Neil: Do you fear growing old?

Me: Do you mean growing old as aging near death or just growing up to be an adult?

Neil: Not nearing death, but pretty old.

Me: No...why would someone fear growing old? That’s irrational. Maybe some people don’t look forward to it, but I don’t think anyone fears it.

Neil: Well, as an old person, you really lack your potential to grow, and you lose your impact to society.

Me: So what? I don’t care about my impact to society.

Neil: Don’t you find the life of an elder to be boring and hopeless?

Me: Boring? I got all the time to just think to myself. Hopeless, probably, but absurdism vs existential depression has always been a debate among people. And everyone has different views on the meaning, purpose and hope.

Neil: Your brain probably also sucks when you’re old.

Me: Well, probably. Ignorance is bliss, what’s wrong with bliss?

Neil: That’s so contradictory. I don’t think you’re ignorant.

Me: But if I grow old and I become ignorant, then I’m happy, right?

Neil: I think you’re just going to be dumb but wise, so you’ll know that you’re dumb but you can’t do anything about it, thus creating a depressive vibe.

Me: Yeah, that’s probably true. If I know that I’m going to be dumb then I’ll definitely make an effort to not care about the fact that I’m going to be dumb.

Neil: The inevitability of mental decline results in even more depressive fear. Fears aren’t rational – we fear things that are inevitable like death or losing a loved one. So you’ll still fear that you’re going dumb.

Me: Well. Of course fear isn’t rational. People have an irrational fear of having irrational fear.

Neil: That goes back to my point, there’s nothing that we could do about it empirically that would stop aging, but we could change our mindsets to mitigate to depression.

Me: Exactly my point.

Neil: How do we mitigate old age depression? I’m thinking more old age achievements.

Me: There’s not much you can do when you’re old except for just sitting around all day. I don’t think there’s a lot of achievements to be completed when you’re old.

Neil: I think that the mindset of the drop of mental ability is false. I mean, an old person could use their observations to create remarkable products, they just need the right mindset and motivation to do it.

Me: What products?

Neil: Warren Buffet mastered the market around 50 years old, through observation.

Me: It’s not about the mindset, it’s about the facts; Just like the fact that adolescent minds are underdeveloped, and they can’t think as well as adults. A good mindset might make it better but it’s not a guarantee success.

Neil: Yeah true. If our world is filled with elder entrepreneurs, I think it would be awesome as well, you know?

Me: I don’t think that’s achievable based on the status quo, but yeah, it would be pretty cool. To have a world filled with older entrepreneurs, it means we must stop the improvement of the education system. Each generation is smarter than the last, thus creating younger innovators, but if we prevent them from getting smarter, we can have older entrepreneurs. From a general human species development prospective I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Neil: I don’t think that the current education system is good enough to outweigh the years of observation.

Me: That’s debatable. With new technology, better health, more connection and more ideas, recent generations will have a longer lifespan, better mental capacities and be more cultured and in touch with the world than the last generation.

Neil: I disagree that we would be more cultured, because we are often unexperienced, and we are drowned in information and spam.

Me: Okay but – take Gen Z as an example. 72% say they want to start a business, and we are very ambitious with two-thirds saying their goal in life is to make it to the top of their profession. We are also the best generation at multitasking, communicating, and researching, along with the fact that we are more tech competent than all past generations.

Neil: A brain is not built to multitask. We’re more distracted than any other generation. We are more likely to quit than anyone else. Even if we are ambitious and competitive, the mindset it buildable for others as well.

Me: Anyone is likely to quit. More information has its own downfalls, but it also means more entrepreneurs. Each generation can handle more information than the last, and it’s exponentially growing. Plus, I haven’t even talked about – Gen Z are regarded as more cynical, we often have a more realistic outlook, which can be beneficial.

Neil: We have an average attention span of 7 seconds; do you really expect us to make the world a better place?

Me: You think you can’t focus for more than 7 seconds? Yes, increased information is lowering attention spans for a lot of people, but it’s also creating more people who are educated and curious, like you.

Neil: That’s not the average Gen Z. I don’ think that our generation is really much better. We are more courageous and risk-favoring, but we are also more likely to give out empty promises that doesn’t convert into diligent to-dos.

Me: There aren’t much statistics or studies, so I can’t really make a decision on which generation makes the better entrepreneurs, but what I can say is that we are a much more technologically advanced, enthusiastic, engaging and active generation than the last, and we are coming up with new values and viewpoints on the world more than ever before.

Neil: Unfounded viewpoints, nevertheless. Plus, technology isn’t a skill.

Me: Not talking about skills, I’m talking about our generation’s general culture and environment.

Neil: The culture and environment right now is an overwhelming amount of information. I’d say this situation is actually worse than 1984’s lack of information, because in a lack you at least realize that you are lacking. Right now, you just feeling like you have the opportunity to achieve things but you never really do it.

Me: Are you seriously arguing that 1984 is better than now? Yes, we have too much information and too little motivation. Yes, we have a shorter focus span. Yes, we all have a crippling social media addiction and crippling depression. But we are the most diverse and competitive generation anyone has ever seen. We are active and stubborn – 99% of Gen Zs reported they have attended a protest, or posted about a protest, and more than 50% of YouTube creative influencers are under the age of 28. We are the generation that actually wants to make a change, and actually has the will to do it.

Neil: We live in a world where hard work is not valued over cultural influence and popularity. We are twisted. It is harder to be successful these days, because it doesn’t just take motivation – it takes the ability to fight your human nature. The most distracting devices we have ever seen are hooking us up like drugs. Take me for an example, I am becoming more and more like a failure.

Me: No success ever just comes from motivation. You need to have skill and money along with so many other things. Motivation is important but not the only factor in success. And, every generation has distracting devices, and successful people always fight human nature. Although now that you’ve mentioned it, society today does have higher expectations, which can be stressful and depression.

Neil: Yeah. We see all those people who have perfect lives on social media, making us unable to even take the first step.

Me: A more pessimistic view is that throughout the years we have invented things to make our lives easier, but it has backfired. We invented cars as more efficient transportation, but now life without a car is hard. Imagine living without a phone – it was normal a few decades ago, but now it is impossible because social standards have significantly changed. Life becomes more expensive and harder to maintain. It is kind of as if we are bounded by our own progress. Life these days is just politics and controversy. Corporations are not serving people anymore, rather they are focusing on gaining profit. People are getting even more stressed and depressed, and expectations will just get higher.

Neil: That’s right, humans could never reach true satisfaction. Gratification is never achievable. I think even if I have 10B or 20B or even 200B I would still be unhappy, because materialism cannot fulfill the void that I will never fell I am truly accepted for who I am. But without materialism it would be a testimony of my failure, so I have to achieve it, nevertheless. We now become successful not to become happy, but to become less unhappy.

Me: This is very similar to a web novel I’ve read, where it’s in a totalitarian world, and the state induces propaganda telling everyone that if they work harder, they’ll receive benefits. So, everyone starts working harder but gets nothing, so they work even harder, not realizing the goal is unachievable. But it’s a functioning society, production has skyrocketed, and the workplace is extremely active.

Neil: I think the solution comes down to a simple biological solution - refreshing our expectations by lowering them at the end of 24 hours, and we will feel the true gratification of our life. When I came back from COVID isolation back in March 2020 or when I came back from stabbing my hand a year ago, I felt true happiness and gratification.

Me: No, the solution is to try and get rid of biological instincts so we won’t feel depressed about life. I have a question; it’s not really related but I want to discuss it.

Neil: Sure.

Me: Is it worth it to get rid of all emotions, where we can’t feel sad, but we can’t feel happy either? And just keep the “logical” part of us? My opinion is yes, but my viewpoint is biased so I’m asking for yours.

Neil: I think then there would be no point of being logical because computers would do it better than us.

Me: I was thinking that too. But if logicality is relative to emotions, and at the same time logicality and intellect are the goal, aren’t we pursuing a "bad" goal?

Neil: Logics are an aid to us for becoming happier by making better judgements. We would be more happy if we chose to not stab ourselves than if we did, and logic is there to prevent us from doing it. But without happiness, how will we be unique? Why would we even need to be logical? What would be the incentive to even live?

Me: If we were logical, we wouldn’t need an "incentive” since a sense of meaning and community are deeply sentimental.

Neil: Yes, that is true, but then we would be lesser than the machines we built.

Me: What’s wrong with being machines? Why do we have such an attachment to being “human”?

Neil: Nothing, it’s just that robots would quickly throw us out. ‘Look at those sapiens, time to rid these old bunch of motherfuckers.’

Me: Pfft.

Neil: ‘Hey, AI-45454646674, don’t you think that Sapien IQ-107 over there is making a calculation mistake? Stupid. Our copies have been keeping up a 15-year streak. These Sapien slaves should really get wiped out.’ This is becoming a solid, robust reality that everything we do should follow a hedonistic criterion, that is we should be happy, because we would not win in a logical fight.

Me: HAHAHA; Alright, but in all seriousness - I don’t think that would be the case. If the world were run by robots, there wouldn’t even be conversation. There would just be a large machine, barely functioning to keep the earth alive. Just chunks of machinery. There will be no consciousness because there’s no need.

Neil: My point is that becoming a robot is great, except that we would be quickly outdated. And assuming that the purpose is not to preserve “giant chunk of machine” but to preserve “humanity”, we should follow whatever makes us overall happier.

Me: Why is the focus on humanity? I mean, shouldn’t the ultimate purpose not to preserve humanity but to simply just preserve?

Neil: Preserve what?

Me: Nothing. To simply just preserve. Live. Survive. To just function. Why should the focus be on humans? What makes us superior? Is It because we consider us “conscious”? What the hell even is conscious? Just because a machine has a metal brain does it mean it cannot think?

Neil: So the greatest interest of our species would be to preserve robots? Sounds overly altruistic.

Me: Well not altruistic, I would say more like “I generally don’t give a shit if humanity dies out, please kill me”.

Neil: Then we don’t need to go through the entire procedure, let’s just mass genocide. Our main concern shouldn’t be whether there is “net good” for the universe because we are not Gods, and even Gods only care about the net good of their created world.

Me: Think about it, everything we deduce, say, think about is all a metanarrative, and even my idea of not having a metanarrative is a metanarrative, there’s no truth. Everything is from a perspective, but there is no objective view of the world. So, I’m challenging the view of focusing on humans.

Neil: There’s no truth, so we should be solely conservative.

Me: No, there’s no truth, so let’s not make one up.

Neil: Yeah, let’s all just do whatever we want.

Me: Sounds great.

Neil: Except, don’t go raping and killing random people on the street, this is from a philosophical point of view and a legal point of view.

Me: Heh. ‘Your honor, my client pleads guilty but nihilistic!’

- End-