That is why we are drawn to strange attractors which are to be found everywhere. There is good reason to believe that this attraction process operates in the lives of mid-centurion men and women who are on the edge of Generativity Three and Four. Events have meaning in their life not so much because of some greater power in life, though this could be the case. Rather, events have meaning and power because certain small events tend at a particular place and time to link with and trigger other events. They trigger memories, interests, dreams and eventually actions.
These strange attractor events form a pattern that is compelling and can serve as a guide for our continuing generativity and the re-invention of our life. A rabbi we know talks about the “assemblage” of small, meaningful events and decisions in our lives. Taken together these events and decisions comprise a person’s “spiritual life” (Bergquist, 2023e) He suggests that spirituality is not some big, powerful, isolated event. Rather it is constituted from a whole cluster of small events. What happens when we ignore these strange attractors? What happens when we choose massive denial and make the wrong decision? We face stagnation—a loss of spirit and an absence of soul. We withdraw and become “mean spirited,” turning our spirit into a negative force.
Becoming Stagnant: The stagnant mid-centurion resents others of his or her age when they remain engaged in the world. The mid-centurion resorts to sarcasm and resistance, having abandoned hope and ambition. He or she often resents the young men and women who are newly engaged in the world. Like Scrooge, the stagnant person focuses on one thing at the expense of all other aspects of life. For Scrooge that one thing was money. The stagnant obsession for Scrooge-like mid-centurions in real life may concern power, position, traditional family values, or an old political cause. They strive toward goals such as the acquisition of wealth or power that no longer really have meaning for them.
How do we know that we have chosen or fallen into stagnation? When we are stagnant, we act out of habit. We reach a point in our life when activities take on their own meaning and impetus that were previously means to other ends (such as the approval of our father, the attraction of women or men, the achievement of security). The original purpose is lost, and we invest no new purpose in the activity. Psychologists describe this condition as “secondary autonomy.” (Hartman, 1958) It is also the foundation for psychic stagnation. We chose or fall into stagnation when we desperately try to blunt our pain. We act out of an obsessive need to somehow heal the wound and eliminate the anxiety associated with midlife depression. We live in a society that no longer can find any meaning in the experience of pain. This is largely because there is now the possibility of avoiding or eliminating pain through medical advancement and, in particular, “pain-killers”. Alternatively, we discover and embrace our own pain-killing cocktail—be it alcohol, dope, or high-risk sports.
We try to escape from that which is painful rather than finding meaning in this pain. We race away from our inner voices from other rooms and from the generative voices because we hope to avoid pain. Unfortunately, we live in a society that not only approves of this avoidance, but also offers many antidotes to pain, both legal and illegal. We live in a society that is filled with middle-aged men and women who would rather escape pain than find any meaning or purpose in the pain or, for that matter, find meaning in any other aspects of life. Just as pain and generativity are companions, so too are stagnation and the avoidance of pain.
