Future Future Midlife Crisis
The Dematerialization of the Midlife Crisis in 2023
What has become popularly known as the “Midlife Crisis” often revolves around an individual’s sense of “meaning” upon recognizing their own mortality within the context of reaching an anticipated “halfway point” in their life. We anticipate a tidal shift in perspective and manifestation of the crisis 10 years from now as the dominant generation experiencing midlife shifts from the Baby Boomers (born between 1944 and 1960) to Generation X (born between 1962 and 1980).
Throughout the past two decades a Baby Boomer’s standard reaction to midlife frequently involved an intensified quest for objective materialist identifications such as fancy sports cars, plastic surgery, younger and various sexual partners, etc. Conversely, the worldview of aging Gen Xers has been informed by their being raised as the “latchkey kid” offspring of their divorced and dual-income working Boomer parents, as both phenomenon gained widespread frequency during the 70s and 80s. This has resulted in a less material and more experience focused culture informing the lives of aging Gen-Xers and their shifting worldview has been accelerated by a variety of developments, largely technology-fueled, in both industry and culture.
Although our latest generation, known as the Millenials, represents the first generation born directly into the maw of technology, the Gen-Xers have been forced to adapt to a rapidly changing and accelerating technological landscape and as a result are generally nimble, more adaptable, self-sufficient, and prone to reinvention than previous generations. As a result, this coming generation’s experience of midlife crisis may in fact prove to be less tumultuous although possibly more widespread and in fact Gen-Xers may find that they’re experiencing several smaller crises throughout their middle years.
The largest single factor informing the midlife crisis in 2023 appears to be the dematerialization of experience and the emergence of a shared ownership society. The compression of time and space brought about by advances in communications technology and the ubiquity of wideband internet access will facilitate the emergence of a barter economy in which ownership is largely eschewed in favor of rental and sharing. Under these auspices, wherein a high end sports car or luxury accommodations are readily available albeit only temporarily, these trappings of luxury will not carry the same perceived value as they have for past generations and as such will factor far less into the pursuit of meaning generally associated with the Midlife Crisis.
As a result the Gen-Xer entering midlife in 2023 will be far more focused upon experience than materiality and this phenomenon will be greatly supported by other advances in technology providing for Virtual Experiences that may substitute for many of the traditional pursuits of the Gen-Xer’s crisis-experiencing Boomer parents. For example virtual worlds such as today’s Second-Life role playing game will evolve to such a high degree of realism and engagement that experiences within these environments will serve as a direct substitute for the real thing. Informed by their experience as the products of divorce we will find more and more Gen-Xers sticking together throughout the changing landscape of midlife and seeking meaning together with their life companions through shared virtual experiences online or through virtual “swapping” services that enable users to experience sex with other partners, lifestyles otherwise unavailable to them, and travel to places unattainable due to time, budget, or physical constraints. Gen-Xers as a result will largely experience midlife together and with the societal stigmas generally attached to these activities removed by bringing them out into the open and dematerializing them into the virtual realm midlife will become a bonding rather than a divisive phenomenon for many couples.
This emerges as a direct counterpoint to the current wave of infidelity and dissatisfaction that has grown up around the burgeoning internet dating and meet-up sites proliferating throughout the first two decades of the century. While it has became easy to search for and engage in extracurricular sexual activity, the emerging surveillance society that accompanies the transference of our social life onto the internet has also made discovery much more likely and resulted in many high-profile embarrassments to figures both public and private. Indeed the entire notion of public vs private figures blurs into a continuum wherein virtually anybody at any time could find their perceived-to-be private lives revealed and distributed virally on the internet with lightning speed. Eventually this proliferation of internet fueled infidelity and exploration implodes upon itself and although new technologies will emerge in the coming years that allow for increased anonymity in the digital world the tide is already changing and attitudes informed by these experiences will evolve towards those described above.
