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

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#681

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 12:26 PM UTC

rednerrus wrote: post #605

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about most hostile places, in the midst of civil war- do they produce the greatest people? In all times, the great philosophers, engineers, generals, scientists, etc. Were never made up of peoppe that suffered greaters hardship, that starved in the childhood. They were always elites, people with best education or at least middle class. We've run this experiment, there is zero evidence for it.

People born in 1930: Clint Eastwood, Sandra Day O’Connor, Warren Buffett, Sean Connery, George Soros, Ray Charles.

That's not a particularly impressive list, Steven Hawking was born in the 40's, Bill Gates was born in the 50,s, Bezos in the 60's. I am not seeing how 30's was a particularly 'strong' decade.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by baseballdork » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 12:50 PM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #615

baseballdork wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't you think you owe them something? Anything? IMHO, no. You don't owe your parents anything for doing the job they signed up for. I have a great relationship with my parents and had a great upbringing. It's very difficult for me to imagine cutting off contact. However, I also don't feel like I owe them a single thing and I think they'd agree with me on that.

Humble opinions aside, if your parents live in one of 26 U.S. states, then yes you do owe your parents what amounts to basic needs at minimum [1]. Even if you and your parents are in agreement that you owe each other nothing, about half of U.S. states disagree, and they have the legal mechanisms in place to make you responsible for their needs, should they be impoverished. I'm lucky enough to have a decent upbringing…

Neither me nor my parents live in any of those states. Even if I did, legal obligation is not what this conversation was about. I spend time and share resources with my parents because I love sharing with them. If that dynamic changes, then it'll stop.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by brightball » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

tharkun__ wrote: post #679

themacguffinman wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm not the person you're replying to) A bit of a tangent: I don't know that much about the Aztec gods but AFAICT, the Vikings didn't really deny that their gods can be pretty terrible. There are a lot of Norse myths that basically describe a really dysfunctional and bitter family, but with superpowers. Betrayal, infidelity, pettiness, arrogance, and stupid mistakes are all reflected in stories about their gods. The…

Also fair enough :) and to add to your tangent AFAICT though Viking human sacrifices are described it seems like they weren't the common place standard type of sacrifice. I don't necessarily think that it matters much for the question though. I'm not sure I can find a different benevolent omnipotent (or close enough) deity to make a straight comparison to that doesn't have a current (large) following that would drag…

The Bible often talks about not honoring other gods, avoiding idols, etc. Even Solomon built many shrines to other gods for his wives.

Some people interpret it to affirm the existence of other gods. In reading, there’s never a point where another god directly intervenes in the lives of men. There are plenty of occurrences of men creating idols to worship of other gods or falling to temptations offered by the gods of other cultures. Asherah poles are the most often called out.

All that is to say, we don’t have any historical context of other gods directly intervening in people’s lives.

What we do know is that if we were to claim to know when God will intervene we would be wrong. We can’t possibly. I have seen in my own life and heard testimony from others which gives me a little bit of a pattern to draw from and gain better understanding to help make some sense of it…but I’m still just guessing.

What we do see in the Bible is that even the biblical heroes are all very flawed and fall in and out of favor with God. Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, etc. The only one who doesn’t is Jesus, but even Jesus became frustrated at times. There’s a story where Jesus curses a fig tree because he’s hungry and there’s no fruit on it. I always thought it was funny because it shows more of his human side…he got hangry.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by wutbrodo » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

Method-X wrote: post #120

wutbrodo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to some degree, but what I don't get is the mechanism by which that's assumed to translate into toxicity, let alone enough toxicity to engender estrangement. Parents not understanding their children's world is as old as time, or at least as old as industrialization. I experienced this myself to a pretty significant degree, and I wouldn't describe my parents' misunderstanding of the modern economy as "toxic" i…

I think “toxic” is a bit hyperbolic. It’s likely they’re just frustrated with how out of touch some baby boomers can be.

Perhaps, but it's different enough in meaning that I'm not convinced hyperbole is plausible, and I don't want to accidentally dismiss an interesting claim by assuming it was just incoherent.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by wing-_-nuts » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

starik36 wrote: post #438

mike00632 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. The article seema to intentionally taboo homophobia (maybe dismissing it under the category of "identity") when that is one of the biggest sources of homeless youths in the US. I refuse to see parents who disown their gay kids as victims.

> one of the biggest sources of homeless youths in the US What is your source of information on this claim? I am reading this and don't see anything. https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/homeless-and-ru...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_....

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by marcosdumay » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

queuebert wrote: post #358

marcosdumay wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I swear the last 4 years drove the vast majority of everyone insane, in a very literal sense. Our current situation reminds me of the brain-eating computer on the book Diamond Age that somebody created to crack passwords. It's like a lot of people are simply gone, and some superconciousness too over their bodies, and it's on the controls 24/7. I still hope this reverses once the simplistic ideas get hit again and a…

What an amazing analogy. I doubt there is a solution short of severe changes in how most people use the internet and media. Attention stealing apps and their consequent dopamine addictions seem to have killed rational thinking, so much that people will refuse to believe facts and evidence. It feels better to be part of a group that believes a thing than to process a conflict and adapt your worldview. Hmm, what else d…

> Hmm, what else does that sound like?

You mean a religion? People host all kinds of superconcioussness, that's part of what we are. But it's not normal for some to be on the controls a lot of time. This is similar to religious zealotry, what is rather rare.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by BrandonM » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

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…

Did more millennials also opt to live in city centers, which had hollowed out during the previous generation? You can still buy suburban and rural housing for $1xxK, or even five figures if you’re willing to compromise.

I just looked, and room+board at OSU costs $13,352 per year (http://undergrad.osu.edu/cost-and-aid/basic-costs). Adjusted for inflation, that’s cheaper than it cost 20 years ago. Of course, unsubsidized private or out-of-state schools will cost far more. Many fewer people went to college 40 years ago, too.

The health insurance premiums are higher now, but the coverage is far better. Everyone can have guaranteed health coverage via ACA, subsidized in cases of financial hardship.

Free childcare is still available for many of those who live close to family. Maternity and parental leave and FMLA laws have only improved. Free public schooling generally starts earlier. More wfh jobs are available today than ever before.

My point in all of this, of course, is that I suspect a lot of these differences boil down to optionality and different decision making. I don’t think it’s reasonable for our generation to pursue a more exciting, leisurely, and expensive lifestyle than our parents had (prestigious school, expensive city, travel, white collar job, moving away from a childhood home, delayed commitment), then resent that generation’s boat and lake house.

Can you have it all today? For most, the answer is still no, just like it always was. I suspect that more people than ever before can get pretty close, though, leaving those who can’t even more resentful about it than in the past.

BTW, with one month of SF rent, you can buy yourself a nice used boat. A couple years of that rent will buy you a simple lake house.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by triceratops » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #273

triceratops wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not too much significant has happened over then past decade That's a bold statement, and IMO a very incorrect one. You just can't see it right now because you're too close. Electric cars, batteries, and solar power in general have taken off. Autonomous driving draws ever closer. Covid has changed work culture, education, and lifestyles the world over, probably permanently. And mRNA tech could revolutionize healthca…

What's the difference between FAANG now and IBM, HP, Dell, Sun, Yahoo!, and Apple of yesteryear?

Market cap and size relative to the rest of the market.

Prior to the 2010s, Microsoft was the only tech company consistently on the list of top 10 by market cap (IBM and Intel made fleeting appearances). The top 10 used to be more diverse - telecom, healthcare/pharma, oil and gas, finance.

Now that list is absolutely dominated by tech: Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Tencent, and (sometimes) TSMC.[1] It's not a turn-of-the-century-style dotcom bubble either; all of these companies are highly profitable.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by...

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by throwawaygh » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

thomasahle wrote: post #662

throwawaygh wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't not wanting kids for X reason mean that you consider the moral worth of a new person to be less than X. What? No. Most people who do have children are not doing in order to fulfill some dispassionate abstract moral commitment to the inherent moral worth of human life. And there are all sorts of examples of people who clearly value human life but choose not to have children. Or are all nuns terrible people?…

> there are all sorts of examples of people who clearly value human life but choose not to have children. Or are all nuns terrible people? OP was specifically referring to people (including in this thread) who choose not to have children on moral grounds: >> several of my friends (millenial like myself) think that bringing children into this world is a bad thing to do- with global warming and other social problems So…

>>> several of my friends (millenial like myself) think that bringing children into this world is a bad thing to do- with global warming and other social problems

...and?

There's nothing at all logically inconsistent about two following two propositions:

P1. All human life has value.

P2. Intentionally creating new human life is unethical.

FWIW, I am not an anti-natalist, and I do not believe P2. However, I do believe it's unethical to purposefully have children you cannot support (financially, emotionally, intellectually, etc.). But that doesn't meant that I think that the children created by people who cannot support a child are worthless or have negative value! Just because "creating X is bad" does not mean "X has no value".

> So it seems fair to assume...

No, it isn't fair to assume that people who believe "creating X in situation S is bad" implies that those same people believe "X has no value". Those are two very, very distinct and different value judgements.

More importantly, I very much doubt people who hold to above position would agree with this characterization of their view of the value of human life.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

the_only_law wrote: post #598

ta2158 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're flagging this means you know it's the truth but you just have to flag to keep the narrative. That the Pulse nightclub shooter was gay, was on gay dating apps, etc. and decided to shoot up the club because he was closeted (this was wildly paraded on the news) and self-hating. The FBI investigation months later found out that all of those claims were unsubstantiated, and that the real motivation wa…

Would you mind sharing the exploit you have that allows you to determine GP flagged your minute old comment? I’m sure the technical details would be fascinating.

[deleted]