Longer lifespan helps but not that much. Biologically we just tend to peak pretty early.
One thing I may disagree with PG is that if you enjoyed doing something while doing it, then I think the time wasn't wasted, even if later in life you think you may have spent that time better. Otherwise logical conclusion is that you should live with a mind of a very old man.
If I was to live in a small community where I'd know my neighbours, everyone did the things most valuable to the community - farm, smith, care, socialise, guard - and I knew everyone had each other's back, this would give the same feeling.
Alas, we live in a disconnected society, not even close to having local ties, so we feel we have to earn a ton of money in order to survive by buying our security.
And how much of it is FUD society.
I’m yet to meet the parent whose run the numbers and can tell me what is more likely that their one drink before driving will kill their kids or letting them play out.
So we rely on messages - and the media provides them. Tells us to be scared. The thing to be scared of is the new thing that’s interesting. In the early 2010s it was terrorism - but I haven’t heard that word for a while. Next it will be something else.
So I keep two thought processes going, one is protect kids of course, but the other is “am I being bullshitted”. What is the trade off by wrapping them up in a bubble.
Yes. I remember a "bullshit" task once: An old version of the FOCUS database query & programming language: It limited the length of a row in the results, and I needed a lot of data in a query. I split it into multiple queries and automated daily outputs. I was working in an ancient VMS system, so I had to write a programs to join them. I'd never used C for any practical purpose, but I managed to write a basic program to join the two queries on a key and append the matching lines, and then automated the whole thing into a SFTP to and ETL system for integration with another system.
It was absolutely a BS task that shouldn't have been necessary if we'd even bothered to install a 15-year old upgrade. But I had a lot of fun figuring it out.
Early Rome had a celebration called a Jubilee. It was held when the last living person from the previous Jubilee died, typically about a century apart.
Strangely, Seneca's wife, Pompeia Paulina, was ~26 years older than Seneca. I'm not super sure I have the sources right on this (Seneca the Younger vs. Seneca the Elder), but from what I could find it seems legitimate.
As is typical with humans, it seems each person comes of age at their own pace, society be damned.
From wikipedia:
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (54 BC – c. 39 AD), known as Seneca the Elder.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65),[1] also known as Seneca the Younger, is the one that married to Pompeia Paulina.
Both born in today's Spain (Hispania, then a Roman province), but both educated in Rome.
From the Wikipedia's page on Seneca the Younger [0]:
In AD 65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot to kill Nero. Although it is unlikely that Seneca was part of the conspiracy, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, and his wife Pompeia Paulina attempted to share his fate.
Also interesting about Seneca the Younger [1]:
His life took a sharp turn in 41 A.D. once Claudius became the emperor as he exiled Seneca to the island of Corsica on the premises of supposed adultery with Julia Livilla, the emperor’s niece and Caligula’s sister. During his exile, he wrote a letter to his mother consoling her during his exile. Eight years later, in another twist, Agrippina, mother of future emperor Nero and wife of Claudius secured permission for Seneca to return and for him to become her son’s tutor and adviser. Nero later became one of the most notorious and tyrannical emperors in the history of the Roman Empire raising even more questions about Seneca’s character. Not surprisingly, Seneca’s wealth came largely while in service to Nero.
Furthermore, a tiny fraction of Romans were able to achieve wealth enough to retire. Meanwhile, in today’s world, virtually anyone can do it.
(Before anyone pipes up to argue with that last point, I used to work in restaurant kitchens. All the Mayan and southern Mexican dudes working for minimum wage were on track to retire in the next 10 years. They lived extremely cheaply and bought land where they could afford.)
It totally ignores that we have constructive limits, i.e. we seem designed to live parts of the day on auto mode (which here equals to waste, but who knows, we don't control the background, and stuff happens even when sleeping).
Its why some people try to optimize economy of daily constructive decisions by removing what seems to waste it (like choosing what to wear or not playing games). This is way way more prominent today than 2k years ago since in single day you are exposed to more information then for entire life back then.
Lets get serious: Seneca, Buddha, Jesus, whoever, are irrelevant. Context changed dramatically.
Minimizing energy expenditure is called laziness for a reason.
You will learn the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret, as I've heard it said.
Most of that information is irrelevant to your everyday life, and so the net actionable average is about the same as then.
>Lets get serious: Seneca, Buddha, Jesus, whoever, are irrelevant. Context changed dramatically.
LOL, not even close.
OK, take Hyperion book for example, do you think Seneca would be meaningful with all sort of 'technological distortions' existing in such world ?
I can identify with the Seneca quote, mainly for it's perspective that time is a resource to be spent, and potentially invested. Seems truer today than ever.
I bet some of those differ a lot (hint: not wings:)
We don't exist in vacuum: humans live among and with and as hosts for other creatures, and there is also environment that literally plays most important role.
> I can identify with the Seneca quote, mainly for it's perspective that time is a resource to be spent, and potentially invested.
Yeah, everything can be awesome in theory with little word or number massage. In real life, its usually not.
Let’s get serious: more people still follow Buddha or Jesus today than follow Paul Graham or Steve Jobs ...
How can they be not relevant if they still affect people existing in the world we see today?
Not relevant as in influence. Bugs influence me too, but its not relevant most of the time.
“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen.” —Diamond Sutra
Living the way we live is a modern invention, it has no more than 150 years, and it's already collapsing
Meanwhile Romans built a city where a million and a half people lived and acqueducts to bring running clean water to all of them
They built roads to go to every part of the empire and bring back to Rome thousands of tons of construction materials, mainly marble
That they than used to build giant buildings that only many centuries later have been copied successfully
They built ships to go to Africa and bring back to Rome elephants, tigers, lions, giraffes, rhinoceros, ippos and many other wild animals, alive!
Imagine going in the streets of a modern city and meet an elephant, an animal that nowadays people rarely see in real life and think again about experiencing more than people in the past
They did it for 450 years and did it so well that there are no elephants or lions in northern Africa anymore
They were probably the best engineers and sokdiers in history, the Colosseum was built in mere 8 years
But
Their way of life was "otium et negotium" even if you don't know what they mean, neg-otium is clearly the negation of the world otium
They were the foundation of Romans success, they worked half a day (negotium) and spent the rest of the day in idleness (otium)
It was obviously different from today idea of "doing nothing at all" it meant more something like if you are free from the obligations of life, you can engage in intellectual activities
They spent a lot of time not doing any kind of work or duty related stuff and yet achieved so much
Only many centuries later the work became something organized that must be carried on during certain hours (shifts) in certain places for a certain amount of money
So basically in ancient history most of the times people never really worked continuosly on the same thing and valued a lot their free time as a way to improve themselves, if their condition allowed it
We must be very careful when we think that we have more time or have seen more things or are more advanced than ancient civilization
Seneca was very modern, he discovered something universal about human struggle between certainty of death and the mundane uneventful life that most of us live and that's why his ideas survived
He certainly wasn't stupid and certainly the average human of today is not more intelligent than Seneca just because they read more news on social networks...
Auto pilot is not really what I would describe life in ancient times
That's a modern idea probably best depicted by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, that was in fact shot in 1925 when the effects of the mass industrialization were becoming clear
Trivia: the tower of Babel in metropolis is modelled around this painting by Pieter Bruegel
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the...
_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg){kind=link}
where the tower of Babel is painted as recursive Colosseums, one inside the other, to express the idea that the Romans tried to reach god and were punished for their hubris (there is more to that, the Colosseum was also a place that symbolised persecution for Christians)
We have definitely seen more things. I think that is beyond questioning.
Being more advanced is questionable, especially because that term means something different for any human.
But the point is that wisdom from that time can not IMO be translated verbatim to current time - you can peak pieces of it but not rely on it as truth 100%. Both life expectations and habits and priorities are totally different now that makes any wisdom arised from such system distant and foggy.
The average human has seen more of contemporary things but will never see what we lost, on average I will say the quantity is the same, they are simply different things
> wisdom from that time can not IMO be translated verbatim to current time
Wisdom of that time could not be translated verbatim not even when they were fresh ideas
That kind of wisdom was acknowledged only among a marginal fraction of the population that had the instruments to understand it and argue about it
Let alone applying it, you had to be someone in complete control of their lives, a thing that was extremely rare
We are talking about less than 1% of the population, something around one every ten thousands
But probably even less that that
It has more chances of being popular today than at the time it was formulated
Do you believe that we don't have much time (because we cannot do otherwise)?
I have friends who are obsessed with watching the news. I point out that for every 1000 hours they spend watching the news, that is 1000 hours not building something great, or time with friends and family, etc.
Not terse, easy to pick up and read in parts unsequentially.
https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu01seneuoft#page/n...
But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.
Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
- Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 49 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca)
http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortnes...