How my views have changed between 20 and 40?

I was 40 earlier this year. I still feel young, and I can’t believe how quickly those years came. During those years, a lot has happened. I moved to another country, then again, and once again. I got married, started a family, bought a house and changed a lot.

But main topic of the article today is how my values have developed and changed over time. When I was growing up, I was so excited about many things that I consider damaging now. Still, I see many parallels between my younger self and my current self.

Things that didn’t change are mainly related to my love for freedom, travel, learning, science, and technologies. Also, when I was 20, I was already reading a bit about philosophy.

And there were things that have changed significantly and today, I would love to go back and tell my youger self to change would be following things:

Postmodernism

I am from a small town. From a small country. From a country, that just left communism behind, and was moving towards freedom. There weren’t many traditions, or things to be proud of. And yet, as I was super young, everything was possible.

So I was probably not valuing enough older concepts.

Also, postmodernism is a form of infohazard. In some way, it is true. It is really hard to find absolute truths, and big ideas. Everything can be critiqued, challenged.

To this day, I still see many use-cases for subjectivism. And thougs of people like Kierkegaard speak to me a lot. Being forty is ideal time for existential crisis, isn’t it?

Open borders

Just like many proponents of open borders, I was growing into cosmopolitanism. Most of the people from other countries I was meeting were university educated. People who have been to dozens of countries. Clever, well-educated, hard working, and productive.

So that probably led to a bias. The same bias, that leads to open borders today.

It isn’t true that everyone is clever, well educated, hard working, and productive. But back in the day, it looked like that.

Minimalism

Minimalism has started way earlier than I was born. And it looked better. Furniture of my grandparents looked aged and old compared to Ikea.

And honestly, I liked how bright are functionalist buildings. Compare it with small windows of old buildings.

On personal level, I was minimalist too. I traveled the world with a backpack. I didn’t need much.

Blank-slatism

So again, when I was 20, I was meeting many people with a big potential. Especially once I started with business consulting. Suddenly, I was speaking with entrepreneurs, managers, CxOs, team leads, and people with personal brands. They all had a big potential.

I still think that educational system is failing and many people could do much better. For instance, language learning is terrible and inefficient. And many kids leave school hating maths, or learning at all.

And now, let’s speak about my values today.

Modernism

One thing I believe in today, is that even when it is hard to find absolute truths, there are codes of humanity. Points of attachment between philosophy and reality.

That means, there are also natural ethics. Natural laws. And humans can find them.

A human can live in harmony, and can be happier if he strives to find the truth. And not be a hypocrite.

Open borders

There is a strong case for immigration. Some subset of it. Every country should try to attract people who are talented, productive, peaceful, and have good family values. People who contribute to the country. People who are not only immigrants, but also citizens.

I am an immigrant. I adopted the culture of the country I live in, at least partially. As a Czech, my kids speak English. We celebrate English Christmas. My manners moved towards the British ones.

I think this is a baseline expectation for any country. And when immigration within Europe was initially like this, it created a strong pro-immigration sentiment.

Not everyone is integrated like that.

There are now forms of immigration, where people contribute significantly less than they get. They are more violent, they ask the country to change for them.

Often, they succeed and the culture of the country changes. Usually, for worse. From human rights for women, to women being in danger. From free speech, to bigotry. From love to history of your country, towards hating it. Former colonial powers have been the biggest victims of this. Young people today have not responsibility for actions of their fathers and grandfathers. Yet, they are somehow expected to carry the burden of their ancestors, and even hate them.

Richness instead of minimalism

Now, I spend significantly more time looking at art, and design. Especially rich design. You can build an expensive building, and show its richness in different ways.

You can salvage older furniture and make rustic look expensive. You can build big white spaces, and fill them with light. These are minimalistic, but rich.

And both are nice. But overused. It is now all either rustic, or minimalistic.

But you can find beauty in many other things.

Art deco is showing its richness in bold colors, beautiful materials, custom details, and beautiful architecture. Mediterranean sea has many places that are rich in many things at the same time. Look at Firenze!

Right now, I would rather spend more time looking at art deco, futurism, surrealism, and other rich styles. Minimalism is overused. It is not bad, but there is much more to explore.

Biological realism

I was born into era, when people really believed, that education, your environment, parenting makes all the difference. And if you just give kids from families in bad situation better education, they will be able to achieve the same as kids from “good” families.

I believed we humans are very similar, with a different skin tone. I believed, that there isn’t such a big difference between men and women.

None of that was true. We are extremely shaped by our genes, and hormones. It is dumb to pretend, humans are not animals.

I believe, people adapted to certain biomes, environments, behaviors. And changes are very slow. We are similar, but not the same. Of course, again, there are cosmopolitan people, who speak the same language, travel to the same places, and act the same way. But that’s a very small subset of the population.

So what’s next?

Now, when I am 40, I am in fact going through a big development in my life. I have achieved a lot. And I have a lot of things I want to continue doing. But I also have a new role in my life.

I want to create more. Pursuit of productivity should be replaced by pursuit of purpose.

Also, I want to surround myself with beauty more. Cut out all bullshit. Remove things that don’t bring purpose, or beauty, or truth, with the opposite. Push towards all that in areas, I can influence.