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Wow, check out this guy's comment

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Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#61

Post by cousin_it »

blurry wrote: post #55
cousin_it wrote: post #9

my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out. Is it really this way in the US? As a foreigner I'm curious.

@cousin_it I also grew up in Russia (25 years between Siberia and Moscow) and have lived in the US for the last 12 years. From my experience, the typical Russian attitude of moral superiority (Americans = materialistic, Russians = spiritual) could not be farther from the truth. Perhaps I am reading into your comment a bit, but it seems to me that you were essentially trying to assert the above, even if you phrased yo…

I'm sorry. Of course similar things happen in Russia all the time. My comment was just a knee-jerk reaction to a phrase. At least it sparked an interesting discussion.

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#62

Post by kirubakaran »

Allocator2008 wrote: post #35
cousin_it wrote: post #9

my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out. Is it really this way in the US? As a foreigner I'm curious.

Dude, this is not a US thing. It is more an evolutionary thing. Men hunted, women raised the kids. If the man isn't hunting enough, the woman is going to find a better hunter. This is simply evolutionary anthropology. The pressure is on the male to "hunt", or to make money. This is not a good or a bad thing, it is just Darwinian reality. At the end of the day, I think there is really no such thing as "romance" or wha…

In the world where a non-hunting home-maker (ie. woman, as you posit) found a better hunter when the hunter she was with didn't do well, the hunters probably didn't feed the women when they stopped being useful. Hunters most certainly fucked everyone they possibly could, to maximize their gene transmission. Marriage prevents this. Hence the expectation that your SO sticks with you when the times are tough... Especially when the times are tough.

Even murders can be 'justified' by evolutionary biology but the court tends to put an end to further propagation of that gene :)

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#63

Post by bd »

blurry wrote: post #57
bd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to comment on cultural differences, though via brief googling I found out that US and Russia have actually very similar divorce rates. In both countries almost half marriages fail. Interesting. http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsWorld.shtml

@bd Just wanted to mention something that you may not be aware of. In most russian cities, housing stock is in very short supply (thanks to the legacy of centralized city planning) and people often stay together because otherwise they would have nowhere to live. I believe this skews the statistic in favor of the US, i.e. I believe that the russian divorce rates would be even higher if more people were able to live se…

Then it is even more surprising, at least for me. I had Russia associated with strong families, people sticking together and so on.

And it doesn't even seem to be a recent phenomenon. It looks like already in 1970s divorce rate in Russia was very high (40%):

"Even in Communist times, the unhappiness of Russian families was hard to hide. The divorce rate in the 1970s was 40 percent; now it is 51 percent. In the past, sociologists blamed Soviet life, its regimentation, oppression, and lack of individual freedom, for men’s alcoholism and apathy to work and family. Today, the major factor appears to be an economic free fall that humiliates men who cannot provide for their families, to the point where they just walk away with little social censure. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of all Russian families are now headed by a single parent, 94 percent of whom are women."

http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/russia.html

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#64

Post by mike_organon »

jey wrote: post #41

my brother and both parents said "well of course everyone is driven by money... you mean you thought they were driven by something else?" What the fuck? They really think everyone's goal in life is to buy as much crap as they can?

Money isn't an end goal, it's a means to something else. Who said the goal would be buying crap? A better use of money is financial security for raising a family, having free time, buying things you really value, retiring early and enjoying life. Money is an excellent motivator, but it's indirect, the real motivator is your values and your life.

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#65

Post by jey »

mike_organon wrote: post #64
jey wrote: post #41

my brother and both parents said "well of course everyone is driven by money... you mean you thought they were driven by something else?" What the fuck? They really think everyone's goal in life is to buy as much crap as they can?

Money isn't an end goal, it's a means to something else. Who said the goal would be buying crap? A better use of money is financial security for raising a family, having free time, buying things you really value, retiring early and enjoying life. Money is an excellent motivator, but it's indirect, the real motivator is your values and your life.

Then that's like saying you're motivated by food, water, shelter. I see money as just one resource that I need in my life to maintain my lifestyle, like I need food/water/shelter. It would be nice to solve the money problem once and for all by doing something to accumulate a large pile of it, but only so that I can stop expending my energy on generating money and move on to the things I really care about.

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#66

Post by silencio »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #42
smoody wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bad assumption here. It could have simply been that his wife didn't want to see her children go to bed hungry or for them to lose the roof over their heads.

Smoody, I so wish I were wrong. But I am so right that if you search for the top reasons why relationship fail you would find that money is always first or second. Women have cried for centuries to have equality (vote, salaries....), which I totally agree with. Now on the flip side, they still expect man to be the provider, the protector etc...If you do not provide anymore, like Mr Pumbler, you can be sure that you w…

PEOPLE care about money because it is important for survival, even more so when you are in a family of, like the guy mentions in his comment, 4.

Also, I'm still curious as to how you inferred from said story that his wife wasn't also working to provide for the family since her husband couldn't hold a steady job. It was a stressful time for everyone involved, and when there are kids to provide for in the picture, even more so.

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#67

Post by silencio »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #51
smoody wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bad assumption here. It could have simply been that his wife didn't want to see her children go to bed hungry or for them to lose the roof over their heads.

Ok, so what about when the guy tells his wife "If you do not loose weight I will leave you"? How is that different?

A job provides income that pays for the house and the food on the table and clothes for the kids and more. Doesn't matter who tells who to get a job. It's a necessity.

Losing weight is what is truly materialistic, as unless the person that needs to lose weight is morbidly obese and their health is directly at risk if they do not do so, it's something that does not directly affect their ability to get and pay for day-to-day necessities. It's nice if it happens, but it wouldn't directly threaten their ability to shelter their kids, for example.

The two are just not comparable.

If the guy told his wife who did the same thing as this plumber did ($300 in savings at start and no customers for weeks) that he'd leave her if she didn't get even an undesirable job soon, it wouldn't be unreasonable, and would be a more apt comparison to bring up instead of this losing weight nonsense. However, it would be crass for anyone in the relationship to threaten to leave, but you know it happens in a lot of them. :(

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#68

Post by mg1313 »

thenduks wrote: post #43

> my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out "...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part." It's reading things like this that make me appreciate my wife more than I already did. Get a 'walmart type job' or get out? My wife would _never_ say that to…

Yeah, fire the wife!! How come she says that instead of supporting you?? I guess she didn't contribute with anything to your success but probably swallows money like a shark.

But then you have 4 kids with her :(...you're kinda trapped there.

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#69

Post by mg1313 »

cousin_it wrote: post #9

my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out. Is it really this way in the US? As a foreigner I'm curious.

There are enough cases when the man goes bankrupt and the wife is leaving him instead of supporting him until he recovers. But also there are cases when the wife is supporting the man until he gets on his feet...I've seen both.

Re: Wow, check out this guy's comment

#70

Post by Prrometheus »

yters wrote: post #17
Prrometheus wrote: post #5

That's an interesting anecdote about business practices, but I don't understand what it has to do with the pro/con virtue/evil desirability/undesirability of being motivated by money.

He was successful despite not selling out his principles and succumbing to the motivation of money.

How is he not motivated by money in this post? Is plumbing his love and passion, or is he trying to provide for his family? And what's so wrong about being motivated by money, except for that it offends the secular liberal religion?
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