I meant to answer this the other day, but forgot.

Don't get me wrong - I'm living comfortably, I own a house (small and shitty but paid off), I have an interesting job, and things are about as good as they could be.

But on the one hand, being in your 50s has always been hard - the kids are close to leaving or have left (empty nest syndrome), our parents - if they're still alive - are starting to wind down their lives, our bodies no longer are capable of things we used to do, and never will be again. There's not a lot of "this gets better in the future" to look forward to. We've lost a lot of close friends over the years through the normal rigours of life, and it's almost impossible to make new ones.

So that's just being 50-something, and has been like that probably since the industrial revolution. It's hard and it sucks, but I'm not going to whine about it.

What is different is the realization that this may be the best we ever get to, as a species. We're destroying the planet faster than we can hold summits about it, politics is turning into a bipolar hate-fest across the entire globe, life expectancy is decreasing for the first time in human history, and end-stage capitalism means that our kids will never be able to afford what we have (house, education, etc.). Surveillance capitalism means that every movement they make - and before too long, every thought they think - will be monetized, exploited, and (if necessary) penalized.

In short, what has always been the bright spot in this hard point in our lives - the knowledge that the next generation will be able to do more and live in a brighter world than us - is no longer true. Right now (or maybe a decade ago even) is likely the apex of humanity, and it's not really that great.

Consider the Homer Simpson conundrum. 35 years ago, Homer was the classic low-class uneducated shlub (Fred Flintstone, Ralph Kramden, Al Bundy, etc.). Now he's living an impossible dream - being a single-income homeowner and head of a family, without extensive post-secondary education (which is only marginally helpful anyway.)

Are my kids going to see the extinction of polar bears? Will the human population be decimated by floods and wildfires (and war, for that matter)?

I just don't see anything getting better anymore, and that tends to resonate with my generation - at least the compassionate ones.

Edit: Also, we drink. A lot. The people I know who don't drink excessively are the ones who stopped drinking entirely, because they were...drinking excessively. Hence the liver failure comment.