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The Atlantic Monthly | March 2002
Inspired Immaturity (The midlife crisis as a patriotic duty) by David Brooks
"I turned forty recently, so it's time I started planning my midlife crisis. I'm not going to have it right away, but something this humiliating requires preparation."
"The biggest threat to the midlife crisis is the new era of seriousness. Wartime necessarily encourages a culture of earnestness. Nowadays, looking around the nation, one sees relatively little in the way of epic silliness. The dot-com jockeys have been tamed. The investment bankers seem relatively chastened. College students are behaving sensibly. Young people seize career opportunities. Middle-aged people watch their cholesterol, and even the big rock groups, such as U2 and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, are ripe for Geritol sponsorship. We have entered an age of prudence."
"Over the course of the past two hundred years Americans have vacillated between two great fears—fear of chaos and fear of conformity. During some periods we worried that individualistic energies would tear apart the bonds of community. During others we feared that our national élan was being enervated as we tamed our personalities in order to climb the corporate ladder and lead sensible, respectable lives."
"Today conformity is once again a bigger threat than chaos. The forces of seriousness and maturity are everywhere closing in. If this trend continues, we will soon be living in a country unworthy of the greatness that was P. T. Barnum, our true Founding Father." ... [more]
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