[kinnth]

I really love reading the wisdom of older people. Society really dismisses everyone over 80, but I find myself having deep interesting connections with a few people much older than myself (38).

Something society always neglects is that everyone goes through the same thoughts time and time again. We all make mistakes and we learn our own way, but when someone's 90, they really have done a lot of it all before. Even if we think everything is different, human's really are very similar. We all have emotions, we all have desires and we are all deep down social creatures. So I would only encourage more people to step out and try to make an honest, deep, friendship with someone a lot older than you. It can really help give you guidance and perspective.

[efsavage]

> they really have done a lot of it all before

Not even just done it before, but done it multiple times. This is where experience is forged into wisdom.

[imiric]

> This is where experience is forged into wisdom.

That is not guaranteed, though. There are many experienced yet unwise people, and sometimes viceversa.

I agree with the sentiment of listening to older people, but age alone is not a good criteria to determine whether they're worth paying attention to. Old people can be as ignorant and unwise as young people, sometimes even more so.

[ljf]

And in addition they got to watch their friends/family/coworkers succeed and fail many times over.

While it can be very tempting to say 'we tried that before and it didn't work' - the key is people who can understand why it didn't work, or who can encourage you to make your own mistakes and be there to guide you back when needed.

[raleighm]

Exactly. Wisdom sometimes comes from having the right thing to do already articulated in your head (which itself took some reps to articulate), seeing yourself not follow it, and seeing the consequences.

[kakacik]

You are of course absolutely right, but its more complex. When I look around me at my family, people there and already gone, one of the issue is communication and whole mental model of reality.

Younger generations live emotionally richer lives. Or maybe thats not the best description, but something along that. I can't talk about deeper emotions even with my parents, the generational gap is absolutely huge. They never talk about theirs, and trying to start the talk ends the talk, they simply are not wired for such introspection. Both proper university educated which is a small miracle given how they and their parents were viewed as potential enemies of communist state.

They lived their whole lives under soviet oppression, never left Europe, don't understand modern world and technologies, they lived their whole lives in single monolithic culture. Critical thinking outward and especially inward is not in their runbook. I live past 20 years away from my home country, travelled the world that changed me (for the better) permanently. i tried psychedelic drugs a bit in the past, also a profound and probably permanent change they never had a chance to go through. I was/still am doing a number of potentially dangerous mountain sports that expose you to fear of death regularly, and one has to overcome that fear and move on, over and over - definitely a personality-changing experience. And so on.

Its hard to find people to talk about ie backpacking travelling to exotic undeveloped remote places even within my peers, who did that. I gathered more life experience living in 3 countries, dating ladies from various cultures, raising my kids in a foreign culture than they ever could. I understand psychology and people way better than them.

The roles reversed some time ago - I am helping them, however I can. As long as they are actually willing to listen, not every topic is like that. I can't talk politics to them, russians did a very good job in subverting public opinions of large portions of population into absolutely illogical self-harming position, and just stating truth leads nowhere.

[hattmall]

Interesting perspective but with all of that experience are you not able to communicate with them in their way? This seems a bit like missing the forest for the trees, people are no less thoughtful or complex based on where they've lived or what they've done. The experiences you are learning from came at a cost of the experiences like those of your parents, those experiences shape their communication. There is absolutely a multitude of wisdom only age and their experiences can create but you have to learn to bridge the gap.

[kakacik]

Not all experiences are created equal. They have some type of experience in droves, but mine is much... wider and more varied for the lack of better words. Their days looked one like another, very little variety. Same people, same situations whole lives. It really limits one's experience, and living 5000 years in such environment doesn't add up that much.

One example is that psychology - they are just not wired to look at complexities of other people's emotions, origins, mental issues and so on. People are good or bad, weird is a third state for them and thats it. They are trivial to manipulate via emotions, just like their whole generation is.

I mean I talk to them regularly, but its rather shallow talk. Anytime I go deeper ie about my deeper experiences in some remote place and culture, their face goes blank, they don't have much to add. They look at the photos and love those but that's a very tiny part of whole story. I learned over decades what topics work and which are for other people.

Its all fine, apologies if I sounded worse than things are. Parents are just parents, for adults they are not meant to be the closest people in the world, that's rather an indication of some social failure to find and integrate with peers down the line.