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A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#551

Post by Ensorceled »

Tade0 wrote: post #418
nsxwolf wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that I'm circumcised and every male I know is, and none of us even give it a second thought or feel that our genitals have been "mutilated", I would say it requires a bit of sucking. There has to be some existing dissatisfaction or disorder for someone to get so up in arms about that. Anyway, it was an example I saw, I had intended to remain neutral on the subject.

> There has to be some existing dissatisfaction or disorder for someone to get so up in arms about that. How about undergoing a non-essential and medically unnecessary surgery without your consent? Doesn't that bother you at least a little bit? I was baptised as an infant and most of the people I know were as well, but I recognize it for what it is - roping me into a membership in an organisation which requires me to…

> How about undergoing a non-essential and medically unnecessary surgery without your consent? Doesn't that bother you at least a little bit?

Nope. My parents were 20 and 21. Family, their Priest and Doctor all pushed them to do it. I have no recollection of any of this. My dick looks like most of the dicks I've seen in the change room and in porn. Why would this bother me? It's so abstract as to be ludicrous.

All sorts of things were done without my consent that have had a much larger impact in my happiness and well being: being raised Catholic for instance, something you brush off as "reversible".

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#552

Post by kwyjobojoe »

tw04 wrote: post #196
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge agreement on including abuse. It's hard to make this question grounded in data, but here's an anecdote I do think is accurate. My grandfather was a horrific man. He died of complications due to alcoholism before I was born. That said, I've heard a lot about just what he was like, including from people outside the family. I've also seen 16mm film footage of him at family holidays, and it's shockingly clear every…

It was more socially normal because an entire generation experienced the horrors of WW2. I'm not saying that makes the behavior ok, but it sure made it a lot easier for families to empathise. My grandpa wasn't an alcoholic but he was a giant asshole until about mid-70s when he started softening up.

It's probably because baby boomers were the generation most effected by lead poisoning. Their children don't have the associated brain damaged that causes the impulse control, lack of reasoning and irrational anger, and they see their parents as damaged goods and interacting with them has too many negatives to make it worth while.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#553

Post by agensaequivocum »

minikites wrote: post #224
conductr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the US tradition of leaving next generation better off than the last (whether true or not) is somewhat to blame. There is a societal "failure" to not providing for your kid the same or better than your parents provided for you. Many millennials are the tipping point for; they got the most, and it's down hill for future generations. The great American pyramid scheme is falling apart or so it seems. I think man…

>Many millennials are the tipping point Millennials are way worse off than previous generations by many metrics, that's why so many of them are angry. The tipping point already happened.

This is ridiculous. If you look at the totality of the situation, the average person is living an easier more comfortable life than the top 1% 120 years ago.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#554

Post by kwyjobojoe »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #542
BrandonM wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This cannot be accurate in any absolute sense. How is wealth defined in this context? 25 years ago, the median car and house didn't have (central) A/C. Cell phones and the Internet were expensive and not widely available. Truly portable laptops, usable tablets, and smartphones didn’t exist. Health food options were limited. The world was not mapped for all to access at street level. Translation was far more difficult…

This is pretty well documented. The main point is that older generations had access to much cheaper housing, they bought it instead of rented it, and it went up in value. Millenials by and large rent instead of own, and the rent increases have been outpacing wage gains for a while. Along with housing, education has vastly increased in price increasing student debt a lot, which was basically non existent in my parents…

And there is no such thing as a guaranteed job, or job for life. My parents are boomer generation, and their friends insist that their kids are too lazy to work and should just march into a business and speak to the boss for work.

The world doesn't work like that for the vast majority. Hell, I worked in a software role for 10 years and it took me 2 years to find a non contract, full time role elsewhere. I applied for hundreds of jobs, with university education and experience, and got a handful of responses.

The economy is set up so a minority of people live in heaven while everyone else is treated like an expendable cost centre.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#556

Post by scotty79 »

maccam94 wrote: post #539
narraturgy wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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 par…

Hey, in case you aren't aware, it sounds like you might be depressed. I highly recommend finding a therapist, or if you can't, consider what would need to change in your life for you to feel more active and engaged. Are you eating/sleeping/exercising too little or too much? Is your job/commute/locale draining you? Do you feel like you just need to find a direction/purpose? There's no other soul out there that would t…

There's such thing as dysthymia (persistent depressive disorder). About 1.5% of people have it. Treatment is supposedly as effective as treatment for depression (it's the same treatment). You have to feel like that for at least 2 years to get a diagnosis. Since it's not severely handicapping people suffering from it, it may go undiagnosed for decades and even after diagnosis people might choose to forgo treatment because of its hit and miss nature and side effects.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#557

Post by TeeMassive »

pjc50 wrote: post #430
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #424

24/7 bombardment with conspiracy theories and partisan political nonsense through television and the internet has turned the relationships and bonds in my extended family into weird factions of outrage addicts that are basically impossible to interact with for any extended amount of time unless you similarly develop a fondness for their flavor of outrage or for their passive aggression for when you don't. It's exhaus…

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...

And also a lot of "cut your Trump supporting parents" stories out there too.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-cutting-off-relatives_n...

https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/11/why-left-wingers-cut-...

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#558

Post by scotty79 »

lisper wrote: post #501
scotty79 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> ultimate selfishness You can't really blame them. It's a consequence of evolution. Genes that make brains that want to have children tend to reproduce better than genes that make brains that don't.

No you can't. But you don't have to be grateful for what you never wanted just because you got it.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#559

Post by jkhdigital »

avidiax wrote: post #374
LordHumungous wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's definitely not a coincidence, but it is certainly complicated. Damaged kids become damaged adults, and if they realize it, they may decide that they wouldn't be good parents and rightly opt-out of it. Children that didn't have the right opportunities, whether that's their parent's fault or not may not have enough achievement as an adult to take on the burden of being a parent. One can argue whether it is harder…

> Damaged kids become damaged adults

I strongly disagree with this overbroad generalization.

> you can't argue that being a parent requires lots of resources in both time and money, and if you don't have both, it's the right choice to not be a parent.

I would be happy to argue this. Raising children is the most essentially human experience one can have. A society with fewer parents is a society well on its way to nihilism and extinction.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#560

Post by mistermann »

teawrecks wrote: post #516
starik36 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the outrage culture is prevalent with pretty much all the news networks starting with CNN and on down the list. You can replace %foxnews% with any of them. At family gatherings, find something else to talk about. I mean, people did have conversations 30 years ago, right?

> find something else to talk about Not sure if you clicked on the links or have any first hand experience with this phenomenon, but that's exactly the problem: conservative family members always find a way to steer the conversation back to politics. They don't live in the real world anymore, everything relates back to their political outrage. And if you do anything but agree with them, they immediately become defens…

Technically, from a strict neuroscience perspective, no one really lives in the real world. Rather we perceive and conceptualize reality through our senses and a complex "biological AI", where much of the processing is beyond our perception or understanding. Likely many things you consider normal or acceptable would be considered otherwise by reasonable people from other cultures, and they would perceive you as being the wrong one, although these things vary in magnitude and kind.
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