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When 'Middle Age' Arrives in Your 20s

4 points by marban 2y ago

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
There's a counterpoint in that historically "middle age" arrived in one's twenties, and sometimes even before. There's a passage from a Gene Wolfe story that I like. It's illustrative: > How are captains trained, anyway? Not like other officers?” > “No,” Daw said. “We’re not just officers who’ve been promoted, although I know that’s what most people think.” > “It’s what I thought.” > “That was the old way. I suppose the British carried it to the ultimate. Around eighteen hundred. Have you ever read about it?” > The girl did not answer. > “They put their future skippers on board warships when they were boys of eight or nine—they were called midshipmen. They were just children, and if they misbehaved they were bent over a gun and whipped, but at the same time they were gentlemen and treated as such. The captain, if he was a good captain, treated them like sons and they got responsibility shoved at them just as fast as they could take it.” > “It sounds like a brutal system,” Helen Youngmeadow said. > “Not as brutal as losing ship and crew. And it produced some outstanding leaders. Lord Nelson entered the navy at twelve and was posted captain when he was twenty; John Paul Jones started at the same age and was first mate on a slaver when he was nineteen and a captain at twenty-three.” > “I’m sorry . . .” The girl’s voice was so faint in Daw’s earphones that he wondered for a moment if her suit mike was failing. “I’ve never heard of either of those men. But I’ll look them up when we get back to Gladiator.” > “Anyway,” Daw continued, “it was a good system—for as long as people were willing to send promising boys off to sea almost as soon as we’d send them off to school; but after a while you couldn’t count on that anymore. Then they took boys who were almost grown and sent them to special universities first. By the time they were experienced officers they were elderly—and the ships, even though these weren’t starships yet, had become so large that their captains hadn’t had much real contact with them until they were nearly ready to take command of a ship themselves. After a hundred years or so of that—about the time the emphasis shifted from sea to space—people discovered that this system really didn’t work very well. A man who’d spent half his life as a subordinate had been well trained in being a subordinate, but that was all.”
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/rAMmU https://archive.ph/rAMmU
deleted 2y ago
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4 points by marban 2y ago

There's a counterpoint in that historically "middle age" arrived in one's twenties, and sometimes even before. There's a passage from a Gene Wolfe story that I like. It's illustrative: > How are captains trained, anyway? Not like other officers?” > “No,” Daw said. “We’re not just officers who’ve been promoted, although I know that’s what most people think.” > “It’s what I thought.” > “That was the old way. I suppose the British carried it to the ultimate. Around eighteen hundred. Have you ever read about it?” > The girl did not answer. > “They put their future skippers on board warships when they were boys of eight or nine—they were called midshipmen. They were just children, and if they misbehaved they were bent over a gun and whipped, but at the same time they were gentlemen and treated as such. The captain, if he was a good captain, treated them like sons and they got responsibility shoved at them just as fast as they could take it.” > “It sounds like a brutal system,” Helen Youngmeadow said. > “Not as brutal as losing ship and crew. And it produced some outstanding leaders. Lord Nelson entered the navy at twelve and was posted captain when he was twenty; John Paul Jones started at the same age and was first mate on a slaver when he was nineteen and a captain at twenty-three.” > “I’m sorry . . .” The girl’s voice was so faint in Daw’s earphones that he wondered for a moment if her suit mike was failing. “I’ve never heard of either of those men. But I’ll look them up when we get back to Gladiator.” > “Anyway,” Daw continued, “it was a good system—for as long as people were willing to send promising boys off to sea almost as soon as we’d send them off to school; but after a while you couldn’t count on that anymore. Then they took boys who were almost grown and sent them to special universities first. By the time they were experienced officers they were elderly—and the ships, even though these weren’t starships yet, had become so large that their captains hadn’t had much real contact with them until they were nearly ready to take command of a ship themselves. After a hundred years or so of that—about the time the emphasis shifted from sea to space—people discovered that this system really didn’t work very well. A man who’d spent half his life as a subordinate had been well trained in being a subordinate, but that was all.”

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/rAMmU https://archive.ph/rAMmU

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]