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I love you, dad

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Re: I love you, dad

#61

Post by kristofferR »

shawn-butler wrote: post #50
kristofferR wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because randomness isn't conscious. As humans we tend to place a lot of purely human ideals/ideas on the non-human world, but they're all actually things we've just made up. Goodness/badness/fairness/unfairness aren't "real things" existing in nature; they’re just something humanity has created in our minds and societies. No things has an inherent goodness or badness, we as humans just think/decide it is. Don't get m…

This is of course obviously false. Morality is a part of human nature. It isn't gifted by the supernatural. Therefore concepts like justice, good, bad have as real an existence as you. If humans are part of the natural order so is natural law.

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, but I'm as strong as a non-believer in the supernatural/religious you can possibly be. I'm certainly not arguing that a supernatual force is determining what is good or bad, I'm arguing for the exact opposite - that there is no such predetermined thing in nature and that it is a purely human construct/idea.

What I'm saying is simply that nothing is inherently good or bad, it's humans who assign the purely human concepts of fairness/justice/goodness/badness to things/actions/events.

Re: I love you, dad

#62

Post by chimeracoder »

jbail wrote: post #6

That gave me chills. I'm constantly impressed by people that have the ability to share their personal life with the world in an honest way that reveals the vulnerabilities we all share as humans. It is so much more refreshing than the opposite, where we pretend our lives are perfect and we never experience moments of doubt or melancholy. It is rare to see someone make a post like this. This is precisely what makes it…

I can't find a mirror of Mark Pilgrim's blog post from 2010 on losing a friend of 25 years. That haunted me.

EDIT: Here it is: http://web.archive.org/web/20101214221345/http://diveintomar...

Re: I love you, dad

#63

Post by thispassisweak »

This hit pretty close to home. My father just moved in with me after calling me last week and telling me he was going to kill himself. I managed to calm him down and convince him to move in with me for a while, so hopefully this is the beginning of the road to recovery.

Reading the comments helps to know there are others helping to carry the burdens of their own families. Thanks to everyone for sharing your stories.

Re: I love you, dad

#64

Post by alexakarpov »

kristofferR wrote: post #54
alexakarpov wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some indicators that it does make a difference; too lazy to dig those up, but it should not be surprising that adhering to some religious doctrine that discourages activity X should have some effect on reducing the frequency of X abuse among the adherents (not just the reported numbers, but actual values too). However, what I wanted to say is more like - if you don't have a crane, yet need to lift an X-wing…

On the other hand - when you strongly discourage something and decide to make doing it wrong/immoral, you also make it very taboo and stigmatized to talk about, which can be incredibly dangerous. This is very obvious with illegal drug use and sex, problems related to them (drug addiction and unwanted pregnancies/STDs) are much higher in places where it is strongly discouraged, stigmatized and hard to talk about. Ther…

Oh, of course. Far too many people don't realize that religion (in general, and in the "Bible belt" case, Christianity in particular) should be completely orthogonal to such concerns as science and education, and truths revealed therein. There's no inherent conflict, of course; but people from both sides are guilty of acting as if there's conflict. Unfortunately for religious people, they have started it first in ages past, when religion was a standard, and so now they tend to have harder time learning the error of their ways.

Re: I love you, dad

#65

Post by bad_user »

riffraff wrote: post #24
jbail wrote: post #6

That gave me chills. I'm constantly impressed by people that have the ability to share their personal life with the world in an honest way that reveals the vulnerabilities we all share as humans. It is so much more refreshing than the opposite, where we pretend our lives are perfect and we never experience moments of doubt or melancholy. It is rare to see someone make a post like this. This is precisely what makes it…

I agree with being impressed, but I am not sure the opposite of being able to share is pretending we are perfect. Maybe, it's just being unable to. My dad passed away eleven months ago, no day goes by without thinking of him, and I may be able to get to the end of this without crying, but I can't manage a blog post.

There's no shame in crying and it is great therapy. When losing somebody close, do cry until your tears run out.

Re: I love you, dad

#66

Post by gknoy »

ColinWright wrote: post #57
pekk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many women want to be mothers. Having a kid is easier than falling off a log, it just takes time. However, it's not correct to imply that women with divorced families are worse somehow.

> Having a kid is easier than falling off a log, > it just takes time. Wrong, and to say so like that demonstrates both ignorance and a significant lack of sensitivity.

I think he's correct. Being pregnant and giving birth is tremendously challenging (and rewarding, to many), but is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire rest of your life being about Not You. Not only do you face the constant lack of sleep, but you now have to worry about financial planning, raising the kid to be a good human, etc.

Having a kid is easy. Raising a kid (well) is hard.

Re: I love you, dad

#67

Post by chubbard »

That was a touching story, and I'm sorry to hear about your father's death. My best friend's father was an alcoholic. I watched as my best friend struggled trying to build a relationship with him. I don't think he ever had any of the touching moments you described with his father, and I think it still affects him to this day.

It sounds like you have good memories about him, and knew that he loved you. And for the most part that's all we can ask from our fathers.

Re: I love you, dad

#68

Post by mnicole »

redad wrote: post #2

My father has substance abuse problems too (alcohol dependency for 20 years) and it has destroyed his relationship with my siblings and my mother, he's going to lose what little he has left very soon and I genuinely fear he's going to do something very similar to what is mentioned here. I am the only child that will talk to him without contempt and I have long since left home. He lost his own father very recently and…

AA's founder originally believed that LSD had potential to cure substance abuse, and although he later stepped away from that belief to make religion a bigger aspect of it, researchers believe that it is far more likely to help than even AA itself. There was additional information (along with personal experiences) in a recent Reddit TIL that may be of interest to you - http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14mpow/til_bi...

If that's an option you think he'd try out, perhaps there's a facility nearby that could help.

Edit: If you're going to downvote, do so because something is legitimately wrong and prove otherwise, not because you don't agree with it. This topic is a big deal and my response is equally as serious.

Re: I love you, dad

#69

Post by speeder »

jacoblyles wrote: post #53
pekk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many women want to be mothers. Having a kid is easier than falling off a log, it just takes time. However, it's not correct to imply that women with divorced families are worse somehow.

I would be interested in knowing whether or not one's likelihood to divorce is correlated with whether or not one's parents were divorced. Do you know what the data say? edit: I found some data. It looks like a couple is twice as likely to divorce if one of them comes from a divorced family, and three times as likely if both do: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/26714.php

There are some US department of Justice data that shows stuff like 70% of people in prison being from fatherless homes and other things like that.

There was somewhere in about.com a collection of that sort of data.

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