A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement • Hacker News Board

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#311

Post by rhacker » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #290

jgilias wrote: post #285

When I was around twenty my Mom used to call me every other day or so just to have a chat. One day, after she asked me how my day was, I shot back something along the lines of: "I don't have anything to tell you, really. You're calling so often that nothing new manages to happen in between the calls." So, she stopped calling. I would go home every other week as usual and everything seemed fine. It was only much later…

Every once in a while I read something the so obviously resonates with me as how things should be with me, but not how things are, that it's depressing and humbling. That's good though, because that's how change happens. Excuse me, I need to go make some calls and set some alarms now.

Both of you have me tearing up while reading this. Probably the most humbling feelings I've had in a while.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#312

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

slownews45 wrote: post #247

lazide wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the posters background, they may have just not taken it into account. One challenge with abuse on all these fronts is that there is a huge amount of grey area in all of them, and judgement that would need to be drawn on what is and is not abuse. Sometimes/often it is REALLY clear cut (yeah, someone doing munchausen by proxy on their kids, or beating them, or whatever is clearly abuse). Other times, you'll…

If you've ever worked as a camp counselor for rich kids - the term abuse can work out as follows: "Clean up your crap" = "You can't make me, that's abuse, my dads a lawyer." Is asking someone whose had maid service / cleaners to clean up their crap in a group situation abuse? The other stuff is feeling "uncomfortable" or "unsafe" in situations where you are asked to take the most basic responsibilities (ie, turn in a…

This is an interesting example of subjective versus objective well being.

Asking someone to help clean is clearly not a misuse of power (e.g. abuse), but to an ill informed/molded individual, any request that they do something they don’t want to do (homework, chores, work, etc.) can ‘feel’ like abuse to them (subjectively), even though objectively it is not.

Most of our society is shifting to focusing on subjective well being over objective well being, so we get these confusing situations. (at least this framework helps me parse these issues).

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#313

Post by ClumsyPilot » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

Cerium wrote: post #284

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships." This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction to the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” My life experience agrees, tough…

I'm not sure it is contradiction, both the strong and weak alike can be emotionally damaged. Many see dictators, or want to be dictators as strong men, yet they are often obviously damaged people.

Surely this is a contradiction in terms? A strong boxer who is missing a leg is a weak boxer.

I don't think dictators are a good example, you only see the PR spin, it's not like you get a chance to meet Putin in person to realise he is actually clueless about whats happening in his own government.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#314

Post by objectivetruth » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #155

polka_haunts_us wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a politics shifted perspective of this, sometime late last year before prayer before meal, my mom was talking happily about how she hoped Jeff Bezos got the guillotine. Just before "Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts...", "Boy wouldn't it be funny if a mob necked Bezos". Her main news sources are Salon and Twitter threads of various left (Bernie or more) wing writers. I remember referencing the incident a couple…

> I swear the last 4 years drove the vast majority of everyone insane, in a very literal sense. TDS is very, very real and when paired with this whole covid thing it only got worse. Peoples deep issues with the last 4 years joined forces with media fear mongering to create a perfect storm resulting in what will be someday be looked back upon as a massive "social engineering" failure.

_Some 23% of Republicans... say they agree with the baseless QAnon allegation that “the government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.”_

Source: https://www.prri.org/research/qanon-conspiracy-american-poli...

By chance, do you have a comparably researched statement about how "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is "very, very real" that didn't come from a Twitter thread or YouTube video?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#315

Post by teddyh » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #293

teddyh wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Toxic" is just a catchier-sounding synonym for "harmful." It’s more subtle than that. “Toxic” is used as a synonym for “ irredeemably harmful”, and that very distinction makes all the difference. If a person is labeled a “jerk”, they are potentially redeemable and able to be reformed, but if someone is labeled as “toxic”, the label itself declares that there is no helping them. The label itself prescribes ostracis…

I mean, same with "harmful" right? But I've rarely heard a person described that way. Usually it's a behavior.

Since “harmful” isn’t generally used to describe people, it’s not generally an issue. “Toxic”, on the other hand, I see applied to people all the time.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#316

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

bostik wrote: post #279

jdavis703 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about people raised by single parents? What do they owe to the absentee parent?

An apology?

You might be confusing the question. A child does not have to apologize to a parent that left before they were born.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#317

Post by Floegipoky » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

queuebert wrote: post #56

In my particular case, the rift is due to Rupert Murdoch's media outlets destroying my parents' logical reasoning ability coupled with a particular kind of boomer narcissism. For example, when I was young, my mom stayed home and raised me, fed me health foods, and gave me a head start on education. She was very loving and did a great job, really. These days, she screams at me and says she hopes Trump cancels my resea…

Big +1 to this. My parents weren't abusive at all, they love me and have always done their best. But my relationship with my dad is extremely strained- it was a strange and painful realization that I wouldn't associate with him, at all, if we weren't related. And it's entirely because of his radical right-wing beliefs, which have only escalated in the era of Trumpism.

I've read accounts of older children during the rise of European fascism, seeing their parents consumed by bitter hatred until it destroyed everything in their lives except their devotion to the totalitarian state. I was prepared to deal with that. I have no blueprint to deal with a walking embodiment of the Southern Strategy- just complete and utter denial of the core tenets of what they support.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#318

Post by msbarnett » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

ceilingcorner wrote: post #266

michaelmrose wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc.

Wrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.

Precisely none of “climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare” constitute a natural disaster, nor has this quasi-neo-confucian conception of societal cohesion via filial piety historically triumphed over anything worse than any of these modern extinction scenarios.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#319

Post by mensetmanusman » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #30

I think if anything, the "shift" is more like an unveiling. There are and have always been extremely problematic issues in many families, it's just that in the past you would be denigrated for severing ties with your family for those reasons due to a sense of duty. So we now finally see the elephant in the room. We cannot go back to unseeing it, but we have to deal with it gracefully. To me this is just the continuin…

It also might be a reversion to the mean.

E.g. One reason ancient Christianity was such a big deal according to historians (and resulted in billions of followers, etc.) was their profoundly different family structure when compared to what was happening in the roman culture and throughout the world.

They brought Jewish traditional family structure to the ‘gentiles’ (read: everyone else who wasn’t omitted by blood line).

It’s possible that a more secular materialistic society will have completely different relationship structures because there is no objective truth saying ‘hey, respect your elders’

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#320

Post by not_jd_salinger » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

ceilingcorner wrote: post #266

michaelmrose wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc.

Wrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.

Can you please list some of this "far worse situations" than nuclear war and climate change as we are currently facing?

"Societal cohesion" doesn't do too much to help us survive crop failures and wet bulb temperatures over 35C.

Aside from that, I think you might misunderstand your causal arrows a bit. It is fair more likely that massive industrialization and late state capitalism led to a society that valued the individual over the social unit, rather than that a sudden desire to be individuals sprung up in people's hearts and made a mess of the world.