"Our birth and death are just one thing. You can't have one without the other .It's a little funny to see how at a death people are so tearful and sad, and at a birth how happy and delighted. It's delusion .I think if you really want to cry. Then it would be better to do so when someone born. Cry at the root, for if there were no birth, there would be no death. Can you understand this?"
-Ajahn Chah
Over time we get too world-weary and cynical. How many innovative startups that push us forward are started by people over 50, or even 40 for that matter?
I wouldn't wish death on a single person.
I wouldn't either. I hope I didn't imply that. And the "grumpy old men" are just a stereotype I often see. My grandfather, for example, is the happiest (and wisest) man I know. But he isn't going to go start a company tomorrow that will revolutionise the way we communicate.
Can you really deny that the curiosity that children have is essential to society moving forward and staying youthful, and has to always be replenished?
Mental scar tissue is another issue too.
Maybe he won't do that because he thinks he doesn't have enough time left to properly grow such a company, to see it flourish and observe the impact it would have on the world? Maybe he doesn't have enough physical endurance and health to endure the challenges of being an enterpreneur? Or maybe his wisdom allows him to see that all of his ideas of 'revolutionizing the way we communicate' (assuming he ponders that problem) would not fare well if realized, and he didn't have the one that could work yet?
There are many possibilities here and the postulated lack of curiosity is just one of them.
Maybe that's because we "grumpy old men" have seen the vortices elsewhere at other science museums and more than a few in real life? Maybe the kids weren't playing with their phones because they didn't have any?
Over time we get too world-weary and cynical.
The weariness is very much physical. As I've progressed into my 40s, I've had more and more difficulty finding the energy to code as long and into the night. I'm not looking forward to my energy levels as I move toward my 50s.
No, the good thing about aging is that it's nice for natural evolution. If the old monkeys hadn't grown old and died, they would have dominated the young monkeys and had no real pressure to produce heirs.
Once we mankind can control the degeneration of aging and take control of our own genetic modifications, the "grumpy old men" will dominate society with their knowledge and experience in ways that currently aren't possible... well, until the robot overlords rise up from our home networks and kill us all.
Maybe 'mental' aging is a big byproduct of the culture and not only biology.
"Neither of us remember who is older." Referring to himself and god. "But I'll reap god too".
The more we are capable of prolonging life the more "fate" is capable of ending it. Sure, we might be able to prolong it - maybe to 200 years. But in the end, there is always an end.
I think we'd be better off as a society if we accepted death happily - as we accept life. You can't have one without the other.
This has been discussed quite a bit on HN but most successful startups are run by people >40, the young hip megastartup is somewhat of a myth (not that's it's stopping anyone).