Udhay, have to admit, he is an acquaintance. Share a bunch of very good friends with him :). regards Anish
Anish Mohammed Twitter: anishmohammed http://uk.linkedin.com/in/anishmohammed Skype: thecryptic > On 10 May 2016, at 02:42, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > > Venkatesh Rao is a very smart (if extremely prolix) guy. I don't actually > agree with the basic premise of this essay, but wanted to see what silklist > thought - several of the regulars have probably passed this milestone > already, including myself. > > Comments? > > Udhay > > http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/04/28/immortality-begins-at-forty/ > > Immortality Begins at Forty > April 28, 2016 By Venkatesh Rao > > I discovered something a couple of years ago: Almost all culture, old or > new, is designed for consumption by people under 40. People between 40 and > O (an indeterminate number defined as “really, just way too old”), are > primarily employed as meaning-makers for the under-40 set. This is because > they are mostly good for nothing else, and on average not valuable enough > themselves for society to invest meaning in. > > Immortality > > The only culture designed for people between 40 and O is prescription drug > ads and unreadably dense literary novels. Between age O and Ø, the age at > which you die, there is only funerary culture. That second link is to an > app for managing your own death called Cake. Why cake? Your guess is as > good as mine. > > But there’s a plus side. Forty is when immortality begins. > > A very general life-stage map across civilizations and eras looks like this: > > 0 to a: Achieve launch velocity > a to 40: Play culture! > 40 to O: Ah crap, I have to make shit up for others now? > O to Ø: Let them eat cake > The new number in the scheme above, a, is the age at which you achieve > enough of a restless drive, via either increasing resentment (some sort of > red pill) or cluelessness (some sort of blue pill), to play for meaning. > > In the scheme above, 40 is the only roughly stable number. It exists as an > approximately fixed point because it is an emergent outcome of history. It > is reflected in the nature of humanity’s collective cultural archives, > religions, sitcoms, ideologies, self-improvement plans, justifiably ageist > 40-under-40 award schemes, weight-loss plans, and dating advice. > > In case you hadn’t yet noticed, the few older archetypes and characters who > do play a role in our collective cultural imagination tend to be > unrealistically wise, healthy, evolved, and wondrously well-prepared for > retirement. Unlike archetypes of youthful beauty and vigor, these are not > meant to set unrealistic standards for older people to actually strive > towards. It’s too late for them. They are meant to prevent young people > from getting too distracted by their own future concerns to play the > present-day meaning games the world needs them to play. > > The other numbers can float, which means you can get extraordinarily > fucked-up lives if (for instance), your a is higher than 40 or your O is > under 40. > > If you’re lucky, the following set of inequalities will hold for you, and > you will be able to experience that most precious of all things, a life > lived forward in time: > > 0 < a: you have childhood innocence to lose > > a < 40: you have enough value that society does culture to you > > 40 < O: there is enough time to take revenge for having had culture done to > you > > O < Ø: if you’re lucky, there will be time to rest and observe in peace > > Some well-known fucked-up life scripts include: > > O < a: Acting dead > > a > 40: Peter Pan > > 40 > 40: Has-been > > 40 < 40: Burnout > > Ø < a: Died tragically and heroically young > > Ø < Ø: Painful and unwanted life extension > > Once society stops doing culture to you, and you’re on your own, > immortality begins. The morning after your fortieth birthday, you > experience the first day of the rest of time. > > There is an obvious question that everybody should ask but nobody does: how > would you know if you were immortal? > > It is not enough to merely go through one or more death experiences, > miraculously surviving each one. By virtue of living in 2016, you’ve > probably already sailed through many infections and diseases that would > have killed you a few hundred years ago. You’ve probably also committed > what would have been capital crimes in ages past. > > No, you begin to experience immortality the first time you recognize the > transience of experiences you thought were permanent, and more subtly, the > permanence of experiences you hoped were transient. > > This recognition generally ruins culture for you, since culture is built > around the game of a meaningful search for eternal truths, timeless values > and changeless habits of prowess. And, it goes without saying, > transcendence of the unpleasantly transient. > > Time, of course, is the merciless slaughterer of all these infinitely > qualified anchors of the meaning of life. Wait long enough, and every truth > will crumble. Wait long enough, and every value will dissolve into moral > ambiguity. Wait long enough, and every habit will decay, first into ritual, > then into farce. Wait long enough, and every slain demon will rise again. > > And then you will be free. Something almost nobody wants, but almost > everyone is forced to endure past 40. > > Unless you have kids, in which case you may be eligible for an extension. > > Forty years is not enough to specifically undermine every truth, value, and > habit, but it is long enough to generally undermine the idea that there are > non-transient truths, values, and habits. You’ve seen too many business > cycles, too many political cycles, too many cultural cycles, too many > saints and sinners trading places, to believe that this time a source of > meaning will endure. > > I’ll call any emotionally coherent collection of truths, values and habits > meaning. The half-life of a representative basket of meaning is about > twenty years, adjusting for purchasing power parity. > > Forty is also the age at which point it stops being worth anyone’s while to > manufacture and invest meaning in you. It is this drying up of supply — > meaning, by virtue of its transience is a consumable — more than any > maturation into nihilism, that triggers the shift into an immortal frame of > mind. > > What really drives home the visceral sense of the transience of all meaning > is the realization, around forty, that not only is nobody going to supply > you with comforting permanences anymore, but that you have to begin to > repay a debt you did not realize you had incurred. You have to create > meaning games for others to play. There are not many other jobs for the > 40-to-O crowd. > > Not only is it all meaning transient, it must all be manufactured by > somebody. Meaning doesn’t just happen. Civilization functions by putting > the 40-to-O crowd to work, creating meaning games for the a-to-40 set to > play. > > Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Stock a lake with fish, and > he’ll fish till he’s 40, at which point it’s generally not critical to > anyone else that he continue to eat. > > If you’re lucky, the meaning game you play in your a-to-40 years will have > been designed by a tradition of not-entirely-malevolent 40-to-O sociopaths. > > If you’re even luckier, the meaning games you help create for others in > your 40-to-O will not be entirely bereft of kindness. This matters more for > you than for the people who play your games. > > The transience of the seemingly permanent is well-recognized, even though > Buddhists around the world work hard to mystify it. A word or two about the > permanence of the seemingly transient. > > There are many experiences we hope are transient. Experiences that > threaten, and ultimately destroy, meaning. Experiences about which we say, > this too shall pass. > > Generally they do. Unfortunately they also keep coming back. The causes > change — today it is Zika, Trump and robots, yesterday it was the Spanish > Flu, machine guns and George Wallace. > > The transient experiences keep coming back, but the meanings they destroy > don’t. Indeed, the permanence of transience is merely the negative space > formed by the creative destruction of meaning. Change, as the saying goes, > is the only constant. > > This is a good thing. > > Culture is the necessary art of perpetuating the disturbing rumor that > reality is meaningful. That beneath the pain and the pleasure, the cruelty > and the compassion, the estranging and the connecting, the breaking and the > making, the ugliness and the beauty, the losing and the winning, the dying > and the living, there is Something More.™ > > Reality of course, is the bit that doesn’t go away when you stop believing > in it. The meaning of reality, unfortunately, isn’t part of reality. And > beyond reality, there is nothing more. > > But with a little skill, it is possible to prevent most people from > figuring this out until they have paid more in taxes and social security > than they will demand back. > > This is a good thing. And I am not being snarky. It is good that things are > this way. > > The way you perpetuate the rumor is by making meaning games. These come in > many forms, besides the obvious ones like creating a religion or writing a > poem. Like being a good middle manager, running for President, or > announcing a daring plan to colonize Mars. > > All fall into one of two patterns: redistributing meaning and creating new > meaning. There is also a third category, accelerating the destruction of > rotting meaning. But since rotting meaning self-destructs naturally anyway, > there isn’t much demand for accelerating the process. Still, there’s a > living to be made in shorting the meaning markets. > > Redistributing meaning requires creating strongly escaped realities by > sealing off inconveniently meaningless bits of reality. Things like > religion fall into this category. By shifting Significance from Some Things > to Some Other Things, redistribution can manufacture a new signal from old > noise, and motivate the restlessness and motion the world requires of the a > to 40 set. It may not be very useful motion (indeed the motion is usually > circular), but it creates liquidity in the meaning economy. > > Creating new meaning means disturbing the universe. By sciencing the shit > out of it, as we have discussed several times before. This does not > directly create either meaning or meaning games. In fact, given the > fundamentally nihilistic character of sciencing shit, the core activity > threatens meaning more than it creates meaning. > > But for those standing far enough away that they can Fucking Love Science! > instead of actually doing science, disturbing the universe creates > pleasantly disturbing rumors that J. Alfred Prufrock actually had an > overwhelming question. One to which he could have discovered the answer if > only he’d had the courage to disturb the universe. A fucking lovely answer. > > The grim truth is not that there is no profoundly satisfying answer. The > grim truth is that there is no overwhelming question. Poor Alfred just > wasn’t very good at turning 40. > > Redistributing meaning or creating meaning. You’re either an art history > major, or you can science the shit out of things. There is no middle. > > This way of talking about meaning is similar to how we talk about money. > You might conclude from this that if you seek meaning, you will also make > money. This is exactly wrong. You have to make meaning games, which is > exactly the opposite sort of activity. > > Being exactly wrong is actually a useful thing to be. It’s the next best > thing to being right. You can get to right by flipping exactly wrong. > Flipping somewhat wrong merely makes you somewhat wrong in a new way. > > To seek meaning is to believe in truth before virtue, virtue before beauty, > beauty before creation, creation before victory. This is the honor code of > meaning-seeking. If you follow this code perfectly, you will make exactly > no money. > > I was dumb enough in my twenties to try to follow this code perfectly. > Fortunately for my solvency, I am not very good at following instructions, > and a succession of mid-life crises and crashes ensured my survival. > > But it is important that you don’t stop believing in this code too early. > That’s a recipe for a fucked-up life. It is also important that you don’t > continue believing in this code too long. That’s also a recipe for a > fucked-up life. > > You must stop believing in this code exactly when you are ready to begin > immortality. When your own appetite for meaning is satiated, and you are > ready to start making meaning games for others. When you’re ready to play > god for your own amusement. > > Here is how you disturb the universe to make meaning. It isn’t pretty, and > there’s a reason most who are able to do it on a grand scale are above > forty. > > Winning before making. This is survival. > > Making before beauty. This is perpetuation. > > Beauty before virtue. This is leadership. > > Virtue before truth. This is realism. > > To win you may need to do destructive, ugly, vicious, and false things. > > Then, to create, you may need to do ugly, vicious, and false things. > > To make your creations endure, so they don’t go away when you stop > believing in them, you may need to do beautiful, vicious, and false things. > > Then, you may need to do beautiful, virtuous, and false things to create > happiness. > > And finally, you may choose to seek truth. This is an optional, > meaningless, and essentially solitary activity. Something the immortal and > free may choose to do, to entertain themselves in the amusement park that > is the part of eternity that does not go away when you stop believing in it. > > > -- > > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
