“It could have imitated a million life-forms on a million planets. It could change into any one of them at any time. Now, it wants life-forms on Earth.” – The Thing
This bust is Seneca on one side, and on the other Socrates, all at a museum in Berlin. Both guys are carved out of the same block of marble, which is kind of creepy and reminds me of The Thing.
Okay, it’s not creepy – it’s not like Joe Biden was involved.
“Think of those who not by fault of inconsistency but by lack of effort are too unstable to live as they wish, but only to live as they have begun.” – Seneca
What Seneca was saying was that you should strive, and you should persevere . . . but only up to a point. Whereas you can start your career as a snake milker, there is no law that says you can’t finish your career as a Senior Kindle™ Evangelist. It’s even easier to make that transition if you’re Jeff Bezos’ ex-brother in law. It’s even easier than that if you have . . . special pictures of Jeff Bezos.
In the words of Winston Churchill, “Never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” Even Churchill notes that at some point your life ceases being an inspiration for people to aspire to, and becomes a case study and example of ludicrous obsession. Does that remind you *cough* of anyone *cough* Hillary *cough*?
I don’t know, maybe she lost because of an image thing? Or was it because she was The Thing?
In your life, based on circumstance, you will find that a certain amount of flexibility is required. Not necessarily “Soviet-bloc gymnast” level flexibility, but at the minimum “middle-aged, middle-school art teacher” flexibility. The economy will change. Jobs will change. And as you age, your abilities will change. This will make a career change not only likely, but inevitable for most people during their lives.
I’d prepared a bunch of my notes before I read the recent story in The Atlantic titled, “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think.” It’s worth a read, since it appears it was written by their one non-communist writer. One great quote from the article is from Alex Dias Ribeiro, who is a retired Formula 1 race car driver:
“Unhappy is he who depends upon success to be happy.”
Alex retired from driving in 1979 at the age of 31, never having finished higher than second place in a major race. I’d make fun of Alex, but he’s certainly done better than I have in Formula 1 racing, where I’m not really sure my butt would even fit into a Formula 1 race car. But I totally am a better blogger. What, he has 38,000 Facebook® followers and has devoted his life to being a humble Christian pastor? Does he floss as often as I do?
He does? Dangit. He has perfect teeth. At 70. Crap.
Alex’s commentary and early retirement age are the point of the article: some abilities decline with age. As much as a forty-year-old man might identify as a twenty-year-old, he isn’t. Alex understood that at 31 he was past his peak as a driver and has dealt with it with far greater humility and grace than, well, me.
What do you mean that bragging about your achievements when you were in high school is after, well, 22?
I’m sure they’re all totally impressed that I knew all the lyrics to that brand-new Bon Jovi album, Slippery When Wet.
As anyone who is older than 25 knows, physical ability goes down with age. This decline is not linear. Think of physical ability as your hairline. Ever see a seventy year old with a thicker head of hair than when they were forty? I mean, unless it’s Joe Biden? Nope.
He says that being around young people keeps him young. I think he means young doctors?
My physical ability declines with age. Shower drain clogs caused by my hair decline with age. Does that mean everything is diminished as I age? Nope. I have a luxurious, flowing mane of ear and back hair. Sadly, I can feel the wind blowing through my back hairs, and all it takes for me to feel that air flow is the breeze from a bathroom fan. The good news is that I can now knit myself a sweater entirely made of myself. Well, I could if I could knit. And if I lived in California. I think that they’d make me move out of the county if I did that kind of creepy “back hair sweater knitting” in Modern Mayberry.
The good news is one other thing happens as you age – mental abilities change.
When you’re young, you have a greater amount of “fluid intelligence.” Fluid intelligence is the fuel for innovation. It’s what makes a five year old with a screwdriver take apart a $300 digital camera (yes, that really happened, and I let him live). Fluid intelligence is the cause of new theories, the skill to solve novel problems, the ability to unhook a bra with only one hand. Fluid intelligence seems to peak at or just before the age of 30.
The article further references a couple of examples that illustrate the problem of declining fluid intelligence: Back before computers and high-speed imaging, an umpire was an umpire and the only difference between one umpire and another umpire was how fat they were. Now, Major League© umpires can be objectively and scientifically graded. Did that fast ball catch the corner of the strike zone? Was that curveball really just outside? Unlike in 1950, this can be checked in 2019.
Statistics show the best home plate umpires are, on average, about 33 years old. The worst home plate umpires average about 56 years old. It may not be a coincidence that the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers is 56, which is an oddly specific number. I guess fastballs over the plate at Yankee® Stadium are just another bit of air traffic.
You can trust them! Communism will surely work this time!
Hang on, old people – don’t pack your bags and get ready to board the trains for the new “Sanders-Cortez Leisure Camps” just yet. There’s another type of intelligence – crystallized intelligence. This intelligence is based around taking the information that you know and combining it (plus new facts) to form a synthesized view of the world. That’s a whole lot of syllables that just mean one simple old word: wisdom. The best news is that crystallized intelligence doesn’t decline until senility hits. Wisdom is accessible until you’re drooling.
This explains why rockstars in their seventies play music they wrote when they were twenty or thirty. Writing music requires fluid intelligence. For example: Aerosmith hasn’t written a new song since well before Steven Tyler started looking like your poorly aging lesbian aunt.
(S)he was lead-off hitter in the softball league that consisted entirely of stray cats that (s)he kept in the garage. They did win the championship, which was a bouquet of catnip and chardonnay.
Signs of decreasing fluid intelligence:
- Your VCR clock is constantly blinking 12:00.
- Interruptions tend to make your mind wander . . . oh, look, a baby wolf.
- You still have a VCR.
- You have no idea why you came into the kitchen.
- You don’t really care that the VCR is constantly blinking 12:00 because the last time you tried to fix it you changed all the menus to Mandarin and had to wait for a 10 year-old to fix it.
- Why am I in the kitchen again? I swear, I had it figured out last time.
- You leave stickers on your laptop, because you’ll be getting a new one in the next eight years, so why bother?
- Was it ice? A beer? Eggs? No, I’d have to cook eggs. Oh, that’s it! I left ramen® in the microwave!
If your dream is to be a groundbreaking theoretical physicist in your sixties? I’m sorry, it’s not going to happen. But teachers, historians, and bloggers all rely on crystallized intelligence. Innovation is not going to happen, but thinking deeply and combining new and old facts and ideas will happen. It’s recognizing that you’ve seen the patterns in society before. It is wisdom, which consists of rubbing your chin and saying . . . “What were you thinking when you decided to try create a musical comedy about the Ferguson riots?”
Wisdom is asking that one additional question before you bomb Iran. It’s why the framers of the Constitution put a minimum age on being President – you have to have wisdom to do the job. Honestly, at my current age I think the Constitutional minimum is too low. Thirty five? No. I’d put the minimum at forty five, unless they had no idea who a Kardashian was.
My brother and I were talking about on the phone about a decade ago. The organization he was working at had just hired a new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for their billion-dollar organization. The new CFO was 30. My comment to my brother was, “Thirty? Are they nuts? He’s not ready. He has the wisdom of a houseplant. He has the insight of an ice cube.”
My brother’s comment: “But John, he’s really smart.”
A year later that CFO had flamed out and had gone, umm, more than a little nuts and they had to fire him. My brother related several friendly conversations he had with the CFO where the CFO sounded borderline paranoid-schizophrenic. The CFO wasn’t really crazy, though. The position had just been too much for him to handle mentally. It had been unfair to put him in a position where he had such responsibility so young, with so little wisdom.
The focus of life is different after fluid intelligence drops – it has to be. You won’t have a sixty year old winning many high school track meets, but you won’t have any decent life advice coming from little Benny Shapiro, either.
Something tells me Shapiro . . . is no Seneca. Unless he grows an extra head.
Seneca bust photo: Marcus Cyron [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]
Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.
True enough. And very well said. Getting old doesn’t require you get wise . . .
Little Benjy is not on our side. He has never been on our side.
Nope.
The American decline is disturbing.
Americans scream that the world will not end if sodas are banned, but will the world end if sodas are legal?
You know the US is doomed when a Libertarian forum bans you and Americans say the ACLU, the Institute for Justice, the Libertarian Party, and Oathkeepers were all founded by Stalin.
You know that you live in hell when you lose your ID, but the bus or train that can take you to the city where you can replace your ID requires an ID to buy a ticket.
Americans think tyranny is a fun game, but Americans don’t realize that only the leader can be famous in a police state.
In a free country, singers, actors, writers, and sports stars are not limited and can be successful because they are talented and work hard.
In a police state, every individual success is a state success. Every book, song, movie, and sports stars must glorify the state. Any writer or singer that criticizes the state disappears, is arrested, or is killed. Any dangerous book, movie, or song must be written in code.
In a police state, some of the most dangerous jobs are being a journalist, lawyer, or priest.
In a police state, the leader and citizens are praised as noble.
In a police state, enemy countries are portrayed as having brutal dictators and foreigners are mocked and ridiculed as savages.
Part of the reason the collapse of the US is so depressing today is that young Americans think censorship, gun bans, immorality, wiretapping, forfeiture, checkpoints, TSA groping, torture, NDAA indefinite detention, and extrajudicial assassination are perfectly acceptable.
Americans don’t even know what Independence Day means.
The ACLU really was founded and funded by the Communists.
Absolutely – look at how they pick and choose the liberties that they support. Right to bear arms? Nah, not what we do.
“When you’re young, you have a greater amount of “fluid intelligence.” Fluid intelligence is the fuel for innovation. It’s what makes a five year old with a screwdriver take apart a $300 digital camera (yes, that really happened, and I let him live).”
I had an awesome Dad with the patience of Job. When I was very young, I attempted to clean his AR stereo amplifier ((old tube set he and his brother had built in the early 40’s)with metal cage covering to protect it, but not from young person stupidity) by spraying Windex on the cage. When Dad found out what I had done, did he do his impression of Hulk beating Loki against the nearest object in that Avengers movie – he did not. He did not raise his voice nor even pretend he was going to hit me. He simply raised his head to sky, closed his eyes and said “It’s a good thing I love you”, before walking away.
I had no idea what he felt at the time, but as a Dad of two teenagers, NOW I understand. I’m sure he is in heaven, chuckling at what I go through now. Love you Dad – give Mom a hug a from me.
Yup. Wrote on a beautiful hardwood floor. With ink that I took out of the tubes of ball point pens. LOTS of ball point pens. Dozens.
My parents found out the night before we moved out (they sold the place).
“Get to scrubbing . . . . “
I sincerely hope that Felonia von Pantsuit isn’t “The Thing?”, as that would put her here in Cochise County, Arizona.
Of course, that would make her a mummified* roadside attraction along Interstate 10, so there is a potential upside….
*I’m pretty sure that, given the ready availability of Chardonnay wines, von Pantsuit’s corpse will end up pickled, rather than mummified.
Yikes! No. She froze in the Arctic. She heard there was some vodka there.
Sorry Benji, and sorry Israel, but the American public appears to be, finally, sick of these wars. The folly of what we are doing in the middle east is obvious to some, but has to be figured out the hard way by others. I was one of the latter, unfortunately, so kudos to those who were able to figure this out just by reading and applying common sense. In fairness to me, I was young. I guess theres that age/wisdom thing you mentioned…I didn’t have to shoot anyone, and no one shot me, or blew me up, so in that I’m lucky. If young Mr. Shapiro thinks war with Iran is such a good idea, he should join up and go fight it himself. He should stay in his lane, by which I mean he should stick to arguing with purple haired feminazis, trannies, and other assorted weirdos on college campuses and posting the videos on youtube.
By the way, I found your site from TBP and WRSA and am now a fan. Keep up the good work.
Wow, Ben Shapiro . . . taking the consequences for the war he’s been wanting for years?
Nah. That’s for others.
Gator, thank you. You’re always welcome here!
Unrelated to your meme, but I wonder: am I the only person for whom that innocent, unremarkable 70s pop song, “Stuck in the Middle With You,” was completely ruined by Tarantino (“Reservoir Dogs”)? Occasionally I hear it on radio — not K-Billy’s Sounds of the 70s” — and I cringe. Some movie scenes cannot be un-seen, regrettably.
I’ve seen (and like) Reservoir Dogs. Yup, that’s where they used it. Thankfully, I liked the song before, so I can disassociate between the two. Or, as The Mrs. would contend, I’m a sociopath.
Little Ben is the most inexplicably overrated “intellectual” in the public sphere. Congrats on outwitting some idiot college kids! His more important role is to be a gatekeeper of acceptable thought, a diminutive version of what National Review was for a long time.
Yes. His 15 minutes will (hopefully) be over soon enough. He’s not doing well on the bigger stage.