Quote:
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Originally Posted by Orwell20
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I am amazed much I’ve changed. My whole way of experiencing the world is different. All the vividness and intensity has gone. You really begin dying in your mid-30s, and that continues every decade until, by 85, you are so numb and detached that you’re virtually dead anyway. A happy 10-year-old and and a lonely 80-year-old (or even 40-year-old) experience the world so differently, it’s almost like comparing two separate species.
Right now, there are 18-year-olds in their first year at university. They’ve left home for the first time, made a new group of friends, lost their virginity, and are excitedly looking to the future. Everything is raw and intense. For me, as a lonely, mildly depressed 40-something, the world barely seems real. I find it impossible to take anything, or anyone, seriously. Me and that 18-year-old are living in different universes.
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I’m amazed by people who say “I can’t believe my age - I don’t feel any different to how I did at 18.†Christ, I feel SO different that when I look back to my teens it’s like looking at another person. So much changes. For a start, time speeds up. When you are young, you feel like you’ve got forever. I think a poet described it as “the eternity of childhoodâ€. Up until about 24 or 25, I felt so intensely alive. I wasn’t happy. In fact, I was suicidally depressed. But at least I felt alive. And I had hope. Death and ageing didn’t seem real, and everything I did seemed to matter. Louis C K does a good routine on this, on how people look at you differently once you hit your 40s, how no one cares what you do, no one is interested in your achievements, etc. I sort of feel like it doesn’t matter what I do any more. Life seems kind of surreal and absurd, like it’s a bizarre, meaningless, unfunny joke.
Another horrible thing about ageing is that you build up so much shame and regret, and then you carry it around like a two tonne weight. The shame is the worst. Everyone has their ‘story’ and we each repeat our ‘story’ when we go on a date or meet a new friend or work colleague, or whatever. But when ‘my story’ fills you with shame, you increasingly hide away (at least that has been my experience).
I often wonder what will happen if people like Aubrey de Grey develop regenerative medicine that can reverse the ageing of the body. If you could reverse a lonely, depressed 55-year-old’s body to that of a 20-year-old, would his subjective experience change as well? Would he recover that sense of limitless time and hope and intensity?