In my thinking, this has two answers.

1) First, an old parable:

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.

I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

2) If I've learned one thing, its that without other people, life is largely meaningless, or at least, a very much great deal emptier. As such, I do not think it is a logical gap to say that therefore, a large component of the "meaning" of life, lies in one's interactions with other people.

Really? Because in my world, life is about doing what makes you happy, as long as you aren't negatively impacting others. If you want to write that great novel: do it. If you want to finish that huge programming project: do it.

It may mean sacrificing other things in life to accomplish, but if that's what makes you happy, the sacrifice shouldn't be a big deal. If making that sacrifice is too great, then it isn't what REALLY makes you happy, is it?

Now the "do whatever I want" thing works for a short period of time, but at some point you get to the end of the doing everything you want, and realize if you shit on everyone around you, you still aren't happy. And if you don't come to that realization... well... the rest of society is going to figure out how to deal with you and you probably aren't going to like that. not doing bad is just as much about self-preservation as anything else for those people who don't have a moral compass.

The problem in your 40s is that you acutely realize your limitations, you become risk averse, you choose what you are already good at.

So that great novel it is not going to happen unless you have written a fair share of good short stories in your twenties.

That huge programming project again unless you've mastered your chosen language and the domain space, you are just going to be dissapointed.

There are many things that make me happy, but there are no grand plans left.

Trivial example: I took 6 months of daily Duolingo practice in German to keep up with my daughter. I was making some progress but it was slower than hers. It became apparent that unless I dedicated myself fully to study I would not be able to read Grimm's fairy tales much less Kant.

It is as Stephenson wrote: "Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. if my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

>Unfortunately there is so little time and no time for any grand works unless you already showed some promise at early age (ala Thompson).

Well, there are several artists that started out of nowhere in their 30s or 40s or even 50+. Especially in novel writing, this has been quite common.

I'd love to hear more about great artists/makers/scientists etc who started in their 30s/40s.

Only one who comes to mind as far as writing goes is Chandler, but he must have done his own share of writing (oil business in 1920/30s must have required some writing)before that.

Joseph Conrad is another interesting case mastering English in his late 20s.

My premise: To be great you have to perspire early with some talent thrown in.

Early means in your teens, early 20s. After that it is near impossible to master the unconscious mastery of the basics of whatever craft you choose.

Again, I'd love to hear more counterexamples of old age mastery of something started in your 30s.

Bukowski published his first novel at 51. He had written a couple of stories and poems before his 30s, but spend most of the next 1.5 decade drunk and not writing.

Burroughs published his first noval at 39. He had just written a few articles until then.

Walt Whitman first published a poetry book at 36.

Toni Morrison wrote her first novel at 39.

Bram Stoker wrote Dracula around 50. He worked as a public servant before, and wrote theatre reviews.

Anthony Burgess (of Clockwork Orange fame) first published at 39.

Raymond Chandler worked as a businessman (in the oil industry IIRC) and started writing novels at 51.

Wallace Stevens, celebrated poet, worked office jobs, and first published at 35, but his best work was done in his 50s. He went on to win the Pulitzer price at 75.

Beatrix Potter wrote her first book at 35.

Jules Verne, who went on to write tons of classics, started at 35.

Ian Flemming worked as a spy in Britain, and only started writing his books (James Bond) when he was 44.

In another genre, Martin Rev released his first album (with Suicide) at 39, Leonard Cohen started as a singer/songwriter at 33, and Vi Subversa (nee Frances Sokolov), started singing and performing as the vocalist of the influential Poison Girls punk band at the tender age of 44, and as a mother of two.

>Early means in your teens, early 20s. After that it is near impossible to master the unconscious mastery of the basics of whatever craft you choose.

That presupposes that you need to. Modern painters don't need to learn to learn to paint like Michalangelo to express themselves (and many don't know), modern musicians don't need to go into classical training or even know the scales (e.g. somebody like DJ Shadow and tons of others).

As for writing, it can be more about sensitivity to details and having an interesting story or viewpoint to express, than mastering some genre rules. One can learn most about writing from having read a lot (which is also what most writers advise young writers to do).

Kind of like how you don't need to study CS and study TAoCP to learn to program and write something useful. There are stories that picked up programming later in life and went on to write succesful apps and open source projects.

Your list is inspirational although I could argue that it is flawed because those late starters actually had early practice.

Jules Verne is one of my favorite childhood writers thus I knew he had an early start.

Wikipedia concurs: By 1847, when Verne was 19, he had taken seriously to writing long works in the style of Victor Hugo, beginning Un prêtre en 1839 and seeing two verse tragedies, Alexandre VI and La Conspiration des poudres (The Gunpowder Plot), to completion.

Same deal with Bukowski, sure he had not written a novel but he knew he was a writer much earlier + plus he devoured the whole library ages 15-24.

Same deal with Fleming: His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels. Emphasis on being a journalist.

Still writing is indeed one of those fields where you can get by with not being fluent in your skill as long as you got a good editor.

Programming is the same thing, you can write a decently sized program without knowing the language and its idioms very well but it is oh so painful.

So yes you can achieve outside success in some craft without being really gifted/skilled but that's not the same thing as achieving proficiency and being in flow. Yeah you can fake being a modern painter but someone like Rothko or Pollack had the early classical training.

My lament is that past the age 40 you can not achieve proficiency in some new craft that you have taken up. There are no neurosurgeons who started at 40.

You have to settle for less, pick your battles very carefully and delude yourself with special prizes.

To an extent, I agree with your first point. Should a big mass of people suddenly 'come into the light' and realize they can do whatever the fuck they want, that could become a problem. No need to look far, capitalism is just the latest implementation of the very old concept of 'rich men exploit poor men'. However, we shouldn't forget that we're quite elaborate little things that can through discussion agree on a common set of rules by which to interact with one's environment. So while there may not be any sense in life, just as an individual can create meaning for himself, so can a larger group of people. Obviously, this gets harder the larger the group, which is why to this day nothing has really worked out. I try to be optimistic.

Your second point comes at an interesting point in time: if general robotization works out on the scale that's being talked about right now, jobs for humans will fall off a very big cliff. Meaning, current education systems, whose sole purpose is to pump out hard-working, quick-spending bureau apes, will become utterly useless. I was lucky enough to go to a very good school, and even there, we never learned to think. We learned more algebra or languages or what-have-you than the vast majority of other schools (which I could confirm in the first week of uni), but nobody ever told us what to do with all that. It's not in the program, because all you're wanted for is keeping the system running. No need to think outside the box, here.

Frankly, I don't see how humanity can not crumble into a fucktillion little pieces if we don't give the coming generations something to do. And I think thinking is something we lack hugely, so that would be a good thing. Now, the ablity to think doesn't pop up in your head one sunny afternoon. It has to be taught, by the parents, by the schools, by society. That means fuck adverts. Fuck legalese. Fuck politicians. Fuck expensive action movies. Fuck all the things that are meant to keep you from thinking.

You are deluding yourself when you think you actually have a choice. A chaotic dynamical system moving between (or sitting at) attractors doesn't leave much room for Free Will.

Well this is one delusion I am glad I still have.

I can delude myself that I have Free Will by choosing to take a vacation next week. Then I could flip a coin to decide my destination between Singapore and Bangkok.

Sure it was all deterministic at some level but the illusion was good enough for me.

That all depends on how you define "choice", surely.