Redux - Ep. 35 - Midlife in the Crisis

When describing how Turnings come about, the Midlife cohort can seem less important than the young adults' exuberant energy or the Elders' wisdom and values. The Nomads (like GenX) are identified as rather uninteresting managers of the Crisis/4th Turning, not much else to do in their role. Perhaps, though, the people in midlife are the key to it all, the real impetus, the ones who push the Crisis towards its peak.    ================================ The tweet that - mostly - got this episode starting up again in my head https://twitter.com/larisa_a/status/1095350964226281473 A few notes here on how age, fertility, and other ways we suspect that midlife is a specific biological event. https://www.webmd.com/depression/features/midlife-crisis-opportunity#2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage-crisis_view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/why-do-killer-whales-go-through-menopause/512783/ Hadn't found this source when doing that earlier episode on The Third Wave http://www.thewavehome.com/1991_The-Wave_article.htm As mentioned, there was an earlier episode on Authoritarianism and Awakenings (Episode 16) that talks about The Third Wave and who was involved. There's another one on anger, it's effect on people and its impact on the Fourth Turning - episode 20 Why Are You So Angry?   A couple of articles about how people have this drop in happiness around 44 or so. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-leadership/201804/miserable-and-middle-aged-is-something-wrong-you https://www.marketwatch.com/story/miserable-in-your-40s-dont-panic-its-perfectly-normal-2018-07-10 A study of 500 chimpanzees and orangutans rated for happiness by their zoo keepers indicated a primate mid-life crisis at around the age of 30 – a finding that led to speculation that some (as yet unidentified) age-related biological influence is at work. (…in the book Protector, there is speculation that other primates were separate offshoots of breeders, de-volving because of something unexpected like increased radiation.) https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/jun/24/life-happiness-curve-u-shaped-ageing A description of Protector on Larry Niven's website. http://news.larryniven.net/biblio/display.asp?key=81&order=4&direction=1 But you can search around and you'll find more about it - like here https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Protector Marie Kondo was at the Oscars https://twitter.com/TheAcademy/status/1099797651946491904 https://twitter.com/MarieKondo "Tidying is contagious" https://twitter.com/MarieKondo/status/1087735339551244290