Midlife and Meaning

Ken Taylor
Is midlife just the beginning of the end?

Josh Landy
Or can it be the start of a whole new chapter?

Ken Taylor
Can philosophy help us navigate the shoals of midlife?

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor.

Josh Landy
And I’m Josh Landy. We are here at the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where I teach philosophy and Josh directs the philosophy and literature initiative.

Josh Landy
Today we’re thinking about midlife and meaning.

Ken Taylor
Well, Josh, I don’t really have any personal experience with this one. I’ve never had a midlife crisis. How about you?

Josh Landy
I think I’ve never not had a midlife crisis. Yeah, I pretty much started around 30 and never looked back.

Ken Taylor
I mean, gosh, what was that? Like? Should I say? What is that like?

Josh Landy
That’s pretty straightforward. You know, just the feeling that what I’m doing isn’t it all worthwhile?

Ken Taylor
Well, Josh, that’s good. You’re in a Literature Department, dude.

Josh Landy
Oh, that’s rich coming from a philosopher.

Ken Taylor
Ok, fair enough. All kidding aside, you sound like that guy in the searcher novel, nausea. You’ve lost all confidence in your fundamental project. Is that it? Yeah, that’s about

Josh Landy
right. Like I just don’t have a deep belief. And it’s important, you know, for the world well,

Ken Taylor
but I’m not quite sure what that has to do with midlife in particular, it’s just your ordinary existential crisis that could happen at any time. You’re like young, older, middle aged,

Josh Landy
I think there’s something special about midlife actually, like, time is running out. People you love die, and all this stuff you worked so hard to achieve. It isn’t making you happy?

Ken Taylor
Well, if it’s not making you happy, Josh, do something else.

Josh Landy
Oh, okay. So you want me to choose some other career that also wouldn’t make me happy? My point isn’t that the career I happen to be in is pointless. It’s that all careers

Ken Taylor
are? Gosh, Josh, it’s such a downer, man, you got it bad. I didn’t realize that.

Josh Landy
When you’re younger can look you’re totally focused on the goals, right? The stuff that’s ahead of you. Those goals, if you achieve them, they’re gonna make you happy, and they’re gonna solve the world’s problems. Then what happens? You land that promotion, you write that book, you create that app. And guess what? You’re not happier. You’re just older?

Ken Taylor
Oh, gosh, I think you need to look at life differently. Think of life as like a series of experiments, some workouts, some don’t. When one fails, well, you move on to the next hypothesis. And you don’t think of it as a crisis. Think of it as your as your life speaking to you giving you feedback.

Josh Landy
Well, I’ll grant you that life is an experiment. But what if the result of that experiment is that nothing matters? One day you’ll be gone. Everyone you know will be gone. The whole human race will be gone. What’s the point of any project

Ken Taylor
should need some therapy? Look, here’s what I think is wrong with you. You’re just a way to focus on goals and achieve but I know you’re you’re this hyper charged over achieving guy. I think you need to stop and smell the roses. Josh, you need to learn to enjoy the process.

Josh Landy
The living in the moment stuff Well, yeah,

Ken Taylor
I’m with the poet Kovai on this. He has this great poem about Odysseus. This he spent 10 years at sea and cafe says he was lucky it took him so long, because Josh is the journey that counts the journey.

Josh Landy
Look, can’t get to see us wasn’t just traveling. He was trying to get home you need to reread that poem can remember that was great lines. Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey without her you wouldn’t have set out without Ethica there’s no journey without a destination. All you’re doing is just ambling about you can’t have a process if you don’t have a goal.

Ken Taylor
I don’t think I by that, I mean think of Camus Sisyphus rolling that stone up the hill, it’s always falling back rolling it up. It’s always you know, a Khumbu says we have to imagine Sisyphus happy even though there is no ultimate Terminus. That’s what living in the moment is all about Joshua, get the ultimate Terminus

Josh Landy
can that sounds like a terrible, terrible life? Josh,

Ken Taylor
look, I see. I’m not going to convince you with philosophy or even with your own field literature. Maybe a little science will help you. We sent a roving philosophical reporter Liza veal to find out if there’s any scientific basis for the way we imagine and navigate midlife. She files this report.

Liza Veale
In Hollywood, midlife crises come out of nowhere. They get hit at a family dinner, like in the movie American Beauty.

American Beauty
No, no. All right, dear. Your father and I were just discussing his day at work wanted to tell our daughter about it honey. Today I quit my job. And then I told my boss to go sell and then I blackmailed him for almost $60,000 past the spirit.

Liza Veale
The main character Lester Burnham up ends his life when he meets a young beautiful woman that makes him want to live again.

American Beauty
Your father seems to think this kind of behavior is something to be proud of. And your mother seems to prefer that I go through life like a prisoner while she keeps my In a mason jar under the sink,

Liza Veale
in the movie, city slickers, Billy Crystal’s character also arrives at middle age, all of a sudden, as if looking up from the task of life for the very first time when you’re a

City Slickers
teenager. You think you can do anything and you do it 20 is a blur. 30s you raise your family, you make a little money, and you think to yourself, what I’m gonna my 20s 40s you grow a little potbelly. You grow another chin? The music starts to get too loud. One of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. A lot

Liza Veale
of times the midlife crisis seems to be about reading being old. As much as it is about feeling dissatisfied right now. I assume it just gets worse.

City Slickers
So during dinner at two o’clock in the afternoon, you have lunch around 10 breakfast the night before, spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate soft yogurt muttering How come the kids don’t call? How come the kids don’t call?

Liza Veale
Turns out this movie trope speaks to a very real scientifically observable trend.

Carol Graham
We discovered these incredibly consistent patterns in the relationship between reported happiness on the one hand and age on the other.

Liza Veale
This is Carol Graham with the Brookings Institution. On average,

Carol Graham
most individuals experience a decline in their reported happiness starting sort of in the mid 20s. Going down to a low point in about earlier late 50s.

Liza Veale
This is often the most stressful part of your life, the height of your career, the most responsibilities, it’s all those things that the characters in American Beauty and city slickers we’re going on about. But the surprising part, and what Hollywood doesn’t always show is that it gets better reported happiness bottoms out and then begins to curve back up.

Carol Graham
So this distinct U shaped curve crosses hundreds and 1000s. And indeed, millions of people around the world.

Liza Veale
The declining happiness part of the curve isn’t hard to understand. When you’re young, it’s

Carol Graham
easy to be much more hopeful about the future and high have high aspirations. But as you grow up, you know, you realize, hey, a lot about being a grown up is a lot of hard work.

Liza Veale
What’s a little harder to explain is that shift why overall happiness swings back up after middle age. Graham says part of it is coming to terms with the things that used to disappoint you,

Carol Graham
by the time people are in their mid 40s or late 40s. Their aspirations adjust with their, you know, more realistic expectations and, you know, bluntly, put, if you’re 45, and you can’t sing and you don’t play guitar, you probably figure out you’re not going to be a rock star.

Liza Veale
Another part comes from our psychology, older people experience less emotional volatility. Graham says it’s the wisdom of perspective.

Carol Graham
Young people have more emotional swings, in part because they have less experience with negative things or bad luck or whatever it might be. By the time you are in your late 40s. You’ve had so many bad experiences. They roll off your back, so to speak, but at least you’re much you realize that a bad experience isn’t the end of the world.

Liza Veale
And lastly, some of it could be attributed to our biology. There’s research that shows

Carol Graham
even chimpanzees have a sort of downward trend in their cheerfulness.

Liza Veale
The shape of the EU varies across countries there are places that are just happier. In Latin American countries like Costa Rica and Scandinavian countries like Norway. The drop into midlife slump is shorter and shallower.

Carol Graham
These places have a lot of things that make it better to get old. They have good safety nets. They have good family ties, good public health and education systems, good social security systems.

Liza Veale
In other words, there’s less to dread. All of this supports the idea of a midlife slump, but there’s no research to back up the idea of crisis and acute culmination. But who knows? Maybe Hollywood is on to something. Keep an eye on the middle aged people in your life. Philosophy Talk, I’m Liza veal.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for that cinematic and scientific look at the midlife crisis Lysa I’m Ken Taylor with me as my Stanford colleague Joshua Landy and today we’re thinking about midlife and meaning.

Josh Landy
We’re joined now by Kieran Setiya, professor of philosophy at MIT and author of midlife a philosophical guide. Welcome to Philosophy Talk,

Kieran Setiya
Karen. Thanks for having me.

Ken Taylor
So Karen, you know, I know you reasonably well, I’ve seen you. You know, it seemed to me like a guy in the throes of a midlife crisis. You seem pretty chipper and cool to me. So what how’d you get interested in this subject? Surely not from personal experience?

Kieran Setiya
Well, I think I hide it. Well, that’s good. That’s, that’s good to know. Yeah, I think my experience was was a little bit like the one Josh was describing earlier of having really been incredibly lucky and successful and realizing as I got tenure, and I wrote a book and I got a job. I was gonna keep doing this, and I was just gonna keep doing it. And it seemed like my career which had been a very big An important driving part of my life still seemed worthwhile. But I definitely was struck and stopped short by that thought was that it? Is this is this what it’s going to be for the rest of my life? And that happened to me maybe five or six years ago. And naturally, I thought, well, maybe there’s some philosophy in this. And that’s how I started trying to work on the philosophy of midlife

Ken Taylor
five or six years ago. That’s when you turned down Stanford and went to MIT. I know.

Kieran Setiya
I’m sure that’s entirely coincidental. Yeah.

Josh Landy
So does that help us get it get a read on what the midlife crisis is? Because you know, Ken and I were arguing earlier about the difference between midlife, midlife crisis and existential crisis. Does that shed any light on that? What is the midlife crisis in particular?

Kieran Setiya
Well, I think it’s has something to do with this temporal structure of life instead of the irreversibility of time. And I think there are really many things going on. In fact, I think there wasn’t just one midlife crisis. But a big part of it for me has to do with the cumulative achievement of goals, which are failure and goals and the sense that they get exhausted, either by failure or by success, and then have to be replaced. And then you have to do something else, and you have to do something else. And the structure of life comes to feel like a kind of relentless grind of project after project. And I think, I mean, the way Josh was describing earlier was a bit more extreme than my experience that he was describing a kind of a sense that nothing matters. In fact, what I found emotionally and intellectually puzzling, and ultimately intriguing was the sense that actually, things did seem to matter. I thought, philosophy is interesting teaching this class is worth doing. And yet there seemed to be an emptiness at the heart of it or kind of something was missing. And that seemed to me odd. How could it be that I was doing something that seemed worthwhile, and yet, at the same time, think this is hollow, there’s nothing there.

Ken Taylor
But let me ask you going back to the roving report, and we’re, like I said, well, maybe there’s a midlife slump. But there’s this you face U shaped curve. That sounds like people just work out of this. And so it’s not a crisis. It’s just a little downturn, what makes it crisis. I mean, that’s a big word unless we want to keep in that word. But one

Kieran Setiya
thing to say is, I think the word has been cheapen it. I think that now when people talk about the midlife crisis, often they now that the idea of the U curve has been popularized, they really just mean the sort of dip in happiness around midlife. So when these studies were done on great apes in which it turned out that they have also have a huge curve in in happiness by age or seem to the headlines where, you know, chimpanzees have midlife crises, I think some of it is that the term has changed in meaning. The other thing to say is that if there’s a sort of dip in average happiness, and people vary around the norm around the average, you’re also going to see the highest incidence of extremes at that point. So and there’s some evidence that the highest incidence of depression is in midlife, sort of mid late 40s.

Josh Landy
And is that is that a universal thing? I mean, I’ve been thinking about Clarissa Dalloway. Did she have a midlife crisis? I mean, in other words, is does this cut across genders? Is this just a first world problem? Or is it a universal thing?

Kieran Setiya
Well, the use of evidence shows up for men and women equally. And it shows up around the world. It does show as the roving reporter said it shows up differently in different countries, slightly less in the developing and the developed world. But it does show up. So there’s, it seems like it’s something fairly pervasive. One thing that’s very hard to know is, you know, was it true 200 years ago, we don’t have

Ken Taylor
here and I want to just put a small point before we take a break. You don’t want to use the term midlife crisis, just to name the the trough of that U shaped curve. Do you want to you mean something more really crisis? Like I assume, isn’t that right or not?

Kieran Setiya
I would be happy to use it in the broader way. I mean, I think that that in a way, even if it’s not a crisis, that process of coming to terms with success and failure, the regret about the past, missing out on things, and the inexorable passage of time. I think that phenomenon is worth addressing seriously and philosophically, whether or not it reaches the extreme of a crisis. Okay, um,

Ken Taylor
that’s a good point. And we’ll come back to that after a short break. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about midlife and meeting with Kieran Satio from MIT. How can philosophy

Josh Landy
help us diagnose the midlife crisis? Can it help us overcome it? Is there a philosophical way to live one’s middle years

Ken Taylor
midlife meaning and mortality plus your calls and emails? When Philosophy Talk continues. He

maybe that’s all there is to midlife but not to this show. I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk. The program that questions everything except

Josh Landy
your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy and we’re thinking about midlife and meaning. Our guest is Kiran Sacha from MIT who’s the author of midlife philosophical guide.

Ken Taylor
Okay, Karen. So I think we’ve got a decent idea I think we can deepen it as we go along. But for now we got a decent idea of what the midlife crisis is and but you know, this is something that psychotherapist, think about what can philosophy do to help us? Can philosophy help us understand the causes? And sources kind of provide some solutions? Start with the causes, and then we’ll think about the solutions. Can philosophy help us understand the causes of a midlife crisis?

Kieran Setiya
Well, I think that insofar as the causes involve attitudes to time, a ways of thinking about the temporal structure of life on the values of different activities, or the range of possibilities that confront us, I think the the intellectual study of those ideas can be helpful. And so I think in a way, what philosophy can potentially provide is a kind of very abstract cognitive therapy, where we can find out whether some of the malaise that surrounds midlife, turns on misconceptions about Okay, time or posture.

Ken Taylor
So to help me help, let’s go through this a little more slowly, then. So you’re confident that both can help us understand why have a midlife crisis and the how to get through it, how to navigate it well, by clearing up understanding, but let’s start with a help us understand, from a philosophical perspective why it shouldn’t be surprising to us, given the temporal arc of human life that people sometimes experience midlife crises.

Kieran Setiya
What, as I said before, I think there are several aspects to that. So I’m going to pick one to start with, right, what is good is at the the the structure of projects. So this is something that you were both talking about in the initial conversation you’re having. And I think there’s a way in which there’s a kind of puzzle about the pursuit of desires, the pursuit of projects that the 19th century philosopher Schopenhauer was very obsessed by, which was the thought that when you want something, it not having it, it’s kind of painful. But then, of course, as soon as you get it, you’re done. And it’s over with, and now you need to move on. And he thought this was just a deep problem with with desire as such, there was no way out of this. And I think that’s not quite right. But there is a genuine puzzle there. And that if your life is structured around goals, the thing you want is sort of always at a distance in the future. And then as soon as you’ve got it, it’s sort of archived into the past it’s over with, and your engagement with it takes the form of trying to complete it. So you’re as if you’re constantly trying to take the things that are meaningful in your life. And by completing them, kick them out of your life. And I do think that’s something that can especially come into focus around midlife, as you start to either achieve or don’t achieve major life ambitions, like you have a family or you don’t have a family or you have a kind of career that you worked many years to get, or you don’t. And so that the project like orientation of your life, and the sources of meaning in it can really come into focus. And I do think that that’s a kind of problem that philosophical ideas can diagnose.

Josh Landy
I think that’s I agree. Totally. I’m a huge fan of Schopenhauer. So but, you know, it sounds like you’re saying, Look, you know, we made it, we tend to make a certain kind of mistake, we put everything we put these projects into the future. And then we’ve achieved them in their in their past, and we’re never in the moment. So it sounds like you’re about to tell us live in the moment, man.

Ken Taylor
Well, that’s the that’s the that’s the solution. Right. Right. But I still want to go back to whether that’s the right diagnosis. I think there’s a cure, and I think there’s something deep to that. I’m not quite sure. It’s the whole story, because, well, maybe it may be what I think is consistent with what you think I’m gonna try out a thought and you know, I think of life as a not so much projects, but experiments, right? I want I want what do I want to be? Well, there’s no fixed given answer. I want to be a philosopher, I want to be a painter, I want to be okay, I’m going to try out the philosopher thing. And either it gives me satisfaction, or it doesn’t I expect it to give me a certain satisfaction. at midlife, a lot of these experiments have been tried and the verdict is in. Oh, my God. I don’t love philosophy nearly as much as I do, or I love it. But I don’t love it. I know. It doesn’t give me the satisfaction I expected. So some of my experiments work out some of them don’t work out and midlife is an accumulation. I mean, I don’t know if that’s tied to that desire that says like life is an experiment and experiment, sometimes crash and sometimes succeed. Is that inconsistent, different related to your thought or not?

Kieran Setiya
I think it’s different. And I think there is a kind of tension that and that in that part of what I’m thinking is that sometimes what’s happening is that you’ve tried something, and it just wasn’t the right fit for you. And the lack of satisfaction reflects the need for a change in life. But part of what was puzzling me in at least in my own experience was the thought. It’s not that there’s something else I want to be doing rather than philosophy. The thing that’s the problem is that I’m doing exactly what I want and still not finding the satisfaction in it. So I think there’s two different cases there is the case where it midlife you realize you need to change and then there’s the the puzzle that even when there’s no alternative that will be better. Having a kind of project like goal oriented relationship with something you care about, and something you’re invested in can mean that even if you’ve made the right choices, there’s something hollow and

Ken Taylor
strange. Gotcha, gotcha. So I mean, there are two there, that means there are multiple possible sources. But I want to what you said makes me think of the what people what psychologists called a affective forecasting. And it turns out, there’s all these experiments, you, you want x, and you think getting x will make you this happy it and you ask in advance, how happy will getting x make you, and people say n, right? And then they get x. And instead of being unhappy, they’re like n minus m for some M, right? So we are really bad at forecasting how happy achieving our goals will make us. And once I achieve the goal, if I compare it to my expectation, right, I’m often like really disappointed. I thought I was gonna be this happy, but I’m so less happy. I don’t know how that because I don’t know how that

Josh Landy
was science here. Can I do that doesn’t sound like what Karen’s talking. No, I

Ken Taylor
know. That’s what I want to know. I wanted to

Josh Landy
be a deeper worrier. Maybe Karen, you can you can say who’s right here. But it sounds like you’re saying, you know, somebody can be doing the thing they love the most and care about the most. And yet, there’s some kind of way in which even that thing, which they think is important and valuable, and maybe even doing something for other people for the world. It’s just not worthwhile. Why why why did why can some people I mean, that sounds like a crisis. just sound like a dip. That’s a real crime.

Ken Taylor
No, I mean, but I think Joshua bringing a good point, but I want to know how that relates to the effect of forecasting, which is a robust phenomenon. So are these two different things related things or what?

Kieran Setiya
I think it’s hard to say, I mean, the effect of forecasting thing is is sort of precedes the science and that the you know, there’s an Anna Karenina Count Vronsky, seduces Anna Karenina then says, he realizes the the eternal error men make and thinking that happiness lies in the satisfaction of their desires. Yeah, I think that phenomenon of, you know, you get what you wanted. And it isn’t, it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be is, is recognized by by writers as well, as scientists. I think it’s, it’s the interpretation of that is up for grabs, like whether what’s going on is just, we’re bad at predicting what will make us happy. And if we picked other things we might have, or if we relied not on our own judgments, but on objective evidence, we might have ended up happier. That’s one diagnosis of what’s going on another is just No, no, the problem is, it’s it’s sort of endemic to the project like nature of our motivation, that we’re going to end up disappointed, because insofar as what we’re aiming for is an achievable finite goal, then as soon as it’s done, it inevitably is over with. And so there’s going to be a kind of disappointment because that that just lies in the temporal structure, the pursuit of projects. So I think which of those interpretations to give to the the hedonic treadmill, the effect of forecasting problem is unclear. So that it’s a bit it’s hard to know, I think, which, which, whether that exactly fits the phenomena I’m describing or as an alternative to it.

Ken Taylor
Okay, that’s interesting stuff. I mean, it’s complicated. You’re telling us this is really complicated turf, both for philosophy and science. I’d love to get some callers in here. And aureon from San Francisco is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Speaker 1
Thank you for taking my call, I just want to reiterate about the externalization of happiness, and how we live in the richest and most materialistic country in the world, and one out of 10 adults are prescribed antidepressants, and how we need to see that our, our relentless and unending desires are conditioned by our economic, those that are Calvinist origins that said that those who had the most, the most materialistic objects and status and power were superior and in the eyes of God. And what you’re describing is, is this sort of psychological reckoning in an individual level related to middle age, but also something that’s going on in our country at this time, where we’re where we’re starting to question the unsustainability of our desires, and how they promote anger and violence and wars, the we want other people see, and this contrasts with relationships, which are messy and profound experiences, which are invisible and are measurable, and counter the world of science.

Ken Taylor
So Arianna, I’m gonna let Kieran respond to that. Thanks so much for the call. What do you got in response to that? Okay,

Kieran Setiya
that fits exactly how I was. I’m thinking about it that I think the acquisitive desires and the projects of achieving certain kinds of status in society that’s a particularly toxic form of the sort of goal oriented motivation because it’s not just goal oriented. It’s also oriented towards goals that are often not coming from you or not not fully autonomous or authentic and that I think it’s that’s especially problematic and I think relationships are an important contrast because, again, they’re not the only kind of activity In life where we value, the process of engagement more than the product, but there are very clear instance of that no one is hanging out with their friends, primarily in order to achieve things with them. Or if they were, they will be sort of instrumentalizing their friends in a way that’s inconsistent with true friendships. I think relationships are a case where it’s easiest, it’s easy for us to see a kind of value in the process that I think there is in other activities in life. But it’s it takes effort to unearth that.

Josh Landy
Okay, what so here we have a contrast of two kinds of goal, right? So one is, or rather, a kind of goal oriented life where you’re trying to acquire things, and then the other side, hanging out with friends that doesn’t really have a goal that sounds very attractive. What about a third option, which is being for example, a climate scientist, right? What if you spend your life actually trying to solve the problems of the world? Wouldn’t that maybe, you know, insulate you against a midlife crisis?

Kieran Setiya
Well, I think the problem with goal oriented activities isn’t specific to selfish goals as opposed to altruistic or outward looking goals, I think there’s still going to be this the problem of aiming at a future target that achieving which would sort of leave you with a sense of emptiness. And in the case of the climate scientists, I think the promise not so much that you’re going to achieve it too quickly. I think the problem is that the goal looks too precarious and too distant, even there, I think, seeing value in the process of pursuing it, independent of the goals, or in addition to the achievement of the goals is important, I think. And it’s important, partly because when you’re pursuing something that is as difficult and distant as the goal of, for instance, for stalling the worst effects of global warming, valuing, seeing that there’s value in trying to do that even no matter what the results are, is a way of of insulating yourself against hopelessness. I think even altruistic activities, this transitional shift is important.

Ken Taylor
So Karen, we’ve shifted to talking about how philosophy can help us get through midlife. It sounds like right, we’re not dying diagnosis sources of it anymore. So it sounds like you’re you got like, I can’t remember. Is it 11? Ideas? Six ideas? You got various number of ideas? Yeah, yeah, we can’t go through them all. So I want you to give me your sing what you you’re there different aspects of midlife, you’d say in your book, but give me your single biggest bang for the buck? If I could, if there were one takeaway that you were going to leave those suffering a midlife crisis? I know, that’s a hard thing to do. Well, they could read your book and get them all. But

Kieran Setiya
no, for me, it really is that the fact that that when we’re engaging in activities, usually what we’re doing is simultaneously pursuing some goal. And I’m trying to get a promotion at work, but I’m also just doing my job, or I’m trying to help my kids with their homework. And I’m also just engaged in interacting with my kids or parenting, and that there’s a dangerous tendency to place too much value in the goal oriented side of what we’re doing, and not enough value in the process. And I think that is a source of sort of emptiness and a sense of holiness because what we’re doing is failing to see or fully appreciate the value of the ongoing activity that’s fully realized in the presence. So

Ken Taylor
I’m gonna ask you something, though. Okay, Karen, I want to ask you, Sisyphus. Imagine Sisyphus happy. He fully engaged if commu could be believed he can live well, if he’s fully engaged in this utterly meaningless thing, Josh shadow though, but without without. further ado, who side? Are you on specificity or lower chakras?

Kieran Setiya
Well, I agree that since the first that the rolling the rock up the hill over and over again, is not not the ideal life. Absolutely. So unlike some sort of advocates of the live in the present ideas that one of the things they did in working on this topic was read a lot of self help books with this idea gets gets thrown out. And often what they say is obscure. And also, they often suggest that it’s some kind of miracle cure. That’s, you know, if you’re living in the present, you’re immune from all harm, everything is bound to be perfect. And that’s not what I think my thought is, if you’ve engaging in a valuable activity, then the right way to orient yourself is to appreciate the value in the ongoing process. That doesn’t help if the thing you’re engaged in isn’t really worth doing to begin with. So what I’m thinking is, what’s the right way to engage in activities that are actually valuable? Right, right. Not that as soon as you engage with things in this way. It’s bound to be wonderful for you. I gotcha.

Ken Taylor
Interesting. Christina and Berkeley’s on the line. Welcome to philosophy. Dr. Steena. Hi, I have two things First, give us one, give us one first.

Speaker 1
They go together. Yeah, my favorite quote of mine from Jung is all true things must change. And only that which changes remains true. And I think a lot of it has to do with getting stuck and trying to hold on to things that have passed their prime, and then wondering what you think the elongated term of adolescence has to do with all of this? I’ll take my answer off the air thanks.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for Christina. Oh, so what do you think are elongated adolescent? What? I know that demographers are inventing a new term, adolescence, you know, because it takes us forever to grow up. So what do you think of that?

Kieran Setiya
Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s definitely, I think been a shift and when people think of middle aged for instance, so when, when the term midlife crisis was coined by this Canadian psychoanalyst Elliot jock in 1965, the people he thought were having midlife crises were 35. And for me that that seemed about right, that’s 35 I immediately thought time for a midlife crisis. But I think nowadays, a lot of people think of middle age is really only, you only really hit it when your 40s or 50s. So I think there’s a kind of changing in the shape of the life cycle in which these kind of crises get put off because people are striving to maintain the sense that they’re still young and youthful and not yet middle aged for longer. So I think there is a change, genuine change there at least in for instance, in the US. I mean, the other thing that caller, the caller said was that there’s a need for there’s a constant need for change in life. And, you know, I think that that is probably true. It’s something to which I think I’m I’m temperamentally less attuned in that, for what was puzzling to me was precisely the sense that I didn’t want to do anything dramatically different. I just wanted to do philosophy and enjoy it the way I did when I was first discovering philosophy. And I think part of that was for me that when I first discovered philosophy, my orientation to it was much more just joy in the activity. In the sheer fact that one could think about these questions.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about midlife and meaning with Kieran Satya from MIT author of midlife, a philosophical guide, can philosophy help

Josh Landy
us avoid the midlife crisis altogether? Okay, younger folks learn now that’s going to save them from having to buy sports cars in their 50s

Ken Taylor
crisis avoidance strategies. When Philosophy Talk continues.

Josh Landy
No one person who’s getting through midlife without losing his edge, it’s the guy sitting next to me Ken Taylor. I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything

Ken Taylor
except your intelligence, I guess is Kieran Sathya from MIT author of midlife of philosophical God when you get to be my age? You know, midlife is starting to be in a rearview mirror. But we’ve got we’ve got a caller. Elliot from Oakland Sutherland. Welcome to philosophy Talia, what’s your comment or question?

Speaker 2
Thank you. I was wondering if this crisis is an outcome of our failure to take care of our souls? If that is the case, can spirituality help us manage the crisis?

Ken Taylor
Take care of our souls? Is that what you ask? Yes. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for the question. Karen, what do you think taking care of the soul?

Kieran Setiya
Well, I think that it’s a notable feature of the way I’ve approached the topic that I’m i It is secular, I’m not thinking of religion as a source of solace. It’s not something that’s part of my life. But when I try to integrate that, thinking about religion as a sort of outsider, it does strike me that certain kinds of activities that are very important to people who are religious, have this non goal oriented structure, they involve kind of a relationship with God or relationship with a community where the value is found in a way that’s sort of ongoing and eternally present. And so I think it would make sense if if that kind of if religion provided a kind of bulwark against an excessively project oriented, goal driven attitude to life,

Josh Landy
okay. Let’s, I mean, you know that your book is so wonderful, and I love the goal oriented discussion about goals versus process. But I also really liked this other part where you talk about essentially reevaluation of your life. I mean, so you mentioned one of my favorite TV shows from my childhood, the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, which I don’t know if many non British listeners like to know about, but, you know, suffice to say, numbered here. Yeah, exactly. Two against one. But a wonderful scenario in which this middle aged guy essentially, you know, gets his same life back. But under a new description, all of a sudden, it’s something he’s chosen something you know, he’s it’s a kind of almost like a remarriage story. So it’s all something about that, like, you know, other than focusing on the process, rather than the goal. What about this part about thinking about your life that you currently have in a new light?

Kieran Setiya
Yes, I think what the Reggie parents story was very inspiring to me, which is this the guy who has a kind of boring commute, and he, he, he’s stuck in his marriage, and he fakes his own death run, and then comes back under an assumed name and gets rehired to his old job and seduces his past wife and sort of begins his old life again. And part of what I think that that scenario enables us to sort of think through is the way in which we value it. The sense of, of having diminished possibilities that when we were younger, we might have had all these options ahead of us. And now in middle age, the sense is that whatever you want to do, there’s certain things you have to do that constrain what lives are available to you. And I think the Reggie parents story is interesting, because what it suggests is that even if you even if you’ve got the right options, the fact that they’re no longer chosen by you can sort of can be a diminishment. And so part of his genius is to say, what I need is, I love my wife, I just would like to feel like I don’t have to continue with her. But I want to

Ken Taylor
convert I think I think ready what’s his name? Ready pair? Yeah, read a little softer De Beauvoir something. Because actually, at every moment, here’s the thing, here’s the thing, I don’t know have a deep disagreement with you or not, you have this difference between a process oriented life and a goal or if you’ve used this fancy, lovely vocabulary of Tillich, like Telos directed toward an end, and at least not directed toward an end. Right. But in a way in life is essentially a tee like it’s essentially process or because every moment is a moment of choice of command commitment, at every moment, it’s open to you to choose or re choose. And your life always says to you, do you choose me again? Do you choose me again, I can always say yes, I’m too I choose you, I choose you, or I unto you. It’s true. It’s a crisis, when the choices that you’ve made had up add up to a lot of brute facticity. Such that to make a new choice is fraught with risk and peril. That’s a real crisis and not just a U shaped curve. So I don’t know, I think there’s an essential a to liberty in life because the life is choosing and committing, always at every moment.

Kieran Setiya
I mean, I see that as a sense, in which in principle, I could leave whatever I’m doing, I could I could quit my job. And so there’s a way in which my continuing with it is it is a kind of choice. But there’s there is also the mundane sense that it will be extremely difficult. Yes.

Ken Taylor
Makes it a crisis. Yeah. Because the costs are elevated when you’ve invested all this, it that makes it a crisis. They’re elevated costs. And it says to you, how much courage Do you have? How much courage life is saying to you at this moment? How much courage and self and ownership Do you have?

Kieran Setiya
So I think sometimes the right response to the sense of constraint is to say, I need to make a change, do I have the courage to do it? What I what I’m interested in is the ways in which, even when that isn’t true, it can seem true, it can seem like there’s an allure, that comes from sort of the the frustration of not having options. And that can be it can be because really you do need to make a change. But other having other options can seem appealing, not because you need to make a change, but because it alters the meaning of what you’re actually doing so so in a way, the point of analyzing philosophically the sort of value of options is to enable people to think through whether the sense of constraint is a sign that they need to make a major change, or whether it’s just a sign of the fact that the Yeah, practical constraint means that it’s not going to it’s not going to seem the same. It’s not going to feel as free as it did earlier. But that’s not because there’s something better. Yeah, then

Ken Taylor
we got a caller. JJ, suddenly, at a winery in Sonoma. What Welcome to Philosophy Talk, DJ, hope you’re sipping some fine wine.

Speaker 2
Hold on. You’re right. We have the this discussion prompts a memory of sailing backwards, Bahamas and the Gulf Stream and sending that marine radio dial and picking up Paul Harvey page to solve so I’m setting the dial on my car at this winery. And I pick up a distinguished dude from MIT talking about the midlife crisis and the Great Ape, Ironman. So the guys are fascinating. And I just say this. Somebody just asked me, how did you live in Florida? With the humidity? I said, I simply unplug the negative input cord to my brain. So therefore I have no data. So therefore, I can’t make a judgement. And therefore it’s excellent. I’m doing it. And so that’s it’s all perspective. It’s all vibration. Focus on the positive things, the negative things. Thanks, JJ.

Josh Landy
sound similar to Karen’s point about reevaluate, yeah. Got all these choices. But it’s a question of how you think about them. That’s how you pull yourself out of Yeah, but

Ken Taylor
it’s phrased by a guy drinking some very fine wine who’s been

Josh Landy
sailing in the Bahamas. Yeah.

Kieran Setiya
Yeah, I want what he’s having. Seems like the way to go. He seemed to have it figured out. Yeah, no, I did think there’s a there’s a broader sense in which part of what happens to people in midlife often is a kind of rewriting of the past in the sense that although you can’t change the past, the meaning of past events can be changed, or at least reevaluated by understanding the way in which things that matter in your present life things you’re attached to in your present life. And upon things that are in your past, maybe even things in your past that are regrettable, or that you the time you wish hadn’t happened, I think that’s a process that can be analyzed philosophically. And that is something people go through in, in coming to terms with the fact that they’re living, you know, the one life they’re going to get to live, and that it has the particular shape it does, when they’re 4050.

Josh Landy
Absolutely, totally agree with you. But let me make a point inspired by our friend linear Anderson, you know, it’s danger, there’s a danger there that you’re just going to deceive yourself, if all you’re doing is telling your life back to yourself in a kind of more rosy way. And he would say, it’s not just a matter of, of telling yourself a story, you’ve got to do something in order to legitamate that story. If you ever regret about something in your past life, you’ve got to make a change. And you’ve got to, you’ve got to redeem it in some kind of concrete practical way.

Kieran Setiya
I mean, I think that’s, that’s sometimes true, sometimes, there’s a sort of, there is a change that needs to be made to sort of complete the story or complete the narrative. But there are also cases which are more more straightforward. So one of the cases that I’m very gripped by is, comes from a thought experiment by the philosopher Derek Parfit, who died earlier this year, in which he imagined someone with a temporary condition in which if they conceive a child, now it will have migraines or something and they think I should wait. But they don’t, and they have the child. And in that kind of case, just the sheer existence of the child and your attachment to the child, enables you to look back and think well, yeah, I can’t really regret my decision, right? And there, it’s there’s no further thing you need to do. It’s just a matter of properly appreciating and being attached to the particulars of your, your actual life. And I’m so interested in the question how far that kind of phenomenon generalize that

Ken Taylor
this is a really big topic, and we could talk about it, I think, but before we leave, we’re getting down to it, I want you to talk to the younger people, give me a minute worth of advice of how I might avoid if I’m 22, or 19, or a young college student at Stanford or MIT, living a life that’s going to culminate or maybe temporarily culminate in a midlife crisis.

Kieran Setiya
This is something I think about a lot, because one of the things that’s very striking about the MIT undergrads is they’re extremely driven. And they’re extremely project oriented. So they have a lot they want to achieve. And I do I have, I worry about them, that they’re setting themselves up for a realization that succeed or fail, that they, they their relationship, for instance, of the scientific endeavors that they’re invested in, isn’t fully engaged with just the sheer joy of the process of doing it. Okay, I

Ken Taylor
get the problem. I know I live it too. I see it in my students, tell us preach to them. Now, he

Kieran Setiya
said what to do? Well, so this is where things things get kind of practical in a way that is awkward for the analytic philosopher. But the thing that helps me really is meditation. So there’s a kind of meditation in which one slows down one’s thinking and stops it from projecting forwards kind of mindfulness meditation. I think one role that can play in life is to enable you to detach a little from future goals and, and to appreciate not just simple at lick processes, like breathing, listening to sounds, but to bring that into other aspects of your life and appreciate the process of what you’re doing more. And so that’s something I find helpful in that I definitely would recommend other people try.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, yeah, I think there must be more to it, though. I’d love to talk to you about this. But unfortunately, Garen, we’re out of time, this has been a great, great conversation. And I want to thank you for joining us.

Kieran Setiya
Thank you so much.

Ken Taylor
I guess it’s been Karen Sathya, a professor of philosophy could have been at Stanford, but went off to MIT instead, He’s author of midlife a philosophical guide. So Josh, you got any? Are you? Are you over your midlife crisis?

Josh Landy
Feel a little better? No, I look, I find this idea of having goals, trying to pick the right goals, but also finding some way to appreciate the process as well. I think I find that actually very inspiring, whether you go through meditation or something else. What do you

Ken Taylor
think? I think that’s right. But I think life is that thing. I think life is an at least thing because life is the process of choosing a life. Right? I don’t think you could, I mean, there’s the Buddhist thing, you can just kind of go with the bus but I don’t think that it I think life is always saying what do you choose? Now? What? So enjoy the thing of choosing right? Don’t be wedded so much to the choice but to choose it right? Because

Josh Landy
it’s about I mean, the guy in cinemas, right? I mean, it is about your perspective. So maybe life is that but you have to think about it in the right kind. No, that’s

Ken Taylor
true. That’s definitely true. You have to think of it in the right way. And philosophy can help you think about it in the right way. I think all three of us agree about that. And we’re right here. Okay. But this conversation this wonderful conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is don’t get this Koto Ergo bug, I think Therefore, I blog that’s very at leak. And you can also become a partner in that community by registering at our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG.

Josh Landy
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear it. Send it to us at comments at Philosophy Talk, or G, and we might feature it on our blog. Now let’s hear from a guy who speak through all his crises. It’s Ian Shoals, The 62nd philosopher

Ian Shoales
in show speaking personally, my life has been one long midlife crisis since about oh, age 17. Am I doing the right thing? What’s life all about? Should I go over there or stay right here? Such introspective deep dives are always undercut by other concerns. Can I pay the rent to see like me? Should I maybe keep my mouth shut for once in my stupid life? So I’m an anomaly nonstop crisis management, dwindling resources. Well, okay, maybe I’m not so alone. midlife crises are mainly a guy thing. Women in my experience are always questioning what they’re doing, what is value, how to balance what must be done with what could be done, and then getting together with other women to drink wine work through issues pick up lunch, and that a toxic past. midlife crises with women manifest as coloring the hair kind of cinnamon color and buying a red Chrysler Sebring convertible with men and also often involves a sports car purchase accompanied by very poor life decisions taking up with a gal half their age quitting their job, learning how to make cheese starting a rock and roll band risking their life savings on a roll of the dice. Juggling will gathering skydiving wandering aimlessly striding purposefully off a cliff running a terrible note. Buying a semi automatic weapon in an hour’s worth of ammo. Well, let’s not go there. Along with coming of age stories, midlife crisis provide a rich subject for movies. Probably because movie stars get older audiences get older and there’s a shared metaphorical experience. Here’s a partial list of movies spurred by midlife angst but just a Madison County. Bulworth Fatal Attraction falling down Bad Lieutenant, shining, eight and a half network The Wild Bunch. There’s a midlife crisis movie trope for you the one last job motif, one more robbery and then I’m done one more train and that’s it. I’ll do this bank and then we’ll finally get married honey. Of course, by and large, it didn’t work out it ends badly. And there’s our Puritan strain smashing smack dab into our libertarian strain. We could do anything abhorrent for Jesus and bureaucracies, curses darn morality and Kristus paperwork. But we are our own worst enemy. When we have youthful dreams of wealth that usually involves an environment of shiny furniture sexy companions, a Hi Fi system a home theater a private golf course a swimming pool as big as a city block. cocktails are hosted is also a beaming tower that scares poor people away. We don’t escape to that tower though either inherited or we earn it by making a cheap car finding oil making a phone you can put in your pocket or for closing in all Americans in the order of their poverty. If you’re rich like that, and midlife crisis is wasted. That was the point of Citizen Kane was net, though you will remember he died to all his toys, even his sled. As we get older though, and even more not wealthy, the penthouse and piano chair in the south of France are just pictures in a magazine. Even in the movies, the one last job before early retirement usually only holds out the promise of Mexico, which is where every thief longs to escape. Once you get over the border. The pets can’t grab you. No more shining castle on the hill, but you can live cheaply in a shack by the ocean. counting your money in the counting sack sipping margaritas with a company senior Ito or Senor Shawshank Redemption, they get away. Make that run for the border. It’s a devalued paradise downsize for the gig economy. And like anything else our dreams in Mexico are mixed in with history. The chaos of the Mexican Revolution mixed in with windsurfing, Aztec ruins, mixed with drug cartels mixed in with golf mixed in with snorkeling assassins, mixed in with disco dancing, and it all makes for a heady Daydream for your average middle aged cue monkey disappear like Ambrose Bierce and up on the beach with Salma Hayek doing tequila shots or get shot up in the square by General pacis army. Either way, well, it beats working I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of K LW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2017.

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Ken Taylor
The views expressed or miss expressed in this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University, all of our other funders, not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation

John Perry
continues on our website, Philosophy Talk dot o RG where you too, can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m John Perry. And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening. And thank you for thinking.

Speaker 3
We were talking about our lives. And we both kind of realized we’re kids. We’re not men. So then you ask yourselves, isn’t there something more? Yes, we did. Yeah, well, let me clue you in. There is