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Nine things I learned in ninety years

edwardpackard.com

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Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#201

Post by james_marks »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #183
malnourish wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm married to my wife. We lived together happily for more than a decade before we married. We are childless atheists in a neighborhood of other childless, atheist, married couples, some of whom have been together almost as long as my wife and I have been alive. By your definition, are we all unmarried or living in disharmony?

> By your definition, are we all unmarried or living in disharmony? If we consider what the word meant up until about 50 years ago, then yes. If we consider the new definition, of "you signed a piece of paper given to you by the government, and gave it back to the government". Then, sure, you are married. I'm not trying to insult you or denigrate you, but again, if we use the word marriage for all relations between t…

No one is suggesting marriage means "all relations between two human beings". Only that there are many ways to demonstrate and be committed to a person. The legal recognization by a church or government is one version, but not the key ingredient.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#202

Post by Kye »

FacelessJim wrote: post #100
thehours wrote: post #64

I was hoping for more of the author’s own perspective over those ninety years. Instead, it read more like a stitching project of other people's ideas. In particular the barrage of quote fragments disrupted the flow and made it harder for me to engage with the main point of each section.

It is often the case, that one’s perspective is a personal synthesis of external ideas. The act of quoting great past authors is also a way of recognizing where your influences come from. To describe by association how you think, or aspire to. These are very difficult topics to properly talk about and correctly express all the nuance in the feeling that you try to convey, and many authors are quoted because they nail…

It turns out all the aliens in Darmok were very old and that's why they spoke in reference and metaphor.

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

Meanwhile, I communicate exclusively in Star Trek references.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#203

Post by BarryMilo »

coldtea wrote: post #127
shark1 wrote: post #59

> "...happiness to become one’s default state of mind." I have read psychologists saying that "happiness as default state" is a social construct myth of modern times. You cannot be happy all the time, the fact of being unhappy sometimes is what drives you self-reflect and to chase meaning to your life. To feel pleasure you need to feel some pain.

> I have read psychologists saying that "happiness as default state" is a social construct myth of modern times. Psychologists are what's the actual social construct myth of modern times. > You cannot be happy all the time That's not what "happiness as default state" implies though. It's about happiness being the disposition you opt for, as opposed to wallowing in misery and seeing fault in everything as your baselin…

Psychologists are a myth?

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#204

Post by flanked-evergl »

james_marks wrote: post #201
flanked-evergl wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By your definition, are we all unmarried or living in disharmony? If we consider what the word meant up until about 50 years ago, then yes. If we consider the new definition, of "you signed a piece of paper given to you by the government, and gave it back to the government". Then, sure, you are married. I'm not trying to insult you or denigrate you, but again, if we use the word marriage for all relations between t…

No one is suggesting marriage means "all relations between two human beings". Only that there are many ways to demonstrate and be committed to a person. The legal recognization by a church or government is one version, but not the key ingredient.

> Only that there are many ways to demonstrate and be committed to a person.

And we don't need to use the word marriage for all of them.

> The legal recognization by a church or government is one version, but not the key ingredient.

The covenant with god has been a key ingredient for centuries.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#205

Post by psychoslave »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #179
b_e_n_t_o_n wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's a mistranslation and Hanh means it's not complicated to be a Buddha. Many things in life are very simple, and also very hard.

I'm sure most folks here have seen the talk, but Rich Hickey's Simple Made Easy # is a superb discussion about this in the context of software. # https://youtu.be/SxdOUGdseq4?si=fbRmd27oY80LZxw6

Found it last month, don’t remember how, but I did share it with the rest of my team. Excellent talk, it does have many "eternal" points to rebound on the essay vocabulary.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#206

Post by astura »

nly wrote: post #63
flanked-evergl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even more outsized role is played by a virtuous life. It may not make you a billionaire, but if you finish high school, get a full-time job once you finish school, get married before you have children, then you are quite likely to have a good life. We are doing a disservice to our fellow man by not telling them this truth.

Those are some strangely arbitrary not-virtues.

It's a shitty conservative talking point called the 'Success Sequence.'

https://archive.is/9Onj3

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#207

Post by grumbelbart2 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #153
ropable wrote: post #36

> what an outsized role is played by luck This speaks to me. So much of our life circumstances are beyond our control (parents, genetics, geography, society, wider economy, etc.) It's humbling, how much of our success or failure is influenced by pure chance.

Well the other way to look at it is beyond initial conditions luck. You get to take swings every day and luck plays a role there. So keep moving forwards, flipping the coin in life.

The bigger picture is though that taking swings every day also requires a bit of "luck". Some people just don't have the energy, education, mindset, or environment.

It's easy to assume it would be in our control, but if you're just tired all day every day because, say, your hormone balance is off and no one can tell you why, you might statistically accomplish less than others.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#208

Post by flanked-evergl »

malnourish wrote: post #200
flanked-evergl wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By your definition, are we all unmarried or living in disharmony? If we consider what the word meant up until about 50 years ago, then yes. If we consider the new definition, of "you signed a piece of paper given to you by the government, and gave it back to the government". Then, sure, you are married. I'm not trying to insult you or denigrate you, but again, if we use the word marriage for all relations between t…

I disagree; we have gained the ability to understand how different sorts want to share their lives with their families and communities. Do you hold the same position for marriages in other traditions - for example, Shintoism, indigenous belief systems, Hinduism, paganism, etc? Many such religions don't have the same concept of a marriage as a covenant with God, yet have existed for quite some time.

[dead]

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#209

Post by piva00 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #164
piva00 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understood my comment, I will spell it out: data by itself just quantifies, doesn't qualify. It doesn't qualify why marrying before having children is better, it just states that, for some reason, the outcomes are better. Now you need to do the qualitative research to understand what are the causes for it, it could be that marriage is a signal for stable relationships, in that case marrying doesn't…

These things I named correlate to better outcomes, we have nothing that indicates that not doing these things generate similar favourable outcomes … but we should continue to tell people that it's not necessary for them to do these things to have good outcomes as we have not done enough qualitative research to know what almost all of our forefathers have known, and it's best that people experiment more and see if may…

> These things I named correlate to better outcomes, we have nothing that indicates that not doing these things generate similar favourable outcomes

Exactly, they correlate but there's nothing saying that just because traditionally it has correlated it means that getting married is the reason for it.

Traditionally only marriage was accepted as the means to form a family, even up to this day people will be shunned by their families for having kids out of wedlock, even in a loving relationship, don't you think being shunned by grandparents would also cause worse outcomes? Considering that some of these being shunned are also of younger age, less support from family members would mean worse outcomes.

Your data doesn't even discriminate about age groups, it's a blanket statement "marriage leads to better outcomes", leading to the question (which you could find data for): which groups? Are there other parameters/aspects that lead to better outcomes which are correlating with marriage rates? What about marriage exactly is causing better outcomes? It's not marriage itself since a lot of marriages end in divorce or an unhealthy home environment, so what is it?

Those are the insights that data can lead you into. Your take is just to do whatever has been done because it's been working, without even questioning why it might work, and what can be done to lead to better outcomes without requiring marriage.

> but we should continue to tell people that it's not necessary for them to do these things to have good outcomes as we have not done enough qualitative research to know what almost all of our forefathers have known, and it's best that people experiment more and see if maybe the right combination of unemployment, promiscuity and lack of education could not create equally good outcomes for them.

This is just moral grandstanding without substance, the world changes, traditions change (the tradition of marriage used to be about property, changing ownership of a woman from her father to her husband, for example), just blind belief in traditions is, at best, ignorant, and at worst produces this bigoted worldview.

You'd do much better if you believed in traditions while also questioning the "whys" behind it, at least to understand better why some tradition you believe might have created better outcomes, and how those processes can be applied outside of your tradition.

That is, if you are a good person and want everyone else to also have a better life even if living outside of what your view of morality is, and not only living life the way your morality prescribes to because that's, supposedly, the only way.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#210

Post by jebarker »

K0balt wrote: post #78
shark1 wrote: post #59

> "...happiness to become one’s default state of mind." I have read psychologists saying that "happiness as default state" is a social construct myth of modern times. You cannot be happy all the time, the fact of being unhappy sometimes is what drives you self-reflect and to chase meaning to your life. To feel pleasure you need to feel some pain.

I would argue that perhaps you have confused happiness with joy, or I have confused happiness with a lack of sadness, or perhaps with satisfaction. While I find that joy is a fickle and fleeting thing, I feel that I am happy most of the time, satisfied that things are as they must be, or at least close enough that the state of affairs does not poorly reflect on my efforts. Sadness or grief make their appearance, but…

I tend to think of (a default state of) happiness as being akin to equanimity. Not indifference, but acceptance of life as it is right now because that tends to diffuse your suffering. Contentment would be another appropriate word for this I think.
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