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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

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're wrong to feel this way" is a ridiculous notion, one I had to personally unlearn. Emotions aren't right or wrong and you can't control them. Disregarding someone's emotions as wrong has exactly one result, resentment, which leads to heightened conflict. You can acknowledge that someone's emotions are valid while disagreeing with them on the content. Here's a template: "It sounds like when I said x you felt y,…

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding what you mean by "valid" here, because there's lots of emotions that seem obviously wrong and controllable. The most obvious example is a fear of public speaking. Everyone I know who's struggled with it (including myself) has resolved it through the perspective that it's wrong to be afraid and you've gotta figure out tricks to get over your irrational fear. It's hard to see what a…

Public speaking carries real potential for negative outcomes. I don't think fear of it is irrational.

With experience and exposure, we learn how to manage risk and what our limits are. Same is true of learning to swim or learning to drive, but it's not true that a fear of swimming or driving is irrational or unwarranted for someone who hasn't done it often or ever. No, it's completely appropriate.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#692
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think as we see crises accelerate, the only ones with true freedom to act and make the world they want to be in will be the nihilists. everyone else is busy playing calculus looking for solutions that fit into existing logic and political economy, when the truth is that survival and creation irreducibly exist for their own sake. bringing a child into a dying world might be the ultimate selfish act. it's also the on…

> bringing a child into a dying world might be the ultimate selfish act. That's a pretty bleak outlook on the future of our world. Do you really think getting born today is significantly worse than being born at a random time in human history?

today doesn't have to be the worst day ever to generate anxiety about the future. knowing that cavemen got ate by dinosaurs wouldn't make it any nicer to pitch a tent under i5. but i think it's pretty clear that barring some kind of unexpected radical change, and maybe even in that case, many of us are going to experience deprivation and terror unlike anything we've known before. at previous moments in history, if it got too bad and all else failed, you could just start walking and live off the land on your way to someplace nicer. it sucked and was often violent but people had the skills and the world had the space. that's not an option now.

i can't imagine surviving something like a famine or civil war in the modern world. and it doesn't look like that kind of risk is growing smaller. could you take on some total disaster like that while caring for a child? what kind of person would you be at the end of it? what kind of person would they be?

and it doesn't even have to be that dramatic. there will be a lot of suffering that doesn't touch us directly, but it will still shape the places we inhabit. could you stand to live in a total police state, even if you're safe (from the outside) and relatively wealthy (compared to a refugee)?

these are the questions on a lot of people's minds. and nobody has good answers, because there are none.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Long story short, I don’t call my parents precisely because I’m childless. Failing my love life has everything to do with them. It’s not like I were divorced. I’m precisely never married, never had a long girlfriend, despite not being ugly nor totally stupid, and my loneliness drove me crazy (in the literal sense – since Covid I’ve honestly snapped a few neurons, so it’s quite over for me). But before that, I used to…

It's very possible. You probably won't see how it's possible until you've been to therapy. But you should 100% seek therapy. Your first and last paragraphs imply being a success at life means having children, which points to self-worth issues that HN commenters aren't qualified to address.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, we have to stop looking to our parents, and take responsibility for our own lives. Until we can do that, we aren't really adults. That's what sets adults and children apart: responsibility. Children are not responsible for their own lives; rather, they live under the guardianship of adults. Adults are responsible. And it is a hate crime that we have probably two generations in the West that have been r…

- So you are telling me I should take responsibility because no-one in society should have responsibility ;) (half-badly rephrasing with humor). On one side, it burns the claim that it’s a society, it means we’re just independent units with no love for each other; On the other it’s assuming that I didn’t try everything first. I’ve lived in 4 countries, went across the world, participated to a dozen charities (>200hrs…

Its a bad look to blame feminism honestly, women are just looking out for themselves and its just healthy in a way. If you're irretrievably redpilled on this then not much I can say there.

2020's pandemic and the associated mess with society is a thing. Just look out for yourself. Therapy is fine, you don't have to broadcast to everyone that you've chatted about issues. I've had a few sessions and to be honest, even those few sessions have given me ways to have internal conversations with myself by just imagining what a therapist would say. Just thought I'd offer that.

Still, take care of yourself, we only have one life here on the planet, plus you can't depend on 100 percent of the folks you run into to be on your side, most of us can be pretty self centered but don't let external insanities live in your head rent free. Humans are just not perfect beings.

Look forward to the future, surprises can and do happen. Cultivate friendships where you can.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that other people went through it too is a horrible, horrible metric for something being okay, and I think buying into that is its own form of sucking.

I am circumcised and pretty happy with it, has nothing to do with it happening to other people. It is not a horrible thing that happened to me, its just my penis and me and everyone else that has encountered it seem to like it. The fact that you are determined to think that I and others like me (the majority of American, middle eastern, south korean and other men) should feel assaulted or upset about it is an issue i…

I haven't determined as much, just poked a hole in your argument.

You can't really know how bad it was if you were too young to remember and can never have any bearings. The only way we can really know is from empirical analysis or people that went through it at an older age.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#696
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]

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#698
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]

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#699
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]

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#700
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.

The fact that you're flagging this means you know it's the truth but you just have to flag to keep the narrative.

Did you figure it out?

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