Thanks for this enlightening discussion. It really resonated with me personally as unlike Shadi I have found a partner but I still have that feeling where unhappiness looms over me not unlike a shadow ready and waiting to grab me at any moment. I tend to believe happiness is a rare state- something that can be felt only for intermittent periods, necessarily transient even if it can be transcendent.
I do also think arguably the decline in marriage is a result of shifting social norms. We are now told family is insufficient or even 'heteronormative' which is essentially a code word for a problematic idea. Instead, we should all 'rock out with our cocks out' as the fictional Marcy Runkle said from the show Californication. Yet, the end result has been a dearth in intimacy, trust, sex, and love. Replaced with a culture where we consume a lot and put great emphasis on 'living our best lives' while being extremely scared in the process. If late stage liberalism has told us anything it's that this type of living is not in the long run sustainable without significant shift changes.
Finally, I think to be loved, as in the bell hooks definition, is an important part of life and ourselves. It's also why I have rarely been convinced about polyamorous relationships in the long run, at least from my own perspective if not others. It strikes me that kind of love is especially rare and I'm not sure if you can fully possess it for more than a singular being.
Thanks Sam for sharing this. I'd be curious - did finding a partner at least make you *less* unhappy (since I think it's best to think of happiness/unhappiness as a continuum and not a binary)? In your own case, where do you think that deeper sense of unhappiness looming over you come from? I also take your point that this might not necessarily be a bad thing, and that we need strong doses of dissatisfaction in order to truly appreciate those rare moments when everything seems to come together, if only for a moment.
I think overall probably not because being unhappy wasn't tied to having a partner. It has probably nudged me up on the continuum of happiness simply because having someone there is better than having no-one. Yet, I wouldn't say it has been my 'salvation' or escape from unhappiness or continual uncertainty that I tend to think is simply part of living.
It always felt more existential, a searching for something I could never quite get my hands on. I'm still not absolutely certain as to what it is but it remains there. I'm not sure I'll ever find the answer (although I am still only 31, so am still quite early on in the search) but I'm not sure I'm meant to either.
Yeah, I don't think it's inherently a bad thing at all. When taken to extremes obviously it can be very bad but I think true happiness, that feeling of either absolutely ecstasy or my personal favourite when you feel completely and utterly at peace, should be rare. This is why attempts to manufacture this always feel unsatisfactory and plastic to me.
Thinking about it, I probably need to write a piece on why living on the happiness continuum closer to unhappiness is a good thing at some point!
I really enjoyed this discussion, and would love to hear a podcast episode where you think through your agreements and disagreements out loud together. By most metrics, I myself am a leftist or liberal: I am a writer who works in philanthropy and was shaped by "elite" academic spaces during the rise of the DEI / social justice regimes. More and more, however (and I sense I am not alone in this), I am drawn to those external structures like religion, family and community that impose boundaries on my individual freedom and require that I take responsibility for some collective and higher good.
Why? I have simply found in adulthood that the default modern liberal pathways of orienting my life around my own pleasures -- and even my own pursuit of higher meaning -- were staircases to nowhere, and that the deeper sense of freedom and fulfillment I was after comes not through removing constraints, but by choosing the right ones.
The ultimate emptiness of life under late stage liberal capitalism explains, I think, why so many young men were captivated by pseudo-philosophers like Jordan Peterson (is he still popular? no idea...) who say, "no, actually, there are some hard, unchangeable truths about the world, and the good life starts by imposing some boundaries and discipline upon yourself." What is at stake is not just your happiness, but your soul (if you believe in such a thing.)
I am finally reading Patrick Deneen's book "Why Liberalism Failed," and I would love to hear you take on some of his claims about liberalism and human nature. I.e. "as an ideology, it pretends to neutrality, claiming no preference and denying any intention of shaping the souls under its rule." How do you think each of your views (and your souls, if you don't mind?) have been shaped by liberalism? And to what extent do you consciously push against it?
And to Kristina, you use the term "existential" a few times, but I'm not sure what you mean. I adore Camus and often quote him, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy"...do you see yourself as a descendant of some particular strand of existentialism? If so, do you find that it affords you some kind of useful map for the terrain you're navigating now at midlife with so much change around you?
Our own desires, and our own sense of unlimited choice, being a "staircase to nowhere"... I love that way of putting it! As for Deneen, I agree with him on a lot of the diagnosis but not necessarily the prognosis. In that sense, I'm not sure there really is a "solution" to the problem of liberalism. It's, I guess, too late — as much as we might wish it, we can't undo the fact that we're products of a liberal society. Here's an essay I wrote on anti-liberalism by way of Houellebecq where I discuss some of Deneen's ideas: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/liberalism-trump/553754/
Since I don’t know Shadi personally I won’t speculate, but generally I believe quite strongly choosing to commit (and get married if you want) is very grounding and re-assuring for many of us.
Not that you can just flip a switch, especially if you have not found someone you are compatible with, but to some extent being ready for marriage and wanting to commit is a choice rather than than something that happens to you.
It’s perhaps at odds with self-realisation and living your truth, but at some point there are trade-offs to be made and we can’t have the best of all worlds.
I really enjoyed this discussion and (as mentioned in another comment) would love to hear it continue in a podcast episode! Maybe both authors touched on this already, but it seems to me like a lot of the structure of a midlife crises involves wondering what one’s life would be like if they’d taken a radically different path: if married, what if I had remained single? If single, what if I had gotten married? I feel like some of this (not all) is independent of what social norms surround an individual and are just a natural function of feeling like one is halfway through life.
Yes, there's always going to be a "grass is greener effect," but I have to say that I hear those kinds of sentiments less from people who are married with kids. Once they've made the decision, their incentive structure leads them to continue investing in what they have since they can't (or at least they can't without great difficulty) undo it. In that sense, making strong commitments has liberating effect, insofar as it liberates us from what could have been. Or to put it differently, people who are married with kids (unlike those of us who aren't married) have experienced both kinds of lives and then they make a more informed comparison between those lives. They don't have to wonder about something they never had, because at one point they did have it.
This is just an "epi-" comment. It's interesting how Kristina starts the debate using Shadi's favorite word, "existential," but in the original 40's and 50s philosophy sense that Shadi never (at least in my memory) uses. And so Shadi proceeds -- and this is just classic -- to reinvent this original sense of "existential" from scratch. And he does not too bad a job of it!
I appreciate you both diving into this conversation. I've come of age in spaces and institutions that reinforced a very different ethic than many Westerners experience. I grew up in a pretty conservative Evangelical church and went to a Christian college in a small, rural town that I have come back to work now. Many juniors and seniors that I work with feel pressure to be married by the time they leave the institution because of many of the sexual ethics of evangelicalism and what I would call the idolatry of the nuclear family over and against many other things.
As a product of the Christian college marriage industrial complex, I have to say it has paid off. I am happily married to my spouse and I really don't live with any regret in that decision; however, we find ourselves in a unique space in this culture as we've made the decision not to have kids for a significant amount of time (if ever). This is an area where many of our peers are having their first children anywhere from 23-26 years old and having multiple children by 30 is routine.
Reading this dialogue was a helpful reminder that cultural pressures exist everywhere. Humans will never be liberated by their own desires but also never delivered from cultural pressures. I guess maybe my question is, how do we come to be content with our standing in relationship to the world?
I really enjoyed reading this. We don’t often hear about singleness from the male perspective. While I agree with Kristina that people need all kinds of love, romantic love is a very specific thing that can’t be replaced with something else, which makes it very unpredictable and is probably why for most of history, marriage wasn’t based on romantic love. For better or worse, we live in a time of companionate marriage and even most religious people have this type of marriage, at least in America. It means the stars have to align a little bit even if you don’t believe in that.
Kegan’s levels of the evolving self referenced by Kristina remind me of Nietzsche’s framework of the camel, the lion, and the child. I find that analogy very inspiring and like the idea of returning to a simpler, childlike approach to life and allowing things to unfold, trusting that if something is right, you will be able to give the child’s “sacred Yes.”
Or as our fearless leader says, "You know, you don't meet the right person, or you don't meet any person. But you're just as good, in many cases, a lot better than a person that's in a family situation."
I enjoyed reading this discussion, and found much to agree with. However, it seemed a bit „blinkered“ to me. Neither of you seemed very aware of the billions of people around the world who have
different family groupings, different religions, different notions of love and marriage. Even in the Western world there are many people living in different structures from those you describe. I was particularly puzzled by a comment about marriage - I have a number of friends in 50 year long relationships who are just as happy/unhappy as my married friends. For some people marriage is merely a legal act, to simply inheritance and to maximise some financial issues.
Thanks for this enlightening discussion. It really resonated with me personally as unlike Shadi I have found a partner but I still have that feeling where unhappiness looms over me not unlike a shadow ready and waiting to grab me at any moment. I tend to believe happiness is a rare state- something that can be felt only for intermittent periods, necessarily transient even if it can be transcendent.
I do also think arguably the decline in marriage is a result of shifting social norms. We are now told family is insufficient or even 'heteronormative' which is essentially a code word for a problematic idea. Instead, we should all 'rock out with our cocks out' as the fictional Marcy Runkle said from the show Californication. Yet, the end result has been a dearth in intimacy, trust, sex, and love. Replaced with a culture where we consume a lot and put great emphasis on 'living our best lives' while being extremely scared in the process. If late stage liberalism has told us anything it's that this type of living is not in the long run sustainable without significant shift changes.
Finally, I think to be loved, as in the bell hooks definition, is an important part of life and ourselves. It's also why I have rarely been convinced about polyamorous relationships in the long run, at least from my own perspective if not others. It strikes me that kind of love is especially rare and I'm not sure if you can fully possess it for more than a singular being.
Thanks Sam for sharing this. I'd be curious - did finding a partner at least make you *less* unhappy (since I think it's best to think of happiness/unhappiness as a continuum and not a binary)? In your own case, where do you think that deeper sense of unhappiness looming over you come from? I also take your point that this might not necessarily be a bad thing, and that we need strong doses of dissatisfaction in order to truly appreciate those rare moments when everything seems to come together, if only for a moment.
I think overall probably not because being unhappy wasn't tied to having a partner. It has probably nudged me up on the continuum of happiness simply because having someone there is better than having no-one. Yet, I wouldn't say it has been my 'salvation' or escape from unhappiness or continual uncertainty that I tend to think is simply part of living.
It always felt more existential, a searching for something I could never quite get my hands on. I'm still not absolutely certain as to what it is but it remains there. I'm not sure I'll ever find the answer (although I am still only 31, so am still quite early on in the search) but I'm not sure I'm meant to either.
Yeah, I don't think it's inherently a bad thing at all. When taken to extremes obviously it can be very bad but I think true happiness, that feeling of either absolutely ecstasy or my personal favourite when you feel completely and utterly at peace, should be rare. This is why attempts to manufacture this always feel unsatisfactory and plastic to me.
Thinking about it, I probably need to write a piece on why living on the happiness continuum closer to unhappiness is a good thing at some point!
I really enjoyed this discussion, and would love to hear a podcast episode where you think through your agreements and disagreements out loud together. By most metrics, I myself am a leftist or liberal: I am a writer who works in philanthropy and was shaped by "elite" academic spaces during the rise of the DEI / social justice regimes. More and more, however (and I sense I am not alone in this), I am drawn to those external structures like religion, family and community that impose boundaries on my individual freedom and require that I take responsibility for some collective and higher good.
Why? I have simply found in adulthood that the default modern liberal pathways of orienting my life around my own pleasures -- and even my own pursuit of higher meaning -- were staircases to nowhere, and that the deeper sense of freedom and fulfillment I was after comes not through removing constraints, but by choosing the right ones.
The ultimate emptiness of life under late stage liberal capitalism explains, I think, why so many young men were captivated by pseudo-philosophers like Jordan Peterson (is he still popular? no idea...) who say, "no, actually, there are some hard, unchangeable truths about the world, and the good life starts by imposing some boundaries and discipline upon yourself." What is at stake is not just your happiness, but your soul (if you believe in such a thing.)
I am finally reading Patrick Deneen's book "Why Liberalism Failed," and I would love to hear you take on some of his claims about liberalism and human nature. I.e. "as an ideology, it pretends to neutrality, claiming no preference and denying any intention of shaping the souls under its rule." How do you think each of your views (and your souls, if you don't mind?) have been shaped by liberalism? And to what extent do you consciously push against it?
And to Kristina, you use the term "existential" a few times, but I'm not sure what you mean. I adore Camus and often quote him, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy"...do you see yourself as a descendant of some particular strand of existentialism? If so, do you find that it affords you some kind of useful map for the terrain you're navigating now at midlife with so much change around you?
Our own desires, and our own sense of unlimited choice, being a "staircase to nowhere"... I love that way of putting it! As for Deneen, I agree with him on a lot of the diagnosis but not necessarily the prognosis. In that sense, I'm not sure there really is a "solution" to the problem of liberalism. It's, I guess, too late — as much as we might wish it, we can't undo the fact that we're products of a liberal society. Here's an essay I wrote on anti-liberalism by way of Houellebecq where I discuss some of Deneen's ideas: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/liberalism-trump/553754/
Thanks Shadi - excited to read your piece on anti-liberalism!
Since I don’t know Shadi personally I won’t speculate, but generally I believe quite strongly choosing to commit (and get married if you want) is very grounding and re-assuring for many of us.
Not that you can just flip a switch, especially if you have not found someone you are compatible with, but to some extent being ready for marriage and wanting to commit is a choice rather than than something that happens to you.
It’s perhaps at odds with self-realisation and living your truth, but at some point there are trade-offs to be made and we can’t have the best of all worlds.
I really enjoyed this discussion and (as mentioned in another comment) would love to hear it continue in a podcast episode! Maybe both authors touched on this already, but it seems to me like a lot of the structure of a midlife crises involves wondering what one’s life would be like if they’d taken a radically different path: if married, what if I had remained single? If single, what if I had gotten married? I feel like some of this (not all) is independent of what social norms surround an individual and are just a natural function of feeling like one is halfway through life.
Yes, there's always going to be a "grass is greener effect," but I have to say that I hear those kinds of sentiments less from people who are married with kids. Once they've made the decision, their incentive structure leads them to continue investing in what they have since they can't (or at least they can't without great difficulty) undo it. In that sense, making strong commitments has liberating effect, insofar as it liberates us from what could have been. Or to put it differently, people who are married with kids (unlike those of us who aren't married) have experienced both kinds of lives and then they make a more informed comparison between those lives. They don't have to wonder about something they never had, because at one point they did have it.
This is just an "epi-" comment. It's interesting how Kristina starts the debate using Shadi's favorite word, "existential," but in the original 40's and 50s philosophy sense that Shadi never (at least in my memory) uses. And so Shadi proceeds -- and this is just classic -- to reinvent this original sense of "existential" from scratch. And he does not too bad a job of it!
I appreciate you both diving into this conversation. I've come of age in spaces and institutions that reinforced a very different ethic than many Westerners experience. I grew up in a pretty conservative Evangelical church and went to a Christian college in a small, rural town that I have come back to work now. Many juniors and seniors that I work with feel pressure to be married by the time they leave the institution because of many of the sexual ethics of evangelicalism and what I would call the idolatry of the nuclear family over and against many other things.
As a product of the Christian college marriage industrial complex, I have to say it has paid off. I am happily married to my spouse and I really don't live with any regret in that decision; however, we find ourselves in a unique space in this culture as we've made the decision not to have kids for a significant amount of time (if ever). This is an area where many of our peers are having their first children anywhere from 23-26 years old and having multiple children by 30 is routine.
Reading this dialogue was a helpful reminder that cultural pressures exist everywhere. Humans will never be liberated by their own desires but also never delivered from cultural pressures. I guess maybe my question is, how do we come to be content with our standing in relationship to the world?
I really enjoyed reading this. We don’t often hear about singleness from the male perspective. While I agree with Kristina that people need all kinds of love, romantic love is a very specific thing that can’t be replaced with something else, which makes it very unpredictable and is probably why for most of history, marriage wasn’t based on romantic love. For better or worse, we live in a time of companionate marriage and even most religious people have this type of marriage, at least in America. It means the stars have to align a little bit even if you don’t believe in that.
Kegan’s levels of the evolving self referenced by Kristina remind me of Nietzsche’s framework of the camel, the lion, and the child. I find that analogy very inspiring and like the idea of returning to a simpler, childlike approach to life and allowing things to unfold, trusting that if something is right, you will be able to give the child’s “sacred Yes.”
Or as our fearless leader says, "You know, you don't meet the right person, or you don't meet any person. But you're just as good, in many cases, a lot better than a person that's in a family situation."
I enjoyed reading this discussion, and found much to agree with. However, it seemed a bit „blinkered“ to me. Neither of you seemed very aware of the billions of people around the world who have
different family groupings, different religions, different notions of love and marriage. Even in the Western world there are many people living in different structures from those you describe. I was particularly puzzled by a comment about marriage - I have a number of friends in 50 year long relationships who are just as happy/unhappy as my married friends. For some people marriage is merely a legal act, to simply inheritance and to maximise some financial issues.