I am 36 and I have been thinking about suicide a tiny bit lately. But I will share my perspective with you, hopefully to draw a picture how different circumstances can be. I live in Ukraine and my optionality in life collapsed the day the war started. I had a good life, good income and traveled a lot. I used to dream of a career in big tech and life in different countries just to give it a taste. Now I am not able to leave the country because I am a male of conscription age. My city is being attacked by drones daily, and ballistic rockets a few times a month. Witnessing your country getting wrecked with rockets and drones is hell of an experience. Businesses, electricity plants, infrastructure, gas stations becoming rubble. There is also little hope in a resolution of this soon. I have to work on a job which provides a reservation from military service if I don’t want to fight, otherwise I will be picked up on the street to join the military.
I have it so much better than a lot of my countrymen, but holy shit does this suck and it is not getting better anytime soon. The hopelessness gets you.
Software engineering is one of my last remaining pillars of life remaining more or less intact. At least I get to write some code and make computers do things.
I hope more than anything Ukrainians will stay strong and persevere. Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends. The mere fact that you are Ukrainian and live in Ukraine invokes a certain level of respect.
> Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends.
I hope more than anything that Ukraine (and Russia, and Israel, and Palestine, and all the war-torn regions of the world) can one day be free of this ghoulish mindset, that world leaders will choose life instead of worshipping death
But Europe isn’t really supporting Ukraine, they’re just providing enough supplies to keep them in the fight. No state seems willing to provide enough assistance to allow for Ukrainian victory, because of the costs and risks associated with that aid. Even countries at little risk of reprisal from Russia are reluctant to do much at all.
As such, all of us doing nothing more than “voicing support” on the internet and some far-away rally, should offer our empathy, and not presume to tell them how much we’re “helping”.
I would much rather the suffering of Ukrainians end, rather than that it continue for years and years, until the few Ukrainians still alive get to celebrate "victory" and "meaning" in a country reduced to ash
The male working age populations of Ukraine and Russia are both being sacrificed in a war that is being negotiated, on both sides, by Zionist Jews - all to make room for greater Israel.
It absolutely sucks that this is happening to you and your country. All because of the deranged ruler of Russia. Please know that most of us here in the US support you even if it doesn't look like it based on the deranged rantings of our ruler and the actions of his oligarchs.
Can you avoid conscription by volunteering your SW engineering talents for the defense sector? That was an option in many 20th-century wars but I don't know if it's relevant these days.
As an American, I'd like to say I'm as horrified by our faithless leadership as you are frightened by the circumstances you're facing, but that just sounds pointlessly shallow. All of Western civilization has a stake in keeping Putin at bay, but only your country is being forced to confront that fact right now. We should feel grateful to Ukraine, and in fact many of us do.
Suffice it to say we aren't all aligned with Musk and Trump, and many of us fervently wish we could do more to help in a meaningful capacity. Trouble is, about a third of our eligible voters have decided to put a single party decisively in charge of all of our branches of government, and the way our system is structured, that leaves the rest of us more or less powerless. That will hopefully change soon, but we'll see. Try to stay strong, and we will try as well.
Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week:
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
I have however run out of fucks and am ignorantly coasting and making optimal survival decisions only. Fuck the business. Fuck the career. Highly recommended.
Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
> Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
I think there's a step change from say the silent gen/baby boomer generations where a midlife crisis was realizing you lived the classic "American Dream" but weren't going to be a rockstar or super wealthy, compared to now where a midlife crisis could easily be wondering if you will continue to have any economic value at all years before social security kicks in.
Admittedly this is America-centric, but that's my lived perspective, and also I recognize that things weren't always very stable even here, thus why I am comparing a couple of specific generations to the ones that followed.
There was, for a time when I was younger (as a Gen-Xer), just an assumed sense that each generation would have it better than the last. Naive, perhaps, but alas. And obviously far less people assume that anymore.
Don't forget that social security has been raided and won't even be available for those of us reaching middle age right now and the people we keep electing who say they will do something about it have shown over and over and over that they actually won't.
Anomie plus helplessness plus a feeling of a rug pull of the laws/equality/character of our country. I am not suicidal but wow I get it.
Well said! 5 years ago I could have a pretty solid picture of what my career would look like through retirement.
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
>loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife
Lots of people didn't have their field automated away though alongside most other knowledge work fields, or seen at the same time a drop in demand in manual work and an oversupply (drop in demand because of upcoming AI layoffs, and oversupply in manual fields, because of same)
pivot to what though, if "mind" jobs are going to be automated, it's not like there's a category of jobs that opens up, and going from mental to physical jobs in your 50s doesn't seem that easy
Physical jobs will drop in demand and increase in supply too. Unemployed "mind" workers don't have much to spend to drive much demand in manual work, and they might even try to pivot themselves to manual work, making things worse for manual workers.
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous for very long in terms of how much AI impact there is.
yeah, you're down to like 3/4 a career left, it makes sense that you feel that way. Less runway ought to feel different.
I do agree that a safe 'next' is unclear. But I also think if ai truly hits all knowledge work as hard as it might we're looking at up to 50% unemployment. Frankly there is no point career planning at all in that scenario. We will all have much larger problems.
And if it doesn't, then pivoting to some field with a combination of rewarding work and 'enough' pay seems sensible enough.
Part of working through history from (only) 100 years ago is an impression of how quickly societies were changing then. This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
Which isn't to downplay the upheaval that people are in - it is definitely traumatic. But we've been through disruption before. Hopefully we'll make fewer costly mistakes this time...
maybe some just don't want to live that long. does everyone need to live as long as possible? you live your youth, and maybe that is enough for some.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide "hey, i lived enough. i don't want to go through years of feeling like this."
I think about this increasingly often. I have accomplished much, and have seen much of the world. I have also lived through gruesome deaths in my family and have seen how aging in America, under American healthcare looks.
I retired in 2023, not because I could, but because I couldn't not. I'm almost 50. My parents died in their early 60s. I have some of their health problems, and some of my own. I also destroyed my back in a motorcycle accident many years ago and live with constant pain.
My favorite things to do, which bring my peace and joy, involve me sitting in a chair, which hurts my back. In my youth I rode my bicycle avidly, which now hurts my back. I love gardening, and if I do it too much, it hurts my back.
It became increasingly clear to me that my "purpose" in this country is to work until I die. I know that there are other countries, and other kinds of lives, but they are not where my wife and friends and life are.
I am happy, relatively healthy, and love life. I would like to live forever if I could. I know I could fill every minute of it with things I find interesting, even if it was just reading every single book.
But I've seen what American life looks like in your 60s and older, and it's not fucking pretty for most people.
Are you me? My old motorbike injuries are a little more distributed but -- like yours -- almost entirely crippling from the perspective of doing anything joyful; we're in the same bucket yearwise; and it sounds like we always visit the doctor with just the one bullet in the chamber.
Mostly just posting to say, hey, there's others out here like you. Hang in there, Almost-Me. If not, see you on the other side.
A hurting back on a bike might be an issue of bike fit. Bicycle touring is a hobby regarded as accessible to even the elderly, and indeed one often comes across people age 50-80 on popular routes. Many of them will complain about a bad back off the bike when doing other things like camping or carrying panniers, but a fitted bike should not strain one's back.
That's why Mishima topped himself at the age of 45: as a physical-conditioning buff and gay man, he came to a firsthand realization that it was all downhill from there. What you posted is very similar in spirit to the opening of his last novel.
Eh, I don't think today is really all that different from the last 100 years. We as software engineers may feel different as it's (maybe) our turn in the barrel.
I defined success for myself quite a few years ago: I want to leave the world better than I found it. No high aspirations, no figure. Just better than it was.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!" - Emerson
I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. Between (some of) the effects of AI on my career and hobbies, and the effects of politics on my country and even my own town, and many more problems, I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been demeaned or destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist.
And this isn't even to mention money, and what my future is looking like, despite having every possible intrinsic and external advantage in The Greatest Country on Earth.
I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.
> I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit.
Alcohol is incredibly dangerous after 40, particularly if you've got a history as a heavy drinker. I've had to cut back to virtually nothing as it's guaranteed to trigger anxiety and depressive episodes.
Almost all the premature deaths in my circle, including suicides, have been alcohol-linked.
Obviously, YMMV, everyone's different, but if anyone reading this thread is over 40, struggling, and still drinking regularly, taking a break can really help.
I celebrated 20 years since my last drink on Monday of this week.
People who want to drink--should drink.
People who don't want to drink but find that they keep doing it anyway, might want to check out what AA has to offer. It worked for me when nothing else did.
I’ve lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well. So much has happened that it’s impossible to pinpoint one root cause, it’s all contributing.
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
> I've lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well.
I felt similarly and had a "crisis" point at the start of 2025. I realised that living a fulfilling life had to become my top priority, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may seem. Otherwise, I might not survive another 30 years.
Now I can see a bit of the mechanism behind the dimming of the spark. I had gradually conceded the direction of my life to external forces, and let anxiety and self-doubt drive my decisions. It's a great way to end up with a life that you don't want. I shudder to think of what it's like to do that for 20 years instead of 5.
AI hasn't made a dent in my enjoyment of my hobbies and tech (the opposite, now I have more toys to play with than ever), but politics? Oh man, politics becoming the new religion has absolutely ruined pretty much everything for me.
I don't believe in politics. For me left and right are all *the same*. Just a bunch of megalomaniacs wanting to hog power for themselves. This extremely hot take has made people call me more names and costed me more relationships than if I went out and started screaming slurs in a crowded street. Because I am a "fence sitter" or whatever.
And I just can't handle it anymore, I just went full recluse. I don't go into social media anymore, I don't talk to anyone at a personal level anymore. Outside of some github issues and some comments here, I don't touch socials anymore. I am just overwhelmed by the level of vitriol and hate the new internet is based on.
I don't know how sincere this comment is, but if there are others thinking this way, it's a mistake. Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Social media is a veil of manipulation, engagement maximization, and bots. Do not misconstrue it as any kind of real or productive politics. There is a signal there amongst the noise, but it's hard to make sense of if you do not have a coherent world model or belief system. You have to learn to cut through it if you want to keep your sanity.
Read my other comment in the thread. Why would I post a non-sincere comment on this anyway? My belief is that all of us, no matter our gender, religion, age or social standing, are prey for the political and "elite" class. And not only we aren't holding them accountable, we are fighting their fights for them in several fields of our lives in form of "political discourse".
My country has a very serious housing crisis, both the left and the right are contributing to it because both parties have multiple people who are "serial landlords" with several properties, so they only make laws that benefit the landlord. This is a known fact and there are huge protests ongoing about it to the point emergency elections have been called.
Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on. Like you have some ulterior motive or are a paid shill from the other side or making the logic leap to thinking you support the far-right for not choosing one of the two existing "teams". Everything has gone crazy.
I think most folks are actually in the middle and generally agree. Anyone who thinks one of the us political parties is completely innocent is lying, either to you or themselves.
That being said, I think it's worth noticing if one party does more bad things than the other and I also think speaking up with your values is worth it and maybe even a duty we owe the people who built this country before us.
Either way, your first responsibility is your own mental health so you have full support from this internet stranger.
>Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Nihilism is a popular, vague pejorative today but philosophically it's a serious answer to exactly the manipulation, engagement-bait and juvenile techno-optimism of our age. Whenever you're at the end of some moral or social period active, not resentful or passive nihilism, is a palate cleanser and necessary condition for revaluation of all values.
The kind of middle aged men that tend to fall into despair or suicide in these times are usually people who rely on some identity provided to them that then crumbles. Job, money, house, status, 'how to be a man' etc. There's something they're supposed to be like and they're not, stability they took for granted just stops.
And we're in a period like this across many dimensions, political, technological etc. And if you want to be sane a dose of nihilism is fairly important so that you can go on and construct some sovereign answers to all these issues.
Yo I'm also strictly apolitical and never had an issue with relationships or social circles, I just tell everyone I meet that "I do not talk politics, because maintaining my mental health is a full time job without putting the weight of the entire country/world onto my shoulders in addition" and so far they've all understood. The radicals who wouldn't understand I just say goodbye to, but this hasn't happened yet.
Same, in many senses. But you can’t fully detach from humanity without losing your own humanity. Forget socials, and pretty much all media consumption, but go talk to real people, make friends, find an human partner. Even raise a family.
Sadly I can't raise a family. This January I got a pretty bad brush with death and got diagnosed with something pretty bad and I don't have a lot left. After 5 high-risk surgeries (because of the medication making me bleed too much) I finally regained some autonomy and can move again, but I can't have kids. My bloodline ends with me, and it's better this way because this is hereditary and gets worse every generation. My kids would die at ~20 if lucky, according to the doctors.
Even knowing this, people around me still called me all sorts of things for not having strong opinions on random political things or wars. How can I worry about that when I am going to die soon anyway? Got enough in my plate to think about global politics.
"Go talk to real people" is easier said than done post-Covid. I'm in a European university city where even young people are complaining online of a dearth of opportunities for in-person socializing -- there is a good amount of cultural events and cafes to go out to every night, but it has become taboo to talk to strangers there even among young people, and a single middle-aged man's attempts to socialize anywhere would not be welcomed. Even people attending the remaining hobby meetups are finding merely practice of the hobby, but not any meaningful social contact alongside it.
Social media is poison, sure, but detaching from it doesn't mean you can get an IRL social life to replace it.
This is a bait comment because any push back will just re-affirm your stance and I don’t know if you’ll find much agreement here otherwise. Millions of people died in WWII defending against ideas that are actively being brought by a clear side.
FWIW it’s not that hard to be a fence sitter and not advertise it to everyone. It sounds like either you’re hanging with the wrong people, or you’re the problem. I guess go back to playing with your toys!
I know friends and family with many kinds of beliefs, we don’t rehash why they believe those things every time we see each other. Humans are complex /shrug
I voted you both up, because you're both right. Those who aren't dying before their time have an obligation to their future selves to make things better. Unfortunately it sounds as if you have a good excuse to begin letting go of worldly concerns, but the truth is, only the worst people benefit if the rest of us adopt an apolitical perspective.
See my other post in this thread, for example, replying to a Ukrainian who's finding that people he thought could be counted on can't be. I pointed out in that post that this is because one-third of our electorate is either brainwashed or malicious, one-third is willing to do what we can, and one-third can't be bothered to care.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with ever growing information and noise. With mindfulness, deliberate separation from most of the daily noise we can all zero in our own purposes in life. This hard, doesn’t happen overnight but with little steps and a lot of patience we will find that eventual purpose. And you find it hang on to it. I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil.
Hang in there strong with spiritual closeness, removing noise and avoiding those negative thoughts.
It's ironic that the "acktually.." atheist/anti-theist crowd don't do a modicum of research when it comes to this kind of stuff. It's pretty well-established in the literature that folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives[1].
Can’t wait for them to test why specific denominations have a positive causal impact on wellbeing over others. Mormons, Jehovas Witnesses, Southern Baptists, etc.
While we’re being snarky, should we talk about the people who are arbitrarily and capriciously removed from these communities during times when they need them most? Like women seeking divorce in abusive relationships while in a denomination that preaches absolute subservience to the male head of household?
That study you linked does not establish a causal relationship. It may simply be that the sort of person who is able to extract well-being from church is the sort of person more likely to actually attend church with any regularity. It likewise does not address the possibility that depression itself might make one want to stop attending church.
>Millenial cynicism is so boring
Yeah, it's always Millennials who are in the wrong. Fuck us, right? It's all good, we're used to being the scapegoats for society's problems.
The problem is that humans evolved to be religious, and you can't just ignore that and get rid of it in a generation or two. It is in our brains and we have to live with it somehow. So from that perspective ... maybe Jesus does cure depression.
Not religious, but also not disputing that believers have lower rates of depression either.
Believing in a higher power has seemed to provide great comfort to a number of friends and family over the years. I went to a friend's father's funeral a while back, and I had to admit, the service, the way the community came together was moving, and it really made me question whether I should return to the church as an adult, even with my questions of faith.
He said something about moths and rust consuming matter and with that at the very least he pointed out quite clearly the source of our suffering in regards to the AI transformation
should i also mention that people who funded their religion hunted jews searching for the holy grail and were present at one if not the biggest holocaust of human history (the colonization of America, between 1500 and 1600, which killed from 25 to 100 million people)
Sure, it's silly to judge those highly religious people.
Maybe we can judge the religion on the work of the Papacy... Though that doesn't give great results either
They definitely misread "let the little children come to me"
I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).
I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.
My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.
The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.
I think most white-collar people have similar feelings. I certainly am, and many dev-friends and coworkers have confided such to me.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
I've been through a 6 month long unemployment. Got let go from a company (along with the majority of the dev team) which picked up AI like a shiny object thinking it could do everything.
Then I got hired to a company which have been pushing AI 100% for like a year, not at the expense of headcount, but responsibly as the N+1th productivity increasing tool, like what it is.
It's a really nice environment where keeping and cultivating great talent is not just one of the primary marketing slogans on the hiring page, but it actually feels like it while on the job.
My talent is nowhere near yours, so don't lose hope, keep applying.
While I applaud Australia's initiatives, I am becoming more and more convinced that a lot of people are already in (or heading towards) situations that the mental healthcare field can do very little, if anything, to improve.
Middle aged family men are kinda invisible. The government only sees them when it needs taxation. Kids only see them when they need money. His wife ignores him too, or rather, they ignore each other as roommates.
They can’t escape because all those legal and moral responsibilities. They have to wait patiently until retirement —- if their hearts allow them to live that long.
Ooof, not even that old here and I'm feeling that. Things are pretty bad all over. Gets hard to want to be around. AI took my job recently and I've been moved back to helpdesk and just awaiting further layoffs. There's not much fun in intellectual pursuits any longer as LLMs have taken it all. All my fun hobby projects are just jokes now as anyone with money can easily outdo me with an LLM. Sad times...
No pleasure really anymore, my hobbies were coding occasionally and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Recently I started rebuilding a custom d3d9 hook for an old game and it was really fun and I planned to release it to the community. But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
Try see if you can find some physical hobby that has nothing to do with computers.
Mine is gardening. With relatively little effort, I can grow a decent amount of foods, much of it interesting varieties that are not grown commercially anywhere. I really doubt that we're going to see affordable humanoid robots out-competing me in this hobby any time soon.
> and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
That's OK, you don't have to be the best at any one thing. The important thing about any hobby, be it programming, skateboarding, or playing the piano, is that you feel personal satisfaction in doing it, not in the reactions of people to your work. Your enjoyment of a hobby should never be based on whether or not people like it, or even whether or not they want to use the thing you created. If you feel that a project that you are working on could be summed up in a single prompt that can be given to an LLM, then your job is not to work on the project directly, but rather to find what makes what you are doing unique. It doesn't even have to be technically interesting or bring any new ideas to the table, just the fact that somebody has put in effort into making something (regardless of completion or quality) gives it value.
Do you not see a benefit in coding for the mental exercise and challenge?
Most hobbies are impractical... Machines can produce clothes much faster than a knitter, no chess player will beat the best computers, a boat can bring more fish to port in one trip than you can in a year, etc.
A hobby is something you do for yourself. Whether it's code, or painting, or woodworking.... you don't care if someone is better or faster than you. Unless you really see the hobby as a potential business, in which case you might want to reevaluate because with LLMs it's possible for an individual to do more by himself than ever before.
Well, some hobbies are fun because you're doing something no one else has done before, or which is challenging to accomplish without a lot of investment in time and growing in personal skill. A lot of hobbies are fun because of the competition and because you get to be at the forefront of something. It's fun because we're all limited in our time and energy and choosing to spend time on something means you can do things that someone else who doesn't spend time on it can't. That feels good.
People who were in the demoscene took joy in learning how to make a computer do things no one had done before and push the hardware to its limits. That's not as meaningful if someone can achieve the same thing by prompting an LLM.
A lot of hobbies are fun because of the human challenge in creating the output and knowing it was only achievable because someone had to take time to create it. Having an LLM accomplish the same thing absolutely devalues the fun in the hobby. Hobbies aren't 100% just about accomplishing something for yourself, even though if you sway to much into doing it for validation or to compete with others it can lead to burnout and lack of enjoyment.
You can do a hobby for any reason. It doesnt have to be for yourself. He could enjoy programming but also enjoy contributing to the wider open source community. So it makes sense to feel bad when he sees another project popup and invalidate his work. If it was another person who'd worked hard and thought about the project he could at least take solace in chatting about their solutions but with AI its nothing. It just solves the problem and there is little to be gained from it.
Ah, well I do nothing for myself sir. I work most days of the week and time off is limited. My company doesn't really do vacations. I haven't had one in at least 3 years and hopefully I'll have the PTO soon but never the money!
>Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Then it's not really a hobby, no? Sounds more like a weird competition.
>But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
That sounds more like a job, at least with your perspective.
>I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
That's a job, man. Even if you're not getting paid money for it, you're not really doing it for yourself.
The point is a bit moot cause it's the same difference: you can get joy from a "job" and AI making that job obsolete sucks regardless. But if that's what you think a hobby is, then you don't have an actual hobby.
We've thoroughly pathologized this aspect throughout history, but doing things that earn you societal status and respect from others is a essential for having a healthy psyche for many, possibly most people, men especially struggle when they don't have avenues to demonstrate skill and competence.
Doing things to share them with others is pretty normal in a hobby. You might be baking for friends and family or sewing clothes or whatever, and want to enjoy the recipients appreciation for it. If people don't accept your gifts, the satisfaction of it will go away, and the same is often true of small coding projects I think.
I wish I could take up gardening but alas I live in an apartment like most other people... I suppose you got me, I have no hobbies and it's just another reason to not want to be here. :) Everything is work and not much fun, is it?
This is a weird PoV - that a hobby is only a hobby if there is no community and you do it solo.
Sounds like you're saying tennis can't be a hobby. Nor videogames, nor making movies, writing stories, etc.
I mean, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic: hobbies via a community is still a hobby. There is no requirement that to qualify as a hobby it has to be completely audience-free.
>that a hobby is only a hobby if there is no community and you do it solo
Didn't say that.
>Sounds like you're saying tennis can't be a hobby. Nor videogames, nor making movies, writing stories, etc.
Nope, those are not conclusions you can draw from what I said.
>hobbies via a community is still a hobby
Yup, don't disagree with that.
>There is no requirement that to qualify as a hobby it has to be completely audience-free.
Never said that.
What I did say as that producing a product which is meant to be consumed by others and which offers you no joy if it isn't consumed isn't a hobby- it's a job. Money doesn't need to be exchanged for it to be a profit-seeking activity. And to be clear: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But what I am saying is that, fundamentally, AI can't make a proper hobby obsolete.
The OP is disheartened because his "hobby" is no longer relevant because AI can do his hobby better than him. Just take a step back and think about that: does it make any sense? Can you think of a reasonable example of a hobby where this dynamic can ever occur?
Like, AI has gotten pretty good at music. Does that mean everybody who was in a band for the fun of it all disbanded because AI can make music better than them? Of course not; they still enjoy making music. Now, a band who is trying to make money off of their efforts may be facing a different reality: if people are able to generate better music than what they can produce for way cheaper, then staying in a band for profit is a hard sell. But note that in both instances, these people (who are clearly operating within a community) are doing the same exact activity, but one set of people are doing it as a hobby while the other is doing it as a job.
And again, to be clear: I'm not saying the OP's feelings aren't valid. They wanted to produce something that others would find valuable, and AI made their efforts obsolete. That sucks, and they're clearly not alone. What I'm disagreeing with is the notion that that is a hobby. And that's an important distinction, because the OP is claiming they don't have a hobby anymore and I'm claiming they never did. They should have a hobby- a proper hobby- because it's important for humans to have hobbies for their own well being.
If someone likes digging tunnels by hand, that's a hobby.
If someone is mad that tunneling companies make it hard for them to find "hand tunneling work", that's not a hobby. That's someone thinking their work is owed attention.
Go find a hobby that you like doing for yourself. Why do you think so many engineers turn to woodworking? It isn't because they think they're going to compete with Ikea.
I don't know if it's common but I generally don't like to be bad at my hobbies. I like it when I can do things well. I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
I keep wanting to say the same thing. In fact, how other people describe hobbies is why I don't like the term hobbies.
I think music is a good example of sometimes you need to not have fun to have fun. Practice isn't really fun, but if you can put up with it you can have a lot of fun. So you can say that the not fun parts are part of the fun parts because it's what gives you the payoff. But when people then go and send you a Suno generated song, and say it's better than yours, it is them devaluing the "not fun" parts you had to put up with. I've had people do similar things to code projects I've done. It's a real buzz kill.
I also really value when musicians critique my songs, even when I feel defensive about it. Because then it's not about them devaluing my time, it's about them helping me grow, and they know how it feels to go through that process.
Not liking being bad at your hobbies is much different than not finding joy in them because people do them better than you. I work harder to be a better cook, it doesn't mean I'm in competition with people who cook better.
Sure. But AI doesn't make you bad at hobbies. It just makes others better at it, and even that is a stretch.
>I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
And are you going to give up learning piano because now AI can just generate piano music better than anything you can ever produce? No? Then what you're doing is a proper hobby, which contrasts with the OP who feels their efforts are no worthless because AI can just do it better. That's not really a hobby; it's a job.
Hmm.. I meant to make my point in isolation from LLMs. I definitely don't feel that way about learning music.
I do kind of understand it when it comes to programming, though. Hobby-like side projects often felt like they had some utility down the line, even if not directly applied. It's fun to show others what you've accomplished, to show off, maybe land a job from being noticed, etc.
I'm sorry, but this is not realistic. Life is complex and involves many variables. You are right to engage with this question, but you are oversimplifying to the point of implying dishonesty, if I'm being frank (assuming you are not very neuro-divergent!).
Not the author you're replying to but I don't understand this reply at all? What variables? What oversimplifying?
They simply said
> Why do you imagine yourself you be in competition with others while doing hobbies? Do you not find pleasure in the doing?
Which... I don't understand how that is oversimplifying. If your hobby is golf are you unable to enjoy golf because you're not as good as the pros? If your hobby is music can you not enjoy it because you aren't going to win a Grammy award?
If you enjoy programming or working on something an LLM can do... can't you just enjoy doing it without an LLM? Heck there are plenty of people that will probably seek it out because of how many people hate AI being used in programming.
It's realistic to want to be competitive. But as soon as your "hobby" becomes competitive, at least in this sense, it ceases to be a true hobby. It effectively just becomes work.
Nothin' wrong with the OP feeling disheartened by AI taking away his "hobby"/job, but AI will never be able to take away a "true" hobby because a "true" hobby is something where such external factors are irrelevant.
You'll notice that people who lift weights, run marathons, maintain a garden, tinker with models, etc., are effectively immune to AI. An AI won't lift your weights for you or tend to your garden for you. Maybe one day it could technically do that, but it doesn't matter, because you simply wouldn't have it do that for you. And it wouldn't matter if AI is doing that for others, because you're not competing with others. You're doing it for yourself.
I exercise/lift weights, and you should too. My reps/effort/weight/PRs are a joke. I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com despite really fucking trying for ~6yrs now.
Many people are better than me at the EXACT SAME THING that I'm trying, at my bodyweight/age/sex. It doesn't discourage me. There is always room to improve. I track every workout, go to RPE 8-9, and try to do progressive overload. Seeing the numbers go up helps. I know it won't continue into infinity, especially as the decades go on... but yknow, I'm building a mentality here, not just a body. And when the weights go down, I'll be in the correct mental space for it.
I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting. I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else. But I do it anyway. I think it teaches me things about life.
The only true goal is to grow and be better than yesterday. Effort is the reward.
That's not the population. It is the average among other weightlifters which is where you would expect to be. Most of the population can't do a pull up.
It helps to know how achy the body gets without it. In my case, the back pain I had from desk work is entirely gone now. If you focus on the form rather than reps and getting through it, paired with some good music, you can reach a focus state. There are off days of course, but I'm surprised that I enjoy it much more than I used to, where my motivation dropped off quickly due to being externally motivated (visible gains). Now it's kind of cool to just see your ability change over time, better balance, capability to do more advanced exercises, etc.
Hehe yeah. Perhaps I exaggerate with "I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting." More precisely, I never _look forward_ to a workout.
I don't hate every squat. In fact, it's (I can't believe I'm saying this) somewhat satisfying in the moment whenever I do decide to go RIR=0. I'm wiped, but like, in a "hell yeah I did that" way.
But starting a session? I'm still as reticent as I was on day 1 lol. Maybe someday I'll pick up a sport or something as the others suggest, but I love programming too much to pick up other hobbies >_>
I have multiple herniated discs in my back so working out isn't possible. The V.A. wouldn't help with it either... But thanks for the suggestion! I'll be going the way of the people in the article so ya'll enjoy what you got! Many of us have nothing. :)
Perhaps my advice was too narrow/specific to my situation. If you can't deadlift, then don't. But there are many other things you can do, as the other commenters have suggested.
But if you're in the mentality of _not wanting_ to have anything, then all the advice in the world will bounce off you.
My suggestion, then, is to work on that mentality. Do something to get you anything, to get you out of that "Many of us have nothing" mindset. Build momentum. Physically doing something is often what it takes to break a mental barrier. The mind spirals and digs a hole, especially at night. But you get to participate in life/society/people during the day, which is why doing bodily things affects the mind and can break its loops.
You won't "win" on the first attempt. But you'll make progress. And the real win-condition is to keep playing.
The first step is always the hardest. I wish you the best.
Hear hear! It took me a bit but I've reached the point where I'm enjoying just "growing". I think we grew up in a world that molded us to compete, and to judge ourselves based on others, but I think with AI we're going to reach a point where our hobbies are going to be just seeing what we can accomplish for ourselves.
Try doing some sports as well, I do weightlifting, but I do bouldering as well with friends, it is not only fun it also develops your strength in a kind of complementary way to lifting (also increases you stats on balance and other related stuff)
50th percentile on there is pretty strong! I've also lifted for around six years and I'm very light so my raw numbers are terrible but I'm still proud of them
Most of my friends from high school and college are dead from random cancers, or drugs, or both.
I used to love skimming the new preprints on arXiv in the morning but now the signal is buried LLM drivel.
The one hobby I have that is kinda LLM-proof for now is speedrunning. Tool-assisted speedruns have always had their own categories for decades, and even if the LLMs or their descendants are used for routing or glitch hunting there’s still an element of human execution.
I like JRPGs from the early 2000s. I haven’t settled on one that I like enough to specialize in yet. It’s a bit of a time commitment, as you can imagine.
1. How utterly dogshit the vast majority of code is.
2. How utterly dogshit some of the most important or famous products and services are under the hood.
So what if LLMs can do something better? Our entire field and industry has been built on 'good enough'. God knows how many programming 'masterpieces' are on Github with 0 stars and 0 users.
I am more excited about programming by hand now more than ever. While I do not know what the future has in store for us in terms of careers, I still think I will always program by hand for fun just because I enjoy the feel of the flow-state/getting lost in something.
I solo founded and run a men's suicide prevention nonprofit organisation in the UK. It's early stage bootstrapped at the moment but I have long-term plans.
I've facilitated 200+ talking meetings at this organisation and another I was involved with previously. Anecdotally, the average attendee at the male-only meetings is ~45 years old, has some level of issues with personal and/or professional boundaries, has had suicidal ideation more than once, and has made plans for or attempted suicide more than once.
There is some form of survivorship bias in the above, but I get a lot of pride from our groups keeping men alive. We haven't lost anyone in 2 years.
It's a responsibility and fulfilling, extremes at both ends. The key thing is self-management, and knowing limits. I learned a lot from the ASIST course, and I retake the full two-day training every two years or so:
I would have guessed middle-aged men and women, not just men. I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation.
Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting.
Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.
The things that motive me to stick around are holding the people ruining this world to account, documenting it and trying to thwart their efforts, a curiosity in seeing just how bad the climate crisis gets (how do we react, can it wake us from our stupor), and a desire to learn and help others (whether volunteering or just life advice). An absurdist lens helps provide some levity and not take things so seriously.
I had to step back from my career to focus on a mobility issue and at this point I don't know if the job path will continue to be there or even if I care. I'm focusing on small pleasures for now - cup of tea, exercise, peace and quiet. Music and film help provide a sense of meaning and catharsis.
I'm 40 and am accepting I will be single forever. I'm in shape / constantly lifting weights, dress well, work hard on maintaining a good attitude, and am financially stable etc. But not a great face, and extremely skinny (Think Oppenheimer or Bin Laden), am not funny or charismatic, and am not into dogs. Dating is a kick in the butt. Women don't "Feel the spark"
DON'T DO ONLINE DATING. Online dating has wrecked mating except for the most attractive 5%. Online dating is mostly a looks competition as first step. And you are saying you don't have the looks to win that game, so you need to play a different type of mating game.
Go to meetups instead via meetup.com and also look for local group activities happening on EventBrite - don't make finding a partner the focus or even the objective - go to a ton of meetups doing the things you love doing.
People form relationships doing common interests and having shared experiences. Have shared experiences with people and take finding a partner off the agenda - just enjoy the company of others. You never know what might happen but don't go looking for it.
I can tell you this for sure - many women are looking for a partner of character - someone kind who actually wishes to engage in relationship - a genuine person - and if time is taken to form relationship well in advance of the "will you be my girlfriend" pressure, then how you look is very often just not an issue. Have you noticed how when you get to know someone you see their character as much as their outward appearance? You might need to let people learn who you are gently and over time.
As for being charismatic or funny, as Oscar Wilde said: Be yourself - everyone else is taken.
A helpful thought for me was that literally everyone could reject you, except one person, and that's all you need is just that one person. Also along with that principle, maybe 99% of people actually aren't a good match for me, so if I mostly don't "click" with other people, that's totally fine — I don't know if I would want to be with 99% of possible people myself even if they were interested in me. It's just about finding the right kind of person that's similar to you. People with unique attributes may find someone else with the same unique attributes, or the other person may possess unique attributes that might somehow be a good fit for your unique attributes.
Just do other things you like and don't worry about women. Relationships bring heartache and grief a good percentatge of the time anyway. Being engaged in things you like doing will bring you into contact with others and friendships or more may develop. But don't do them with that expectation.
If you don't know what to do, try to get involved with helping others in some way. It can be rewarding and give you a broader perspective on life.
I heard that before when I just started dating. I would say don't worry about the outcome (especially pertaining to one person - you know close to nothing about them early on anyway), just try to connect with people. In my case, it would've helped calm my nerves, which were a hindrance. I've been with my partner for 8 years. A given outcome is never preordained and you don't need everyone to like you, just the one that you click with if you don't let rejection discourage you.
being funny and charismatic are something it is possible to practice, same as lifting weights. From what you say, sounds like a high leverage thing to look into
Before everyone jumps in with their favorite ad-hoc reason, take a look at the graph first. The headline is technically true, but barely. For the 45-64 age group, the suicide rate is barely different than it was in 2012 and 2018, and about the same as it was in 1985 (24 vs 22-23 per 100k.) Seems like all age groups have held steady (10-24 25-44 and 75+) or trended up a bit (45-64 and 64-75) since the early 2000's, after dipping from the 1980s.
I am not much of a gamer and sure as hell don't keep up with many people that I gamed with 20 years ago but there was one guy that I would talk with ever few years. I talked with him and a few months later he was gone. I don't know why his suicide hit me so hard. Maybe because I connect him to a different phase of my life. Maybe because he was the guy who was the life of chat. I don't know.
What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.
I’m college educated, have a successful career doing things that I enjoy to a decent degree, have a wonderful house, wife and kid. If you showed my life to my younger self and asked “would you take this life?” I would have answered every single time wholeheartedly “yes! I’m living the dream!”
But I only recently truly accepted that the life I am living (and have created for myself and family) is actually the dream. We so often miss the greatest times in our lives because we are too focused on the unknowns of the future.
This rings true for me - I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to prevaricate over trivialities. Maybe it's rose colored glasses but those times feel very idyllic otherwise.
The graph shows that suicides overall are down from 30 years ago, while the same cohort that was higher in 1985-2005 (25-44) is now higher in 2005-2025 (45-64). Perhaps there is something about the generation more than the situation or the age of the individual.
44, unemployed since July, on a cross country train trip trying to decide if it is worth going on. Stood on a bridge a bit too long the other day just wondering what the point is.
It is over for a lot of us in IT. It isn't going to get better, it is going to get worse very quickly. Rather than tell myself a convenient lie, I'd rather try to figure out why to keep living in a world like this.
Anyone going through the same thing, I hope you find something worth living for.
I see this a lot speaking to friends and just in general online discourse. Too much news and social media. Perhaps it will all go to shit. AI is definitely changing the entire world, our industry being the first on the chopping block (maybe).
But, what can you do. There's always been injustice in the world. You just never used to hear about it 24/7/365.
Now you wake up and read about it on the little screen, later you see it on the big screen, talk about it at work, then go to bed and read about it on the little screen again. I have friends who can't even talk to me for 30 minutes without just bringing the entire mood down with doomerism.
Idk, I just do sports, work and spend time with whoever I can in whatever little free time I have left over. I had to forcibly block every news site and social media via an app otherwise I'd get addicted again and become a cynic. Reddit is by far the worst for me, insta is 2nd.
Unlike 95% of people I speak to I actually love my life and enjoy my work, and just hope that AI doesn't steal that from me.
Growing up as a first generation immigrant in a country with some of the worst inequality in the world taught me to just ignore everything but what you need to do.
This is something I sometimes feel guilty about now that I have a comfortable life. But, I feel like trading that ignorance for constant awareness just leads to anxiety and guilt and is a poor trade I don't have to make.
Edit: also this is just 1 factor. There are other factors like actual poverty, loneliness etc. I don't meant to put forth the idea that it's purely the 24 hour news cycle and social media that's to blame, just 1 aspect I see most often in my life.
I am not suicidal and I am lucky to have loving people who I also love around. That said, with all the rapid changes in the software engineering industry and in life in general, I sometimes wonder what I am doing with my life and why.
It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.
In my circle, I've objectively had both the best and the worst life. I can tell when people are thinking about suicide because they reach out to find out if I've done myself in yet lol.
For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.
My older brother killed himself nearly 20 years ago at the age of 50. I don't think he ever considered himself successful. He had financial problems, alcoholism, and was lonely without any lasting relationships. When his resources were exhausted he just ended his life. There was nothing in the estate of value since his assets, such as they were, were less than tax liability he had accumulated. The owner of the house he had been renting tried to get us siblings to pay for repairs and cost of disposal, but we demurred (and told the court we'd be happy if that owner was named executor; they declined the honor.) I think his car just disappeared off the street one day, probably towed to an abandoned car lot and auctioned. At least the state recouped some of the owed taxes that way.
I think part of the problem in that instance, might be "success" being necessary but not sufficient for "surviving and thriving"; and unfortunately sometimes that isn't explained along the way to even people who become conventionally successful (but, perhaps we can try to improve an awareness of the issue going forward for future gens)
Late 40s here, on antidepressants for the anxiety side more than depression.
I can totally see why this is highest in my demographic.
An underlying cause is quiet desperation, there are elements of failure in ones' own life, perhaps pressure caused deliberately by others as they step on you to get to the top. Perhaps it's the fact you start to notice death, your parents, family, and friends. You also see the beginning of your own aged based health decline.
Until society can support genx and older with their goals at this age, instead of telling them to get talking in men's groups, or saying it's alright to show emotions to a generation that grew up without this culture, this will probably continue.
I don't have an answer to fix it, but what I do feel would help is if was treated as a high risk stage of life without stigma. So 45+ men or menopausal women, can take time off to adjust, spend more time with family and friends, and it be treated as normal process, like a sabbatical or maternity leave or just a wind down from society like partial retirement.
This will never happen obviously because it means as a society we have to have a better welfare state and drop the ingrained idea that if you're not working you're a problem (not working is NOT the same as not contributing or benefiting to society, but people conflate this).
Perhaps the AI age will force us to fix that due to mass unemployment, the way COVID kick started remote working.
I am in my late 40's and I am struggling more than I ever have in my entire life. I have a great marriage and 3 children and I have a good job with good income. I have nothing to be unhappy about.
And yet my children are grown now and mostly gone. I feel a profound sense of loss.
I feel like I'm entering the age where I'm a prime candidate for any myriad of diseases and I get so anxious every time I get a symptom. I go to the Dr. a lot. I went to the ER twice every year in the past 3 years. Ironically, its occurred to me that if I do have something terminal, I don't have to go on like this. And I like the thought of that. I'm both terrified of death and also really looking forward to it.
I used to enjoy my work, but AI has made it so that I just kind of show up and ask it for things. Anyone could do what I do. There's no sense of accomplishment in anything.
The worst thing about this is that I have every reason to be the happiest person here. So the fact that I feel the way that I do actually makes me a pretty bad person and that makes the whole thing feel a whole lot worse.
Man this is for real. I’m 46 and I tell my therapist and my friends that I’m not suicidal but like… can we wrap this shit up already? (A tasteless joke stolen from Tom Segura)
I have been meditating on WHY I feel this way. On paper things are pretty good. I’m married. I have a job that is safe for now. I have kids. Two dogs. A house. Two cars.
But I feel really lonely and unseen and like I am a disappointment to everybody including myself. Like it makes sense I’m unseen because I’m unexceptional.
So I’ve done some things that have helped a little including scheduling lunches with friends and coworkers, more frequent date nights (especially double date nights), working out (setting and achieving even small pointless goals like mile time, distance, weight lifted, etc really helps).
All of that and it feels like I’m bailing water out of a sinking ship. It is barely enough to stay afloat and heaven help me if I skip a day or make a mistake…
It is hard to imagine doing this for another 30 years…
I used to think Soma was one of the more disturbing ideas in Brave New World. These days, I understand the temptation a little better.
It can be scary and hard to approach, but I would think you're not unexceptional or unimportant to your loved ones. Maybe you should talk to your wife about this at some point? It sounds like you're starting on this with date nights too which does seem good.
I hope you can find something that helps you feel like you're not just treading water, though.
Yeah, or that it is easier to identify the slog with the hindsight of middle age?
I'm not a Buddhist, but because of the stressors of my previous career I sometimes joke that I accidentally recreated the fundamental tenets of Buddhism in order to not wash out. One of the things I've come to realize is that the slog feeling you describe is something like the concept of 'samsara' or "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence" per the smarter people that edited the Wikipedia article. But that it's still possible to find meaning and satisfaction within this paradigm.
At the end of the day we (men) are the ones expected to provide, to win over the women, to keep the marriage from falling apart, to keep the kids safe. And at any point we fail in our career or one of these things we are left staring into the abyss with no one to help us but ourselves. This is why I reject a lot of liberal views. Even when we tried equality, all we did was take away power from the man that is still expected to do everything.
I had a friend who transitioned and it was such a delight to witness the transformion. Before they were the most flaky of friends, always flitting from on thing to the next, not stable, couldn't hold a job or hobby together for very long. Then they finally transitioned and my god the difference was night and say. They're stable now, they're reliable they're just fun to be around. They've finished a second degree and have held the same job for eight years now.
It's crazy how much not being at home in their body disrupted every part of their life
"etc" is doing a lot of work there; what in your view would constitute success here - something that would allow us to say "we did it, we now have the technology to freely change our sex at will"?
It depends on how you define sex. Hormones cover most expressions from chromosomes already. Skull reconstruction could be better? Maybe some way to really rework skeletons and adjust height and hips or shoulders? But that's more on the cosmetic end.
Or if you want at will, it would be good to have some way to radically speed up changes. You're still looking at 3-8 years for some things.
I wrote an article about youth mental health for my substack recently that touched on this. The suicide rate for the 50-59 demographic is far higher than the general population, but it collapses once you hit retirement age. If I had to guess, social supports for seniors plays a role.
Most people that age right now have no idea where they are going or where they will end up. And not even in their delusions can they pretend the world will somehow magically care about them in another 30 years.
Personally I have given up on hoping for a nice planned and well executed life up through retirement. My own skill set just isn't valued enough by the markets to set myself up separated from the festering human pits. Im just going to go for as long as I can just to see how things go at this point. I always did enjoy thrillers and tragedies, it sucks to be in one but it is better than being in nothing at all. And if the world just keeps getting crazier, maybe ill just join them in being crazy and maybe hopefully go out with a bang near the end.
Sucks when friends dies. Cancer, accidents and so on is just terrible, but suicide really sucks. One of my old friends ended his life a couple of years ago. It really hit me.
She said: “The evidence is clear that successive governments have failed to deliver on their promise to reduce suicide rates and make suicide prevention a priority. Today must act as a wake up call. The current approach is not working; we need meaningful action and proper funding if lives are to be saved.”
I understand the urge to do something on a large scale, but immediately pivoting to "the government" to solve personal mental health crises seems like a terrible idea.
This was a tough article for me. I'm only alive because I have to be. I have one family member left in poor health, and they depend on me, but when they are gone, I don't really see the point of sticking around. I am simply sticking around for them.
The last thing I will do is die alone, or worse, confined to a nursing home, abused by underpaid staff. Yes: I have tried over 15 medication's, therapy, you name it. I came to the conclusion a few years ago that accepting that my life has an end, and they I will make that decision to end it, has been comforting. I feel like it's the only, perhaps last control, I might ever have
I’m bored of how shocked people are about this. It’s been going on decades now. Think of all the great and/or famous men that have killed themselves in the last 60 years. It stacks up quick. No one cares.
To anyone with a degree not in software, you can pivot to a hands-on job. I'm a technician for factory equipment. AI is not replacing me for a long time.
I'm an absolute doofus in the physical realm. No hand eye coordination of any kind. No common sense. No social skills or ability to read and understand humans.
In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.
After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?
Less than 10% of 55 year old men have ever had cancer in their life. And many of them were diagnosed before 35. So if you don't already have cancer, your odds are much less than 10% that you'll have cancer by 55.
And if you're wrinkled and frail at 55 years old then that's your own fault. Put on some sunscreen and go for a bike ride.
Seriously,look at the age at which people run for president. We got a guy whose been living his best life by stealing from the US public in his late 70s. 50 is the new 30 after all
Sometimes I think joining a cult wouldn’t be too bad right about now. Hear me out: a bunch of people pool money to buy a massive amount of land somewhere and then building everything they need by hand: homes, farms, etc. and everyone has a strong sense of community from daily interaction and shared purpose, with regular rituals to keep a sense of stability. If we must work by manual labor, it is more satisfying to work to benefit those around you than for increasingly worthless dollars. No smartphones or thinking machines allowed.
Just got “over the hill” here. It’s…complicated, but not at all surprising on the whole.
My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.
Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.
At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.
This. And also commutes were radically shorter than they are today, with more commuter services in many smaller cities than exist today.
We shifted from a sole-provider/homemaker model of couples to a dual-income-required model, at the same time our choices on car dependency and suburban sprawl came back to bite us in the ass. The working from home era was great for socializing because we could agree on small group nights if we were all feeling well, knowing we didn’t have huge commutes ahead of us after work and with the extra money in our pockets from lowered work costs; RTO mandates killed that again, as did the sudden jump in real estate costs, inflation, and stagnating wages in the face of AI investment.
That’s just the average, too. For edge cases like me in unorthodox households or living arrangements, it’s even harder.
Yes because when you are struggling to take care of yourself, piling on vet bills and food and more responsibility, and less social time will really help.
Worrying over another being you are responsible for and thinking less about yourself and your own situation...just might help with depression I would think.
And nothing increases the desire for other people to be sociable with you than walking a dog.
I love my dog but absent my partner's desires, I don't think I would've taken it on. The cost, attention, potential behavioral issues, the prospect of losing them eventually are not for everyone.
I'm working on this actually. I had a dog for 12 years and she really kept me going. Saved me. But she died a couple years ago, literally the day after one of my parents, and it's been tough. But I'm really thinking about getting another dog; I really want to get another dog.
Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.
A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which is made up of large amount of introspection, extremely fine margins between good times and awful times and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues , the avoidance of social faux passes, planning years and years into the future down to the smallest detail .
That's the perfect recipe for depression for guys
We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need to have sex shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure from my understanding of human history and primate evolution that "long-term sexual/romantic partner" is, in fact, one of the basics.
I am 36 and I have been thinking about suicide a tiny bit lately. But I will share my perspective with you, hopefully to draw a picture how different circumstances can be. I live in Ukraine and my optionality in life collapsed the day the war started. I had a good life, good income and traveled a lot. I used to dream of a career in big tech and life in different countries just to give it a taste. Now I am not able to leave the country because I am a male of conscription age. My city is being attacked by drones daily, and ballistic rockets a few times a month. Witnessing your country getting wrecked with rockets and drones is hell of an experience. Businesses, electricity plants, infrastructure, gas stations becoming rubble. There is also little hope in a resolution of this soon. I have to work on a job which provides a reservation from military service if I don’t want to fight, otherwise I will be picked up on the street to join the military.
I have it so much better than a lot of my countrymen, but holy shit does this suck and it is not getting better anytime soon. The hopelessness gets you.
Software engineering is one of my last remaining pillars of life remaining more or less intact. At least I get to write some code and make computers do things.
Life is a strange thing.
I hope more than anything Ukrainians will stay strong and persevere. Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends. The mere fact that you are Ukrainian and live in Ukraine invokes a certain level of respect.
> Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends.
I hope more than anything that Ukraine (and Russia, and Israel, and Palestine, and all the war-torn regions of the world) can one day be free of this ghoulish mindset, that world leaders will choose life instead of worshipping death
> Perhaps not even for themselves or their country, but just to witness the enemy collapse when it all ends.
It is this kind of delusional war mongering that brought the country to this disaster in the first place.
It is my one sincere wish in life that the suffering of Ukrainians is not for naught and that the people of Europe support you until victory.
But Europe isn’t really supporting Ukraine, they’re just providing enough supplies to keep them in the fight. No state seems willing to provide enough assistance to allow for Ukrainian victory, because of the costs and risks associated with that aid. Even countries at little risk of reprisal from Russia are reluctant to do much at all.
As such, all of us doing nothing more than “voicing support” on the internet and some far-away rally, should offer our empathy, and not presume to tell them how much we’re “helping”.
I would much rather the suffering of Ukrainians end, rather than that it continue for years and years, until the few Ukrainians still alive get to celebrate "victory" and "meaning" in a country reduced to ash
[delayed]
The male working age populations of Ukraine and Russia are both being sacrificed in a war that is being negotiated, on both sides, by Zionist Jews - all to make room for greater Israel.
36 is young man. You got time.
It absolutely sucks that this is happening to you and your country. All because of the deranged ruler of Russia. Please know that most of us here in the US support you even if it doesn't look like it based on the deranged rantings of our ruler and the actions of his oligarchs.
Can you avoid conscription by volunteering your SW engineering talents for the defense sector? That was an option in many 20th-century wars but I don't know if it's relevant these days.
As an American, I'd like to say I'm as horrified by our faithless leadership as you are frightened by the circumstances you're facing, but that just sounds pointlessly shallow. All of Western civilization has a stake in keeping Putin at bay, but only your country is being forced to confront that fact right now. We should feel grateful to Ukraine, and in fact many of us do.
Suffice it to say we aren't all aligned with Musk and Trump, and many of us fervently wish we could do more to help in a meaningful capacity. Trouble is, about a third of our eligible voters have decided to put a single party decisively in charge of all of our branches of government, and the way our system is structured, that leaves the rest of us more or less powerless. That will hopefully change soon, but we'll see. Try to stay strong, and we will try as well.
[delayed]
Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week:
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
It's a psychologically very difficult time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie
On the mark.
I have however run out of fucks and am ignorantly coasting and making optimal survival decisions only. Fuck the business. Fuck the career. Highly recommended.
Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
Internal vs external.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
>Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
Not anymore than WWII deaths are the epitome of "classic early life suicide".
If it was "the classic mid life crisis" the rates wouldn't be "highest ever" (as per the post).
> Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
I think there's a step change from say the silent gen/baby boomer generations where a midlife crisis was realizing you lived the classic "American Dream" but weren't going to be a rockstar or super wealthy, compared to now where a midlife crisis could easily be wondering if you will continue to have any economic value at all years before social security kicks in.
Admittedly this is America-centric, but that's my lived perspective, and also I recognize that things weren't always very stable even here, thus why I am comparing a couple of specific generations to the ones that followed.
There was, for a time when I was younger (as a Gen-Xer), just an assumed sense that each generation would have it better than the last. Naive, perhaps, but alas. And obviously far less people assume that anymore.
Don't forget that social security has been raided and won't even be available for those of us reaching middle age right now and the people we keep electing who say they will do something about it have shown over and over and over that they actually won't.
Anomie plus helplessness plus a feeling of a rug pull of the laws/equality/character of our country. I am not suicidal but wow I get it.
Well said! 5 years ago I could have a pretty solid picture of what my career would look like through retirement.
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
>loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife
Lots of people didn't have their field automated away though alongside most other knowledge work fields, or seen at the same time a drop in demand in manual work and an oversupply (drop in demand because of upcoming AI layoffs, and oversupply in manual fields, because of same)
Everyone can't be a plumber.
In fact one of the worst "trade offs" of the trades is they can very much be a young mans game.
It gets real hard to sling water heaters up/down tight stairs or pull cable in a 100+ degree attic into your 50s.
pivot to what though, if "mind" jobs are going to be automated, it's not like there's a category of jobs that opens up, and going from mental to physical jobs in your 50s doesn't seem that easy
Physical jobs will drop in demand and increase in supply too. Unemployed "mind" workers don't have much to spend to drive much demand in manual work, and they might even try to pivot themselves to manual work, making things worse for manual workers.
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous for very long in terms of how much AI impact there is.
yeah, you're down to like 3/4 a career left, it makes sense that you feel that way. Less runway ought to feel different.
I do agree that a safe 'next' is unclear. But I also think if ai truly hits all knowledge work as hard as it might we're looking at up to 50% unemployment. Frankly there is no point career planning at all in that scenario. We will all have much larger problems.
And if it doesn't, then pivoting to some field with a combination of rewarding work and 'enough' pay seems sensible enough.
Well said.
Part of working through history from (only) 100 years ago is an impression of how quickly societies were changing then. This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
Which isn't to downplay the upheaval that people are in - it is definitely traumatic. But we've been through disruption before. Hopefully we'll make fewer costly mistakes this time...
We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
Well said.
maybe some just don't want to live that long. does everyone need to live as long as possible? you live your youth, and maybe that is enough for some.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide "hey, i lived enough. i don't want to go through years of feeling like this."
I think about this increasingly often. I have accomplished much, and have seen much of the world. I have also lived through gruesome deaths in my family and have seen how aging in America, under American healthcare looks.
I retired in 2023, not because I could, but because I couldn't not. I'm almost 50. My parents died in their early 60s. I have some of their health problems, and some of my own. I also destroyed my back in a motorcycle accident many years ago and live with constant pain.
My favorite things to do, which bring my peace and joy, involve me sitting in a chair, which hurts my back. In my youth I rode my bicycle avidly, which now hurts my back. I love gardening, and if I do it too much, it hurts my back.
It became increasingly clear to me that my "purpose" in this country is to work until I die. I know that there are other countries, and other kinds of lives, but they are not where my wife and friends and life are.
I am happy, relatively healthy, and love life. I would like to live forever if I could. I know I could fill every minute of it with things I find interesting, even if it was just reading every single book.
But I've seen what American life looks like in your 60s and older, and it's not fucking pretty for most people.
Are you me? My old motorbike injuries are a little more distributed but -- like yours -- almost entirely crippling from the perspective of doing anything joyful; we're in the same bucket yearwise; and it sounds like we always visit the doctor with just the one bullet in the chamber.
Mostly just posting to say, hey, there's others out here like you. Hang in there, Almost-Me. If not, see you on the other side.
A hurting back on a bike might be an issue of bike fit. Bicycle touring is a hobby regarded as accessible to even the elderly, and indeed one often comes across people age 50-80 on popular routes. Many of them will complain about a bad back off the bike when doing other things like camping or carrying panniers, but a fitted bike should not strain one's back.
Have you tried drinking cherry juice? I heard moving to Washington can help due to the air there.
Much easier said than done. Ending your life is the last decision you'd make.
That's why Mishima topped himself at the age of 45: as a physical-conditioning buff and gay man, he came to a firsthand realization that it was all downhill from there. What you posted is very similar in spirit to the opening of his last novel.
Eh, I don't think today is really all that different from the last 100 years. We as software engineers may feel different as it's (maybe) our turn in the barrel.
I defined success for myself quite a few years ago: I want to leave the world better than I found it. No high aspirations, no figure. Just better than it was.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!" - Emerson
I'm 40, and I am not suicidal, but I've definitely felt those thoughts more than ever in my life in the past two years. I wake up two or three times every night from anxiety dreams. I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit. Between (some of) the effects of AI on my career and hobbies, and the effects of politics on my country and even my own town, and many more problems, I can count more things I feel love and passion for that have been demeaned or destroyed in the past decade than such things that persist.
And this isn't even to mention money, and what my future is looking like, despite having every possible intrinsic and external advantage in The Greatest Country on Earth.
I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.
> I began drinking too much, but luckily I was able to get out of that habit.
Alcohol is incredibly dangerous after 40, particularly if you've got a history as a heavy drinker. I've had to cut back to virtually nothing as it's guaranteed to trigger anxiety and depressive episodes.
Almost all the premature deaths in my circle, including suicides, have been alcohol-linked.
Obviously, YMMV, everyone's different, but if anyone reading this thread is over 40, struggling, and still drinking regularly, taking a break can really help.
Well, not taking a break, but stopping.
I am very glad I ripped that bandaid off over a decade ago. But success for people with a genuine problem is stopping, not taking a break
I celebrated 20 years since my last drink on Monday of this week.
People who want to drink--should drink.
People who don't want to drink but find that they keep doing it anyway, might want to check out what AA has to offer. It worked for me when nothing else did.
Fair, stopping better. It's a tough thing for many to imagine though. It took a break for me to understand I needed to do more.
I’ve lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well. So much has happened that it’s impossible to pinpoint one root cause, it’s all contributing.
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
Therapeutic writing that out loud, in a way.
> I've lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well.
I felt similarly and had a "crisis" point at the start of 2025. I realised that living a fulfilling life had to become my top priority, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may seem. Otherwise, I might not survive another 30 years.
Now I can see a bit of the mechanism behind the dimming of the spark. I had gradually conceded the direction of my life to external forces, and let anxiety and self-doubt drive my decisions. It's a great way to end up with a life that you don't want. I shudder to think of what it's like to do that for 20 years instead of 5.
AI hasn't made a dent in my enjoyment of my hobbies and tech (the opposite, now I have more toys to play with than ever), but politics? Oh man, politics becoming the new religion has absolutely ruined pretty much everything for me.
I don't believe in politics. For me left and right are all *the same*. Just a bunch of megalomaniacs wanting to hog power for themselves. This extremely hot take has made people call me more names and costed me more relationships than if I went out and started screaming slurs in a crowded street. Because I am a "fence sitter" or whatever.
And I just can't handle it anymore, I just went full recluse. I don't go into social media anymore, I don't talk to anyone at a personal level anymore. Outside of some github issues and some comments here, I don't touch socials anymore. I am just overwhelmed by the level of vitriol and hate the new internet is based on.
I don't know how sincere this comment is, but if there are others thinking this way, it's a mistake. Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Social media is a veil of manipulation, engagement maximization, and bots. Do not misconstrue it as any kind of real or productive politics. There is a signal there amongst the noise, but it's hard to make sense of if you do not have a coherent world model or belief system. You have to learn to cut through it if you want to keep your sanity.
Read my other comment in the thread. Why would I post a non-sincere comment on this anyway? My belief is that all of us, no matter our gender, religion, age or social standing, are prey for the political and "elite" class. And not only we aren't holding them accountable, we are fighting their fights for them in several fields of our lives in form of "political discourse".
My country has a very serious housing crisis, both the left and the right are contributing to it because both parties have multiple people who are "serial landlords" with several properties, so they only make laws that benefit the landlord. This is a known fact and there are huge protests ongoing about it to the point emergency elections have been called.
Yet, saying this simple stance just as I did now, that both of them are guilty, will have people call you an "ultra" or call you a conspiracy theorist, that you are a fence sitter, that you don't know what you are talking about, and so and so on. Like you have some ulterior motive or are a paid shill from the other side or making the logic leap to thinking you support the far-right for not choosing one of the two existing "teams". Everything has gone crazy.
I think most folks are actually in the middle and generally agree. Anyone who thinks one of the us political parties is completely innocent is lying, either to you or themselves.
That being said, I think it's worth noticing if one party does more bad things than the other and I also think speaking up with your values is worth it and maybe even a duty we owe the people who built this country before us.
Either way, your first responsibility is your own mental health so you have full support from this internet stranger.
>Nihilism is a dead end (or political cynicism/fatalism, whatever you want to call it).
Nihilism is a popular, vague pejorative today but philosophically it's a serious answer to exactly the manipulation, engagement-bait and juvenile techno-optimism of our age. Whenever you're at the end of some moral or social period active, not resentful or passive nihilism, is a palate cleanser and necessary condition for revaluation of all values.
The kind of middle aged men that tend to fall into despair or suicide in these times are usually people who rely on some identity provided to them that then crumbles. Job, money, house, status, 'how to be a man' etc. There's something they're supposed to be like and they're not, stability they took for granted just stops.
And we're in a period like this across many dimensions, political, technological etc. And if you want to be sane a dose of nihilism is fairly important so that you can go on and construct some sovereign answers to all these issues.
> not resentful or passive nihilism
To be more precise, it was passive nihilism I was criticizing. That's the sentiment I sensed in the original comment.
Yo I'm also strictly apolitical and never had an issue with relationships or social circles, I just tell everyone I meet that "I do not talk politics, because maintaining my mental health is a full time job without putting the weight of the entire country/world onto my shoulders in addition" and so far they've all understood. The radicals who wouldn't understand I just say goodbye to, but this hasn't happened yet.
Same, in many senses. But you can’t fully detach from humanity without losing your own humanity. Forget socials, and pretty much all media consumption, but go talk to real people, make friends, find an human partner. Even raise a family.
Sadly I can't raise a family. This January I got a pretty bad brush with death and got diagnosed with something pretty bad and I don't have a lot left. After 5 high-risk surgeries (because of the medication making me bleed too much) I finally regained some autonomy and can move again, but I can't have kids. My bloodline ends with me, and it's better this way because this is hereditary and gets worse every generation. My kids would die at ~20 if lucky, according to the doctors.
Even knowing this, people around me still called me all sorts of things for not having strong opinions on random political things or wars. How can I worry about that when I am going to die soon anyway? Got enough in my plate to think about global politics.
"Go talk to real people" is easier said than done post-Covid. I'm in a European university city where even young people are complaining online of a dearth of opportunities for in-person socializing -- there is a good amount of cultural events and cafes to go out to every night, but it has become taboo to talk to strangers there even among young people, and a single middle-aged man's attempts to socialize anywhere would not be welcomed. Even people attending the remaining hobby meetups are finding merely practice of the hobby, but not any meaningful social contact alongside it.
Social media is poison, sure, but detaching from it doesn't mean you can get an IRL social life to replace it.
Encouraging people to procreate is absolutely wild to me. That's just adding fuel to the fire.
This is a bait comment because any push back will just re-affirm your stance and I don’t know if you’ll find much agreement here otherwise. Millions of people died in WWII defending against ideas that are actively being brought by a clear side.
FWIW it’s not that hard to be a fence sitter and not advertise it to everyone. It sounds like either you’re hanging with the wrong people, or you’re the problem. I guess go back to playing with your toys!
I know friends and family with many kinds of beliefs, we don’t rehash why they believe those things every time we see each other. Humans are complex /shrug
This is an unbelievably atrocious response. Where is your humanity?
You just proved my point.
"This is a bait comment". Shame on you.
I voted you both up, because you're both right. Those who aren't dying before their time have an obligation to their future selves to make things better. Unfortunately it sounds as if you have a good excuse to begin letting go of worldly concerns, but the truth is, only the worst people benefit if the rest of us adopt an apolitical perspective.
See my other post in this thread, for example, replying to a Ukrainian who's finding that people he thought could be counted on can't be. I pointed out in that post that this is because one-third of our electorate is either brainwashed or malicious, one-third is willing to do what we can, and one-third can't be bothered to care.
Our brains are constantly bombarded with ever growing information and noise. With mindfulness, deliberate separation from most of the daily noise we can all zero in our own purposes in life. This hard, doesn’t happen overnight but with little steps and a lot of patience we will find that eventual purpose. And you find it hang on to it. I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil. Hang in there strong with spiritual closeness, removing noise and avoiding those negative thoughts.
You know, I don't think Jesus cures depression
It's ironic that the "acktually.." atheist/anti-theist crowd don't do a modicum of research when it comes to this kind of stuff. It's pretty well-established in the literature that folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives[1].
Millenial cynicism is so boring.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5127763/
teensy effect size according to some
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508619.2020.17...
> folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives
Could be:
> folks plugged into a community live better, happier, and healthier lives
Or even
> folks with a weekly routine in a third space live better, …
There’s nothing causational about the denomination.
> There’s nothing causational about the denomination.
You're right, I'm sure the people that are publishing these studies have never heard of "correlation is not causation."
Can’t wait for them to test why specific denominations have a positive causal impact on wellbeing over others. Mormons, Jehovas Witnesses, Southern Baptists, etc.
While we’re being snarky, should we talk about the people who are arbitrarily and capriciously removed from these communities during times when they need them most? Like women seeking divorce in abusive relationships while in a denomination that preaches absolute subservience to the male head of household?
In my opinion, this is a form of hatred.
That study you linked does not establish a causal relationship. It may simply be that the sort of person who is able to extract well-being from church is the sort of person more likely to actually attend church with any regularity. It likewise does not address the possibility that depression itself might make one want to stop attending church.
>Millenial cynicism is so boring
Yeah, it's always Millennials who are in the wrong. Fuck us, right? It's all good, we're used to being the scapegoats for society's problems.
To each their own. I don’t think we should judge anyone on where they find their faith, that is, the drive to keep going on. Everyone is different.
Person A might find it in nature, camping, trailing, etc. Person B might pursue a more spiritual path, giving back to the community, being of service.
Whatever floats the boat man. Live and let live.
The problem is that humans evolved to be religious, and you can't just ignore that and get rid of it in a generation or two. It is in our brains and we have to live with it somehow. So from that perspective ... maybe Jesus does cure depression.
Not religious, but also not disputing that believers have lower rates of depression either.
Believing in a higher power has seemed to provide great comfort to a number of friends and family over the years. I went to a friend's father's funeral a while back, and I had to admit, the service, the way the community came together was moving, and it really made me question whether I should return to the church as an adult, even with my questions of faith.
He said something about moths and rust consuming matter and with that at the very least he pointed out quite clearly the source of our suffering in regards to the AI transformation
I don't know about Jesus curing depression, but it's certainly true that belief in Jesus has made many people feel better.
Excellent advice
oh yes! a racist, misogynist and homophobic literature book... best thing ever to get out of depression
THAT is your take away from the teachings of Jesus?
should i also mention that people who funded their religion hunted jews searching for the holy grail and were present at one if not the biggest holocaust of human history (the colonization of America, between 1500 and 1600, which killed from 25 to 100 million people)
Oh yes, those people were clearly acting out the precise instructions of Jesus as laid out in the Gospels.
Sure, it's silly to judge those highly religious people. Maybe we can judge the religion on the work of the Papacy... Though that doesn't give great results either They definitely misread "let the little children come to me"
I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).
I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.
My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.
The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)
I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.
I think most white-collar people have similar feelings. I certainly am, and many dev-friends and coworkers have confided such to me.
My software skills are now irrelevant. I've accepted that the omniscience robot is a better engineer than me. No clue what I'm going to do next, but I have to figure it out fast once my job disappears.
I wanted a family, but I'm relieved that I don't have one now. I can't imagine the stress and pressure of that with how weird everything is now. I'm nearing the end of the timeline for that anyway, being in my late 30s. Probably a blessing in disguise.
I have a some good hobbies that keeps me on my toes (physically, mentally) and a full social and family life fortunately. That's what fills my cup. I'm not stoked about tech anymore anyway.
I've been through a 6 month long unemployment. Got let go from a company (along with the majority of the dev team) which picked up AI like a shiny object thinking it could do everything.
Then I got hired to a company which have been pushing AI 100% for like a year, not at the expense of headcount, but responsibly as the N+1th productivity increasing tool, like what it is.
It's a really nice environment where keeping and cultivating great talent is not just one of the primary marketing slogans on the hiring page, but it actually feels like it while on the job.
My talent is nowhere near yours, so don't lose hope, keep applying.
While I applaud Australia's initiatives, I am becoming more and more convinced that a lot of people are already in (or heading towards) situations that the mental healthcare field can do very little, if anything, to improve.
Well, if you look around at this world, there ain't much hope for the future.
Middle aged family men are kinda invisible. The government only sees them when it needs taxation. Kids only see them when they need money. His wife ignores him too, or rather, they ignore each other as roommates.
They can’t escape because all those legal and moral responsibilities. They have to wait patiently until retirement —- if their hearts allow them to live that long.
Ooof, not even that old here and I'm feeling that. Things are pretty bad all over. Gets hard to want to be around. AI took my job recently and I've been moved back to helpdesk and just awaiting further layoffs. There's not much fun in intellectual pursuits any longer as LLMs have taken it all. All my fun hobby projects are just jokes now as anyone with money can easily outdo me with an LLM. Sad times...
Why do you imagine yourself you be in competition with others while doing hobbies? Do you not find pleasure in the doing?
No pleasure really anymore, my hobbies were coding occasionally and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Recently I started rebuilding a custom d3d9 hook for an old game and it was really fun and I planned to release it to the community. But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
Try see if you can find some physical hobby that has nothing to do with computers.
Mine is gardening. With relatively little effort, I can grow a decent amount of foods, much of it interesting varieties that are not grown commercially anywhere. I really doubt that we're going to see affordable humanoid robots out-competing me in this hobby any time soon.
> and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
That's OK, you don't have to be the best at any one thing. The important thing about any hobby, be it programming, skateboarding, or playing the piano, is that you feel personal satisfaction in doing it, not in the reactions of people to your work. Your enjoyment of a hobby should never be based on whether or not people like it, or even whether or not they want to use the thing you created. If you feel that a project that you are working on could be summed up in a single prompt that can be given to an LLM, then your job is not to work on the project directly, but rather to find what makes what you are doing unique. It doesn't even have to be technically interesting or bring any new ideas to the table, just the fact that somebody has put in effort into making something (regardless of completion or quality) gives it value.
Do you not see a benefit in coding for the mental exercise and challenge?
Most hobbies are impractical... Machines can produce clothes much faster than a knitter, no chess player will beat the best computers, a boat can bring more fish to port in one trip than you can in a year, etc.
A hobby is something you do for yourself. Whether it's code, or painting, or woodworking.... you don't care if someone is better or faster than you. Unless you really see the hobby as a potential business, in which case you might want to reevaluate because with LLMs it's possible for an individual to do more by himself than ever before.
Well, some hobbies are fun because you're doing something no one else has done before, or which is challenging to accomplish without a lot of investment in time and growing in personal skill. A lot of hobbies are fun because of the competition and because you get to be at the forefront of something. It's fun because we're all limited in our time and energy and choosing to spend time on something means you can do things that someone else who doesn't spend time on it can't. That feels good.
People who were in the demoscene took joy in learning how to make a computer do things no one had done before and push the hardware to its limits. That's not as meaningful if someone can achieve the same thing by prompting an LLM.
A lot of hobbies are fun because of the human challenge in creating the output and knowing it was only achievable because someone had to take time to create it. Having an LLM accomplish the same thing absolutely devalues the fun in the hobby. Hobbies aren't 100% just about accomplishing something for yourself, even though if you sway to much into doing it for validation or to compete with others it can lead to burnout and lack of enjoyment.
You can do a hobby for any reason. It doesnt have to be for yourself. He could enjoy programming but also enjoy contributing to the wider open source community. So it makes sense to feel bad when he sees another project popup and invalidate his work. If it was another person who'd worked hard and thought about the project he could at least take solace in chatting about their solutions but with AI its nothing. It just solves the problem and there is little to be gained from it.
Ah, well I do nothing for myself sir. I work most days of the week and time off is limited. My company doesn't really do vacations. I haven't had one in at least 3 years and hopefully I'll have the PTO soon but never the money!
Many hobbies are collective endeavors or a way of providing something useful to other people.
That's silly. Why can't a hobby be something you want to show others and receive acknowledgement and validation from?
Maybe but any time you start depending on "validation" from other people you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Just be yourself.
>Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Then it's not really a hobby, no? Sounds more like a weird competition.
>But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
That sounds more like a job, at least with your perspective.
>I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
That's a job, man. Even if you're not getting paid money for it, you're not really doing it for yourself.
The point is a bit moot cause it's the same difference: you can get joy from a "job" and AI making that job obsolete sucks regardless. But if that's what you think a hobby is, then you don't have an actual hobby.
Go take up gardening.
We've thoroughly pathologized this aspect throughout history, but doing things that earn you societal status and respect from others is a essential for having a healthy psyche for many, possibly most people, men especially struggle when they don't have avenues to demonstrate skill and competence.
Doing things to share them with others is pretty normal in a hobby. You might be baking for friends and family or sewing clothes or whatever, and want to enjoy the recipients appreciation for it. If people don't accept your gifts, the satisfaction of it will go away, and the same is often true of small coding projects I think.
If their hobby was contributing through code and now their contributions are worthless, they have lost a hobby.
I wish I could take up gardening but alas I live in an apartment like most other people... I suppose you got me, I have no hobbies and it's just another reason to not want to be here. :) Everything is work and not much fun, is it?
Woe is you...
Why would you write such disgusting shit on HN? There are so many other viable online platforms that are designed to accommodate this.
This is a weird PoV - that a hobby is only a hobby if there is no community and you do it solo.
Sounds like you're saying tennis can't be a hobby. Nor videogames, nor making movies, writing stories, etc.
I mean, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic: hobbies via a community is still a hobby. There is no requirement that to qualify as a hobby it has to be completely audience-free.
>that a hobby is only a hobby if there is no community and you do it solo
Didn't say that.
>Sounds like you're saying tennis can't be a hobby. Nor videogames, nor making movies, writing stories, etc.
Nope, those are not conclusions you can draw from what I said.
>hobbies via a community is still a hobby
Yup, don't disagree with that.
>There is no requirement that to qualify as a hobby it has to be completely audience-free.
Never said that.
What I did say as that producing a product which is meant to be consumed by others and which offers you no joy if it isn't consumed isn't a hobby- it's a job. Money doesn't need to be exchanged for it to be a profit-seeking activity. And to be clear: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But what I am saying is that, fundamentally, AI can't make a proper hobby obsolete.
The OP is disheartened because his "hobby" is no longer relevant because AI can do his hobby better than him. Just take a step back and think about that: does it make any sense? Can you think of a reasonable example of a hobby where this dynamic can ever occur?
Like, AI has gotten pretty good at music. Does that mean everybody who was in a band for the fun of it all disbanded because AI can make music better than them? Of course not; they still enjoy making music. Now, a band who is trying to make money off of their efforts may be facing a different reality: if people are able to generate better music than what they can produce for way cheaper, then staying in a band for profit is a hard sell. But note that in both instances, these people (who are clearly operating within a community) are doing the same exact activity, but one set of people are doing it as a hobby while the other is doing it as a job.
And again, to be clear: I'm not saying the OP's feelings aren't valid. They wanted to produce something that others would find valuable, and AI made their efforts obsolete. That sucks, and they're clearly not alone. What I'm disagreeing with is the notion that that is a hobby. And that's an important distinction, because the OP is claiming they don't have a hobby anymore and I'm claiming they never did. They should have a hobby- a proper hobby- because it's important for humans to have hobbies for their own well being.
Thank you for this post, enlightened being
Woefully out of touch and crass.
This is hideous.
It's not. At all.
If someone likes digging tunnels by hand, that's a hobby.
If someone is mad that tunneling companies make it hard for them to find "hand tunneling work", that's not a hobby. That's someone thinking their work is owed attention.
Go find a hobby that you like doing for yourself. Why do you think so many engineers turn to woodworking? It isn't because they think they're going to compete with Ikea.
Rhetorical analogies are for people who can not, or will not, respect the subject on its own terms.
This is hideous.
Most people find joy in doing work that's useful to others.
I don't know if it's common but I generally don't like to be bad at my hobbies. I like it when I can do things well. I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
I keep wanting to say the same thing. In fact, how other people describe hobbies is why I don't like the term hobbies.
I think music is a good example of sometimes you need to not have fun to have fun. Practice isn't really fun, but if you can put up with it you can have a lot of fun. So you can say that the not fun parts are part of the fun parts because it's what gives you the payoff. But when people then go and send you a Suno generated song, and say it's better than yours, it is them devaluing the "not fun" parts you had to put up with. I've had people do similar things to code projects I've done. It's a real buzz kill.
I also really value when musicians critique my songs, even when I feel defensive about it. Because then it's not about them devaluing my time, it's about them helping me grow, and they know how it feels to go through that process.
Not liking being bad at your hobbies is much different than not finding joy in them because people do them better than you. I work harder to be a better cook, it doesn't mean I'm in competition with people who cook better.
Sure. But AI doesn't make you bad at hobbies. It just makes others better at it, and even that is a stretch.
>I've been learning the piano recently and striving to play more difficult songs is what makes it fun.
And are you going to give up learning piano because now AI can just generate piano music better than anything you can ever produce? No? Then what you're doing is a proper hobby, which contrasts with the OP who feels their efforts are no worthless because AI can just do it better. That's not really a hobby; it's a job.
How did AI make you "bad" at your hobbies?
(Apologies if I'm missing your point)
Hmm.. I meant to make my point in isolation from LLMs. I definitely don't feel that way about learning music.
I do kind of understand it when it comes to programming, though. Hobby-like side projects often felt like they had some utility down the line, even if not directly applied. It's fun to show others what you've accomplished, to show off, maybe land a job from being noticed, etc.
I'm sorry, but this is not realistic. Life is complex and involves many variables. You are right to engage with this question, but you are oversimplifying to the point of implying dishonesty, if I'm being frank (assuming you are not very neuro-divergent!).
Not the author you're replying to but I don't understand this reply at all? What variables? What oversimplifying?
They simply said
> Why do you imagine yourself you be in competition with others while doing hobbies? Do you not find pleasure in the doing?
Which... I don't understand how that is oversimplifying. If your hobby is golf are you unable to enjoy golf because you're not as good as the pros? If your hobby is music can you not enjoy it because you aren't going to win a Grammy award?
If you enjoy programming or working on something an LLM can do... can't you just enjoy doing it without an LLM? Heck there are plenty of people that will probably seek it out because of how many people hate AI being used in programming.
>I'm sorry, but this is not realistic.
It's realistic to want to be competitive. But as soon as your "hobby" becomes competitive, at least in this sense, it ceases to be a true hobby. It effectively just becomes work.
Nothin' wrong with the OP feeling disheartened by AI taking away his "hobby"/job, but AI will never be able to take away a "true" hobby because a "true" hobby is something where such external factors are irrelevant.
You'll notice that people who lift weights, run marathons, maintain a garden, tinker with models, etc., are effectively immune to AI. An AI won't lift your weights for you or tend to your garden for you. Maybe one day it could technically do that, but it doesn't matter, because you simply wouldn't have it do that for you. And it wouldn't matter if AI is doing that for others, because you're not competing with others. You're doing it for yourself.
> All my fun hobby projects are just jokes
I exercise/lift weights, and you should too. My reps/effort/weight/PRs are a joke. I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com despite really fucking trying for ~6yrs now.
Many people are better than me at the EXACT SAME THING that I'm trying, at my bodyweight/age/sex. It doesn't discourage me. There is always room to improve. I track every workout, go to RPE 8-9, and try to do progressive overload. Seeing the numbers go up helps. I know it won't continue into infinity, especially as the decades go on... but yknow, I'm building a mentality here, not just a body. And when the weights go down, I'll be in the correct mental space for it.
I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting. I'd rather be doing ANYTHING else. But I do it anyway. I think it teaches me things about life.
The only true goal is to grow and be better than yesterday. Effort is the reward.
> I'm ~50% percentile on strengthlevel.com
That's not the population. It is the average among other weightlifters which is where you would expect to be. Most of the population can't do a pull up.
It helps to know how achy the body gets without it. In my case, the back pain I had from desk work is entirely gone now. If you focus on the form rather than reps and getting through it, paired with some good music, you can reach a focus state. There are off days of course, but I'm surprised that I enjoy it much more than I used to, where my motivation dropped off quickly due to being externally motivated (visible gains). Now it's kind of cool to just see your ability change over time, better balance, capability to do more advanced exercises, etc.
Hehe yeah. Perhaps I exaggerate with "I _loathe_ every. single. minute. of weightlifting." More precisely, I never _look forward_ to a workout.
I don't hate every squat. In fact, it's (I can't believe I'm saying this) somewhat satisfying in the moment whenever I do decide to go RIR=0. I'm wiped, but like, in a "hell yeah I did that" way.
But starting a session? I'm still as reticent as I was on day 1 lol. Maybe someday I'll pick up a sport or something as the others suggest, but I love programming too much to pick up other hobbies >_>
I have multiple herniated discs in my back so working out isn't possible. The V.A. wouldn't help with it either... But thanks for the suggestion! I'll be going the way of the people in the article so ya'll enjoy what you got! Many of us have nothing. :)
Perhaps my advice was too narrow/specific to my situation. If you can't deadlift, then don't. But there are many other things you can do, as the other commenters have suggested.
But if you're in the mentality of _not wanting_ to have anything, then all the advice in the world will bounce off you.
My suggestion, then, is to work on that mentality. Do something to get you anything, to get you out of that "Many of us have nothing" mindset. Build momentum. Physically doing something is often what it takes to break a mental barrier. The mind spirals and digs a hole, especially at night. But you get to participate in life/society/people during the day, which is why doing bodily things affects the mind and can break its loops.
You won't "win" on the first attempt. But you'll make progress. And the real win-condition is to keep playing.
The first step is always the hardest. I wish you the best.
Hear hear! It took me a bit but I've reached the point where I'm enjoying just "growing". I think we grew up in a world that molded us to compete, and to judge ourselves based on others, but I think with AI we're going to reach a point where our hobbies are going to be just seeing what we can accomplish for ourselves.
Try doing some sports as well, I do weightlifting, but I do bouldering as well with friends, it is not only fun it also develops your strength in a kind of complementary way to lifting (also increases you stats on balance and other related stuff)
50th percentile on there is pretty strong! I've also lifted for around six years and I'm very light so my raw numbers are terrible but I'm still proud of them
I feel ya.
Most of my friends from high school and college are dead from random cancers, or drugs, or both.
I used to love skimming the new preprints on arXiv in the morning but now the signal is buried LLM drivel.
The one hobby I have that is kinda LLM-proof for now is speedrunning. Tool-assisted speedruns have always had their own categories for decades, and even if the LLMs or their descendants are used for routing or glitch hunting there’s still an element of human execution.
Happy to hear that. What are you speedrunning?
I like JRPGs from the early 2000s. I haven’t settled on one that I like enough to specialize in yet. It’s a bit of a time commitment, as you can imagine.
I feel like so many devs forget:
1. How utterly dogshit the vast majority of code is.
2. How utterly dogshit some of the most important or famous products and services are under the hood.
So what if LLMs can do something better? Our entire field and industry has been built on 'good enough'. God knows how many programming 'masterpieces' are on Github with 0 stars and 0 users.
I am more excited about programming by hand now more than ever. While I do not know what the future has in store for us in terms of careers, I still think I will always program by hand for fun just because I enjoy the feel of the flow-state/getting lost in something.
I solo founded and run a men's suicide prevention nonprofit organisation in the UK. It's early stage bootstrapped at the moment but I have long-term plans.
I've facilitated 200+ talking meetings at this organisation and another I was involved with previously. Anecdotally, the average attendee at the male-only meetings is ~45 years old, has some level of issues with personal and/or professional boundaries, has had suicidal ideation more than once, and has made plans for or attempted suicide more than once.
There is some form of survivorship bias in the above, but I get a lot of pride from our groups keeping men alive. We haven't lost anyone in 2 years.
I would imagine it feels like a huge responsibility, and also immensely fulfilling.
I couldn't imagine being brave enough for it, props to you for doing this!
It's a responsibility and fulfilling, extremes at both ends. The key thing is self-management, and knowing limits. I learned a lot from the ASIST course, and I retake the full two-day training every two years or so:
https://livingworks.net/training/livingworks-asist/
I have no connection or affiliation with the organisation beyond being a delegate.
I would have guessed middle-aged men and women, not just men. I think the reason is being the sandwiched generation.
Most of us had/are having kids late. Now our parents are old/getting old and in need of our support. Along with that, parenting expectations have never been higher. So between shuttling kids from one thing to another all week, and taking parents to medical and other appointments, there isn’t much time or energy left to enjoy anything. It’s exhausting.
Combine that with someone already depressed, and any unfortunate trigger could push them over the edge. It’s partly anecdotal and some of what I’ve observed.
The things that motive me to stick around are holding the people ruining this world to account, documenting it and trying to thwart their efforts, a curiosity in seeing just how bad the climate crisis gets (how do we react, can it wake us from our stupor), and a desire to learn and help others (whether volunteering or just life advice). An absurdist lens helps provide some levity and not take things so seriously.
I had to step back from my career to focus on a mobility issue and at this point I don't know if the job path will continue to be there or even if I care. I'm focusing on small pleasures for now - cup of tea, exercise, peace and quiet. Music and film help provide a sense of meaning and catharsis.
I'm 40 and am accepting I will be single forever. I'm in shape / constantly lifting weights, dress well, work hard on maintaining a good attitude, and am financially stable etc. But not a great face, and extremely skinny (Think Oppenheimer or Bin Laden), am not funny or charismatic, and am not into dogs. Dating is a kick in the butt. Women don't "Feel the spark"
>> Dating is a kick in the butt
DON'T DO ONLINE DATING. Online dating has wrecked mating except for the most attractive 5%. Online dating is mostly a looks competition as first step. And you are saying you don't have the looks to win that game, so you need to play a different type of mating game.
Go to meetups instead via meetup.com and also look for local group activities happening on EventBrite - don't make finding a partner the focus or even the objective - go to a ton of meetups doing the things you love doing.
People form relationships doing common interests and having shared experiences. Have shared experiences with people and take finding a partner off the agenda - just enjoy the company of others. You never know what might happen but don't go looking for it.
I can tell you this for sure - many women are looking for a partner of character - someone kind who actually wishes to engage in relationship - a genuine person - and if time is taken to form relationship well in advance of the "will you be my girlfriend" pressure, then how you look is very often just not an issue. Have you noticed how when you get to know someone you see their character as much as their outward appearance? You might need to let people learn who you are gently and over time.
As for being charismatic or funny, as Oscar Wilde said: Be yourself - everyone else is taken.
A helpful thought for me was that literally everyone could reject you, except one person, and that's all you need is just that one person. Also along with that principle, maybe 99% of people actually aren't a good match for me, so if I mostly don't "click" with other people, that's totally fine — I don't know if I would want to be with 99% of possible people myself even if they were interested in me. It's just about finding the right kind of person that's similar to you. People with unique attributes may find someone else with the same unique attributes, or the other person may possess unique attributes that might somehow be a good fit for your unique attributes.
Just do other things you like and don't worry about women. Relationships bring heartache and grief a good percentatge of the time anyway. Being engaged in things you like doing will bring you into contact with others and friendships or more may develop. But don't do them with that expectation.
If you don't know what to do, try to get involved with helping others in some way. It can be rewarding and give you a broader perspective on life.
I heard that before when I just started dating. I would say don't worry about the outcome (especially pertaining to one person - you know close to nothing about them early on anyway), just try to connect with people. In my case, it would've helped calm my nerves, which were a hindrance. I've been with my partner for 8 years. A given outcome is never preordained and you don't need everyone to like you, just the one that you click with if you don't let rejection discourage you.
being funny and charismatic are something it is possible to practice, same as lifting weights. From what you say, sounds like a high leverage thing to look into
Before everyone jumps in with their favorite ad-hoc reason, take a look at the graph first. The headline is technically true, but barely. For the 45-64 age group, the suicide rate is barely different than it was in 2012 and 2018, and about the same as it was in 1985 (24 vs 22-23 per 100k.) Seems like all age groups have held steady (10-24 25-44 and 75+) or trended up a bit (45-64 and 64-75) since the early 2000's, after dipping from the 1980s.
I am not much of a gamer and sure as hell don't keep up with many people that I gamed with 20 years ago but there was one guy that I would talk with ever few years. I talked with him and a few months later he was gone. I don't know why his suicide hit me so hard. Maybe because I connect him to a different phase of my life. Maybe because he was the guy who was the life of chat. I don't know.
What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.
I’m college educated, have a successful career doing things that I enjoy to a decent degree, have a wonderful house, wife and kid. If you showed my life to my younger self and asked “would you take this life?” I would have answered every single time wholeheartedly “yes! I’m living the dream!”
But I only recently truly accepted that the life I am living (and have created for myself and family) is actually the dream. We so often miss the greatest times in our lives because we are too focused on the unknowns of the future.
This rings true for me - I wish I could go back and tell my younger self not to prevaricate over trivialities. Maybe it's rose colored glasses but those times feel very idyllic otherwise.
The graph shows that suicides overall are down from 30 years ago, while the same cohort that was higher in 1985-2005 (25-44) is now higher in 2005-2025 (45-64). Perhaps there is something about the generation more than the situation or the age of the individual.
44, unemployed since July, on a cross country train trip trying to decide if it is worth going on. Stood on a bridge a bit too long the other day just wondering what the point is.
It is over for a lot of us in IT. It isn't going to get better, it is going to get worse very quickly. Rather than tell myself a convenient lie, I'd rather try to figure out why to keep living in a world like this.
Anyone going through the same thing, I hope you find something worth living for.
Keep going man, switch countries, never call it done.
You never know what awaits behind the corner.
I see this a lot speaking to friends and just in general online discourse. Too much news and social media. Perhaps it will all go to shit. AI is definitely changing the entire world, our industry being the first on the chopping block (maybe).
But, what can you do. There's always been injustice in the world. You just never used to hear about it 24/7/365.
Now you wake up and read about it on the little screen, later you see it on the big screen, talk about it at work, then go to bed and read about it on the little screen again. I have friends who can't even talk to me for 30 minutes without just bringing the entire mood down with doomerism.
Idk, I just do sports, work and spend time with whoever I can in whatever little free time I have left over. I had to forcibly block every news site and social media via an app otherwise I'd get addicted again and become a cynic. Reddit is by far the worst for me, insta is 2nd.
Unlike 95% of people I speak to I actually love my life and enjoy my work, and just hope that AI doesn't steal that from me.
Growing up as a first generation immigrant in a country with some of the worst inequality in the world taught me to just ignore everything but what you need to do.
This is something I sometimes feel guilty about now that I have a comfortable life. But, I feel like trading that ignorance for constant awareness just leads to anxiety and guilt and is a poor trade I don't have to make.
Edit: also this is just 1 factor. There are other factors like actual poverty, loneliness etc. I don't meant to put forth the idea that it's purely the 24 hour news cycle and social media that's to blame, just 1 aspect I see most often in my life.
I am not suicidal and I am lucky to have loving people who I also love around. That said, with all the rapid changes in the software engineering industry and in life in general, I sometimes wonder what I am doing with my life and why.
It's like plenty of things are happening by inertia, but none of them bring any joy or make lots of sense. In such moments, I really envy people who have the courage to work on something they truly believe in. I have quite a few people to take care of, which requires financial resources, so I am not there yet.
In my circle, I've objectively had both the best and the worst life. I can tell when people are thinking about suicide because they reach out to find out if I've done myself in yet lol.
For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.
My older brother killed himself nearly 20 years ago at the age of 50. I don't think he ever considered himself successful. He had financial problems, alcoholism, and was lonely without any lasting relationships. When his resources were exhausted he just ended his life. There was nothing in the estate of value since his assets, such as they were, were less than tax liability he had accumulated. The owner of the house he had been renting tried to get us siblings to pay for repairs and cost of disposal, but we demurred (and told the court we'd be happy if that owner was named executor; they declined the honor.) I think his car just disappeared off the street one day, probably towed to an abandoned car lot and auctioned. At least the state recouped some of the owed taxes that way.
I graduated college in 1992.
2 male friends from college died by their own hand within the last decade.
By most measures, they were successful professionals.
I think part of the problem in that instance, might be "success" being necessary but not sufficient for "surviving and thriving"; and unfortunately sometimes that isn't explained along the way to even people who become conventionally successful (but, perhaps we can try to improve an awareness of the issue going forward for future gens)
Late 40s here, on antidepressants for the anxiety side more than depression.
I can totally see why this is highest in my demographic.
An underlying cause is quiet desperation, there are elements of failure in ones' own life, perhaps pressure caused deliberately by others as they step on you to get to the top. Perhaps it's the fact you start to notice death, your parents, family, and friends. You also see the beginning of your own aged based health decline.
Until society can support genx and older with their goals at this age, instead of telling them to get talking in men's groups, or saying it's alright to show emotions to a generation that grew up without this culture, this will probably continue.
I don't have an answer to fix it, but what I do feel would help is if was treated as a high risk stage of life without stigma. So 45+ men or menopausal women, can take time off to adjust, spend more time with family and friends, and it be treated as normal process, like a sabbatical or maternity leave or just a wind down from society like partial retirement.
This will never happen obviously because it means as a society we have to have a better welfare state and drop the ingrained idea that if you're not working you're a problem (not working is NOT the same as not contributing or benefiting to society, but people conflate this).
Perhaps the AI age will force us to fix that due to mass unemployment, the way COVID kick started remote working.
I am in my late 40's and I am struggling more than I ever have in my entire life. I have a great marriage and 3 children and I have a good job with good income. I have nothing to be unhappy about.
And yet my children are grown now and mostly gone. I feel a profound sense of loss.
I feel like I'm entering the age where I'm a prime candidate for any myriad of diseases and I get so anxious every time I get a symptom. I go to the Dr. a lot. I went to the ER twice every year in the past 3 years. Ironically, its occurred to me that if I do have something terminal, I don't have to go on like this. And I like the thought of that. I'm both terrified of death and also really looking forward to it.
I used to enjoy my work, but AI has made it so that I just kind of show up and ask it for things. Anyone could do what I do. There's no sense of accomplishment in anything.
The worst thing about this is that I have every reason to be the happiest person here. So the fact that I feel the way that I do actually makes me a pretty bad person and that makes the whole thing feel a whole lot worse.
Man this is for real. I’m 46 and I tell my therapist and my friends that I’m not suicidal but like… can we wrap this shit up already? (A tasteless joke stolen from Tom Segura)
I have been meditating on WHY I feel this way. On paper things are pretty good. I’m married. I have a job that is safe for now. I have kids. Two dogs. A house. Two cars.
But I feel really lonely and unseen and like I am a disappointment to everybody including myself. Like it makes sense I’m unseen because I’m unexceptional.
So I’ve done some things that have helped a little including scheduling lunches with friends and coworkers, more frequent date nights (especially double date nights), working out (setting and achieving even small pointless goals like mile time, distance, weight lifted, etc really helps).
All of that and it feels like I’m bailing water out of a sinking ship. It is barely enough to stay afloat and heaven help me if I skip a day or make a mistake…
It is hard to imagine doing this for another 30 years…
I used to think Soma was one of the more disturbing ideas in Brave New World. These days, I understand the temptation a little better.
It can be scary and hard to approach, but I would think you're not unexceptional or unimportant to your loved ones. Maybe you should talk to your wife about this at some point? It sounds like you're starting on this with date nights too which does seem good.
I hope you can find something that helps you feel like you're not just treading water, though.
I see you, and I feel the same way. You have articulated the dread of the monotonous sisyphean slog of being middle-aged.
Yeah, or that it is easier to identify the slog with the hindsight of middle age?
I'm not a Buddhist, but because of the stressors of my previous career I sometimes joke that I accidentally recreated the fundamental tenets of Buddhism in order to not wash out. One of the things I've come to realize is that the slog feeling you describe is something like the concept of 'samsara' or "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence" per the smarter people that edited the Wikipedia article. But that it's still possible to find meaning and satisfaction within this paradigm.
You have kids. Got to live on for them.
At the end of the day we (men) are the ones expected to provide, to win over the women, to keep the marriage from falling apart, to keep the kids safe. And at any point we fail in our career or one of these things we are left staring into the abyss with no one to help us but ourselves. This is why I reject a lot of liberal views. Even when we tried equality, all we did was take away power from the man that is still expected to do everything.
But for beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
at 40 I became a woman and never been happier
I had a friend who transitioned and it was such a delight to witness the transformion. Before they were the most flaky of friends, always flitting from on thing to the next, not stable, couldn't hold a job or hobby together for very long. Then they finally transitioned and my god the difference was night and say. They're stable now, they're reliable they're just fun to be around. They've finished a second degree and have held the same job for eight years now.
It's crazy how much not being at home in their body disrupted every part of their life
Serious congratulations. I understand untreated gender dysphoria is a huge predictor of suicide.
Became? Do you not consider yourself to have always been so?
(Out of curiosity, if you don't mind the question).
Imagine if we had the technology to actually do this!
It advances every so often. We might have womb transplants in the next decade, surgical techniques get more and more refined, etc.
"etc" is doing a lot of work there; what in your view would constitute success here - something that would allow us to say "we did it, we now have the technology to freely change our sex at will"?
It depends on how you define sex. Hormones cover most expressions from chromosomes already. Skull reconstruction could be better? Maybe some way to really rework skeletons and adjust height and hips or shoulders? But that's more on the cosmetic end.
Or if you want at will, it would be good to have some way to radically speed up changes. You're still looking at 3-8 years for some things.
I wrote an article about youth mental health for my substack recently that touched on this. The suicide rate for the 50-59 demographic is far higher than the general population, but it collapses once you hit retirement age. If I had to guess, social supports for seniors plays a role.
Most people that age right now have no idea where they are going or where they will end up. And not even in their delusions can they pretend the world will somehow magically care about them in another 30 years.
Personally I have given up on hoping for a nice planned and well executed life up through retirement. My own skill set just isn't valued enough by the markets to set myself up separated from the festering human pits. Im just going to go for as long as I can just to see how things go at this point. I always did enjoy thrillers and tragedies, it sucks to be in one but it is better than being in nothing at all. And if the world just keeps getting crazier, maybe ill just join them in being crazy and maybe hopefully go out with a bang near the end.
Sucks when friends dies. Cancer, accidents and so on is just terrible, but suicide really sucks. One of my old friends ended his life a couple of years ago. It really hit me.
Ancillary comment, From TFA:
I understand the urge to do something on a large scale, but immediately pivoting to "the government" to solve personal mental health crises seems like a terrible idea.Any breakdown by race?
This was a tough article for me. I'm only alive because I have to be. I have one family member left in poor health, and they depend on me, but when they are gone, I don't really see the point of sticking around. I am simply sticking around for them.
The last thing I will do is die alone, or worse, confined to a nursing home, abused by underpaid staff. Yes: I have tried over 15 medication's, therapy, you name it. I came to the conclusion a few years ago that accepting that my life has an end, and they I will make that decision to end it, has been comforting. I feel like it's the only, perhaps last control, I might ever have
I’m bored of how shocked people are about this. It’s been going on decades now. Think of all the great and/or famous men that have killed themselves in the last 60 years. It stacks up quick. No one cares.
To anyone with a degree not in software, you can pivot to a hands-on job. I'm a technician for factory equipment. AI is not replacing me for a long time.
I'm an absolute doofus in the physical realm. No hand eye coordination of any kind. No common sense. No social skills or ability to read and understand humans.
In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.
https://archive.ph/sBfx5
Who can blame them?
After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?
Go to the gym. I'm 60 and in the best shape and strongest I've ever been in my life.
Less than 10% of 55 year old men have ever had cancer in their life. And many of them were diagnosed before 35. So if you don't already have cancer, your odds are much less than 10% that you'll have cancer by 55.
And if you're wrinkled and frail at 55 years old then that's your own fault. Put on some sunscreen and go for a bike ride.
besides haven't you heard? AI will cure cancer
57 here
Yeah ....all frail and falling apart here.
Seriously,look at the age at which people run for president. We got a guy whose been living his best life by stealing from the US public in his late 70s. 50 is the new 30 after all
bruv that's some serious cope!
but how does that effect women?
Sometimes I think joining a cult wouldn’t be too bad right about now. Hear me out: a bunch of people pool money to buy a massive amount of land somewhere and then building everything they need by hand: homes, farms, etc. and everyone has a strong sense of community from daily interaction and shared purpose, with regular rituals to keep a sense of stability. If we must work by manual labor, it is more satisfying to work to benefit those around you than for increasingly worthless dollars. No smartphones or thinking machines allowed.
Just got “over the hill” here. It’s…complicated, but not at all surprising on the whole.
My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.
Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.
At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.
How did previous generations working similar number of hours manage to have much richer social lives?
Wives organizing social events, I think is part of the conventional wisdom? And more communal work and eating together after work etc.
This. And also commutes were radically shorter than they are today, with more commuter services in many smaller cities than exist today.
We shifted from a sole-provider/homemaker model of couples to a dual-income-required model, at the same time our choices on car dependency and suburban sprawl came back to bite us in the ass. The working from home era was great for socializing because we could agree on small group nights if we were all feeling well, knowing we didn’t have huge commutes ahead of us after work and with the extra money in our pockets from lowered work costs; RTO mandates killed that again, as did the sudden jump in real estate costs, inflation, and stagnating wages in the face of AI investment.
That’s just the average, too. For edge cases like me in unorthodox households or living arrangements, it’s even harder.
get a dog?
Yes because when you are struggling to take care of yourself, piling on vet bills and food and more responsibility, and less social time will really help.
Depression hates a moving target. The responsibility for exercising my dog is tremendous for my mental (and physical) health.
Worrying over another being you are responsible for and thinking less about yourself and your own situation...just might help with depression I would think.
And nothing increases the desire for other people to be sociable with you than walking a dog.
I love my dog but absent my partner's desires, I don't think I would've taken it on. The cost, attention, potential behavioral issues, the prospect of losing them eventually are not for everyone.
I'm working on this actually. I had a dog for 12 years and she really kept me going. Saved me. But she died a couple years ago, literally the day after one of my parents, and it's been tough. But I'm really thinking about getting another dog; I really want to get another dog.
Go get it man, they are the best.
This is my pack: https://i.imgur.com/hnoioNy.jpeg
Get another dog. I would if I had a little garden for them. It sounds like you already know you should/want to.
This is the way.
Guys should go back to the basics.
Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.
A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which is made up of large amount of introspection, extremely fine margins between good times and awful times and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues , the avoidance of social faux passes, planning years and years into the future down to the smallest detail .
That's the perfect recipe for depression for guys
We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need to have sex shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.
Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure from my understanding of human history and primate evolution that "long-term sexual/romantic partner" is, in fact, one of the basics.
Forget human history, that's the resultant of the median behavior optimized by Nature to produce the continuation of the specie.
At the individual level the pinnacle of happiness is teenage years and early adulthood.
Why wouldn't a rational individual not seek to prolong the behaviors in which one engaged during the pinnacle of happiness
We all know what the problem is.