Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods • Hacker News Board

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#41

Post by fellowniusmonk » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #6

A topic so close to my heart I can barely engage with it. I credit my resilience to a sense of absolute worthlessness. If you have seen the film Gattaca and the bit at the end how the non-modified person can beat the modified person... it comes down to not being afraid of the consequences, of literally being willing to die trying because what do you have to lose? That you would accept that, to die trying, stems from…

I come from a very similar perspective. Worthless but also like... what does "worth" even mean. We are all dust.

I think people spend way too much time wondering about their self worth, or if they will fail or are good at what they do, they confuse task strength with self worth, but if you have no self worth you can avoid a lot of time wasting mental loops, instead it's a focus on task assignment/alignment where you happen to be the person involved.

For me it's basically, the fact that external indicators will tell you you failed or suck and don't worry about it so much, just keep failing but learn each time.

I try only to change myself through knowing more, being more proficient, learning skills that are hard for me to learn, understanding things more holistically.

I haven't really struggled with suicidal thoughts though, I think that there is a certain level of self worth or ego required to be suicidal... to me, all of the existential questions, questions of meaning I don't have an answer for... I just don't know, I'm keeping my eyes pealed for Truth but to say it doesn't exist to me denotes a level of certainty I can't muster either, despair seems like it comes from a place of certainty, so I'll just keep my eyes open until my body gives out or Truth becomes apparent, after all I've go nowhere else to be.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#42

Post by pvaldes » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #40

pvaldes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people can manage frustration correctly. But some outliers, instead... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th... I wonder how this would look in a chart. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/charts-and-maps http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1138/ Also, there's a lot of terrible ways to manage stress without going postal (or some variant thereof) and there's plenty of things other than stress that can lead people to going postal.

Xkcb is always a good distraction, but not.

What is interesting is not that there aren't mass murderings in the desert or the sea or that more people are shooted where the bulk of the people lives. This is obvious. The interesting part is that there are a lot of mass murderings in USA and a lot of children and young people killed also. (and those are only the first six months of the year).

Was the same trend in 1970 or 1860 after adjusting the diference of population? If not... well, maybe something has changed.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#43

Post by gascan » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

rdsubhas wrote: post #26

mmsimanga wrote: post #7

My most upvoted comment on HN was when I made reference to fact that I had grown up in African village. I was totally unaware that this was a something worth sharing but it seemed to pique people's interest. As I didn't know any better at the time, I never felt that I lacked anything. I had two parents, grand parents and many cousins around. We spent the whole time playing, "exploring" and "hunting". Not once did it…

> I read somewhere though, I think one of those decade long Harvard studies that having chores when young was the biggest factor in how successful people became. That seems to make sense. > I presume poor kids have to play a bigger role, hence have more chores in ensuring that household is fed and clothed. But this seems to imply that poor kids are more successful because they do a lot of chores by virtue of being po…

I would wonder if it was something more like:

having chores when young was the biggest factor (after we controlled for wealth, class, race, etc)

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#44

Post by gonvaled » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

phaedrus wrote: post #34

buro9 wrote: post #6

A topic so close to my heart I can barely engage with it. I credit my resilience to a sense of absolute worthlessness. If you have seen the film Gattaca and the bit at the end how the non-modified person can beat the modified person... it comes down to not being afraid of the consequences, of literally being willing to die trying because what do you have to lose? That you would accept that, to die trying, stems from…

This line from Gattaca always hits me so hard (when the genetically engineered brother asks the protagonist how he always won when they competed to swim as far out from shore as possible): "I never saved anything for the swim back."

He only beats the improved one once, as far as I can recall - the last time, the one that matters, when they go all out.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#45

Post by Karawebnetwork » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

sritrisna wrote: post #3

This link works: http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/the...

Here is a bookmarlet[1] that will allow you to bypass paywalls. What it does is redirect you to FB outgoing page. Since news networks allow Facebook users to see their entire content, you get access to the article.

javascript:window.location.href=decodeURIComponent('https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fl.php%3Fu%3D')+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

[1] http://bookmarklets.org/what-is-a-bookmarklet/

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#46

Post by bvc35 » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

mmsimanga wrote: post #7

My most upvoted comment on HN was when I made reference to fact that I had grown up in African village. I was totally unaware that this was a something worth sharing but it seemed to pique people's interest. As I didn't know any better at the time, I never felt that I lacked anything. I had two parents, grand parents and many cousins around. We spent the whole time playing, "exploring" and "hunting". Not once did it…

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#47

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #42

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1138/ Also, there's a lot of terrible ways to manage stress without going postal (or some variant thereof) and there's plenty of things other than stress that can lead people to going postal.

Xkcb is always a good distraction, but not. What is interesting is not that there aren't mass murderings in the desert or the sea or that more people are shooted where the bulk of the people lives. This is obvious. The interesting part is that there are a lot of mass murderings in USA and a lot of children and young people killed also. (and those are only the first six months of the year). Was the same trend in 1970…

Are we talking about murder in general or just the tiny fraction of it made up of people snapping and committing semi-random violence?

The things that cause of typical murders and the things that cause mass shootings are very, very, very different as are the options for solving those problems. Trying to consider them as related is not productive unless the goal is to create confusion in order to push an agenda that is not supported by facts and statistical evidence we have.

Most murder is basically a symptom of illegal drug trafficking (either directly or indirectly) and the problem is made worse and harder to solve by a bunch of systemic issues (racism, incompetent government, etc.).

Mass murder (the real kind where people commit senseless violence, not the kind where it's just multiple normal murders at one time that people use to inflate the numbers) is basically a publicity problem[0]. Once a few people start doing it and everyone becomes aware of it the people who were on the fence figure why not. Same goes for suicides, riots and a lot of other things.

[0] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-do-mass-shootings-...

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#48

Post by BigChiefSmokem » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #25

mmsimanga wrote: post #7

My most upvoted comment on HN was when I made reference to fact that I had grown up in African village. I was totally unaware that this was a something worth sharing but it seemed to pique people's interest. As I didn't know any better at the time, I never felt that I lacked anything. I had two parents, grand parents and many cousins around. We spent the whole time playing, "exploring" and "hunting". Not once did it…

I didn't really have a childhood that could be described as "difficult", but having grown up on a farm and having ended up workin' in the big city for a tech company, I suspect we have at least one common experience. Do you ever sit and think sometimes how weird it is, to know all these things and have all these skills from your earlier life that have, like, no relevance or use in your current life? It's weird to me…

I just learned that hay and straw are different things. Thanks!

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#49

Post by mendelsd » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

mmsimanga wrote: post #7

My most upvoted comment on HN was when I made reference to fact that I had grown up in African village. I was totally unaware that this was a something worth sharing but it seemed to pique people's interest. As I didn't know any better at the time, I never felt that I lacked anything. I had two parents, grand parents and many cousins around. We spent the whole time playing, "exploring" and "hunting". Not once did it…

> To this day my little brother cannot do anything on his own without help

This may be due to factors other than having been helped with his homework. Beware the narrative fallacy.

Re: Secrets of Resilience: Lessons from adults who overcame difficult childhoods

#50

Post by watwut » Fri, Jun 22, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #42

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1138/ Also, there's a lot of terrible ways to manage stress without going postal (or some variant thereof) and there's plenty of things other than stress that can lead people to going postal.

Xkcb is always a good distraction, but not. What is interesting is not that there aren't mass murderings in the desert or the sea or that more people are shooted where the bulk of the people lives. This is obvious. The interesting part is that there are a lot of mass murderings in USA and a lot of children and young people killed also. (and those are only the first six months of the year). Was the same trend in 1970…

1860 was highly violent. It was a year before civil war and they were already killing each other - see bleeding Kansass for most notorious civilian violence. They were also killing/injuring each others in duels (in south).

The society was overall more violent with a lot of violent rhetorics everywhere around.