One reason young people settle down is that the 'frivolity' of their youth can get tiresome. Getting drunk the first time is novelty. 50 times later being drunk isn't quite so amusing.

Another reason that people settle down around age 23 to 25 is that's about the time, give or take 15 minutes, when people's brains are finally developed fully. They are now working with a full deck. 18 years olds are sometimes extremely responsible, sensible, mature people; but usually not so much.

When one settles down partly depends on time and place. When I was 25, gay liberation was just getting off the ground. As a young gay man, I was more than willing to participate in the holy orgy kama sutra that was underway. I liked the sex and politics of gay lib, and the good times rolled on till about 1990 (for me). So, i was past 45 when I started to settle down -- less sex, less drinking, less etc.

Why did I settle down then? Well, opportunities for convenient and reckless fooling around were diminishing. I found I had less energy than I did earlier on. Newer and more pressing responsibilities were arising.

In someways I didn't settle down. I didn't become conservative as I got older. I have sped up my rate of acquiring new information (reading, studying more). At 72 I'm still reasonably physically active. I admit that some areas of study (like politics) are much less interesting now than they used to be. Where religion was a live topic when I was young, it is now a dead duck. I find science and history much more interesting now.

But... you are right about many people: By the time they are middle age (let's say 40 to 45) they are pretty much done. They coast the rest of the way out.

It’s simply about entertaining the mind. The mind concentrating on purely existing with no distractios can’t maintain its state for long. The mind latched onto a creative endeavor looks for a flow state or at the least some activity to distract for the moment. This goes for young and old alike. The older tend to learn how to distract with less dramatic activity. The crossword puzzle, a good book...perhaps a couple cold beers, or scotch on the rocks. A nice movie night. Go to the theater, travel to less physically demanding destinations..unless you are the cool one who does mountain climbing in your 80s...

I guess @BlueBanana, what makes a life of full living? There are limits to behavior. We all have to sleep. We all need to have a means to goods and services or a way to survive. That usually means work. Work also depends a lot on luck. Job market, location, sometimes having to settle to make do with availability and location.

Why get a stable job, a house and a family? — BlueBanana

Because it's more fun. Parties, one-night-stands, rented rooms are dull in comparison.

Children like to play with lego, but real bricks and mortar are as much more interesting as they are more difficult.

why do people stop the frivolous lives of their youths and times at universities or such? — BlueBanana

They get pregnant, and those little mouths need to be fed.

They get tired of living in a cramped roach infested little apartment next to the university, and the better places cost more, requiring a serious job.

They are following what everybody else is doing.

They are trying to meet the expectations of their elders.

Being a party animal stops being cool at some point.

All their friends are getting married and pregnant, so there's nobody left to party with.

They forgot to read this forum, and thus never learned that all of life is meaningless. :smile:

Ever the optimist. :rofl:

Parties, one-night-stands, rented rooms are dull in comparison. — unenlightened

If you're renting a room, aren't you technically settling down, even if temporarily on large scale? One could also argue that partying doesn't lead anywhere and is symbolically equivalent to staying in one place.

How about Alexander the Great, now that's a youth I envy.

Most of my contemporaries used to dread marrying and settling down, looking upon it as a prison sentence, I on the other hand wasn't too happy with singledom and meeting my soul mate and settling down to married bliss felt like getting out of prison, end of insecurity and sharing the rest of my life with a like minded girl felt very good, still does 47 years later.

The reason people settle down in their lives is that they have (at least partially) satisfied their thirst for life and are ready to die. The people in whom the desire to live is the strongest is the young, who have yet to have lived the life to its fullest and who still are pursuing their dreams; settling down is nothing but abandoning and giving up on these dreams. — BlueBanana

Great theme. I agree that there can be an increase in the readiness to die, and I think this is related to settling down. One way of thinking of this among others: youth has a in-retrospect-unrealistic fantasy of its novelty, of its difference from what came before. This is a great motivator, as long as youth is self-critical enough to try to shape the real world after this fantasy (to make a mark.) Sometimes this results in universally recognized or at least financially recognized achievement. More often, not much really comes from it. Youth (while it still has time) can start from scratch a few times, each time thinking that the fault has been located and removed.

At some, however, youth is no longer youth. Their is less time between the grave and the present than between birth and the present. The future becomes finite. And then all along the location and removal of these faults involved the mind/spirit/personality becoming more 'universal,' more aware of some 'boring' old-fashioned virtues as being the truly essential. If our youth was talented and chose talented and ambitious friends, then our aging youth is also less liable to mystify/delight said peers with whatever level of achievement attained. And then advancing in this or that realm involves a specialization that closes off real appreciation by non-initiates.

While this sounds lonely, more and more our aging youth does things for the 'right' reason, for their intrinsic value. So they are happy enough to just have the free time and the health to amuse themselves creatively, enjoying of course whatever high-level bonding is available-in-passing, mostly relying on the more primary bonding with spouse, children, pets.

And maybe our aging youth when younger invested in various save-the-world oversimplifications (political or religious or philosophical or artistic, etc.) And discovered that each runs up against both its own blind-spots and the simple different investments of others who vastly outnumber any particular individual, coming to terms with a certain impotence and invisibility in the world. And doing this not as a victim but as the same kind of person as the others.

We become more sophisticated and talented as we age (up to a certain point) by becoming better judges of our relative talent/importance. In order to fulfill grandiose dreams of the self, a dream-subverting knowledge must be assimilated, fulfilling and destroying the dream simultaneously. The readiness to die increases with the consciousness that one is not 'really' tied to the dying body, but rather has existed in a distributed state all along, becoming more and more conscious of it.

50 times later being drunk isn't quite so amusing. — Bitter Crank

Getting drunk is still fun. It's the hangovers that become less amusing over time. Particularly when you're supposed be doing things other than lying in bed wondering why you still find it amusing to wake up feeling terrible.

opportunities for convenient and reckless fooling around never diminish, look at Trump, his age, what he does... frivolity never gets tiresome, go to a resort for old people, look how the sing mindless songs, play childish games... saying "well, there are external and internal factors" is saying nothing but the question of the debate was not very good, to start with, and maybe your answer was the only meaningful thing you can say about it