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

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#491

Post by wonderwonder » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #477

wonderwonder wrote: post #36

Wonder how much of this is driven by social media and the internet today. The word 'Toxic' is just thrown around now and everything is 'Toxic'. Its a word that has ceased to have any real meaning but virtually every behavior that used to just be normal every day activity is Toxic. Everyone has flaws and no one has all the answers. Parents are just people doing the best they can and for the most part making what they…

There's a meme going around that says something to the effect that people are just meat with electricity inside. It's obviously a simplistic joke but there's something about it that really resonated with me. I'm trying to keep that in mind now, have compassion for others more, and to basically lower my expectations for the human animal. Sure, we can and do overcome our limitations sometimes, but that's something to b…

Not sure if you have kids or not, but once I had them it really made me understand where my parents were coming from and forgive their flaws. I literally know nothing about raising kids and am just making it up as I go along. I feel like I get it right a lot but also often get it wrong. There is no manual for being a parent or a person, we are all just flawed beings doing the best we can in a situation we have very little control over.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#492

Post by damnyou » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #181

hackeraccount wrote: post #139

We're all living that Asian family joke. Parents spend their whole lives waiting for their kids to thank you. Kids spend their whole lives waiting for their parent to say "I'm sorry." That said I've never felt that way about my Mom and Dad. I've faults and problems a plenty but I wouldn't ascribe any of that on them; indeed the best things about me seem to clearly come from them and the worst are just as clearly thin…

Yes, but for many of us in the West, without the tradition common to East and South Asians of reciprocal obligation. This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this obliges you to love and care for them for the rest of their lives. I'm as deracinated Westerner as it comes, and yet I'm fairly traditional in this regard. I can think of three acceptabl…

I grew up in the sort of family you describe, and it is structurally an extremely abusive environment. To hell with the idea of filial piety.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#493

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

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…

> So, I felt [...] grateful to my parents for being there in the first place

I'm going to say something controversial. Not everyone is grateful for their life. I've talked to multiple people who preferred to never be born. And event the best parents I know couldn't offer much more honest reason for having children than "we wanted to" which is basically ultimate selfishness.

> [...] and being decent at being parents as well.

That's way more universally good reason for treating your parents well.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#494

Post by jdbernard » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

taddevries wrote: post #332

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…

Maybe this is more accurate. "Hard times create weak men, weak men create hard times" I've never believed that adversity creates strength, at least that has not been my experience in life.

There is truth in the original saying. Adversity creates the conditions and provides the motivation that spur people to develop strength they would not have needed otherwise. However, adversity is a very blunt instrument, and it is also a matter of degree. People don't always respond positively to adversity. And if the hardship is too great, it doesn't lead to opportunities for growth, just trauma.

That's one of the reasons we need safety nets, to dull the hardship to the point where we can grow through it and not be crushed under it.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#495

Post by RichardCA » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

LordHumungous wrote: post #342

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…

Yeah it does seem like many of the "no contact" people are themselves childless. I doubt this is a coincidence.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-ver...

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#496

Post by StopTheWorld » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

bckr wrote: post #456

mensetmanusman wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like this perspective. There are so many folds to it, though. First fold: Christendom and its 2,000-year-old siblings/cousins Islam (also Confucianism? Buddhism?) have been around long enough to form a sort of base social reality. Second fold: These 2,000-year-old cultural regimes are crumbling and we are moving into new cultural regimes. Third fold: The crumbling is actually, as you said, a reversion to the mean.…

In Engels's Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, he traces shifts in culture and family to shifts in the forces of production, and makes a pretty convincing argument. Some have followed on this work. The modern version would be:

50,000 years ago - behavioral modernity. The whole world a primitive communist society of hunter-gatherer bands. Remaining culture is cave paintings and Venus figurines.

10,000 years ago - agricultural revolution. The rise of slave states, polytheistic religions, emperors and high priests with many wives and concubines.

2,000 years ago - the end of the Roman slave latifundias and rise of feudalism. Kings and peasants. The beginning of the Roman Catholic church.

Turn of the 16th century - the beginnings of modern capitalism, bourgeois republics, Protestantism, the rise of the city and universities.

Changes in the forces of production affect the relations of production and culture (hegemony), in this idea.

The idea in Engels crowd was the beginning of the next system was the 1871 Paris commune.

If one were looking for modern changes in production, I would guess programming and media would be two candidates for being at the vanguard of production change. Stephen King and John Carmack can make a lot of money just going into a room, whipping something up, and sending it out to the masses to see millions rolling back in. That's not like a Detroit factory 75 years ago, and is less so a farmer's field 750 years ago.

And those changes in production would affect society, the culture. In that case it would be San Francisco, and/or Shenzhen culture at the vanguard. Also media creation, so that coming out of LA, Mumbai etc.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#497

Post by zwkrt » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

LordHumungous wrote: post #465

pjc50 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of "Fox News robbed me of my parents" stories out there. https://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_h... (2014, situation has generally got worse!) https://captainawkward.com/2020/12/09/1304-fox-news-stole-my...

Is it really that hard to just ignore these things when your parents say them? I have Republican parents and I just smile and nod whenever they say something crazy. It's extremely easy.

That’s fine and dandy if the “crazy” things they say aren’t directly attacking ones way of life or values. My parents seem to have viscerally negative physical reactions to even the sight of black people and gay men (lesbians seem to be fine!?) and it’s disgusting. If conservative news were just about foreign policy and taxes we could have our disagreements but it is more insidious than that because identity politics are strong and getting stronger. There isn’t any room in my life for bigotry against myself and my friends.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#498

Post by cinntaile » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

rednerrus wrote: post #407

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…

Most emotional damage that I've seen comes in the good times phase. That's when genx's parents were born. In the good times everyone is free to do as they please and have to find their own meaning, this creates weak men. Weak men create hard times. We're entering the really hard times now. When things really go to shit, you'll find your purpose and have to rely on others. That creates strength and good times, eventua…

This is super obvious but I'll say it anyway. We have been living in the good times phase for many decennia now, so it's no surprise that you don't see emotional damage from the bad times phase.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#499

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:22 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #265

GavinMcG wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Toxic" is just a catchier-sounding synonym for "harmful." It doesn't imply intent — in fact, that's one of its strengths, and one of the major components in the shift in the way we collectively talk about things over the past couple decades. Part of the conversation around race, for example, has been an awareness by more and more people that unintentional harms are far more prevalent than intentional ones, and in to…

> "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…

[deleted]

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#500

Post by munk-a » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 11:25 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #493

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…

> So, I felt [...] grateful to my parents for being there in the first place I'm going to say something controversial. Not everyone is grateful for their life. I've talked to multiple people who preferred to never be born. And event the best parents I know couldn't offer much more honest reason for having children than "we wanted to" which is basically ultimate selfishness. > [...] and being decent at being parents a…

> I know couldn't offer much more honest reason for having children than "we wanted to" which is basically ultimate selfishness.

I really don't think that's at all objectionable or selfish to be honest. Couples that don't have children exist and bless them for deciding to go with their gut and not feel compelled by society into having a child. A child being born has absolutely no say in the matter - it's solely a decision of the parents and it should be one driven by whether the parents want and can care for a child.

The question of being grateful for life - that's a pretty complex philosophical subject. At the end of the day life is all you've got as an organism, you will experience pain from time to time but without life you simply would not exist. To those who go through severe trauma and pain, my heart goes out to you and I thankfully can't relate to that utter helplessness - but for most people existence is all we've got and if you run across someone that genuinely prefers they were never born I'd hope you can direct them to some therapists to work through their issues with, that can't be a healthy place to be.