Crises of Life

Humans of the modern age are privileged to be able to witness a strange condition afflicting men of around 40, where they will, for apparently no good reason at all, go completely crazy. They question the value of everything in their lives (including sometimes, life itself), grow inappropriate facial hair, start dressing at least 15 years too young for themselves, go all spiritual, buy a sports car and destroy all their most meaningful relationships. Yes, at around 40 men start glimpsing their impending mortality, they realise that, statistically speaking, they're probably closer to the end than the beginning. They remember the life dreams they hatched 20 years earlier, the grand plans, and notice not only that none of these dreams have been realised, but that the life-path they are traveling pretty much guarantees that none of these dreams are ever likely to become realised. In short, they get terrified and have something commonly referred to as a mid life crisis.

But why is it that this strange phenomenon should suddenly appear? Surely nature would have evolved our psyches in such a way that by the time we find ourselves old enough to start having to confront these serious issues, we would have enough wisdom inside us to be able to face them in a mature way. When the question is posed in this way, the answer is obvious: we are not evolved to live past 40.

Up to and including medieval times the average human lifespan had never exceeded 33 years. Even as relatively recently as the end of the 19th Century, the average western life expectancy was still only 37. It's only during the last hundred or so years that life expectancy has skyrocketed to today's figure of 67 years. Prior to this, if you were 40 you were either a village elder, or you'd been pushing up daisies for 3 years. We haven't evolved skills to deal with facing the 30 or 40 years most of us can expect after "mid-life", because we've only relatively recently been granted that extended envelope. As human beings, we've invested a lot of time and energy on thinking about how to be young; there are a million attractive options to chose from in that particular life catalogue, but how much productive thought has gone into how to be old? No wonder when men are faced with aging, a good percentage of them decide to go backwards and become 22 again.

But according to a number of researchers (biogerentologists) and commentators, the whole context of the mid-life crisis may be up for review in a relatively short time. Due to discoveries and advances in medicine and microbiology anticipated over the next 20 - 30 years, there is a body of opinion that believes the average life span may be extended fairly radically, within the lifetime of people living today. In a situation where you could reasonably expect to live to say 120 or 130, it'd be morbid to start considering your mortality at a mere 40. Hopefully, under that scenario, by the age of 60 or 70, by which time those kinds of thoughts would be appropriate, we would be mature enough to face them without going crazy and completely falling apart.

Of course, the whole question of radical life extension is completely redundant for that percentage of our species that have the misfortune of living in Sub-Saharan Africa. They are the only portion of humanity that is actually going backwards in terms of life-expectancy. According to the World Health Organisation, the 10 countries with the worlds lowest life expectancy are all in Sub-Saharan Africa, with Sierra Leone bottoming out at only 25.9 years average. This backwards trend in life-expectancy has been occurring over the last 17 years or so, because of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, which is by far the leading cause of death in that part of the world. At 25.9 years, the Sierra-Leonian average life expectancy is approximately equivalent to that of the Neolithic Age about ten and a half thousand years ago.

In Sierra Leone, the extremely low percentage of men that reach 40 generally don't go through any kind of existential crisis. For them the crisis of existing is quite a bit more real.