Quote Originally Posted by Amazon View Post
I’m also intrigued with the concept of maturity being a consequence of aging or just experience; can someone with a young mind and set of hormones really achieve the experience and wisdom of an old sage? Or does the experience of getting old itself makes one wiser? What you guys think?
Well, 'the wise old sage' is a character archetype, not an actual person so probably isn't great for comparisons. Which is a bit of an issue with these kind of generalities and stereotypes, which this speculation is largely going to devolve into unless everyone's got a list of long-term studies handy. The fact that what constitutes 'wisdom' is a bit fuzzy itself probably doesn't help much either


If I had to speculate though I would say that I would expect that, of the two, experience is probably doing the heavy-lifting. For instance, the physiological effects of aging are generally fairly gradual (the possibly exception here being the menopause, although even then that can still take years), while it's not all that uncommon for people to go through fairly major shifts in their outlook and perspective over quite short periods of time, weeks of months. The opposite end of the spectrum, people who remain largely the same for decades, would also seem to be a go against the aging argument.


This is of course not getting into the question of where exactly you can draw the line between the two. The psychological impacts of experiencing your body deteriorate probably aren't negligible. Then there's the matter of living up to one's own stereotype of 'being old', the pressure to 'act your age', as it were, shaping behaviour.


There's also the point to consider that the physical effects of aging can often be detrimental to cognitive faculties. Even if there are 'wise elders' who are only that way because they physically aged, you'd need to weigh that against all the people who are worse off in terms of their mental abilities as a result of old age.