Yes, We Get Wiser with Age
nautil.us
nautil.us
> We have been doing a study of about 2000 people from age 21 to 100-plus. We look at their physical health, cognitive function, and psychosocial functioning. What we find is that physical health declines after middle age, which is not a surprise. Cognitive function starts to decline in older age, not a surprise. But psycho-social functioning, including wellness, quality of life, and happiness progressively improve with age. Older people handle stresses better than someone in their 20s and 30s. When you’re young and something goes wrong you might be crushed. When you’re old, and something goes wrong, you say, “That’s okay. There are other things that will go right.”
This is the unroasted scientific nut in an article written with an overwhelmingly authoritative tone. It sounds like the researchers have an online form or sent out a survey. To whom? With what specific questions? Or maybe they are asking in person and older people are more reticent to reveal to a stranger that they are lonely or unhappy. Does "We have been doing a study" mean it is still in progress, and if so, why are they reporting the results already? The answer of course is that an article like this helps justify the grant money / salaries for the UCSD Center for Healthy Aging.
> When you’re young and something goes wrong you might be crushed. When you’re old, and something goes wrong, you say, “That’s okay. There are other things that will go right.”
This bit is massive, massive blanket statement to extract from whatever survey they are conducting. Both the young and old can be equanimous.
Looking at my own grandmother's current life- almost every one of her friends is dead and she has the more limited mobility and health problems people in their 80s often have. She definitely tries to act as cheerful as possible around us, but I know she gets sad. Because having everybody who really understands you and shared common experiences with you be dead is sad. No longer being able to ride a bike or have the health to travel is sad. Its de-humanizing to think that older people somehow don't feel the emotional pain of these experiences.
Wisdom is earned by doing, not by aging.
Maybe we say the one who went to Harvard--even assuming the rare case they got in on academic merit alone as a particularly incredible prodigy--may have fantastic mathematical ability, but not have ability or willingness to socially adapt or even contribute constructively to society (Ted Kacznyski). In other words, is there positive value in saying he was particularly intelligent rather than good at math and academic coursework, etc?
There are infinite other examples: one can be good at engineering, and bad at writing, etc.
Granted there are in fact those with more intellectual horsepower, but everyone has it in a different variety. Then their different experiences, skills and knowledge shape them as a different person.
The misleading nature of our thinking about particular ability and abstracting that into a concept of intelligence appears to also be part of human's arrogance in their egos. Hubris is something very human that we collectively get caught up in. The reality is we are all bad thinkers relative to omniscience. Arguably the greatest scientist, Newton, had plenty of crazy ideas about secret messages in the bible, and alchemy, etc., and it's not that he was stupid or illogical, it's that he had different mind that existed in a different environment, as we all do.
We also have extremely stupid ideas that people in the future will look back on in the same way, and ask themselves "why were they so smart, yet so stupid?"
If your life experiences lean too much in one direction then you will be biased and not wise.
I think that an average person who had contrasting experiences of moderate magnitude is probably wiser than someone who mostly got an extreme set of one kind of experience.
Given the average person (and people are remarkably average) I would bet on an older person being wiser than a younger person.
Actually I tend to see people getting more scared with age. And living in fear is as far from wisdom as ignoring danger is.
Reflection is something you do. so by doing the action of reflection you can gain insight on what to do next time around.
I dont know if we could quantitatively measure how wise you are. So it is hard to tell if a person is wise or not. And a lot of times, you dont need to read 1000s of books, have a few DR degree or thesis to be wise. It seems wise and Intellect dont necessarily have a linear relationship.
A lot of us, might have thought about Time Traveling, like a lot of blog post telling you "Things I wish i knew" or "Things I could prepared before my startup or X". You would travel back in time and tell your younger self what to do now, what to do next, and what Not to do. But nobody came to realize, your younger self failed to understand why those decision were made, and what causes those action to be made.
One may wonder, try hard, fail hard and learn. Then you become wiser. But it doesn't seems to be the case, it seems we don't "click" until we move on to certain age / stage.
This rhymes with Zen / Buddhism loosely translated to enlightenment or awaken.
In a way, wisdom is recognizing when your knowledge is deficient.
No guarantees that my assessment is correct, but that works for me.
> "This rhymes with Zen / Buddhism"
The Zen approach to wisdom a bit different from what many think of as education, as knowing the path and walking the path are two different, almost opposite things.
For example, to know the path the answer to gaining wisdom would be close to "don't try". However, to walk the path towards wisdom you can try, and learn from that experience.
A better question might be, why do you want to be wise?
At least, that's how I like to think about it.
I, personally, would expect that wisdom does not come with age, but with experience and training in how one thinks. That doesn't come with age, it comes with time. The sooner or later you begin this training, or the harder you train, greatly effect when or if this wisdom comes. Though, in people who pursue wisdom, I doubt their pursuit decreases with age.
A final aside, the article's representation of wisdom ("When you’re old, and something goes wrong, you say, “That’s okay. There are other things that will go right.”") sounds awfully like apathy, if not careful. I believe wisdom is more than that.
When I think back to when I was younger (I'm 47) I realize how simplistic a lot of my beliefs were. These days I'm far more willing to listen to others and I make a lot fewer assumptions about why people do the things they do. I hope the trend continues.
I think that's why I was a little sympathetic to that Google engineer that was recently fired for his memo arguing against Google policies on diversity. After I read about what he argued, I actually said to people that he sounds very young. His recent statements about the positive aspects of the KKK reinforce that.
Some of the most narrow-minded and ignorant people I have encountered have been much older than me.
Age does not necessarily confer wisdom.
I also don't agree with the you must respect your elders adage. Respect to is something you should apply to everyone until they give you a reason to do otherwise, but age in and of itself is not a reason to command respect.
No.
How does this explain Brexit?
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/docume...
18-24: 71 remain / 29 leave
25-49: 54 remain / 36 leave
50-64: 40 remain / 60 leave
65+: 36 remain / 64 leave
That sample is too large to be anecdatum.
However to play devils advocate; leave voters were drip fed anti-EU propaganda for decades with nobody on the EU side defending it, and the run up to the referendum there was a lot of lying. So the fault may be that people were more susceptible to misinformation in that state.
Regardless, there are simple facts that people seem to ignore in this debate so I can't take what you said as wholesome or objective.
For instance, the UK was the only member not to impose an easing period in regards to Poland joining the EU. As such we saw an influx of poles as those who wanted to emigrate had nowhere else to go. Purely self-inflicted. But politicians blame the EU for this.
Another instance is: "No way to inhibit EU freedom of movement for those who choose to move here! We have to give them all our benefit money!". Well, you have to afford EU citizens the same rights as UK citizens for 6 months, if they're not economically active they do not have the right to stay. The benefit law could easily be amended to be like Sweden/Denmark in that you get paid based on previous salaries, meaning you had to have held a job in the country before claiming income support.
Denmark is surprisingly hostile to immigrants even EU ones, we could have learned a lot from them if the argument is migration.
Particular instances of lying are: coercive wording "350M a week, lets spend it on the NHS instead" or, more explicit lies such as "Human rights prevented deportation of a criminal because he had a cat". The full reason he was not deported was because of his relationship, the cat was entered as evidence because he had bought it for his partner, it was an attempt by the defence to make the point that long-term relationships have some credence under the law in this age of declining marriage rates.
The EU spends tons of money for promoting itself.
A lot of the journalists in those media where wined and dined courtesy of Brussels, and there are several EU and state sponsored campaigns to promote EU across member states.
This is just an example: "The spending is part of a near €3 million war chest this year funding 84 projects across Britain and the EU with the aim to “channel criticism into a useful, constructive and positive driver for European integration in the long run”." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/eus-3m-war-chest-to-fund-...
"Ten out of 84 programmes the European Commission is funding around the bloc this year to "challenge euroscepticism" directly involve Britain, according to research".
Please take a look at [0], and take a sample of how much of the misinformation listed there originated in English "newspapers". Then again tell us how you think that 250k GBP is unjustified?
[0] http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/
No, I'd be complaining about even $1 spent on brainwashing citizens with state money in favor of a particular politics.
But this $3 million is just the tip of the iceberg. Tons of such programs are under the radar, and even more depend on spending money for other purposes (e.g. BS bureaucratic industry, development and "research" programs that just feed mouths and have them feverishly support EU in return with little or no other benefit for the European citizen).
I do, however, agree that in general a population deserves whatever it is that they voted for.
That might just because you are a tolerant, reasonable person.
If you were a bit more arrogant and rude like some others at this site it would be much easier for you.
Source: Back when I was an even more intolerant, stupid and annoying guy I had no problems flaming whole religions or nations.
That's always the case in democracy. But assuming that what they'll get will be negative (as the above insinuates) is akin to taking for granted what you should prove.
(It is more complicated in that a lot of younger people can be positive about globalist/internationalist institutions such as the EU and the UN over nation-states, yet also often quite sympathetic to separatist nationalisms such as those of Scotland, Catalonia, the Basque country, Kosovo, Palestine, Kurdistan, Tibet, West Papua, etc. To some extent that seems contradictory, and the idealist tendency of the young to support the underdog may explain that contradiction; on the other hand, to support regional nationalisms can be in a way anti-nationalistic, in that supporting smaller nationalisms against larger ones (e.g. Scottish nationalism against British nationalism, Basque/Catalan nationalism against Spanish nationalism) can be seen as consistent with a broader anti-nationalist outlook–one can foresee a future for Europe in which the existing nation-states are sucked away simultaneously in both directions, upward by the growth in power of the EU and downward by devolutionist and secessionist movements (that are hopeful that the structures of the EU might make their devolutionist or secessionist projects easier and more successful.))
Brexit is far from the best example of this kind of divide, but even there it's noticeable that the Remain campaign focused its appeal on financial benefits, respected authorities' opinions and perceived negotiating power for better international arrangements whilst the Leave campaign talked about immigrants, authorities being "elites" and linking perceived "control" to nationhood and borders. (Admittedly the Remain campaign was neither effective nor targeted at the very youngest, but there was a marked difference in strategy. And it's also an example of where the older generation weren't so much clinging to a belief held in their youth as actively changing their mind)
I mean, to give the old their due, they're probably less susceptible to becoming members of fully-fledged personality cults than the young, and it's not as if progressive sentiments are invariably driven by reasoned consideration, but one can't help suspecting that if the old were truly wiser, their objections to certain cultural changes wouldn't manifest itself in disproportionate willingness to subscribe to nonsense like Birtherism.
Brexit is a political decision. It's not inherently good or bad, some people with so and so interests find it good, others with so and so interests find it bad. Similarly, some people think other people voted that "against their own best interests", other people think that they voted according to their interests just fine, and that the condescending ones don't really know better.
Countries signed up to the EU because of certain proposed benefits (among them, the idea that they need to keep Germany bound, an openly stated goal of early diplomats and politicians that were fundamental in the creation of ECSC/EEC/EU. Long after that, Germany re-united, took the de facto economic leadership of EU, and now votes for AfD.
(For a great overview of the climate and the tensions behind EU's creation and later development, I suggest: https://www.amazon.com/New-Old-World-Perry-Anderson/dp/18446... ).
Furthermore, EU has always been problematic from a democratic perspective, with bureaucrats at the helm, and an opaque process of decision-making (complete with several non-official-bodies, non-accountable to anyone, that nevertheless convene and take decisions that affect all member states). Add to that certain "circles of influence" between countries due to historical, cultural and economic ties, where a country might control several other countries votes (and thus have undue influence in EU decisions) and it's not that great a bundle deal.
So, if some country doesn't see the benefits in EU membership, they can always flee. Whether it will hurt its economy is not the be-all end-all question to make the decision "rational" or not, as a) the EU is not exactly a paragon of economic stability, b) economies can rebound, c) the economic impact is not the ultimate criterion by which countries decide everything they do. (As for an open market and open standard they can always happen across European countries without common single law and economic steering from Brussels -- I don't think China and the US for example have much issues in trading, despite not belonging to the same federation).
It's also about personal interests. Young voters might vote Bremain for reasons like "it's the progressive thing to do", "we want a united Europe", "I want to be able to work in any EU country" etc. Older voters might be more cynical on to what EU actually offers because of their experience, and they also don't have much to gain by EU mobility (nobody --and by that I mean extremely few-- is going to leave everything and start a new career in France in their 50s and 60s) or other things that might be enticing to young voters. That might be selfish of them, but it's not senile or irrational: it's pragmatic.
In other words, no, Brexit is not some "proof" that older British get increasingly unwise. At worst, it could mean that they can be wrong in some decision, as is the case with everyone. But the question was not whether they can never cast a wrong vote, but whether they have more experience, control over emotion, better decision making empathy, and other such traits TFA talks about than their younger cohorts. You can have all those and still make this or that bad decision.
Can you specify what you mean by this?
Indirect democracy is still democracy. Heck, it's even the form of democracy 90% of democracies out there use.
How about an oligarchy, is that still a democracy?
Which is not true. The European Parliament is democratically elected, the European Council is (indirectly) democratically elected, the European Council is literally the heads of states elected, again, democratically, by member countries.
The European Commission is not democratically elected, because guess what, no public administration is fully democratically elected. No state could ever function if its "plumbers" are changed 100% every 4 years. The UK doesn't do it, Switzerland doesn't do it, Australia doesn't do it, France doesn't do it, etc.
To be fair, the United States tries to do mostly that -- and the utter dysfunction of 2017 has demonstrated the dangers of that approach.
We're not talking about the "plumbers", we're talking about the "bosses", and I'd suggest to you it's a bit of a stretch to call an institution where corporations have a very strong influence on the selection of bosses as something that is truly democratic. Representative or direct democracy is required to counteract the influence of the rich and powerful.
They don't keep records of what is said there, there is no official voting process, the pressures and blackmails inside the room are kept mum, and the decisions are then carried on.
This is not indirect democracy in the sense a parliament of representatives are -- this still has procedures, official records, transparency etc.
This is having your representatives participate in behind-closed-doors deals, and then present decisions taken in them as fait accompli.
The constitutional agreements of the Union essentially pretend that all member states are also automatically members of the currency union... But obviously this is not the case, because so many members either opted out or haven't yet been admitted into the Euro.
Since the informal Euro group has no official function, its power is executed through whatever decisions the finance ministers can push forward in their home countries.
Should the meetings' minutes be public? I think so. But it's not clear to me where to draw the line. If the finance minister of Germany calls the finance minister of Italy, we don't expect a public transcript. If there are a few more counterparts on the conference call, same thing. What are the criteria for when it becomes an official meeting of an inofficial body?
You are framing this like Brexit was a mistake.
In a few more years I guess you'll understand better.
Note: I'm not saying I'd vote leave but at least I'm old enough to see why others would.
Have you actually considered that your opinion on Brexit could be wrong? Have you really given that any consideration?
I don't have a nickel invested, so your answer doesn't matter to me. It may matter to you, however.
Based on most of the coverage of Brexit, I wouldn't have any idea what the pro-Brexit points are.
I also don't have a horse in that race, just observations.
- Many people do like sovereignty of their state, and fear EU is evolving towards weakening, and eventually subsuming nation states. Discussion of the merits of both the position and the fear is a complex thing that needs to go into details, and a one which media failed to do properly.
- Many people also dislike the immigration situation within the EU. Again, this is also a very complex topic.
Neither of those points, I believe, can be dismissed out of hand, which is often what happens in discussion about Brexit.
(Disclaimer: I have no direct horse in this race, but I am a citizen of the EU and kind of like it to stay, so I lean towards the stay side.)
I came to this realization after reading and watching fairly extensively the arguments against income inequality. I personally feel that lack of opportunity is a waste of human resources as surely countless great people who would have shaped society for the better have died without leaving that impact due to lack of access to capitol. Now 80% of the world lives on less than $10 a day, in my view these are the true victims of income inequity yet as I watched debate after debate these people were never mentioned. In fact the people debating seemed to believe that relatively wealthy, often educated Americans would be the beneficiaries of a more "fair" (fairness is debatable and outside of the scope of what I'm saying here) income distribution. That isn't the case as per capita incomes if all global GDP were distributed equally would be around ten thousand dollars per person before taxes, much less than the vast majority of Americans receive as cash income not counting government programs (remember all governmental services must be paid out of that ten thousand. Roads, police, healthcare, food stamps, etc). Thus income inequality isn't the problem they are attempting to resolve instead they are attempting to resolve it in a very limited arbitrary scope that happens to improve their own personal fortunes while ignoring most of the world that is suffering to a greater extent than they will ever experience.
This is not to say a particular group is bad, just that their ideas no matter how cleverly disguised are at their core about promoting self interest just like everyone else. I expect the people who voted leave had similar intentions as did the remain voters, naked self interest.
Is this a puritan/evangelical thing? What's wrong with displaying emotions? Why is the ability to control them seen as "better"?
This is so self-evident I'm surprised it's even discussed.
And even so, the answer to your question is most of the times "yes", at least in my case, as in I do prefer to spill it out in the heat of the moment instead of keeping it all inside.
It's not wrong having "emotions" and displaying them, I though that this was established since back in the Romantics' day (with only a resurgence of "showing emotions is bad" in the Victorian era).
For instance, in certain circumstances anger may be appropriate to be shown, but in other cases if you show anger it could work against you. Similarly with humour or any other emotion.
(46, English)
So yeah, I don't think it's a "puritan/evangelical" thing. It's more of a "anything but contemporary urban society" thing.
That's actually one of the few reasons why I've still not emigrated yet. The few countries which I now find economically stable are generally seen as "cold" when it comes to human interactions and expressing your feelings (Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden) while the few other options which I found a lot more similar to my country (I now live in Romania) have been going through difficult economic times lately (Spain, Italy).
If people acted on their emotion (i.e. mostly controlled by our reptile brain) it would be a very violent society and quite frankly unsustainable.
Situation: You are angry at a person.
- Control over emotion: You tell them you're angry and why.
- Lack of control: You punch them in the face.
Situation: You see a person in need of help.
- Control over emotion: You allocate reasonable amounts of resources to help them.
- Lack of control: You drop everything and spend all resources availabel to help them.
Anecdata time. The later situation was comically obvious a month or so ago in Sweden. We have a group of people (supposedly) from Afghanistan that may or may not get deported. They are protesting in our capital, and the protest had been going on for some time. A high profile lawyer raises some money (amounting to a couple of thousand dollars) in order to support these people. He goes to where the protesters are assembled. The first person he speaks to, he feels so sorry for that he decides just to give her the entire sum of money he has raised, and be done with it.
I'd argue that (apart from committing borderline fraud), this person displayed an unreasonable lack of control over his "love and tenderness". He spent a fairly large amount of money that could have been used to help a large group of people on a single individual on the spur of the moment.
Having emotions is not wrong. Showing them is not wrong either. Letting them get the best of you (i.e. lacking control over them) often is.
The lawyer, Viktor Banke, raised around 15,000 SEK (slightly less than $2000) to help Syrian refugees who were living temporarily in the Mosque at Medborgarplatsen in central Stockholm. He had raised this money with the promise that they'd be given to the people who were running the shelters, to help them finance the operation. When he arrives, he meets a Syrian woman with children who, while travelling from Syria through Europe, had been registered as a refugee in Hungary. Since EU policy at the time was (and maybe still is?) that refugees should be handled by the first country they register in, it looked very likely that she and her children would be sent back to Hungary. Notably in this story is that at the time Hungary was considered a "less attractive" country for refugees than Sweden. Viktor then decides to hand the raised money (not a huge sum of money, but still) to this woman, rather than to the people operating the shelter.
I don't have any international references for this at all - apparently Viktor wrote about it in his new book Andrum, in which he discusses Swedish politics w/r to the refugee situation in Europe (I have not read the book).
Brief source in Swedish: https://bjornostbring.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/recension-av-...
My apologies for my misleading previous post. That's what happens when you tell a story from memory. Anecdotes indeed.
I agree, it's not wrong, which is why we sympathize with emotional displays in children, the mentally disabled, and people who have suffered great loss. Those responses are involuntary, or nearly so.
The problem is that emotions will lie. As someone who has fought battles with depression, irrational exuberance and other unbalanced states, looking back at how I misinterpreted reality and acted on false certainty is embarrassing.
As I've gotten older, I have strengthened an invisible muscle which allows me to clamp down on my involuntary responses so I can evaluate them more rationally before choosing whether to embrace or extinguish them. I consider myself very fortunate to have had the time to make progress with this, and I am always happy to see others do the same.
When you bottle up a feeling that you later realize to have been based on falsehood, it doesn't hurt your psyche any longer. It just fades away, with only a glimmer of gratitude left behind that you didn't make a foolish choice because of it.