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Shit life syndrome

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Re: Shit life syndrome

#161

Post by jfoutz »

bandyaboot wrote: post #103
RugnirViking wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't pay tax because the government controls the issuing of money. You pay tax because if you don't some large men will come to your house and make you pay tax. this isn't a knock on the system; without some sort of centralised governments things tend to fall apart and then recreate themselves again. Even in the most lawless places someone steps in to perform the role, and usually they're much worse than a legal…

Also important to keep in mind that, to a good degree at least in liberal democracies, the large men that come to make you pay tax exist because your neighbors think they should exist.

Every human, everywhere must contend with large men coming and taking their stuff. I have very little to no first hand experience with alternatives to liberal democracy. Persuading my neighbors to take more or less seems a whole lot easier than any of the alternatives I'm aware of.

Re: Shit life syndrome

#162

Post by karaterobot »

More of this coming, and much more broadly. And it'll have consequences outside just economics and public health. Demagogues, riots, drawbridges being pulled up around the world. People need a reason to live, you can't just take that away from them and expect that everything will be fine.

Re: Shit life syndrome

#163

Post by fnordpiglet »

svnt wrote: post #158
fnordpiglet wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Buddhism and similar “self help” movements evolved over thousands of years in South Asia in an environment of of extreme poverty with literally no health care, and purposefully work in a life of poverty. The idea that only wealth and leisure provides mental health or self awareness is at complete odds with how most of the knowledge around self awareness came about, as most of our modern conception around such…

You chose quite the counterexample. Siddhartha Gautama was royalty before he became the Buddha. He pursued yoga for six years after having been married and had a child before he sat down to do nothing. He was an introspective rich kid. He was not a laborer at any point. Further, Buddhism originated in temperate zones where asceticism works and originated separately because you can easily survive outdoors year round a…

He did however renounced his wealth and lived a life of poverty. And Buddhism isn’t the story of siddhartha alone. He had many followers that figure in the pali canon quite extensively, and they were poor, rich, some even developmentally disabled. Concurrently, there were a lot of ascetics that siddhartha studied with - Buddhism didn’t spring out of his mind wholly formed, it was a distillation of thousands of years of Indian philosophy into a structured process with a structured monk hood and method of “evangelizing” and maintaining coherency of his teachings.

However, I’m not specifically picking on siddhartha, but on Buddhism. Buddhism has seen many people through immensely difficult situations in life, which would cause suffering if you didn’t have a way of framing the conscious experience and it’s impact on emotional and physical well being.

I used the example of Myanmar and Cambodia on purpose - they are Buddhist countries, and while not everyone who is Buddhist practices Buddhist teachings, many do. And it’s impossible to say the Burmese and Cambodians aren’t impoverished and oppressed. Yet many find through Buddhism an ability to not suffer, and lead content and full lives despite. They labor under extreme difficulty, and if you think laboring in the tropics is easy … it’s not. Yet - still, I don’t see the SLS I see in American cities and rural settings, or in UK coastal towns, etc. They’re not magical and mystical beings in burma or Cambodia, they just have access to a way of thinking that enables them to not suffer emotionally from an unpleasant life. They would escape if they could, because Buddhism doesn’t teach acceptance of unpleasantness, but it does teach how to not suffer when things are unpleasant.

Re: Shit life syndrome

#164

Post by parenthesis »

HPsquared wrote: post #156
Symbiote wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average "Index of Multiple Deprivation" [1] for Croydon is about 14,000, where every area (of some equal population size) is ranked from 1 to 32,884. Very roughly average for England. Scotland isn't included, so I can't compare Strathclyde, but Blackpool's average is 5,900 — and includes 8 of the 10 most deprived places in the country. Only one bit of London (part of Haringey) makes the top 1000. Only 106 bits of…

Scotland has the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation... Currently house-hunting at the moment, it's a great tool! https://simd.scot

Are you using it to avoid deprived areas, or to find them and hence cheap houses?

Re: Shit life syndrome

#165

Post by ilyt »

dazc wrote: post #124
flir wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're almost never hamstrung by the opposition voting against them. If they didn't have a majority, they wouldn't be the government. Right now the majority is, what, 80? They could pass anything they wanted.

But choose not to? I really don't understand why people choose to have a career in politics so that they can achieve nothing at all?

They want to achieve stable cashflow

Re: Shit life syndrome

#166

Post by KnobbleMcKnees »

marcosscriven wrote: post #154
KnobbleMcKnees wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You reminded me of this [0] fantastic review of Sheerness in Kent. Blackpool is mentioned several times in comparison. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/u2vu5x/i_thi...

I specifically went to Sheerness to go and see the UK’s only scorpion population. A local copper saw me, asked what I was doing, and offered to get his massive UV light out of his car. Saw quite a few! But yes, otherwise all rather run down. The extreme wealth discrepancy was an eye opener.

I couldn't have guessed that Sheerness had a natural scorpion population and yet somehow it isn't surprising either.

Re: Shit life syndrome

#167

Post by mattlondon »

placesalt wrote: post #113
padolsey wrote: post #5

This is quite darkly hilarious tbh. And consistent with my experience of Blackpool. I once went there on couple-week-long driving course when I was a teenager, hoping but eventually failing to get my license. I was put up in someone's house that was run as a sort of unlicensed b&b. The entire place, the curtains, the linen, the pillow,.. all smelled of old nicotine and damp. On my first evening I went out by myself t…

(beautiful writing, as others have said!) > the same depressing crumbling economy of coastal towns all over the UK I'm surprised to hear that coastal towns in the UK are doing poorly. In North America, it's generally the coastal areas that are more prosperous. Was it overbuilding during the era of British sea power? Or a great sucking-up of wealth by London? It makes me wonder if, long term, seaside areas would make…

Cheap flights and cheap - and reliably warm - holidays in Spain ruined the British seaside town, which were largely reliant on tourism once fishing was taken out of the equation (assuming fishing was in it at all originally).

Anyone living there with any skills or potential have to leave to get good jobs elsewhere. Typical brain drain and related decline.

Re: Shit life syndrome

#168

Post by ip26 »

placesalt wrote: post #113
padolsey wrote: post #5

This is quite darkly hilarious tbh. And consistent with my experience of Blackpool. I once went there on couple-week-long driving course when I was a teenager, hoping but eventually failing to get my license. I was put up in someone's house that was run as a sort of unlicensed b&b. The entire place, the curtains, the linen, the pillow,.. all smelled of old nicotine and damp. On my first evening I went out by myself t…

(beautiful writing, as others have said!) > the same depressing crumbling economy of coastal towns all over the UK I'm surprised to hear that coastal towns in the UK are doing poorly. In North America, it's generally the coastal areas that are more prosperous. Was it overbuilding during the era of British sea power? Or a great sucking-up of wealth by London? It makes me wonder if, long term, seaside areas would make…

In modern time, coastal areas prosper when they have a desirable climate (moderate temperatures buffered by water) or concentrate commerce (e.g. shipping port, especially deep water).

A bunch of the coastal towns in the UK offer neither. They have a legacy of things like small fishing operations, which was significantly more valuable in the past when food was more scarce and fisheries were healthier.

Re: Shit life syndrome

#169

Post by ilyt »

ricardo81 wrote: post #49
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought COVID would radically transform society's thinking and our requirement to be in high GDP areas for certain lines of work 1) Why did you think that? 2) Why do you assume that people are only in "high GDP areas" for work? Personally I moved from rural New Zealand to London and I work 100% remotely.

Because certain lines of work don't require physical presence but are skilled jobs. /added Also, I prefer a rural setting, no doubt others do too. Cost of living is lower also.

Most people prefer having a house and a garage/shed/garden. They go rural not because they like that but because that's only achievable way to get that. I'd absolutely love be in exact same spot in city but own a house instead of renting an apartment

Re: Shit life syndrome

#170

Post by svnt »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #163
svnt wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You chose quite the counterexample. Siddhartha Gautama was royalty before he became the Buddha. He pursued yoga for six years after having been married and had a child before he sat down to do nothing. He was an introspective rich kid. He was not a laborer at any point. Further, Buddhism originated in temperate zones where asceticism works and originated separately because you can easily survive outdoors year round a…

He did however renounced his wealth and lived a life of poverty. And Buddhism isn’t the story of siddhartha alone. He had many followers that figure in the pali canon quite extensively, and they were poor, rich, some even developmentally disabled. Concurrently, there were a lot of ascetics that siddhartha studied with - Buddhism didn’t spring out of his mind wholly formed, it was a distillation of thousands of years…

Buddhism itself is a very diverse beast to get a handle on in that part of the world. But I agree it serves to preserve (especially male) populations in conditions of little material possibility.

It sounds like you are making a different point: that you don’t see anything in the USA like the social/religious systems that have enabled some in SE Asia to transcend difficult conditions.

I would say that Christianity serves much of the same purpose in middle America, and that you don’t see as much “SLS” around practicing Christians as you do in the general population. It doesn’t get reported on much in the popular media though. What would the headline read?

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