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How will the miracle happen today?

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Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#151

Post by cal_dent »

jkingsman wrote: post #142
pizzathyme wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage people to test this out for themselves, I think you will find a different result. People today are starved for in-person connection, but are afraid to initiate the conversation. This doesn't come naturally to me, but after working on it over a few years, 95% of the time strangers are excited to chat and say hi and make a friend.

You mentioned working on it — do you have a particular strategy, venue, or opening line/guiding ethos that you find works well? I love making friends with strangers, but usually rely on the "handshake protocol" of a casual observation or small talk that is then accepted (with a similar slight-deepening or extension of the thought) or rejected (casual assent or no response at all), until the bandwidth opens and I can…

FWIW I think you're already doing the thing. That's it. But I'd suggest trying not to care too much about optimisation. It's unnecessary in my view because it implicit puts goals & outcomes as the end, when it's, ore about meandering and seeing where things go, endless possibilities.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#152

Post by andrewl »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #78
bryanlarsen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the 0.1% ruin it completely. It takes only one bad apple to spoil the entire barrel. (Literally: the bad apple produces ethylene which spoils the rest of the apples in the barrel). Examples of this phenomenon are everywhere. One bad cop makes the entire force untrustworthy, two to three unruly kids can make a classroom unteachable, et cetera. And a 0.1% chance of a bad encounter with a stranger as a vulnerable pe…

You're gong to throw away a life of living above fear if you focus on the 0.1%. And you'll never know what you were missing. You can stay at home your whole life, avoid travel, avoid meeting people. From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances".

Not traveling alone on foot in a country in which you barely speak the language does not mean staying shut in your house and never traveling at all and never meeting people. There is a middle ground.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#153

Post by eightys3v3n »

It seems some commenters feel the author was taking advantage of all those people who helped them. I disagree.

I think they are missing a large part of the situation through lack of experience, a selfish focus, or some other different perspective I don't understand. I very much doubt that any of the people who helped him along his travels thought he was in dire straights and needed the resources more than they did (which might be fraud if he had lots of resources and refused to use them in favour of lying to others to take their resources). I don't think someone who picks up a hitch hiker does so because they think the other person will die if they don't so it's worth the driver being taken advantage of.

I would be willing to share resources if someone knocked on my door and asked to camp in my backyar; for pretty much nothing but the expectation of mutual respect between myself, them, and the rest of society. Though I would also offer a meal for the chance to hear about what they were doing and why. No part of that situation involves me thinking they Need my backyard or Need to be fed to live. In fact, I would do it thinking they left a job and a normal life and chose the journey they're on; my assumption would be that when they were finished they would move back to a more regular life. Where I would have a problem is if the person seemed clearly intent on living like that their whole life; taking without giving. So in a way, my expectation is that the person is giving back in the experiences and stories they share with others, in the knowledge and experience they take back into a regular life; I will happily contribute to that. I don't think this changes regardless of how much someone has so I don't think it matters if someone from Canada travels Africa for example. I don't see any reason to believe he was lying to people to make them feel sorry for him.

Another aspect is that often he was indirectly selecting for people who were willing to share resources. By hitch hiking one is excluding anyone who feels they and society get no value from this person. One is excluding anyone who feels they would be taken advantage of by helping a hitch hiker. Those kinds of people just don't stop the car. Therefore anyone who helped him was obviously willing to do so and felt they would benefit more than what they expended to help.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#154

Post by thunderbong »

monktastic1 wrote: post #107
exdeejay_ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inedible?

Indelible, probably -- though I admit that both trying to eat and trying to delete that passage failed. (I jest -- "impossible to forget," of course.)

Interesting! I meant "incredible", though. Fixed now.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#155

Post by JKCalhoun »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #122
JKCalhoun wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they're human beings. I think the point is, should you, statistically, live a life of fear based on possibly negligible odds of death or assault?

> negligible odds of death or assault? Negligible odds of death I'll buy, but a very large number of my women friends over my life have been sexually assaulted (and probably far more than I realize, it's not like it's something you bring up during holiday dinner). I'm often shocked by how few men realize how prevalent this is. The idea that "women who aren't comfortably traveling the world alone depending on the kind…

I'm male and I was speaking of males (male friends and co-workers for example).

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#156

Post by dpc050505 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #61
Fiveplus wrote: post #32

I couldn't help but focus on the vicarious adventure aspect Kelly mentions which was the "payment" he offered drivers in exchange for the ride. This is a mechanism that has largely been deprecated by the modern attention economy. In the era of hitchhiking, the bandwidth for novelty was low. A driver on a long commute had no podcasts, no Spotify or audiobooks. A stranger with a story was high value. The transaction wa…

I've seen it work the other way: some evangelical Christians picked me and friend up in Alaska and spent the whole ride proselytizing, ha ha.

I got picked up by a born again christian women hitch-hiking in the interior of British Columbia. She was telling us about smoking pot with her friends at a retirement home. Good times

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#157

Post by bpt3 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #144
bpt3 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize I'm talking about the author (KK), not the people he was basically grifting? I have edited my comment to make it more clear.

I did not realize, thanks for the clarification. I think you're leaning a little too hard on Kevin though. Grifting is putting a bit of a fine point on it.

I figured not, apologies for not making it clear.

KK is basically encouraging people to go out in the world and say "what can this place do for me today?" which is bad enough on its surface, but he's doing it while interacting with people (in this story at least) who have much, much less than him in so many ways. I'm not sure what you want to call it exactly, but it feels exploitative and antisocial to me at a minimum.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#158

Post by dpc050505 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #87
JKCalhoun wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're gong to throw away a life of living above fear if you focus on the 0.1%. And you'll never know what you were missing. You can stay at home your whole life, avoid travel, avoid meeting people. From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances".

Me too. But is it the privilege of being large, male and white with a small but real family safety net? I specifically specified "vulnerable people" in my comment.

I know several women who've travelled alone at various places in South America.

My sister had her credit card blocked by her bank while travelling in Belize just before coming home. She got a ton of help from locals who understood her predicament.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#159

Post by lukan »

f1shy wrote: post #76
lukan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is absolutely not the same being poor, in contrast to having money and not using it as part of a kind of game." It is definitely not the same if there is a safety net you always can call and go back to. A true poor person does not have that. But if you have done the livestyle and know that you can get by without money, you do loose some fear of loosing money. That is indeed a liberating feeling and did helped me gro…

> But if you have done the livestyle and know that you can get by without money, you do loose some fear of loosing money. I disagree. I’ve seen people that used to say “I was unemployed, I don’t fear unemployment”… until they lost the job. To me is like saying “I will go to see the bear behind bars in the zoo, so that when I see one in the wild I do not fear.” The people I know that actually were poor fear poverty th…

I mean, it depends of course. Especially now that I have children, who depend on me. I do know, even with kids you can hitchhike, do work exchange, etc. but it is a whole different story than doing it on my own, so I would never claim I transcended above existential fears regarding money. But I do believe my base attitude is way more relaxed to always find a way somehow and that helps me a lot to not get a heart attack considering all the stress I do have to face.

About others I don't know I won't judge, but surely quite some like living in a illusion, no doubt about it.

Re: How will the miracle happen today?

#160

Post by buellerbueller »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #122
JKCalhoun wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they're human beings. I think the point is, should you, statistically, live a life of fear based on possibly negligible odds of death or assault?

> negligible odds of death or assault? Negligible odds of death I'll buy, but a very large number of my women friends over my life have been sexually assaulted (and probably far more than I realize, it's not like it's something you bring up during holiday dinner). I'm often shocked by how few men realize how prevalent this is. The idea that "women who aren't comfortably traveling the world alone depending on the kind…

It is also more likely than not for assault victims that their assaulter is known to them, which goes back to the original point: how much more likely is a woman traveling the world to be assaulted or killed than one who is just existing in her everyday environs?

My original point still stands: the commenter made a big claim: world travel is (more) risky for women (than not world travel), but provided little evidence to support said claim.

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