Anyone Else Want To "die Young"?

[welshwing]

No disrespect to oldsters, this isn't meant to depress you and you can live a good long life in health like Ray Peat, but this is written by a 19 year olds perspective. My friend and I were discussing when we want to die and of course I said I want to live a long life, I wanted to catch him off guard with that since I eat and live with the goal of staying healthy all of my days. But he surprised me with his reply, simply "you really want to live that long? don't you want to die before you get old, I just want to live to like 45"

I want to die young too. He changed my perspective that I had all my life in a few words. The reality as I see it: though people don't want to admit it, there's not much wisdom you can gain in old age that a teenager hasn't figured. After age 20 I think most people have peaked and will only experience the same thing over and over again. Only in the 1900's did people start living longer. Before then people were actually healthier in general, they died in their 40's-60's. Cavemen are said to have lived into their 30's maxium, poets killing themselves in their 20's because they're "bored of living" was seen as a very noble thing to do back then. I am not suicidal but I just don't want to live long. I want to live to my 60's or 70 maximum, 50's would be okay too. It's not just about health, one of the most enjoyable things in life is friendship and mutual attraction, both go down as you age. People are most social in their teens and 20's, coincidentally when we're most attractive. Health does deteriorate too, but I suppose if you're dedicated to eating well and exercising you won't spend your twilight years suffering in a hospital.

My parents are also not people I want to be like. They work overtime to save money for retirement I guess, seriously their bills do not cost nearly enough to justify the money they earn and don't spend by now. The catch is they're deteriorating, they don't go on vacation, don't talk to old friends, don't always eat healthy, are stressed, getting slower, fatter, older. In contrast my ex-girlfriend is living homeless, singing in bars for money, travelling the country with a band, she's only 19 and well aware this lifestyle is bad for health (but she is an extreme, she was in a group protesting capitalism and police showed up) but it's fun.

I think some youth today are truly not planning for the future and are okay with dying young. I think getting old would drive them crazy, you were once vibrant and now you're feeble and deteriorating. A healthy lifestyle only slows it down but nobody at 50-60 can act 20. It makes sense to me. I'm glad Ray Peat's diet suggestions are delicious because I would've quit any "diet" that didn't taste good after what my friend told me. I want to maximize my enjoyment otherwise there's no point to being health-obsessed.

What do you hope to do, live long or die young?

 

[PeatThemAll]

1. Read "Die Broke". You'll get a better view on real priorities, and how the financial industry sells you a plan that in all likelihood is not optimal for you.

2. "It's hard because you're not good at getting what you want." Applies to all fields. I'm still working on improving, but I don't think a "natural" (someone who's kept his instincts, intakes, outcomes, priorities, etc. in *reasonable* line with his epi/genetics) who feels good in the 40+ years would agree to pull the plug early (or earlier than expected).

The size of your appetite(s) versus your gut capacity, figuratively and literally, as well as how you managed them, go very far in altering your view of life past the 40s. Said otherwise, after 40 is where you see how your foundation really stands up to the test of time.

 

[daIllu]

I definitely feel there's not enough time to be young rather than getting bored, I'm pretty sure if I could stay young and people around me that I know would also stay young all the time on the peak of our health then living 100 years would not be boring imo. If I keep aging though then I wouldn't mind dying at 40 if it's not a painful death :P

I've also stopped keeping track of my age though because it doesn't serve me much really lol, I think I stopped counting at 25 many years ago so who knows how old I am now :P

 

[jaa]

This is a bizarre perspective to me. I feel the opposite (to a point). As long as my body's in decent shape and I feel OK, I can't imagine wanting to die young. There's too much to learn and get absorbed in. If you've peaked in your 20s, you must really have a narrow focus. And with the advances in technology (and longevity) on the horizon, this is a very exciting time to be alive.

 

[onioneyedox]

Hehe maybe one should just decide if living as a "old person" is meaningless when one is at that age. Sounds like somesort of feeling of meaninglessness is present in current life and is suppressed my some activities that one can see aren't something inherently rewarding or meaningful nor sustainable. So one assumes older age is just that feeling of pointlessness exposed. Personally, I haven't really much enjoyed life at any point (deeply), so I think I understand the point of view. I just think there is something interesting or even beautiful in living and existence in general so even a somewhat unsatisfactory life seems like worth living. Potential for learning and growth is there even when older, not that all are able to continue to grow throughout their lives. And it seems there are people who find genuine satisfaction from living so that's a good, hopefully it is available to all of us.

 

[XPlus]

It sounds like you're in a hurry.
If you're that bored you might as well find something that'd take care of it sooner than later.

I work with executives who are around 10-25 years older.
They all said they'll quit the job after few years when they're satisfied with what they've earned.
Guess what.
It's been 10-25 years and they're still around.
Still say "this year will be my last year", every year

Most of us just can't get enough of life and money.
For the right reasons and for the wrong reasons.

It's only when the time comes that you can really decide whether to call it quits.
You'd probably want to find something more interesting to worry about at this point in your life.

 

[milk_lover]

Don't wish to die young. There are more experiences in life you can have and more good deeds you can do to people the longer you live. Or if you're that bad influence on yourself and other people, living longer gives you a chance to reflect and correct your misconducts, thus forgiving yourself and feeling happier as you age. I call it a blessed cycle. Life is not without a purpose. Life has downs and ups. Maybe this idea of wishing to die young happens to occur on the down of the life wave.. The notion will change if you try to live life. Sorry English is not my first language.

 

[Nicholas]

i am fine living as long as i'm supposed to.

 

[paper_clips43]

Is that a true statement "Only in the 1900's did people start living longer. Before then people were actually healthier in general, they died in their 40's-60's. Cavemen are said to have lived into their 30's maximum"

I am not arguing I just want to learn and understand.

I mean John Adams died at 91 and Ben Franklin at 84. I always thought the mean average for death was skewed because of the high infant mortality rate that brought average down. Also lack of medical care meant we couldn't save as many people.

So the only reason our life expectancy is higher is because we can use medicine to prolong life and are activities are generally safer. We aren't falling out of trees to get food anymore.

It seems to me if you have a passion then most people would want to live a long life, its just that in the past most people didn't have access to resources that could prolong it. Couple that with the life expectancy after you retire being 5 years it seems like living a long healthy life is the majority of everyones goal.

 

[jaa]

Somewhat relevant

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/2 ... tude-book/

"My father, who lived to 94, often said that the 80s had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. One has had a long experience of life, not only one’s own life, but others’, too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities, too. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together."

 

[cantstoppeating]

If you're talking generally about living in our ages of rapid decline and functioning, then I'd rather take the exit.

Otherwise "live long" and "die young" are relative to the current times.

In caveman times, average life expectancy was 20 years, not 30, with ages 14-16 being (and still are) peak fertility years. In this context "die young" would be 20 years old. No offence to you, and not to depress you, but you're 3 years past your peak fertility years and 1-5 years away from your general biological peak. Ha.

In our current times, "die young" would be 30 years old. Ten years from now it'll probably be 32-37 years old. By the time you're 40 years old, you'll most likely have the biological functioning of a current 20 year old.

With knowledge of and access to substances like pregnenolone, thyroid, red light etc we're already a step ahead of most people who are relying on mainstream medicine and businesses to provide regenerative treatments. (Not forgetting knowledge of substances like LSD which turn the mind of 60 year olds into curious and novelty seeking adolescents.)

So your question about "live long" and "die young" is most likely a non-issue because of the times we live in and the forthcoming advances in biotech, nanotech etc (see Ray Kurzweil).

 

[Blossom]

Things can change. As a teen and younger twenties person I couldn't imagine living beyond my thirties. Now at forty-six I feel alive and thriving more than ever. I suppose having untreated hypothyroidism really took the life out of me and I was just caught in a downward spiral. I remember looking at my eighty something year old grandmother when I was in my twenties and wishing I had her energy and vigour . I've met people my age and younger who are living in nursing homes and confined to wheel chairs who seems to have a very strong will to live and get enjoyment out of playing bingo every afternoon. I suppose a lot of it boils down to feeling like life is meaningful.

 

[Integral]

I read about 45% of your post, Welshwing, and just very strongly disagreed so had to write something down....Though I respect your view, by the way.

You state there's only so much wisdom you can gain past 20. Firstly, I call bull****. The burden of proof lies with you, so I'd like to hear the reasoning behind this statement.

Notwithstanding, my exeperience is highly at odds with your general view.

In my own life, the person I was at 18 is almost so different from the person I am now (aged 24) that the two are imcomparable. I've changed my opinions on a great deal of things, and also view life incredibly differently from how I did when I was younger. Having been exposed to some of the research on near-death experiences and the nature of consciousness, I no longer believe personally that the life and 'reality' we percieve is all there is to our existence. As such, I don't take the materialist or reductionist view of death as being an eternal blackness to be the case.

This is only one topic I have changed my mind on and learned more about, yet, it has completely altered my perspective on life, death, the nature of reality, God, religion, materialist-reductionist science, and a whole host of other things.

Moreover, by reference to your argument that there is only so much more 'wisdom' you can gain past 20, whilst I've already challenged this premise above and shifted the burden of proof towards you, I'd also like to highlight that using this (contestable) notion to extrapolate that it is in fact grounds to want to die young on this basis, your are positing that the function of life is fundamentally reducible to the gaining of wisdom, and thus once your intellectual peak/maximum level of wisdom has been reached, you're in posession of reasonable grounds for wanting to die.

Further problems arise with this logic:

(1) Wisdom is a porous, subjective and context dependent concept. For instance, even between cutures and generations, what we'd understand to be wise varies. I consider my Dad to be very wise, yet to others his day to day life may not appear indicative of any sort of wisdom at all.
(2) Given the subjectivity of wisdom, how do we establish an objective measurement of wisdom? And thus, how do we establish having reached a peak?
(3) Rather obviously, your argument's concomittant implication that the function of life is to gain wisdom is very contestable. For arguments sake, why isn't the function of life reduced to gaining love/compassion/x desirable trait?
(4) This is a thought-experiment, but say person X chooses to live a life minimising wisdom in every sense, living a sort of quasi-monastic life as a forrest monk, meditating in silent contemplative awareness for the rest of my life, subsisting on nothing other than offerings and owning 0 possesions. Or, say contrastingly person X could seek to live in a manner to maximise wisdom and spend every waking hour devouring scholarship on every topic availible, eventually becoming some sort of Da Vinci like polymath. If you were to compare these two lives, your argument would imply that the former life would be unjustified for it's lack of appreciation of the importance of cultivating wisdom. Yet, it would surely be deeply wrong to forbid someone living the former life.

To conclude....your perspective on life is a little trouble for me.

Thanks,
Integral.

 

[answersfound]

I disagree. I would only want to die once I was not able to have sex anymore.

It sounds like you have put a limit on your capabilities. I don't think you realize what a gift Ray's work is. You have the power to fundamentally shift your beliefs and views about the world. I grew up feeling trapped. I loved going to malls and just thinking about things I could buy. Now it's all meaningless. I've realized that even wth all the money in the world, I still need my sense of wellbeing and health. Nothing can really add to my sense of self. It sounds like you hold this same belief. This comes with a lot of freedom. Given the fact that you don't take yourself so seriously, like other people, why not commit yourself to doing something great?

people don't want to live because the stress is too much for them. You have all the tools to reduce stress and make your life worth living. I think you wrote this post for shock factor. I don't think you really mean it.

 

[Daimyo]

Life is lika a RPG game. If you get only to level 20 there's only so much you can level up your character. You might be warrior, a priest, a wizard, a thief.

With time you can be a like a palladin, necromancer, demonologist, assain...

 

[Westside PUFAs]

It's easy to sit there and claim that you want to die young but with a real 6-months-to-live-terminal-diagnosis, you'd change your mind real quick. Once death occurs, that is most likely the end. Claiming that you want that young seems odd because once you die, that's it, for all of eternity, forever, no coming back. The brain can be damaged from getting hit too hard. A person will then not be able to do certain things like recognize people whom they've known for years or identify the names of tools but not animals. This is proof of brain damage. Yet when the whole brain is damaged and dies at death, somehow it will rise off fully functioning into the ether? I want to stay as long as I can in hopes that I see aliens or other amazing discoveries. I'd go to the moon once it's like taking a day trip tourism, or Mars even. Your time is limited so each day that passes by that was one that you did not enjoy yourself in is a day wasted. You will never get that day back. It's gone. A lot of people this very moment are living with extremely horrible, sad, tremendous struggles just to survive to the next day. A lot of them do not have the opportunity to change that. But it may be possible for a lot of people to achieve enjoying each day that they have to the best that they can. You can do this by figuring out what you want first and foremost. You have to know what you want. You have to have a purpose. You have to be honest with yourself in what you want your life to be. Money is not a real thing, just like race, countries, and religion, it is something humans made up. From the scientific point of view no one needs money to live. What you do need is food. Breatharianism is complete quackery. No one can do it, you will die. Your body needs some of the macronutrients to survive and burn calories, and eventually micronutrient deficiencies will kill you as well. There was once a study done on a feral person and they found that persons brain was developed in a way that made them what normal people consider crazy and he/she did not want to interact with normal humans. So in that case you could say that besides food, you need other people around you make you feel well. The world is a crazy place filled with crazy people and you can't control what other people do. You can only control yourself. But even if you control yourself there are no guarantees. One day the economy is good, the next it is bad. One day some people are blowing buildings up in some city, in another city people are going to Comic Con. It doesn't matter what everyone else is doing, what are you doing? Sure, you have to work for what you want, if what you want requires working, but no one will hand anything to you, it is you who has to do it yourself. Unless you have rich parents or you hit the lottery, both of which you do not and most likely will not ever have. You can kill yourself, that's alway an option. You can go live in the wild and hunt and gather. There's a lot you could do. But I remind you, the clock is ticking. Let's say you're 21 now so if you live to be 80 that leaves you with only 21,535 days left of your life. Even if you live to be 100 that still only gives you 28,835 days. It will go by quick. That's assuming that you don't die first from disease or blunt trauma. When it comes to an end do you want to say to yourself, "It's over now and I didn't live the life I truly wanted to," or will you say the opposite and die with a smile on your face. It's your choice.

 

[honeybee]

Yet another post that confirms youth is wasted on the young.
Nobody ever learns from history or from the obvious. Sad.

 

[mujuro]

post 111186there's not much wisdom you can gain in old age that a teenager hasn't figured. After age 20 I think most people have peaked and will only experience the same thing over and over again.

If I didn't think you were a teenager before, I certainly believed it after reading this.

EDIT- Deleted paragraph concerning existence and consciousness. I don't want to derail the thread and turn it into an ontological discussion.

 

[DaveFoster]

This paradigm of the body shifting from a period of growth to one of decay fails to meet reality. Your body has a phenotypic goal; an ideal structure that most achieve around the age of 25. From the moment of your birth, your body tries to fill this form, and when it does, it makes the best effort to maintain homeostasis at this point.

"Dying" is the gradual accumulation of error in the maintenance phase. Reduce the error to zero, and you will achieve immortality.

 

[mayweatherking]

I think if you look at it from the right angle, getting older can be a good thing. In my thought process, I see 3 paradigms as a whole life. Health, wealth, and relationships. If you succeed in those 3, you will enjoy your life as you get older. We are on ray peat forum, this is the ultimate health place. Way ahead of it's time. I think if you can master the diet and can get your hormones straight, you are going to have that 3rd paradigm completely filled. That is awesome.

Okay, so second and third paradigms also have to be conquered. I'd say most people don't have these, like you said, people as they grow old, they don't want to do anything. Look at people like MArk Cuban, he is what, 50 something? He is a role model for me.

To conquer relationships, I don't know what to do from a female perspective because I'm not a female, but as a male, I would go out and try to pick up and meet as many women as possible when you are 19. I actually started doing pick up when I was 19, I'm 27 now. Once I went out 100 days in a row to the bars sober most nights just to meet girls and learn to do "pick up" because I never had a girlfriend in highschool and I was too shy. Unfortunately, I also took finasteride at 19, and I had pretty much no libido, but I still went out every night and forced it. Even no emotions a lot of nights. Really ****88 up dude, really ****88 up. Basically it was like trying to do pickup with a iron weigt around your leg because pick up is all about your emotions, whatever you feel, she feels.

But that's why ray peat diet is good. It makes you feel so good. Some nights I felt so good on it, other nights not so much, I can't figure out my balance, but my point is when you conquer the health paradigm, you can go meet and pick up girls pretty easily I think becuase you feel so good and if you have a strong libido, that is pretty much like 90% of the job.

Moving on to wealth, watch shows like shark tank, follow tai lopez on social media, join a private torrent tracker for wealth (pm me if you want to join it, I can send you an invite, or at least tell you how to join), etc. Build a business, get rich.

You can do these things well into your 50s and 60s. Look at hugh hefner. Or dan blizerian, he is like 35 or something. Tyler from RSD, he still does pick up pretty well and is balding pretty bad, he is like a hero to me when I see him because i'm losing my hair so bad, it's getting bad, i can't get my health paradigm solved.

Aynway dude or girl, even if you are girl, you can do these things. Not hte pickup part, but the business and health part, the health part carries a large part of other areas. Trust me, as someone with messed up health, it really carries you.