Aging ("Ageing," to the obsolete)

sus

sus

Moderator
For the old man, there is no longer any novelty in the world, because he has decided there is none.

Even surprises are post-emptively explained away with ease.

All the animals have been named and identified. Evolution freezes in its tracks; there are no new animals.

This thread is dedicated to Leo.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Because all things in this world are the same and different simultaneously—the same in some ways, different in other ways—the old man is not wrong to see only repeats!

But neither is he right.

His explore-exploit algorithm has decided it is time to stop learning. The ego has grown attached to, and dependent on, the schema that structures its experience.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
The old man is sentimental. He sees no good in changes, and much good that has been lost. The structure is fine as-is, best left alone.

Disconnected from the flow of things, anchored in place, reality drifts slowly past him. For the world invariably changes, even if his method of structuring it stays stagnant and unmoving.

No longer limber, he is outcompeted by more flexible rivals. His works wane, and their reception with it, so that it will take some time before his youthful accomplishments are remembered as excellent in their own time. For those less fortunate, only their late senility will be remembered...
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Leo said:
Gus, if you knew anything -- about me, or the world in general -- you'd realize what a jackass you are.
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Ohh are you medically diagnosed as senile? If I had known that I wouldn't have joked about it, swear on my life.
 
jenks

jenks

thread death
I kind of recognised myself in some of that with regard to music - ahh youngster I can see why you like it but I can see where it all comes from if only you had my depth of knowledge/experience (obviously in not such a patronising manner but you get the drift) However I don’t feel it in Lit where I’m constantly surprised and confounded by her young and old alike and I don’t feel old, worn out and potentially cynical
 
sus

sus

Moderator
jenks said:
I kind of recognised myself in some of that with regard to music - ahh youngster I can see why you like it but I can see where it all comes from if only you had my depth of knowledge/experience (obviously in not such a patronising manner but you get the drift) However I don’t feel it in Lit where I’m constantly surprised and confounded by her young and old alike and I don’t feel old, worn out and potentially cynical
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That's a great point, I think @blissblogger talks about something sorta similar, where he could still be wowed by newly discovered music in the canon from before his time (e.g. Giu La Testa soundtrack), but didn't feel that way about new music from "after his time"/youth. It's interesting that the canon—things which are culturally/memetically upstream, in terms of influence—provides the relief of novelty in this different way.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
In another thread I said

The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs (and White Stripes for that matter) I think I was old enough to see as the nth reheated iterations of their sound and I couldn't get excited about it no matter how well it was done.
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I stand by the sentiment, but I'm not sure I fully got my meaning across. I was trying to say something more than that they were unoriginal - though of course they were that - I think the problem was that they were such brilliantly constructed pastiches. So much effort went into observing the past and seizing it as a raw material from which to make their own stuff that there was nothing left with which to put anything of themselves into it.

This is why I said "no matter how well it was done" cos it was done really well. And I think up to that point that had always been enough for me; I could hear something and know it was a shameless copy of something else, but as long as it was good in its own right I could still enjoy it.

Or perhaps it was an age thing and I had simply grown bored of the act of copying itself.
 
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mvuent

mvuent

Void Dweller
It does seem to me like old people don’t have much mental space for other people’s subjectivities. In conversations they often seem to have a very fixed idea of what you’re going to say and what they’re going to say next. It can be impossible to pry them away from the conversational route they’ve decided on.

I’ve noticed that pattern working retail and my mom has observed it in some of her older (70s and 80s) friends. It happens with older teachers too. They’ll be fishing for a certain answer from the class and some student will basically get the gist of it right and the teacher will be like “well, no…” and then rephrase the exact same point but the way they’ve been making it for the past 40 years.

Of course, young people can be horribly inattentive to the people around them as well, but for different reasons. With them (e.g. me) it’s more a matter of self absorption, of being too neurotically focused on their own developing sense of identity to expend mental effort elsewhere. Once your sense of who you are is settled in old age you become less selfish but by then it’s too late, your brain has turned to stone. So there’s no escape from myopia, ever.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
one thing that's a bit like aging, but which isn't the same, is that engagement with one art form or another is a process. you engage with it over time and your relation to it changes based on your experience of it. listening to and thinking about something like electronic music for twenty years is going to give you a different relation to the latest iteration of it than if you've just picked it up recently. i do think its possible to reach the end as well, where there's basically nothing new you can get out of a form or another.

that's one of the interesting things that's going on with the new internet forms of cultural production, there's no-one about yet talking about how they've seen it all before.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
Nothing like sweeping, broad-stroke generalities. I encountered X person who did this, so all X people do this. would you say things about "Black people" or "gay people" in the way you do "old people"?
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
following uk politics is a bit like that for me, its pushing the boat out a bit, but that pasttime is essentially an interlacing of your own experience of real life and following a bunch of different forms of cultural production. i think i've reached the end of it, you've looked at it from every angle, turned it inside out, got all the affect you can get from it and seen through that, learned all the tricks. there's nothing else those forms can do that i haven't seen before.
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
mvuent said:
It does seem to me like old people don’t have much mental space for other people’s subjectivities. In conversations they often seem to have a very fixed idea of what you’re going to say and what they’re going to say next. It can be impossible to pry them away from the conversational route they’ve decided on.

I’ve noticed that pattern working retail and my mom has observed it in some of her older (70s and 80s) friends. It happens with older teachers too. They’ll be fishing for a certain answer from the class and some student will basically get the gist of it right and the teacher will be like “well, no…” and then rephrase the exact same point but the way they’ve been making it for the past 40 years.

Of course, young people can be horribly inattentive to the people around them as well, but for different reasons. With them (e.g. me) it’s more a matter of self absorption, of being too neurotically focused on their own developing sense of identity to expend mental effort elsewhere. Once your sense of who you are is settled in old age you become less selfish but by then it’s too late, your brain has turned to stone. So there’s no escape from myopia, ever.
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talking to my parents is like this. without exaggeration I am unable get a single complete sentence in when talking to them. I think its more they are excited to share what they think is a common thought, so its not rude or dismissive, but its impossible to share a complete thought with them or even get them to consider that your thought is different from what they assume you think. And Im not talking about any serious subject matter either. If were talking about something as banal as breakfast and my parents have it in their head that were talking pancakes, I will be unable to move the conversation to bacon. theyd go something like 'ya bacon in pancakes is good too. another thing I like about pancakes is...'
 
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