According to Mr. Google, the life expectancy of an average American has not increased since about 2010 and may have actually gone down slightly in the past one or two years.
True, the elders you cite mostly did well. But Adenauer was pretty far gone, and he had plenty of ex-Nazis working for him. And Churchill did finish his book, but he stepped down as prime minister at eighty, prodded by the Tories, and it was time for him to do so— his decline in office was evident. As is Biden’s.
You write of Wallace Steinberg. I remember reading about another great guru of the death-defiers. I have no recollection of his name, but he was the scientific pioneer and intellectual leader of the whole movement. And the story was about his recanting or, as he put it, his coming to his senses. He’d quite forgotten himself as a biologist, he now said. In his enthusiasm, he lost sight of Darwin. A few years of technology could not overmaster eons of evolution. We were programmed invincibly by those eons. Evolution had no use for us after 70 or so, and no fantasies of winning Wimbledon at 132 would change that.
You say that psychologists say creativity peaks in the thirties and early forties. I ask which psychologists and in which domains? In mathematics, it’s legendary that the geniuses do their best work in their teens and twenties and are past their prime by their thirties and early forties. And I once asked a math colleague at Penn about that, and he said not true. Some great mathematicians did their great work early. Others scored towering breakthroughs in their fifties and even sixties. Some of his senior colleagues were doing their best work ever as we spoke. Different horses for different courses. Tortoises and hares.
I am hopelessly torn about Biden and whether he should run or withdraw, but I think you’re too hard on him in one regard. You fault him for saying he wants to complete the job he started and you fault him rightly, both because the Pirke Avot saying abjures completion and because he couldn’t complete it in another four years even if reelected. But you neglect the second half of the injunction: neither are you free to desist from it. The part of me that wants him to stay and thinks he can still win thinks that the job he referred to – even if he misspoke about completing it – is his return to New Deal economics. Never mind that he was a willing and enthusiastic neoliberal under Clinton and Obama. He’s been FDR and LBJ as president, and his economic policies have been much more successful than Clinton’s and Obama’s at spurring growth without spurring inequality. I can well see where he wouldn’t want the party to drift back to Obama and the neolibs and their deep faith in the free market.
From reader Alan Richman:
Just wonderful, although I was hoping it would end with your prediction of when Biden (and maybe Trump) will die.
From reader Len Lear:
According to Mr. Google, the life expectancy of an average American has not increased since about 2010 and may have actually gone down slightly in the past one or two years.
From reader Robert Zaller:
True, the elders you cite mostly did well. But Adenauer was pretty far gone, and he had plenty of ex-Nazis working for him. And Churchill did finish his book, but he stepped down as prime minister at eighty, prodded by the Tories, and it was time for him to do so— his decline in office was evident. As is Biden’s.
From reader Michael Zuckerman:
You write of Wallace Steinberg. I remember reading about another great guru of the death-defiers. I have no recollection of his name, but he was the scientific pioneer and intellectual leader of the whole movement. And the story was about his recanting or, as he put it, his coming to his senses. He’d quite forgotten himself as a biologist, he now said. In his enthusiasm, he lost sight of Darwin. A few years of technology could not overmaster eons of evolution. We were programmed invincibly by those eons. Evolution had no use for us after 70 or so, and no fantasies of winning Wimbledon at 132 would change that.
You say that psychologists say creativity peaks in the thirties and early forties. I ask which psychologists and in which domains? In mathematics, it’s legendary that the geniuses do their best work in their teens and twenties and are past their prime by their thirties and early forties. And I once asked a math colleague at Penn about that, and he said not true. Some great mathematicians did their great work early. Others scored towering breakthroughs in their fifties and even sixties. Some of his senior colleagues were doing their best work ever as we spoke. Different horses for different courses. Tortoises and hares.
I am hopelessly torn about Biden and whether he should run or withdraw, but I think you’re too hard on him in one regard. You fault him for saying he wants to complete the job he started and you fault him rightly, both because the Pirke Avot saying abjures completion and because he couldn’t complete it in another four years even if reelected. But you neglect the second half of the injunction: neither are you free to desist from it. The part of me that wants him to stay and thinks he can still win thinks that the job he referred to – even if he misspoke about completing it – is his return to New Deal economics. Never mind that he was a willing and enthusiastic neoliberal under Clinton and Obama. He’s been FDR and LBJ as president, and his economic policies have been much more successful than Clinton’s and Obama’s at spurring growth without spurring inequality. I can well see where he wouldn’t want the party to drift back to Obama and the neolibs and their deep faith in the free market.