I've never met Markus Persson, but its obvious from reading his tweets and posts that he is a good person. If anyone deserves the success he's had, its him.
I love you, dad
81–90 of 219 posts
Re: I love you, dad
#82That 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.
I too lost my Father, but at a young age (12). Deal with your emotions as you can, and take time for yourself. That is the only advice that I found is portable across different people.
Its been 15 years for me, and it gets easier with time. But recently I hit the 15 year mark and just lost it. For some reason that number was bigger than any year previously. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that I have lived 55% of my life without my father around.
Re: I love you, dad
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The more I learn about social data, the more I learn to appreciate traditional values and wisdom.
Re: I love you, dad
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to have kids and want a partner that is into that, that's fine. However, being self-centered and wanting to be a parent aren't mutually exclusive, as I have met adults whose parents were/are extremely self-centered and that factored in heavily into the abusive situations those adults lived in when they were children. > And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling. I'm not really sure wha…
I know lots of self-centered people that are parents. What I mean is that it is hard to find women that actually WANT to live a life of sacrifice, living for the family, instead of living to themselves. I've met some women that when I ask if they want to be mother they say: "Oh, sure!" And then I ask: "So, when you have your 4 months old kid, you will stay at home to take care of it if your husband is rich enough for…
> What I mean is that it is hard to find women that actually WANT to live a life of sacrifice, living for the family, instead of living to themselves.
Well, in most of the western world women had no choice in the past but to take on those roles, regardless if they wanted to or not. That we see women rejecting this kind of role because they have more choices is a good thing. I'm sure there's plenty of folks out there that still want that lifestyle, but there should be no default assumption of that being the suitable gender role for women.
> "Hell no, the kid can stay in the creche, or watching TV with the babysitter, I must work."
If someone wants to do this and has the means to do so, is there a problem? Sure it might not match what you want with your life, but that just means that person isn't the parental partner for you.
Re: I love you, dad
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to have kids and want a partner that is into that, that's fine. However, being self-centered and wanting to be a parent aren't mutually exclusive, as I have met adults whose parents were/are extremely self-centered and that factored in heavily into the abusive situations those adults lived in when they were children. > And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling. I'm not really sure wha…
I know lots of self-centered people that are parents. What I mean is that it is hard to find women that actually WANT to live a life of sacrifice, living for the family, instead of living to themselves. I've met some women that when I ask if they want to be mother they say: "Oh, sure!" And then I ask: "So, when you have your 4 months old kid, you will stay at home to take care of it if your husband is rich enough for…
My wife won't watch the kid or work (productively). She does online tutoring "work" for effectively ~$3/hour about 5 hours a day while daycare costs ~$7/hour.
I can think of very few choices more important in life than who you marry and bear offspring with. Sadly in my case, none of her habits became visible until well after we had married and had a child.
Re: I love you, dad
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to have kids and want a partner that is into that, that's fine. However, being self-centered and wanting to be a parent aren't mutually exclusive, as I have met adults whose parents were/are extremely self-centered and that factored in heavily into the abusive situations those adults lived in when they were children. > And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling. I'm not really sure wha…
Actually, the crumbling of the family is quite new. The past 50 years has seen a rapid and sad dissolution of the family: http://dalrock.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/p70-126_pdf_hist_...
All this chart shows in an increase in the number of single mother households over time, particularly starting in the 1960s/1970s, in the United States. Whether or not you see that as sad depends on what you know of the living conditions women experienced in the time before that, conditions which gave rise the 2nd wave feminist movements. Suffice it to say the same underlying social and gender disparities existed prior to the increased occurrence of divorce and US society was not more stable or better off before that increase.
Re: I love you, dad
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 huma…
Yes, I belive I understood you. I think apparently I haven't been clear. You are part of the natural order, the same as that tree growing outside my window. Part of what being human is, is to have a sense of what is just. As a result, that sense we all share of what is just is also part of the natural order not a fictional arbitrary construct. Determining that a mother that eats her infant out of spite is an evil act is indeed as fully natural as the growth of the tree towards the sun.
There are constructed, "positive" laws obviously. That it is wrong to jaywalk for example. That it is wrong to torture living creatures to cause pain (and for those creatures with temporal understanding, suffering) on the other hand is not. The latter flows from or is immanent in nature and is an example of natural law. It governs even the behavior of non-humans. Deviations from the natural order have consequences.
Some Eastern cultures raise this cause and effect relationship to the level of a force no less powerful or useful than gravitation for explaining the world (karma for example). In Western cultures, this recognition of the natural order forms the basis of many legal systems. The concept of natural right or natural law in fact is what the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution are founded upon.
There is a long history of the subject if you want to learn more as I obviously have done a bad job of explaining. The work of contemporary jurists like John Finnis [0] at Oxford might be worthwhile.
[0]: Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford University Press, 1997)
Re: I love you, dad
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to have kids and want a partner that is into that, that's fine. However, being self-centered and wanting to be a parent aren't mutually exclusive, as I have met adults whose parents were/are extremely self-centered and that factored in heavily into the abusive situations those adults lived in when they were children. > And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling. I'm not really sure wha…
About crumbling families: I am form Brazil, no-fault divorce was only allowed in the 70s (in comparison to US for example), and divorce rates rose very quickly. Three years ago the divorce laws were made even more lax, and divorce rate tripled immediately (ie: one year after the law, the amount of divorce year-to-year was 3 times). Most of my friends have divorced parents, I knew few people that actually have married…
Is this really a bad thing? Is it better that people stay in marriages they do not want to be a part of rather than be free to separate? Staying in a failed marriage is not necessarily better for kids and may in fact be worse than getting a divorce.
Marriage rates are falling in some countries and places, but that really depends more on the specifics of where you are. In the US, there are a variety of reasons why people are getting married at slower rates these days, but it doesn't really matter how often people get married anyway.
> Also the marriage rates are plummeting too (and although the co-habitation rates are rising, it is not rising fast enough to compensate).
Compensate for what exactly?
Re: I love you, dad
#89I've never met Markus Persson, but its obvious from reading his tweets and posts that he is a good person. If anyone deserves the success he's had, its him.
There's actually quite a few good people in the world. They are just less noticeable than assholes, because they don't stick out as much.
Re: I love you, dad
#90My 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…
1) Try and fix him. I know this is generally thought of as a bad idea, but I think it will be important for you to know that you did everything within your power for him in the event that something bad happens. When (adult) children lose a parent, the ones that mourn the loudest are typically the ones that were not taking care of the parent in their decline. The ones that support them in their declining years get to meet the sad day knowing they did everything they could for their loved one. I think this brings comfort by removing any guilt that someone might have.
2) If recovery is not an option, accept it. If you have run through all the reasonable things to be done to help your father from the outside, there is nothing left for you to do to fix him. Accept him for all his good characteristics and bad, and simply show him love.
3) Wait. Even if you were unable to fix him, he still might come around on his own, which is most likely what needs to happen anyways.