated in the time since I was your age.")
|
| So having some other person, typically older and who fancies
| themselves wiser, who knows not-nearly-enough about your life,
| opine that you should "enjoy" your current state...can be
| offensive in many cases!
|
| And of course, as the star of our own autobiographies, we tend
| to inflate the importance of whatever drama-du-jour we're going
| through, and fail to take a longer view of things. This is
| generally the _intended_ message of the speaker, but we often
| don 't hear it that way, and anyway we don't want to be _told_.
|
| Some messages can only be heard when they are explicitly
| sought.
| drummojg wrote:
| Oh no, that's too mild. Things that rise to the level of
| "offensive" are "violence," not merely "abuse."
|
| Tongue somewhat in cheek, of course, but I do have a friend
| whose claim to the "Me too" movement was that an older
| gentleman had called her "young lady" once.
| kodah wrote:
| > "Abuse" now means "offensiveness". Literally.
|
| It seems this watering down of language was systemic and
| intentful. I'd love to know what generations, geographies,
| and cultures are afflicted most by this.
| fullshark wrote:
| I don't think the intention was to water down the words'
| meaning. The intention was to get attention on just how
| terrible a certain thing was/is in the short run (This idea
| is abuse/violence!). The long term effects of this is
| future claims of abuse get ignored in the discourse because
| the words have been so watered down as to lose their
| meaning.
| kodah wrote:
| The problem is that it seldomly was abuse or violence.
| These are misplaced or exaggerated words for effect,
| which is what creates the long term effect. If they're
| exaggerated, that makes me think this was intentful. If
| they're misplaced then we've failed in educating a whole
| group of people on a very fundamental level in a
| multitude of areas from language to emotional management.
| quesera wrote:
| "misplaced or exaggerated for effect" appears to be a
| natural thing. It's not a _new_ thing, but it definitely
| seems to be accumulative.
|
| Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are
| "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are
| "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does
| it all mean?
|
| What words do we choose when the correct words are no
| longer meaningful? What is the value of a word that
| describes a situation that almost never happens?
| kodah wrote:
| > Friends say bands are "awesome", long meetings are
| "excruciating", guys in mock turtlenecks say products are
| "magical" or "revolutionary". Boys cry "wolf". What does
| it all mean?
|
| Do these exaggerations, or use of flowery language, carry
| any real world consequences? The words "abuse" and
| "violence" (and other vernacular that people are using
| around problems they face) carry consequences under the
| law, reputational damage, etc... I suspect the people who
| replace, "So and so said something that offended me" with
| "So and so said something that was abusive to me" know
| they're participating in deceptive language that carries
| real consequences.
|
| I lean in the direction that these folks believe the ends
| justify the means but I've yet to hear anyone speak in
| earnest about _why_ they do this. Usually when they
| explain themselves it involves a lot of imagery and
| mental gymnastics as well as a wide array of unprovable
| assumptions you must accept in order to understand their
| point but always conveniently skips over their language
| choice.
|
| In fact, there's entire rhetoric designed to avoid this
| subject called "tone policing" whereby someone is allowed
| to make outrageous claims because they feel some way
| about something. It's then on the rest of us to sort out
| their emotional baggage from the hard facts and produce
| something from it.
|
| Generally, I've noticed humans will use flowery language
| when bullshitting, speaking abstractly, or trying to sell
| something. When we talk about problems we tend to try to
| be more concise, as being concise lets us address the
| problem more directly while using flowery language is
| both deceptive and distracting.
| quesera wrote:
| Actually I often wonder if people think about the
| extremity of their words.
|
| Absurd exaggeration is the norm. That's fine in the form
| of metaphor (though I still dislike "murder" and "rape"
| to describe the vagaries of competitive sports and
| business!) but it's something else when the words can
| have legal/moral/professional ramifications.
|
| Power gained by the previously-disempowered is rarely
| handled responsibly. But the powerless _should_ be
| empowered. I don 't know how to get from A to B without
| collateral damage.
| kodah wrote:
| That's a fair point and one I'm willing to accept, but
| this has been going on for at least half a decade if not
| longer. I guess at some point, the sort of meta-
| conversation you and I are having will have to be had.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| Nowadays, any simple comment can be interpreted on any extreme
| and everything in between.
|
| Anecdotally, in my experience, this shift is really visible for
| 3-4 years now. I don't know what changed in these recent years
| or what caused that shift to become so drastic (again, in my
| experience). Internet gave a stage to these interpretation even
| though they were there previously in low volume.
|
| But even on the internet, this wasn't the case until 5-6 years
| ago, at least not to this level (or so I think).
| tjs8rj wrote:
| My pet theory that fits the timeline pretty well is that when
| Tumblr died and they migrated to Twitter, what was incubated
| and contained on Tumblr dramatically changed the demographics
| of twitter and became more mainstream. Most of the last few
| years of change have been commonplace on tumblr up to that
| point, but we just kind of laughed and pointed out how
| ridiculous it was. Now it's the mainstream
| Xplune13 wrote:
| It might be. Personally I never had a Tumblr account, never
| even visited their website. It was just a name I'd heard.
| Tumblr was so far out of my life that I didn't even notice
| that Tumblr died.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| There's a feedback loop between:
|
| a) systems like Twitter giving people dopamine bumps and
| internet points for strong emotional responses to the most
| extreme interpretation of anything anyone says and
|
| b) peoples training their brains to have strong emotional
| responses to the most extreme interpretation of anything
| anyone says
| Xplune13 wrote:
| Yes, but I don't remember all this being so extreme even
| until 4-5 years ago on Twitter.
|
| From my experience, something changed around 2017 and now
| Twitter is a war zone.
| vimy wrote:
| The start of the Trump era. Trump made the left blind for
| the extremists on their side. Because criticizing them
| would mean siding with Trump. Not true of course but
| that's what you get when people start to think in
| absolutes. "You're either with us or part of the
| problem."
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I think a lot of the public space toxicity that we now
| witness is an extreme reaction to Trump. An autoimmune
| disease of sorts, but in a social context instead of
| biological one.
| f00zz wrote:
| I wish I could say that to my younger self
| klyrs wrote:
| Try having kids. Your hard-earned wisdom runs like water off
| a duck's back. But, keep giving it. At least you can say
| "told ya so"
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Meanwhile I wish I could tell my younger self "don't worry,
| this is actually the worst part of your life and all the
| people telling you things will never get better are just
| wrong".
| silicon2401 wrote:
| This is just like that article yesterday that called Discord UI
| colors "harmful". People today love demonizing anything they
| don't like so that they can lambast it without having to give a
| well-founded reason why they feel how they do. Nowadays people
| change language to suit their agenda, thinking that if enough
| people believe hard enough then changing language can change
| reality.
| mcguire wrote:
| The rest of that paragraph:
|
| " _I think what's really important for emotional well-being is
| to know that your future is secure, to achieve the luxury of
| not worrying about your future. When you're younger, there's a
| lot to worry about. I sometimes tell my undergrads: When older
| people say, "This is the best time of your life, enjoy it while
| you can," that's a form of abuse. A lot of younger people have
| high rates of distress._ "
| Clubber wrote:
| Still sounds hyperbolic. "Form of abuse," is pretty
| ridiculous. It's like saying, "you are assaulting me with
| your words."
|
| A better phrase from a person who wants to be taken seriously
| would be, "that can be naive," or "that's ignoring other
| people's burdens," "that's not always accurate," etc. "Form
| of abuse," is just over the top in my opinion.
|
| He's certainly not doing anybody any favors hinting that they
| are the victim of something (abuse) when they are clearly not
| in his context.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| The issue that I have seen with this phrase being used is that
| it is often used in response to a younger person complaining
| about their current life or aspects of their life. The
| implication of the phrase is then "well your life sucks, but
| it's only going to get worse".
|
| For a real life example, I knew someone who was going through
| some pretty serious depression in high school. Responding to
| which their counselor said something along the lines of "you
| shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your life". Which
| was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > For a real life example, I knew someone who was going
| through some pretty serious depression in high school.
| Responding to which their counselor said something along the
| lines of "you shouldn't be sad, this is the best time of your
| life". Which was pretty devastating thing to say to someone.
|
| And, for a lot of people, it's just not true. Maybe I'm
| really fortunate, but I can't remember a better time in my
| past life. I think for a lot of people, things generally get
| better as you age. You definitely get more autonomy, compared
| to when you were a child and teenager. Financially, you get
| established in your career, you save a little money, maybe
| you can even afford a home. Socially, you have better, closer
| friends as you get older. You can worry less and less about
| what other people think of you as you get older. I guess this
| is a little privilege showing, but generally I think my
| mental wellbeing is much better now than when I was a child
| or teenager.
|
| High School was the absolute worst point in my life, and
| that's true for a lot of people I know. You lack autonomy,
| you're bored, you have no money, you're in a prison-like
| institution getting bullied for most of your weekday. You're
| under a lot of pressure and have to worry about grades and
| behaving the way adults want you to behave. It sucked! Who
| are these insane people where high school was the best time
| of their life?
| offtop5 wrote:
| As somebody went through multiple evictions as a teen, I
| agree 100%.
|
| If you don't come from a stable household your teenage
| years are going to be absolutely horrible. You're going to
| know enough to understand that the adults around you should
| do things like pay bills, but they just don't want to.
| They'd rather buy new cars and get them repoed.
|
| I make an absurd amount of money now, and I'm grateful
| every time I pay my rent. Honest to God, if I could change
| one thing about the educational system I get rid of the
| idea that your parents are responsible to pay for your
| college.
|
| If you're coming from a bad household this simply isn't
| going to work, but you'd be the most likely to benefit from
| a scholarship or financial aid. What ends up happening is
| this gets locked behind your parents doing basic things
| like filling out forms, but they're just incapable of doing
| it.
|
| I can't put in words how devastating dropping out of
| college due to this stupid system was. Through the magic of
| programming I was able to still establish a great career,
| but when you come from a broken home you're just going to
| take hit after hit after hit.
|
| I often need to distance myself from what I guess normal
| people struggle with. I'll see something stupid on Reddit
| like a man in his late 20s complaining that his parents
| want him to get a job, and I have to stop myself from
| screaming at my computer.
| msrenee wrote:
| I went through that whole thing in high school. High school
| was miserable. College was better but exhausting. Being an
| adult is way more fun.
| moshmosh wrote:
| I agree with others that "abuse" is a bit over the top, but I
| had people tell me that a few times, when I was in high
| school (never before or since).
|
| I don't know WTF was wrong with the rest of those people's
| lives, but, as someone approaching 40, ages ~12-18 were the
| _worst_ part of my life and it 's not even a close call.
| Everything before and after was much better. Working mediocre
| low-paying jobs was much better. College was like a vacation.
| Adult life is way better. Being a younger kid was way better.
| And I had a really normal HS experience, stable home life, et
| c., so it's not like I was being badly bullied or my parents
| were going through a divorce or something. Those years are
| just _awful_ (school 's about 70% of the problem with it, I'd
| say, and the other 30% is hormones)
|
| When the odd suicidal ideation popped into my head, or if I
| was just way down in the dumps (both are pretty common for
| teenagers) the (absofuckinglutely wrong!) suggestion that
| things would only get _worse_ was... not helpful.
| [deleted]
| nimvlaj30 wrote:
| Reality is that most learn to cope with life a lot better as
| they grow older.
|
| My life objectively sucks more now. I have way less free
| time, and am under harsher constraints. But I am saddled with
| way less depression and anxiety. I am enjoying life more than
| ever. I don't go to sleep crying or ruminating every night
| anymore.
|
| People saying "well your life sucks but it's only going to
| get worse" are inadvertently being mean and unhelpful. I can
| imagine probably offing myself, had I heard that advice at
| the wrong moment growing up.
|
| It didn't get worse. It got better, even though the
| circumstances got worse, because my ability to handle them
| got much better.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Weird. I've never heard an adult tell a high schooler that
| it's the best time in their life. Usually people tell them it
| doesn't really matter (which also doesn't really help).
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I realise that a lot of people have anxiety issues, but to call
| it abuse is just stupid. They are genuinely people looking back
| on their life experience and giving advice.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I wouldn't call this abuse either but there is a huge huge
| gulf between "that was the best time of my life" and "this is
| the best time of your life.
|
| It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about their
| own life and how they should feel about it.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > but there is a huge huge gulf between "that was the best
| time of my life" and "this is the best time of your life.
|
| Not really. It's notional advice, offered in a spirit of
| kindness. You don't have to like it, but labeling it
| 'extremely rude at best' is absolutely infantile.
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| It is neither advice nor kindness. Typically it is
| dismissal and refusal to take issues of the younger
| person seriously.
|
| Using euphemism or calling it something better then it is
| is exactly as infantile as exaggerating. And if is lie
| too.
| 1_person wrote:
| I mean, coming from some boomer who owns 5 houses and
| lives off rent while I'm paying his social security and
| subsidizing his stock market risk, and I'm going to be
| lucky to save enough to afford to die on the street with
| a grossly inflated tech income... "extremely rude at
| best" seems appropriate. I'd throw quite a few more words
| in there and maybe even a left hook under the right
| circumstances. Because fuck you too, boomer.
| dang wrote:
| Whoa, you can't post like this here, and we ban accounts
| that do. No more of this please.
|
| I'm sure there's legitimate experience behind the
| feelings but it's not a good use of this site to allow
| them to turn into generational flamewar, let alone
| violent rants.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: it looks like you've unfortunately been breaking
| the site guidelines a fair bit, e.g.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27075363
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27048414
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27045856
|
| Would you mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart?
| We'd appreciate it.
| 1_person wrote:
| It would be helpful if you could clearly spell out the
| opinions the rules actually apply to.
|
| I've been guessing wrong lately, it seems.
| dang wrote:
| We don't care what your opinions are. We care about you
| following the site guidelines, which include things like
| " _Be kind_ ," " _Don 't fulminate_", and " _Eschew
| flamebait_ ". Can you please stick to the rules? I'm sure
| you can find thoughtful ways to express your substantive
| views if you want to.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I understand the sentiment but it's worth noting in the
| US the median boomer _household_ wealth is 134k. More
| than 45% of boomer households have no extra retirement
| savings or income.
|
| I think it's pretty fair to criticize that generations
| lack of forethought but not so much wealth hoarding.
| 1_person wrote:
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-net-worth-
| by-ag...
|
| ok?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| You source shows boomers with a median net worth of
| around $266,400. That's really not much to have
| accumulated over the course of 40+ years of work.
|
| That's roughly equivalent to putting away $150 a month.
| 1_person wrote:
| Do you think it's also fair to describe $266,400 as "much
| larger than" $13,900?
|
| Do you think $266,400 will buy a house?
|
| Do you think $13,900 will buy a house?
|
| I understand that you can divide $266,400 over any
| interval that's convenient, but I don't see how that
| relates to my point or the facts.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Obviously someone who has been working over 30 years
| _less_ than someone else has significantly less money
| than them? Do you think the people in the 65-74 age group
| had the same $266,400 median when they were in the under
| 35 age group? Of fucking course not, that 's idiotic.
| cj wrote:
| > It's at best just extremely rude to tell someone about
| their own life and how they should feel about it.
|
| I have to disagree. My grandparents often have great
| perspectives on life situations that they readily share
| when relevant to the people around them. No one sees it as
| rude, and if they do, it's usually because the advice hits
| a little too close to home. Like "when I went through my
| divorce..."
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Sharing insight and/or experience != telling someone how
| to feel about something.
|
| The truly insightful manage to _prompt you_ to think
| without explicitly telling you to do so.
|
| (And are sometimes wrong. People can in fact be living in
| a truly dismal present, whatever their age.)
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Yes, I am not disputing that. I am talking about the
| difference between giving someone advice about a
| situation they're in, and telling them how to feel about
| it.
|
| "When I was your age, I didn't appreciate certain things
| so I'm pointing them out to you" is really different from
| "this is the best time of your life" which is a statement
| an external observer is just not equipped to make about
| someone else's life.
| kodah wrote:
| Those two things mean the same thing in casual
| conversation. I'm plenty picky about rhetoric when it
| comes to serious debate, but I would align your view more
| with trying to bully people over some sense of
| unfairness.
| Kye wrote:
| Calling everything toxic or abusive seems to have replaced a
| range of expressive terms and phrases, like "that's an asshole
| thing to say" or "what the fuck is wrong with you."
| Crontab wrote:
| Basically, abuse these days is being told something you
| didn't like or agree with.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Worse than that. In some circles it's not enthusiastically
| agreeing or expressing any kind of reservation as well.
| kahrl wrote:
| Are you kidding me?! Unsolicited advice can be mildly
| annoying!!!! I may have to just nod my head in approval just to
| move the conversation along, even though I might not agree!!
| HORIFFIC ABUSE.
|
| The author just appears to use complete hyperbole to get a
| reaction from his students and readers. Not to be taken
| seriously.
| rriepe wrote:
| It shows contempt. It might not be abuse itself, but it's
| definitely something abusers say. If he's confusing those
| things he probably deserves your compassion, not your
| indignation.
| jmartrican wrote:
| Great point. I think it can definitely feel abusive to be told
| how to feel. It makes it feel like there is something wrong
| with you for feeling differently, or adds anxiety to change
| your feelings.
| heipei wrote:
| I can understand how that sentence from someone not close to
| you, and without any further explanation can be distressing.
| What I imagine telling my kids is "This is the best time of
| your life, you can enjoy it because the things that society has
| you worried about right now, like getting good grades, being
| socially liked, collecting achievements, are not going to
| matter that much anymore once you are an adult and have gained
| experience and, more importantly, self-confidence in your
| abilities."
| prionassembly wrote:
| I have a 1 month-old baby at home right now. God, talk about not
| having control of one's feelings.
| jes wrote:
| I'm 61.
|
| I question whether it's greater control of my feelings, as
| against, more recognition that feelings come and go and don't
| require that we act on them.
|
| The study and practice of non-dualism and other ancient Indian
| regions has been helpful to me. I'm generally at ease in the
| world.
| codevark wrote:
| They've learned to lie better.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| Alternatively, your brain is way more 'energetic' when you are
| younger. You feel things more strongly, can be over whelmed with
| all the competing signals and are inexperienced.
|
| Maturity does reduce the sensitivity and improve the focus (e.g.
| pruning of the neocortex). But I also think experience helps too
| e.g. Knowing your body is feeling anger you are experienced
| enough to walk away or not send that email. 'Not giving a fuck'
| is also a strategy to avoid harmful repetition of negative
| memories.
| raincom wrote:
| Usually, life experiences along with learning impact how one
| control their feelings. The more one lives, the more one
| experiences, the more one learns.
| bm3719 wrote:
| At age 20 or so, I read a quote in a book (on day trading, IIRC)
| that went something like: "Master your emotions, or they will
| master you."
|
| After thinking about it, I realized that despite identifying as a
| logical-thinking individual, I was nevertheless at the mercy of
| the more primitive parts of my brain. Sometimes totally, but
| pretty much all executive functions were influenced by it to a
| large degree. That might be fine, but my limbic system tended to
| make poor decisions; ones that my more conscious brain would have
| to pay the price for later. It's also no match for the brains of
| people not in emotional mode, and would be taken advantage of by
| things like appeals to emotion in advertising, politics, and
| rhetoric. I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and
| took steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.
| Layvier wrote:
| Imo there's a strong tendency for people working in
| tech/business or with high ambition in general to suppress
| their emotions as they affect the decision making. However, I'd
| rather make suboptimal decisions if that means a richer life,
| deeper connections and a stronger sense of wonder. Trying to be
| as logical, rational as possible makes life dull and
| mechanical. In the end as Kierkegaard said, "Life is not a
| problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.".
| darkerside wrote:
| Some might say that the true sense of beauty and wonder cones
| from doing how similar those two opposite ends of the
| spectrum actually can be
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Who might say that and what would we have to do for them to
| commit to it?
|
| Are you saying it? Because I don't think it's true at all!
| But I want to wait until someone actually say it before I
| get into that.
| darkerside wrote:
| Thanks for the invitation but I'm not looking to argue
| about it. Peace!
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Yes this is one of the great advantages of the "some
| might say" move, love that shit.
| mnctvanj wrote:
| Kierkegaard's idea of "repetition" actually speaks very
| directly to the topic of this larger discussion. Many ways to
| interpret his writings here, and I am no trained philosopher,
| but he seems to write about how repetition is not truly
| possible - that encountering a once-new thing for a
| subsequent time is tainted by recollection - dulling the
| experience essentially. I think he also suggests that
| cultivating a certain mindset can re-novelize life but I am
| thinking not many achieve that.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| There's a difference between suppression and realizing you
| have a choice on whether to follow that emotion. Obviously,
| suppression is bad but so is allowing yourself to get
| completely wrapped up in it. You can let that emotion just
| float there in the "background" and continue on.
| [deleted]
| FredPret wrote:
| Even if you approach life logically, and see it as a problem,
| the question remains: what does the solution look like? Money
| in the bank, active sex life, dozens of adoring grand
| children, popularity, achievement, status, a long life?
|
| These ideas enter our rational faculties from below.
|
| They are the caveman's goals, and the rational layer of our
| being is just a means to that end.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| I think we read the same book. Probably "Trading in the Zone"
| or one of those. I never ended up day trading much, but I sure
| as hell got that message loud and clear.
| yberreby wrote:
| > I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and took
| steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.
|
| Could you elaborate on what those steps were?
| bm3719 wrote:
| I settled on the triune brain model as a good-enough
| approximation for my needs in relation to this (whether it's
| factually accurate is another issue). I would then categorize
| my thoughts and subsequent actions based on that model
| (mainly limbic vs. neocortex). It's pretty easy to tell them
| apart with some high-level introspection. Then, I'd short-
| circuit any emotional thinking once I spotted myself engaging
| in it, and injecting rational thought into those times when
| the limbic system would normally be in control. I'd spent
| decades of life not doing this, so it took a long time for
| this to not feel weird, but eventually it became natural.
|
| Once the big reactive emotions (e.g. anger) were dealt with,
| I turned attention to the more subtle influences. I think
| there's a middle ground of thoughts that are a more complex
| or a mix of emotional and rational (think things like
| national pride, identity, career progression). That's a
| harder job and a more involved topic. In fact, I can't say
| I've completely got that done, or even fully mastered the
| first part. The caveman is always there, of course, and
| perhaps the best you can hope for is restraining him.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| This seems weird and bad. Emotion and "reason" aren't two
| ends of a spectrum. You likely aren't any more logical or
| less emotional now than you were before.
|
| I believe you about better control over how you engage with
| your emotional responses but damn dude. If you were just
| getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that you
| don't hafta roll your own psychic amputations these days.
| float4 wrote:
| > If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got
| therapy for that
|
| CBT being the most popular kind. In CBT you detect
| negative emotional reasoning, categorise it, and refute
| it by coming up with a more rational response.
|
| See the pattern?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Probably the same as changing any behavior: First try to
| notice when you're doing the thing you don't want to be
| doing, then try to abort when you find yourself doing it. The
| time between "start" and "abort" will keep getting shorter,
| and eventually you'll not do it in the first place.
| DrStartup wrote:
| Sounds like the ACT Matrix
| lemonberry wrote:
| Yes. An easy observation to make when the highly rational and
| logical person in the room gets angry. Particularly when
| they're angered by others non-rationality. As if being angry is
| a rational response or a useful one.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is such an important realization. And when you have it and
| then think back in your life to the failed relationships you've
| had (personal and professional) it's usually very staggering
| the degree to which your caveman sabotaged you.
|
| Learn this lesson young, and you will save yourself decades of
| squandered time.
|
| Most people never appreciate the degree to which their emotions
| sabotage their lives.
| luckyandroid wrote:
| If I ever got something beneficial out of meditation, it was
| that feelings and thoughts come and go and do not have to
| necessarily be listened to. I didn't realise this until I was
| in my early 20s, and looking back, there were so many regretful
| moments as a result of just doing whatever feelings and
| thoughts dictated I should do in any given moment.
|
| Being able to view your thoughts and feelings in an abstract,
| manageable way is incredibly important.
| tlapinsk wrote:
| Whole heartedly agree with this post. I didn't start
| meditating until my mid-20s and am just grateful to have
| discovered the practice at all.
|
| Instead of swimming in your thoughts/emotions all day,
| meditation teaches you how temporary and fleeting they are.
| This helps you detach from them and not take your own
| thoughts so personally (if that makes sense). It's like you
| have a 50,000 foot view above your thoughts as they come and
| go.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > If I ever got something beneficial out of meditation
|
| Don't do meditation to get anything beneficial at all. You do
| meditation to let go of all of that altogether and
| (ultimately) prepare yourself for death.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Yep meditation is great at helping you laugh at the absurdity
| of your thoughts and the realization they're totally fleeting
| along with the emotions they bring. Now, I can just think to
| myself that emotion will be gone in a few hours/days/etc. and
| I don't need to obsess about it, just let it be. It's
| absolutely true too.
| nefitty wrote:
| The phrase, "This too, shall pass," can be bittersweet at
| times, but also comforting. Although some feelings can be
| so intense that it is difficult to think thoughts that move
| me back to baseline, the clock keeps ticking and new
| experiences inevitably flood in. One thing I think about a
| lot is that we generally can't "remember" what pain feels
| like, which helps sometimes.
| jlos wrote:
| "Mastering your emotions" if you mean, controlling your
| emotions, is not balanced or healthy. Mastering your emotions
| means listening to them as a critical feedback to your
| environment and then rationally controlling your response.
|
| Rational thought is complimentary to emotional thought.
| Rational thought is slow, reflexive, and highly focused.
| Emotional thought is affective; it is your mind telling you how
| something is affecting you.
|
| E.g. Anger tells you some boundary has been violated. It's the
| rational part that allows you to analyze that feeling and
| respond appropriately (telling someone to back off or getting a
| snack because your blood sugars are low)
| 31tor wrote:
| Degradation of tissue in the amygdala
| jerf wrote:
| One of the interesting results from psychology is that emotions
| are a complicated feedback loop from stimulus, around through the
| body, back to the feeling, but critically involving bodily
| response, not just states of the brain. I've personally
| experienced "feeling anxious" simply because my heart was beating
| too quickly for purely physiological reasons. (I've had some
| heart troubles.) Once I addressed those reasons, the anxiety
| faded with it. This is a handwave in the direction of this
| research and ideas, not an explanation of it; consult the web if
| you're interested in more.
|
| I propose something that neither the article nor anyone else is
| in the comments so far, which is that we age, our bodies simply
| get _less physical_ about the emotions. It makes it easier to be
| more level if your body is literally being more level, and the
| aforementioned feedback loop is literally weaker. Everything else
| gets weaker in old age, why not the physiological strength of
| emotions, too?
| danschumann wrote:
| Ray Dalio, "Another one of those"
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Older individuals have less strong feelings, their bodies and
| minds are less primed for survival and mating, they're in the
| grandparent stage evolutionarily. Younger people feel things more
| acutely, they are more sensitive but also the worst thing that's
| happened to them is almost certainly coming, multiple times, and
| the same for the best thing.
| permo-w wrote:
| My personal observation is that emotional control and resilience
| comes from experience. It comes from being exposed to lots of
| different emotional triggers.
|
| The times when I've been the most emotionally strong have been
| after my most socially diverse periods
|
| Perhaps the effect is somewhat cumulative
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Because they are dying from old age?
| djanogo wrote:
| Data. Older people have more data or results of data processing
| stored.
| dangerface wrote:
| Do they really? show them something foreign or a new technology
| and ask them how they feel, you will see how in control of their
| emotions they really are.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. This is a
| noticeable step in the direction we're trying to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| amarant wrote:
| Natural selection. At a young age, some people know how to
| control their feelings, others don't. The ones who can't then die
| from road rage or similar, leaving only the ones with at least a
| modicum of self control in the older age groups.
|
| Basically, it's survivor bias, but literally.
| exegete wrote:
| How many people do you think die from road rage (or similar)
| annually? How do you account for all the people who couldn't
| handle their emotions when young and now can when older?
| Kye wrote:
| All the older people who go on tantrums at retail and food
| service workers throw a monkey into this theory.
| kulig wrote:
| In my experience, a tendency to lash out at others also comes
| with an exagerated sense of self preservation.
| amarant wrote:
| Nah, natural selection sometimes works slowly, and it's not
| infallible, it's all about probabilities. Old people who are
| angry throws a wrench in the original statement, not this
| explanation of it.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| Personally speaking the answer has been mostly "practice".
|
| I realize things would suck less if I didn't let my emotions
| control me on topic X, so I work on that. It's simple, but it
| sure isn't easy.
| ggambetta wrote:
| My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells, we're
| born with a limited number of fucks in our body.
|
| When we're young, we (instinctively, subconsciously) feel like
| our fucks reserves are plentiful, so we give a fuck about a lot
| of stuff.
|
| As we get older, our reservoir of fucks gets progressively
| depleted. The fucks are rarer, so we give a fuck less and less
| often. I've recently turned 40 and I can definitely feel this in
| myself; just like recovery from workouts takes a little longer
| than when I was 20, I don't give a fuck about things so easily.
|
| By the time you're officially old, you're almost out of fucks, so
| it's not like you don't give a fuck because you don't want to,
| but because it's more difficult physically (harvesting of the
| last fucks takes more energy, because biology).
|
| Brb, submitting to Nature.
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq. puts it eloquently:
|
| https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| Reminds me of the theory I read somewhere - we all have so many
| words in us and when we use them up, we die. Think it might
| have been Vonnegut but can't find the source at the moment.
| joncrocks wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-waMtGtxAdg
| dylan604 wrote:
| Also stated "those who don't know speak, those who do know
| don't speak"
| Leary wrote:
| I don't know if I'm getting older or the years of beer drinking
| have caught up on me.
|
| But emotions don't feel as raw/immediate as they used to feel
| when I was younger.
| namelosw wrote:
| Lol, that's both a hilarious and great model for sure.
|
| But I wonder, it seems to me doomers lost their fuck faster. Is
| it because they have fewer initial fucks? Or is it because they
| lose fuck overtime even if they don't a fuck about something?
| Or every time everybody else gives a fuck a doomer gives two?
| op03 wrote:
| This totally depends on the type of people around you and the
| kinds of knocks you have taken and survived in life.
|
| It can go the other way.
| elorant wrote:
| The thing about getting older is that you come with terms with
| the fact that you have limited control over life. You have only
| control on yourself, and this not absolute because you may get
| a decease that's pretty random, although your lifestyle heavily
| affects your well being. Outside of yourself everything else is
| kinda out of your influence. It's good to keep tabs on what's
| going on with the world in an attempt to better prepare for
| hardship, but the more you let go the happier you become.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| > My entirely unscientific theory is that like other cells,
| we're born with a limited number of fucks in our body.
|
| lol. Well, there you have it.
|
| Perhaps the outrage component advertises breeding potential in
| young humans, kind of like thick hair.
|
| In the end, it's all bene caca et irrima medicos.
| SpinsInCircles wrote:
| I would like to think of it as a Bias term. The older I become
| the larger the Bias and the fewer fucks I give. I wish I could
| have performed some transfer learning to my younger self, his
| life would have been much easier.
|
| As an aside I feel this is a wonderful anthem for life:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
| decebalus1 wrote:
| I agree with your assessment. I believe it is an application of
| Spoon theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory
| jollybean wrote:
| No doubt there's some of that.
|
| Perspective is another other thing.
|
| Once you start to see how the world works, and how complicated
| things are, you're a lot less likely to fire off about some
| specific issue.
|
| Radicalism is the posture of those who want to externalize all
| the side effects of their utopianism, and when you're older it
| gets harder to not see second-order effects for what they are.
| emteycz wrote:
| Radicalism can also be a reaction to systems that claim to be
| perfect but unsurprisingly fail, on the other hand.
| jollybean wrote:
| Yes of course, but those systems I think most people don't
| believe are perfect.
|
| Weirdly, it may take a kind of 'irrational populism' to
| nudge the needle a few points to just get 'basic change'
| which is a real paradox.
| [deleted]
| tartoran wrote:
| I've seen a lot of people age and slowly lose the ability to
| control their emotions as well, so Im not exactly sure what's
| the ratio of bettering or worsening of emotion control.
|
| But generally I agree with the idea that that wisdom collects
| with time and experiences lived and so emotional expense is
| better controlled along with aging.
|
| From my experince, at a smillar age (41), I reserve my fucks
| for more important events so your take on fucks fits me quite
| well, I generally give a lot less of them.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Careful, your radical theory could spawn a new cottage industry
| of snake oils! Fuck restorative juice blends and creams, fuck
| focusing crystals, a Gwyneth Paltrow book on giving clean fucks
| so as to not overly deplete your limited reserve of fuck
| giving.
| floren wrote:
| > Fuck restorative juice blends and creams
|
| Hey, I already get half a dozen emails about these in my spam
| folder every day.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I think what you're describing is more down to desensitisation
| through exposure to stressful environments.
|
| When you're younger smaller problems seem larger because you've
| not been desensitised to larger problems. As you progress
| through life you generally experience greater stress and thus
| the smaller problems feel smaller. You could look at it like
| desensitisation to capsicum, salt, violence or pornography.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I am of the belief that when there is no conflict people will
| invent it. I think outrage culture sweeping the US right now
| is part of that.
| mordymoop wrote:
| The people who are most susceptible to this are in fact
| disproportionately young and inexperienced. Virtually
| nobody I know from meatspace behaves the way virtually
| everybody on Twitter seems to behave, for example.
| philwelch wrote:
| Babies in particular cry so much because whatever discomfort
| they're experiencing is literally the worst thing that's ever
| happened to them.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Conversely, they must be in an almost constant state of
| wonder. When was the last time you or I saw a new color for
| the first time? Their threshold for amazement and _" this
| is literally the best thing I've seen in my entire life"_
| is also much lower!
| RHSman2 wrote:
| I'm 44 and still in amazement of our reality.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Babies cry because they can't speak or walk or open food
| bottles or take off their diapers.
| emteycz wrote:
| The thing with babies is that evolution comes in play here,
| and they often cry for no (internal) reason whatsoever...
| More crying = more parent attention = better rate of
| survival. I wonder when does this effect cut off.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| There's nothing funnier than seeing your toddler
| harmlessly fall, he thinks no one saw it, he goes on
| about his day, then a few seconds later makes eye contact
| with you and only then starts crying.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Or: Toddler falls and, while lying on floor, carefully
| searches for an audience before deciding whether to let
| loose with a howl.
| ggambetta wrote:
| That's preposterous! I'm sticking to my "fucks are finite and
| biologically limited" theory. I'll use the TED talk to
| promote my upcoming self-help book around this mind-blowing
| new theory.
| halgir wrote:
| Surprisingly relevant to my post from last year, actually
| titled "Fucks are finite": https://halgir.com/fucks-are-
| finite/
| swiley wrote:
| this definition of "fucks" appears to be the time
| derivative of the "fucks" mentioned earlier.
| SJetKaran wrote:
| Reminded me of this song "I've No More F**s To Give!"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqbk9cDX0l0
| randompwd wrote:
| Be careful, Malcolm Gladwell may steal your comment for a
| book and then blame you when science debunks it.
| joombaga wrote:
| Explanation for those out of the loop?
| ghaff wrote:
| Gladwell tends to pick up on interesting and plausible
| sounding assertions that are often poorly backed up by
| actual research and weave compellingly written narrative
| yarns out of them.
| LanceH wrote:
| Some people on here have an obsessive hatred for Malcolm
| Gladwell.
| dylan604 wrote:
| More realistically a TEDx talk.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Disillusionment is real. Before you have achieved success you
| think that it is really important to succeed. Once you have
| succeeded, or see other people succeed, you realize that some
| of the happiest people are not "successful".
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is a great example of why defining of one's goals is
| important. To be one of the "happiest people" would be a
| worthy goal, but the young don't think of the game of life
| like that.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I don't know, under the right conditions I could give no fucks
| too: like financial independence. I'm sure being financially
| independent helps.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| That, combined with the wisdom one gains from having spent many
| fucks on the wrong things. When you examine the fucks you gave
| 10 or 20 years ago, you realize how clueless you were.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I'm not sure it's a discrete limited number of fucks, just the
| novelty wears off - after so many heartbreaks, surprises good
| and bad - you know you've seen something similar before and
| they slowly loose their power.
| c22 wrote:
| I think you may have just defined _fucks_.
| SMAAART wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. As a reluctant member of the "older
| individuals" I too find myself giving a boatload less fucks
| than I used to, but the main reasons are (in no particular
| order):
|
| 1. I have got my crippling Generalized Anxiety Disorder under
| control
|
| 2. I have realized that I used to give way too many fucks about
| shit that didn't matter at all, and it was not worth it and
| actually detrimental
|
| Mind you, those 2 are highly correlated and of interdependent
| causation.
|
| What got me here:
|
| Therapy didn't help.
|
| Manson's book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" helped
| quite a bit, but was not "the thing".
|
| Articles on "Don't be a victim...." "Don't play the victim...."
| and similar helped.
|
| What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and more
| often than daily, about the events in my life, my thinking, my
| reactions starting from the points of view that:
|
| A) I am accountable for what happens to me
|
| B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to me
|
| And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life in
| tangible manners.
|
| While I am not a snowflake, I am a special case: I started low,
| very low; and - IMHO - I have come a long way in the
| Depression/Anxiety/Being_a_loser scale.
|
| I do believe that to some degree something similar happens to
| most everyone who doesn't start for the same ultra-low point as
| me, with time we learn that when young we were wrong to give
| too many fucks about too many things.
|
| But guess what? Giving way too many fucks about too many things
| is good for:
|
| Business: Facebook, iPhone & Co
|
| Politicians: from left to right
|
| Religions: all of them (except for The Dude)
|
| And that's why the messagings that we are bombarded with aim at
| reinforcing giving too many fucks about too many things (aka
| Anxiety) and the messagings aimed at kids/teenagers aim to
| create and instill Anxiety.
|
| Mic drop.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Very interesting! Can you elaborate on "B) I am 100% wrong
| when something unpleasant happens to me"? Not sure what you
| mean by this exactly.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Something unpleasant happens: I do the analysis from the
| starting point that I am 100% wrong. Of course as I go
| along, most often, I realize that - while partially
| responsible - I am not 100% wrong, but there is some
| wrongdoing on my part, if not just in the way I
| reacted/responded, and/or the depth/breadth of my
| reaction/responses.
|
| For instance, when Anxiety flares up due to some trigger, I
| might ruminate and have insomnia.
|
| Ever ask why? Well... it's about giving way too many fucks.
| Shit happened. So? Who's responsible for ruminating and
| losing sleep? Me, myself and I. 100% my bad. Of course I am
| not responsible for the event, but I am responsible for
| letting it make me ruminating / insomniac.
|
| And seeking an external solution like meds, or therapy, or
| a therapist or whatnot it's just a copout. And if taken to
| an extreme it might develop into victim mentality and hence
| a self fulfilling prophecy.
|
| This works for me. I am not blaming any victims out there,
| at times I have mentioned this personal attitude of mine
| only to be accused of "blaming victims the world over".
| NOPE. This is about me.
|
| I am no martyr either, but I see out there, and I was
| guilty myself, to use as a starting point the stance that I
| was either right or immune to any finger-pointing. Starting
| from "I am 100% wrong" is just a different stance, a
| different starting point. Needs not to be the end of it,
| the process of reasoning is the journey the leads to
| bettering oneself.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Do you have any tips for getting Generalized Anxiety Disorder
| under control? At least point in the right direction?
| mpfundstein wrote:
| acceptance
| SMAAART wrote:
| Mainly this:
|
| > What helped immensely is to start blogging daily, and
| more often than daily, about the events in my life, my
| thinking, my reactions starting from the points of view
| that:
|
| > A) I am accountable for what happens to me
|
| > B) I am 100% wrong when something unpleasant happens to
| me
|
| > And that, in the course of a few month, changed my life
| in tangible manners.
|
| And also:
|
| I am reading about Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)
| specifically:
|
| How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About
| Anything-yes, Anything!
|
| How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons
|
| A guide to rational Living
| 7thaccount wrote:
| This is hilarious and yet right on the money in some way.
|
| As you get older, you start to see that everything is the same
| and goes through cycles. The important stuff of my childhood
| (ex: having clothes that were sewhar fashionable), becomes
| irrelevant. Who cares if I'm wearing the same style of sandals
| for over 20 years now? You start to focus on what's more
| important to you. F** are reserved for important matters like
| arguing on HN about the superiority of Linux :).
|
| When you see a child have a meltdown over not having their
| favorite bath towel available, you start to see how widening
| your scope means less care for minor problems. I have no time
| to worry about those things as I have bigger problems (working
| on marriage, work due dates, educating my kid...etc). It makes
| one wonder how chill an immortal being would be after milennia.
| toast0 wrote:
| > F* are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN
| about the superiority of Linux :)
|
| I thought you said you were tired of chasing fashions. ;p
| playingchanges wrote:
| The last thing you wrote is something I indirectly think
| about quite a lot. Imagine a place (call it heaven if you
| want) where time and death don't exist. What could you
| possibly care about?
| temp0826 wrote:
| Recommend you experience 17776 [0][1] if you haven't, it
| explores this theme in a pretty hilarious way.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776 [1]
| https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
| acwan93 wrote:
| I read somewhere that because people don't live that long,
| we don't have a collective memory of previous disasters or
| pandemics (anyone who was alive today during the 1918
| pandemic wouldn't really remember it), so human history
| simply happens in cycles or waves. The underlying conflict
| is the same, but a new set of humans deal with it with the
| technological tools of the day.
|
| Simply put, if the human lifespan were longer, we might
| give less fucks about natural disasters because we've seen
| them before.
| gibbsnich wrote:
| Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)
| There was an article about Dune on DLF (sorry it's in
| German) that makes exactly this point
| https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/denken-ueber-tausend-
| generati...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > I read somewhere that because people don't live that
| long, we don't have a collective memory of previous
| disasters or pandemics (anyone who was alive today during
| the 1918 pandemic wouldn't really remember it)
|
| I'm splitting hairs, but aren't these two separate
| problems?
|
| If I lived 1,000 years, I'm not sure I'd be able to
| remember things that happened 200 years ago super well. I
| can't remember things that happened 20 years ago very
| well.
| plushpuffin wrote:
| In the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan, people deal
| with this by editing their memory every once in a while so
| that every experience feels fresh. One guy even edits his
| personality so he becomes obsessed with something for a
| random amount of time and then abruptly loses interest.
| [deleted]
| bgroat wrote:
| I've deliberately cultivated this.
|
| As I often as I remember I adopt the perspective of someone
| who's 14,000 years old.
|
| I don't know why I haven't died, and at this point I don't
| expect to at anytime in the future.
|
| But I don't know I won't - so I'm still careful, and
| grateful.
|
| But I don't let things bother me, because I've seen it
| before. And all my plans are long-term, because centuries
| to me are the same as quarters for you.
|
| It seems crazy, but it's really changed how I think. I got
| the idea after watching the incredible movie, "The Man From
| Earth"
| patrickmn wrote:
| You are practicing eastern philosophy :)
|
| The Man From Earth is wonderful. The best ultra-low
| budget movie IMO.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Agreed the movie was great.
| marton78 wrote:
| No way, you guys really like this movie? It's a good
| idea, terribly executed. The worst acting I have seen in
| a long time, gaping plot holes that makes you shake your
| head in disbelief. I was very disappointed.
| mordymoop wrote:
| This is fun. You often people say "death gives life
| meaning" which is absurd, as if the meat and potatoes of
| day-to--day obligations, chores, hobbies and friendships
| are influenced in any way by the fact that the chain of
| experiences will eventually end. I don't imagine that I'm
| 14ky old, but I do make decisions as if I might never
| die, and if I do, I try to keep in mind the implications
| for my as-yet-nonexistent grandchildren.
| bitwize wrote:
| "You think that thing you're worried about is going to
| matter in the long term? THINK, Mark, THINK!"
| koolba wrote:
| My crass response to people being finicky or indecisive
| about dinner plans is, " _You do realize that whatever we
| pick is just going to be shit out by tomorrow right?_ "
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Most of it's breathed out (unless it's fibre-heavy).
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Imagine a place (call it heaven if you want) where time
| and death don't exist. What could you possibly care about?
| Mathematics!
|
| plushpuffin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132468)
| mentions Greg Egan's _Permutation city_ , and this sort of
| question is one of his main themes. In _Diaspora_ , Egan
| explores many other possible answers; my favourite of the
| possible answers there, and I suspect also his, is that
| eventually one would occupy oneself with mathematics in
| such a place.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Mr Egan would be a little biased with that answer :)
| patrickmn wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU0PYcCsL6o
| walterbell wrote:
| _> What could you possibly care about?_
|
| Competition/drama with other immortals? Competition with
| past selves? Assuming no memory wipes.
|
| Context switches could be annoying, given the ability to
| tangent across infinite time or space.
| rkuykendall-com wrote:
| This is addressed really interestingly in The Good Place.
| It starts off looking like a very by-the-book sitcom
| though, so you do need to wait it out a bit.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| It's a philosophy class masquerading as a sitcom. I liked
| the show a lot. And props to them for ending the show
| when it needed to. They could have dragged it out but
| didn't.
| bentcorner wrote:
| > They could have dragged it out but didn't.
|
| I've watched the show and loved it, and I've heard this
| compliment before, but only just now have I realized how
| meta this compliment is.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Glad to hear it ended. Death isn't always bad.
| emteycz wrote:
| Caring doesn't need to be negative only. IMHO You can care
| about love even if you're immortal, and you care about
| losing it even though you went through it all bazillion
| times already, as each person is unique and the feelings
| you lose are still lost and the loss is still painful.
| bitwize wrote:
| > F* are reserved for important matters like arguing on HN
| about the superiority of Linux :).
|
| Linux has already taken over the world. Your advocacy energy
| is wasted on it.
|
| Direct it toward promoting Rust instead :)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Bahaha :)
| mudita wrote:
| I discovered a similar thought the first time in the amazing
| science fiction novel Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling:
|
| "Lindsay glanced at one wall and was paralyzed at the sight
| of his own clan's founder, Malcolm Lindsay. As a child, the
| dead pioneer's face, leering in ancestral wisdom from the
| tops of dressers and bookshelves, had filled him with dread.
| Now he realized with a painful leap of insight how young the
| man had been. Dead at seventy. The whole habitat had been
| slammed up in frantic haste by people scarcely more than
| children. He began laughing hysterically.
|
| 'It's a joke!' he shouted. The laughter was melting his head,
| breaking up a logjam of thought in little stabbing pangs.
|
| [...]
|
| 'It's a joke,' Lindsay said. His tongue was loose now and the
| words gushed free. 'This is unbelievable. These poor fools
| had no idea. How could they? They were dead before they had a
| chance to see! What's five years to us, what's ten, a
| hundred--' "
| ridethebike wrote:
| I was going to say "Over time one just doesn't care anymore"
| but you did it way better. Thank you for that.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Less about the energy to give fucks and more about having
| better things to give fucks about. Personally at least, I used
| to give a fuck about every damn thing - from the slightest
| perceived insult to the way rice is cooked. These days I have
| better/bigger things to give a fuck about. I brush off even
| real insults and eat two day old rice just fine.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Er, I hope it's not at room temp otherwise you might get food
| poisoning.
| cossray wrote:
| You may have to reduce the amount of Fs you give.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| While I usually keep my rice warm instead, I take it
| you'll be here all week.
| miguelmota wrote:
| Another way to put it is that as you get older you start
| prioritizing things better that are of value to you as your
| time in existence is being depleted. Less time means more
| focus, which results in less fucks.
| ddingus wrote:
| I love your theory. Resonates with me.
| munificent wrote:
| Independent of any biological or hormonal causes, I can think of
| several reasons why older folks might be more even keeled merely
| by virtue of where they are in their life span:
|
| 1. The more experiences you have, the less likely any new
| experience is to be an extreme outlier. A toddler has the best
| and worst day of their life once a month or so. A twenty-
| something every couple of years. By your sixties, there's a good
| chance that most of the extreme emotional outliers are all in
| your past.
|
| So when you're going through something that would overwhelm a
| younger person, it's likely you can correctly say, "Eh, I've been
| through worse." And that realization, and the memory of what it
| was like _after_ it is itself an emotional buffer. It 's hard to
| feel like your world is falling apart when you clearly remember
| yourself putting it back together once before.
|
| 2. The stakes for your decisions are lower. When you're a teen,
| it feels like every decision can radically alter the course of
| your life. Maybe that after school sport becomes your scholarship
| ticket to an expensive college. Your major determines your
| career. Deciding whether to go to that party could mean meeting
| the love of your life of not. The butterfly effect iterated
| future ahead of scales the magnitude of every single thing you
| do. But when you're older, there is simply less time for that
| scaling to occur. No decision a seventy-year-old makes will
| change the course of their life radically for the next sixty
| years because, well, they don't _have_ sixty years. Most bets are
| thus relatively safer.
|
| 3. Your existence is more secure. By the time you reach middle
| age, you likely (though not definitely) have accumulated skills,
| experience, a social network, job contacts, a career, and wealth.
| You live in a pretty well-feathered nest, able to withstand most
| bouts of bad weather.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| It's perspective. Young people have little perspective, by
| definition. They can't predict how things will play out, or
| what the consequences of various actions will be on an
| emotional level.
|
| You can _try_ to gain perspective by doing things like reading
| realistic novels or realism-based historical studies (as
| opposed to the morality tales so in vogue today). I think this
| type of vicarious emotional absorption is the best that young
| people can do if they are actively trying to improve their
| perspective. But then you are at the mercy of how accurately
| the author or historian is portraying life -- older people can
| detect "false notes" more easily, and I see many false notes
| when I watch media or listen to music, some so egregiously
| false as to classify those works as deception. Then you can get
| into a situation where your emotional depth is getting _worse_
| with time because you are learning things vicariously that aren
| 't accurately describing how life works.
|
| But most people will eventually come to have enough authentic
| emotional experiences as to be able to gain some depth, e.g.
| perspective, even if they have consumed a lot of false
| vicarious experiences. In fact, those authentic experience
| might be incredibly jarring. I've heard that Ruskin had lots of
| sexual issues in his life because he was trained to work with
| sculptures of naked women with no pubic hair or realistic
| features, and was shocked when he saw an actual (non-idealized)
| nude woman. He may never have managed to purge himself of the
| false notes he absorbed as a young art student.
|
| When a brand new CS student who has never written a program, or
| has only written a handful of exercises, are thrown into a
| large codebase, you expect them to make poor decisions. That's
| why their work is supervised. Not because they lack
| intelligence, but because they lack perspective. They are not
| thinking of how X will be maintained over time, or the
| consequences of creating some dependencies, etc. Over time,
| they acquire that perspective and make better decisions, at
| which point they need less supervision and can eventually
| supervise others.
|
| So it is with everything that requires the exercise of
| judgement, whether writing code or handling your emotions or
| finances, or relationships. It takes time to acquire sufficient
| perspective to exercise good judgement. This is why
| historically nations had committees of elders who could block
| laws deemed reckless, and why traditionally young people were
| not allowed to vote and only gradually were entrusted with
| privileges that required the exercise of judgement such as
| signing contracts.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I think it is survivorship bias, those who couldn't control their
| feelings were more likely self-destruct through a variety of
| direct and indirect mechanisms.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| What was that bit from _The Breakfast Club_? "When you grow up,
| your heart dies."
|
| I believe several factors are in play.
|
| First, instinctual self-regulation of cycles. It seems that
| babies need to figure out how to sleep on a regular basis, but
| eventually they "settle down." Similarly, I suspect that the
| outbursts of childhood self-regulate, without reflection.
|
| I also consider conscious self-reflection. In the American remake
| of _La Femme Nikita_ , one character adopts another's line, "I
| never did mind the little things" as a response to provocation.
| Mine has been "Well, this is hardly the worst thing that has
| happened to me."
|
| Which leads into the third factor -- the more we experience, the
| greater breadth of experience we have and so we have greater
| highs and lower lows against which to compare our current
| experiences.
|
| Fourth, declining energy levels. We get tired as we grow older.
| It becomes easier to deprioritize simply because we must spend
| our limited reserves on other things.
|
| All of this sounds reasonable, but I do wonder, in the pallor of
| middle age, about the idea that your heart dies. Just a little.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| Wisdom through experience.
| 0xEFF wrote:
| The biggest change I noticed was having a kid. It's like there's
| been a process running in my head since birth called "affects
| me?" A few months after kiddo, there's a new process, "affects
| kid?" The new process seems to have taken a third to a half of
| the resources the first was using. Much of what bothered me
| doesn't affect the kid so I don't care nearly as much.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Personally I just don't give a shit. I still get upset the same
| way as I did decades ago, but it's just not worth my time and
| energy to get all up in arms about most things that are upsetting
| to me.
|
| On most things I either know nothing I will do or say will make a
| positive impact, or I know the issue will take care of itself or
| someone else is taking care of it, just not right at this very
| moment. So why bother. I have better things to do with my life.
| Like lie down on my couch and binge watch Golden Girls.
|
| I make an exception on things endangering the well being of my
| wife and kids.
|
| Older and wiser? Or older and lazier?
| FredPret wrote:
| ...or does lazier == wiser?
| terminalserver wrote:
| Golden Girls?
| bitwize wrote:
| Practice?
| rriepe wrote:
| As an emotional philosopher, I've found that the emotions of
| guilt and pride don't stop developing until you're in your 60s.
|
| EDIT: No, really, I do philosophy, it focuses on emotion. I don't
| deserve downvotes for something I've worked for years on[1].
|
| [1]: http://eristicstest.com/
| pomian wrote:
| Hey that was fun. I first read your page, and based on
| descriptions, tried to predict my result. Took test, result was
| close - same category(row), but other side.(column). Neato.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I'm 32. Control over my feelings has always been important to me
| as a way to survive an abusive household when growing up.
|
| I've noticed it has become easier for the following reasons:
|
| * I've been through worse.
|
| * Time flies faster when you're older.
|
| * Having experience means I have an explanation for most of the
| things I experience around me.
|
| * I can assign words and concepts to what I feel, making it
| easier to understand what I experience inside of me.
|
| * I've seen people die. I accept death as a possible outcome and
| rationalize it for what it is: part of life. Like a dreamless
| sleep, like before I was born, which wasn't so bad.
| irrational wrote:
| When I was younger thing seemed so black and white. The older I
| get the more I see that everything is shades of gray. Everything
| is more nuanced. I say "it depends" a lot more than I would have
| when I was younger.
|
| Plus, I've been around long enough to realize that what seems
| really important and earth shattering right now will probably not
| even make it into the footnotes of history. Very little is worth
| getting worked up over.
|
| Plus, I have so many more responsibilities taking my attention
| combined with not having the energy of youth that I simply don't
| have the ability to care about anything above the very most
| important things.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| They are but they are not by default. I've seen old people that
| cant control their emotions.
|
| 1.Experience : Every situation is new when you are young
| therefore much more stressful/emotional.
|
| 2.Hormones : obvious but an 80yo is not getting the same surge of
| adrenaline for things as a 20yo.
|
| 3.Control : Old people general have money, options, connections,
| safety nets. Much easier to stay unemotional when something cant
| affect you.
|
| There didn't need a PHD for that....
| jfengel wrote:
| Is it even true? There is a common stereotype of "older
| individuals", at least in the US, as cranky and irritable.
| Stereotypes aren't truth, but I think we've all encountered at
| least some examples of this.
|
| I'm not actually sure that contradicts the article, which takes a
| somewhat specific view of "control". But I've just spent four
| years dealing with a very prominent older individual who seemed
| to have absolutely zero control over his feelings, and also
| seemed to bring out a very large cohort of similar individuals.
| m463 wrote:
| I think there might be an inflection point where someone
| transitions from "personal sovereignty" through a gradual
| decline of choices and capabilities. Sort of a movement to more
| dependence on others. Could be a bumpy ride for a bit.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's a statistical observation.
|
| And the President/salesman/actor/demagogue is not a
| representative sample of psychological behavior.
|
| Not are his "cohort" largely his own age.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > There is a common stereotype of "older individuals", at least
| in the US, as cranky and irritable.
|
| For older men this is a side effect of dropping testosterone
| levels that decreases some small percentage point each year
| after age 35. They are irritable all the time because they are
| irritated all the time and the effects are slowly cumulative
| until they are irritated all the time and their temper is on a
| short fuse. This happens to all men and only therapy and
| awareness can ward off its effects.
| bena wrote:
| The older you get, the more you've experienced and the less any
| individual moment represents of your accumulated life.
|
| When you are a child of like 5, a year represents 20% of your
| entire life. When you don't get that toy. That is literally the
| worst thing that's happened in your life up to that point. You
| have absolutely no frame of reference. You don't even have the
| capability to imagine and compare hypotheticals. You are unaware
| they even exist.
|
| As you get older, you get more experience, you become capable of
| hypothetical thinking and comparing events to things you haven't
| directly experienced. And, any given year is less of your total
| lifespan.
|
| That's what we call maturity, that ability to reference our own
| experience. That's why children who have experienced great trauma
| seem more mature. Because they've been given experiences we don't
| expect even adults to handle alone. Like kids in cancer wards.
| They're mostly chill because not getting a lollipop after chemo
| is kind of insignificant to, you know, having cancer.
|
| It's also a perspective we lose as we get older. We don't
| remember what it's like to not have that life experience. Not
| really. I can remember being really disappointed at not getting
| that really sweet Lego space set when I was 9 or 10, but I can't
| really _feel_ it again. I look back on that kid as almost someone
| else. Even though I feel as much myself now as I did then.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Maybe older people just feel... less? My feelings get less and
| less intense as I grow older. OH NO Anyway
| [deleted]
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I would expect survivor bias. The author isn't saying "greater
| control of feelings", they're saying "higher emotional well being
| and more satisfying social contacts". Old people with low
| emotional well being probably die off sooner. Old people with
| poor social relationships are probably harder to find and talk to
| to study.
| conformist wrote:
| How big a role does survivorship bias play? It seemed like in the
| case of chimpanzees the article sort of implies that the effect
| "nice and more self-controlled chimpanzees live longer", mattered
| too?
|
| I wonder what portion of "older people being more emotionally
| balanced" can be explained by more emotionally balanced people
| surviving longer in Western society? Sounds like something
| somebody will have tried to quantify at least in terms of the
| order of magnitude?
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Because having control of your feelings is a skill and can be
| obtained through "suffering" for example, and older individuals
| have more experiences in life.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's just from feeling more right? When I was 9 the best pizza
| I'd ever had came from a Walmart food court. Now that I'm closer
| to 30 I'm had a lot more pizza that was far better and far worse
| than that pizza. If I were to eat that same pizza again it
| probably wouldnt taste better than any pizza I've ever had.
|
| My experience is informed by past experience. Just like my
| emotional reaction is informed by past emotional experiences.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I think you're onto something here in certain ways, but the
| expanding relative emotional scale idea doesn't explain why the
| young tend to be the thrill-seekers and the old tend to enjoy
| more of the "simple pleasures" of life.
|
| If the Wal-Mart pizza were the main factor, it seems to me we'd
| expect to see the reverse: the young would be more content with
| the simple, but as they got bored over time, they'd seek
| greater and greater thrills as they aged.
|
| That said, I do think you're right when it comes to a sense of
| sadness. A middle-schooler is devastated when another student
| says his shoes are out of style. Someone in their 50s is
| generally devastated by more substantive things like the death
| of a child.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Oh interesting. I think the same is true for thrill seeking
| but there is an added element which is perspective. When I
| was young I feared little and did stupid things, sometimes to
| disastrous results. Now I know I could do those stupid things
| if I'd like but I'm also more aware of the potential results.
|
| Young people know some of the things they are doing are
| stupid but until you feel it yourself its hard to really know
| it right?
|
| There is also an element of realizing that certain highs are
| not actually satisfying in the long term. When I was younger
| I thought X would make me happy. Now I realize that X is very
| unlikely to actually improve my overall happiness. Some
| people never realize this or they stumble into taking drugs
| which is in some ways does cause them to seek greater
| thrills/highs but they typically don't make it very long in
| that lifestyle.
| maleta wrote:
| They enjoyed and suffered more, so they are not reacting on
| smaller emotion hits.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| The stoics got it right several thousand years ago, now we're
| just waiting on the rest of humanity to catch up.
| archontes wrote:
| This contacts something I think about.
|
| When we do science in a rigorous, non-anthropocentric, fashion,
| we find that the universe is a clockwork mechanism, life is a
| thermodynamically favorable process, and that there doesn't
| appear to be any objective meaning.
|
| Which leads to a person asking, "Knowing this, what do I _do_ [
| _with myself_ , perhaps]?"
|
| And I think that there are four philosophies that begin with
| that premise: stoicism, epicureanism, absurdism, and nihilism.
| And people go on and on about which one is the 'right' one, and
| I just think they're tools in our toolbox, suitable for
| different situations.
|
| A slave from the mines of Laurium would find in stoicism very
| useful tools for enduring hardships in life. Epicureanism is
| full of tools for how to comport yourself when you have a lot
| of control over your surroundings.
|
| Nihilism and absurdism contain reasons to keep getting out of
| bed. There isn't any objective meaning or god? Well, good news,
| that means that anything you decide is important is as
| important as if god himself said so. Still upset that there
| isn't any objective meaning? More good news, friend. You can
| keep searching for meaning even though it isn't objectively
| there, because the search for meaning is a rewarding human
| experience. And you can decide that a thing _is_ meaningful,
| and that has weight because you 're god.
|
| To say that stoics 'got it right', I think, is a bit
| incomplete; it implicitly buys into an idea that a single
| philosophy or way of being is 'the right one', where instead
| they can each be well suited to different situations.
| paublyrne wrote:
| We're too tired to get upset about things.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Isn't the answer simply experience? The more one experience an
| emotion, the more one know on how the emotions works, unfolds and
| how to handle it. Similar, with age and experience we have more
| understanding on how situations arise which trigger specific
| emotions, which also means we have more time to prepare, manage
| and probably even avoid them.
| okareaman wrote:
| I'm 63 and for me the answer is simple: more self-awareness. I am
| aware of what thoughts my emotion is in response to. I am aware
| of how my emotions are cascading other emotions and triggering
| feelings based on memories of similar circumstances. I am aware
| of how my emotions are affecting the people around me and how
| their response is feeding back into my thoughts and feelings.
| Finally, with self-awareness comes the meta-cognition ability to
| debug and reprogram my thoughts and feelings. My emotions are
| often based on something that is not quite true, so stepping back
| and looking at truth based reality calms them. I developed this
| ability only recently. I honestly think I was sleepwalking
| through most of my life being driven to and fro by thoughts and
| feelings that were difficult to understand.
| nefitty wrote:
| What do you picture in your mind when you think about your
| emotions? For others, I imagine an aura, colored based on the
| emotion I'm sensing that they're feeling. It's like a light
| emanating from their body. Inside of myself, I imagine churning
| liquids vying for dominance at any specific moment.
|
| I think because emotions are so nebulous and not like gears or
| software programs, my visualization tracks well with how
| emotions work. For example, if I'm feeling especially elated,
| it's like my body is filling with a deep gold that overwhelms
| any other emotion.
| slver wrote:
| More reflection, sure. Experience. Humility.
|
| But also less hormones. Young people are hormone-driven action-
| reaction machines.
| okareaman wrote:
| I did a course of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and related
| therapies with young veterans and saw them benefit, although
| they probably couldn't tell you how it works.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Everyone is just a machine
| okareaman wrote:
| _Yes, we have become very efficient in doing things. What
| we are doing, we have become so efficient in doing that we
| don't need any awareness to do it. It has become
| mechanical, automatic. We function like robots. We are not
| men yet; we are machines. That's what George Gurdjieff used
| to say again and again, that man as he exists is a machine.
| He offended many people, because nobody likes to be called
| a machine. Machines like to be called gods; then they feel
| very happy, puffed up. Gurdjieff used to call people
| machines, and he was right. If you watch yourself you will
| know how mechanically you behave._
|
| http://www.pomyc.org/blog-details/55
|
| The exact quote by Gurdjieff is worth reading.
|
| Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" dealt with this
| theme in an extraordinary way. He created a character who
| was going mad because he felt he was living among robots.
| At last, his character finds an artist that had a "light"
| in him, a soul, and the character decides everything is ok.
| At this point Kurt Vonnegut inserts himself into the
| narrative (which struck me as extraordinary) and says that
| he decided not to kill himself because he wrote this story
| (his mother committed suicide.) This book also helped me
| become more self-aware.
| nexuist wrote:
| A machine more commonly known as an "animal" :)
| monktastic1 wrote:
| Everyone can be described as machine-like _if you apply
| that particular lens_. From a first-person perspective I am
| pure consciousness operating a meat suit. You may argue
| that reductive materialism allows you to reduce my claim to
| one about matter, but the onus is on you to prove
| materialism -- which I suspect you 'll be hard-pressed to
| do in an HN comment.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| Agree, but you can only do that if you do the introspection
| work, like you did. I know some people in your age range who
| still react like a 20yo.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - there's some correlation with age just because you're
| forced to take in some inputs/experience just from existing.
|
| I think there are exceptions though in both directions
| related to how much you try to directly get better at this
| kind of thing.
|
| It's worth it I think - you're in your own head your entire
| life, might as well try to make it a nice place to be.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm about half your age and I don't know much about anything
| but, I think I'd agree based on my experience so far. I
| realized a while back that I'm some sort of chemical soup and I
| don't know where my thoughts or emotions even originate from. I
| don't seem to produce them voluntarily - they just bubble up
| out of the silence inside me. I have some moment of control,
| though it doesn't seem very effective a lot of the time.
| However I fail or succeed appears to be largely determined by
| abilities I don't have much control over in the first place. I
| mean, how the hell can I read? Why am I able to speak and
| understand language? My heart keeps beating, my cells repair
| themselves, I somehow remember to breathe. I understand math,
| programming, but none of the internal mechanisms which make
| that possible.
|
| I've come to the conclusion that my emotions are something to
| observe a lot before allowing responses, to whatever degree I
| can accomplish that, because I don't truly understand where
| they came from or why later on, let alone in the moment. The
| truth I'm living is a very arbitrary and subjective one at all
| times.
|
| Like you say, these feelings and reactions are often based on
| "facts" that aren't really true anyways. Reality is a very thin
| veil over something I can hardly comprehend the physics or
| magic of.
|
| If I can manage to develop better temperance and courage to
| restrain my reactions and questions my thoughts, feelings, and
| beliefs, I think I'll be pretty content with that. The sense of
| sleepwalking through life is very apt. I've felt very alive,
| focused, and attuned to reality at many points in my life while
| being very much completely out of tune and dead to the rest of
| the world. I didn't know who I was, what was going on,
| anything. And I still don't.
|
| Here's to trying to figure it out I guess!
| okareaman wrote:
| Your ideas are very much in line with Stoicism (I can't
| control the world, but I can control my reaction to it), the
| teachings of Jesus Christ (Matthew 6:25-34 lilies of the
| field), Buddha (Discourse on the Forms of Thought), ancient
| Hindu wisdom (lookup "Vasana" for starts) and modern
| Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Some people like to focus on one,
| but I have learned from them all.
| [deleted]
| nsoonhui wrote:
| Because those who can't control their feelings don't tend to live
| as long, due to poor health and less meaningful social life, all
| resulted from bad temper?
| literallycancer wrote:
| Half of this website has no social life. Anyone dead yet? Show
| of hands?
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Only inside
| me_me_me wrote:
| Lack of social ties, interaction, spouse all are
| statistically significant factors of shorter avg lifespans.
| red75prime wrote:
| Those are correlation studies. Such studies cannot tell
| would you live longer if you were to force yourself to
| improve your social interactions.
|
| Being married at least has a tangible causal link: support
| in health-related emergencies.
| hnedeotes wrote:
| Who produced these studies? The imperial college of london?
| Tade0 wrote:
| IT is well past that point. Now it's a job like any other,
| not something done by people who would otherwise be shut-in
| NEETs.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-12 23:02 UTC)