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Daddy isn’t coming back

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Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#141

Post by MauranKilom »

csomar wrote: post #90
SapporoChris wrote: post #3

I have a black thought on this. I would be happy if someone corrected me. When something breaks, sometimes we repair it, sometimes we throw it out. The more valuable the item, the more we will spend to fix it. However even with the most valuable items, we sometimes reluctantly decide that it is broken beyond repair. Are people like this? Are some simply too broken to fix? I feel awful thinking this, but I wonder if t…

That's not how it works in real life. Family (and maybe generous government healthcare) will take care of "too broke" to give any yield, in the future, people. Anyone else who isn't lucky to have that kind of support will find himself in the streets. And that's fine. Societies can only function if the yield from the people it invested in is higher than the investment. This is why socialized healthcare is tricky. If y…

> And that's fine. Societies can only function if the yield from the people it invested in is higher than the investment. This is why socialized healthcare is tricky. If you invest too much, you might be wasting resources and endangering all of your society. If you invest too little, you might be leaving people who would otherwise be productive once the investment is made.

This is quite evidently not how most socialized healthcare systems work. Thankfully so, because you paint a nightmarish picture of people being left to die or suffer if there is no hope of them recouping an investment in their health. In fact, taken to the logical conclusion it would mean killing retirees instead of paying them pensions (imagine what society could spend all that money on, right?).

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#142

Post by R0b0t1 »

paxys wrote: post #43
aerovistae wrote: post #35

Not a comment on the story itself, but rather on the postscript which follows it: > If you are struggling to cope or have been affected by anything in this story, please contact the Samaritans in the UK at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. More information at mind.org.uk, samaritans.org and save.org Years ago, unhappy but not suicidal, I decided to ca…

A single hotline experience not working for you doesn't warrant a blanket "I would never suggest to anyone to call a suicide hotline". There are lots of studies that show that such programs are at least moderately effective ( https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12... )

There's also studies that show the more times you are committed the more likely you are to commit suicide, i.e., that psychiatric hospitals cause suicidal ideation.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#143

Post by R0b0t1 »

watwut wrote: post #114
mjevans wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression differs. The caller left the experience feeling more disheartened and unsupported. Logically that seems like they were at an _increased risk of suicide_ relative to when they called.

He literally answered "no, I am not suicidal" to the "are you suicidal" question. And in fact, he did not became suicidal after. This was not failure of suicide hotline. This was them recognizing he is misusing the service.

If you answer yes they are liable to send someone to kidnap you, so people are trained to not answer yes.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#144

Post by numair »

jstx1 wrote: post #9

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.

There are so many things that could be said about correlation, causation, million-year-old biological and evolutionary design for the changes that happen to people when they have kids, and so on... But all I will say is that I think you’ve just given people a bunch of lousy advice without prefacing it with the disclaimer of “I am of the personal belief...”

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#145

Post by skissane »

xenocratus wrote: post #123
skissane wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a long history of suicidal thoughts, and I’ve even acted on them a few times when I was younger (albeit half-heartedly-if I’d been really serious about it I wouldn’t be here now.) I don’t know if that makes me “at high risk of suicide” but likely people like me are at greater risk than people who don’t have that history. And yet, having kids has actually made it easier for me to resist those thoughts. They hav…

I took the parent comment's point to be not (just) that you could be at risk of slipping back into suicidal thoughts and acting on them, but that this might have genetic causes and you could end up passing these tendencies to your children. At least, I know I've thought/worried about this quite a lot.

I get that concern. Our son is only 8, but he already has a psychiatrist, and a lot of his symptoms are similar to mine (ADHD with significant autistic traits.) Our daughter is 4, she hasn’t been diagnosed with anything yet, but I can see many of the same traits in her, so I would not be surprised if in a few more years she acquires some of those labels too. So definitely I have given them some of the negative aspects of my own genetics. Added to that, I think I am still learning how to be a parent, and so is my wife, and both of us sometimes wish we could go back in time and do things a bit differently with our son, since we worry some of our parenting mistakes may have aggravated his problems.

On the other hand, it is good that they exist, even if they aren’t the world’s most genetically privileged individuals. It is not like they could have had different genetics than they do-either they exist with these genes, or they would never have existed at all. And not all of my genes are bad - our son has inherited my ADHD, my autistic traits, my anxiety - but he’s also inherited an above-average IQ, which gives him an advantage over many other people which partially makes up for those disadvantages. He is in the 3rd grade but he does 9th grade mathematics - most 3rd graders don’t have the genes for that, he does. Our daughter has so far not been so precocious, but I still get the sense from talking to her that she is smarter than the average 4 year old, so I think she has a bright intellectual future as well.

And I think a lot of my problems have been not just due to my genes, but also due to my own lack of self-understanding, and my parents’ poor understanding of me. Even though I can see how I inherited these traits from my parents, my parents possess them in a more attenuated form, and they lack self-awareness that they have them. By contrast, being very well aware of my own traits, and seeing the same traits in my children, I’m hopeful I can give them guidance on how to manage them which nobody ever gave me when I was young-and beyond guidance, empathy-I never felt my parents really understood what it was like to be me, I feel like they wanted to be empathetic but lacked the imagination (theory of mind?) to really do so. I hope I can do better, and our kids might avoid some of the life problems I have faced. We will see.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#146

Post by animal_spirits »

muuglay wrote: post #79

Suicide is a hard topic. My mom did it. I don't talk to my father. I might be autistic or have aspbergers, and I dont understand why I wake up. I'm a robot emulating a human. I have to do weed to grt any mystery of a cosmic connection because we are strange primates. I hate my job which causes a disease of more when even after excelling in a fang job making over seven figures, I feel very little joy. I just have hope…

Do you make art? I don't know how it feels to lose a family member to suicide, but I do remember how it feels to feel nothing. I started making art... In reality I forced myself to make art. Doodling first, then drawing and sketching and more complicated designs. I learned that art is like exercising, but instead of building muscle I was building physical emotions, in a sense. I had to train myself to make something tangible out of my thoughts and feelings in a way that I could prove to myself that they existed at all.

It wasn't easy, it was hard. Painful and scary and exciting and anxiety inducing and hopeful. I started by forcing myself to do it but the more and more I practiced the easier it became to search for inspiration within myself - like digging a well. At first it was sand and dust and rock; nothing alive. But the deeper I dug I found clay and mud and water and eventually I _learned_ how to find that spring of life within myself, and I could use that water to irrigate the fields and find life and mystery and inspiration in the world around me.

I don't know if art is what makes us human, but I found that art at least showed me what makes me feel alive.

Here's a song I thought of while writing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FeD16vu_qQ

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#147

Post by titanomachy »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #32
micromacrofoot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

Also social pressure and expectations. How many people would feel comfortable saying "Sorry mom/dad/friend/potential partner, I'm not going to have kids because I'm worried I might not be a good parent or maybe even take my own life"?

I said it. I'm not suicidal, but I told my partner that I wouldn't be comfortable having kids unless I could significantly improve my mental health, and that while I would keep trying I couldn't be sure that I ever would.

That ended our relationship. I think it was good to be up-front about it.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#148

Post by dbt00 »

cyberpunk wrote: post #122
bladegash wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has watched their parent struggle with - and ultimately pass away from - lung cancer, I can say that in my case the memory of them was far from their last days. I still remember them as my dad, the way you do when you’re a kid. The person that is a superhero and strongest person there is/was. FWIW, my dad passed away at home under hospice care, with me there to care for him for the last few days. It wa…

I've still got both ahead, I guess I was a bit cocksure about how I would deal with it.. It's a tricky line to find for me between 'letting my kid watch me slowly die' or err.. not.. This is a ridiculously personal question and just ignore it if not, but it's something I've had in my mind for a while... If your pop had taken the cyberpunk route, and just pissed off during those last 2 months, would you have felt him…

I watched my grandfather do the slow fade in his mid 80s -- he spent the last year or so not really knowing where he was, not able to open his eyes, rarely knowing who he was talking to.

It was hard. And both my dad and I knew that he would never have wanted to keep going past his ability to communicate and interact. I don't think he would have minded being bed ridden, but feeling hopeless and helpless and lost, that was hard as hell.

Everybody's got their own take on this, and I have mine. If he had the means and the will to make the choice, and had taken that path, knowing that he had no more meaningful moments left to him for the rest of his life -- I would not have resented him for it and I don't think anyone else would have. But if he was able to be present, even in his weakened condition, I would have been happy to sit there in a room with him and tell stupid jokes for months until he was gone.

He's been gone over 10 years now. But I can tell you now that while I do have that picture of him, its not the one I think of when call him to mind -- I think of all the times we spent at his house joking, playing, laughing. I remember my oldest kid putting a bow on his head at Christmas and him laughing and playing along. I remember my youngest kid sitting on his lap at his 60th wedding anniversary party and him being pleased as punch to just hang out with her. The good memories always win in the end.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#149

Post by GDC7 »

The fact that people in here are considering waiting to have a kid till they can self-diagnose themselves as mentally stable enough not to kill themselves, is itself an indicator that people who clicked on this HN thread are at higher risk for depression.

Me included.

The non-depressed person goes about the world as they owned it, thinking nothing but good things will come their way, they have the confidence to try half-court shots and so forth.

People were never made to think about all the negative stuff potentially happening to them.

That was the state of the world back in the African plains, if we had enough data to plot the diminishing of interpersonal violence and the rise of depression I have a feeling that there'd be a strong correlation between the two

Matter of fact widespread interpersonal violence is what happens when most (if not all people) go about the world with as they owned it.

Re: Daddy isn’t coming back

#150

Post by anon9001 »

muuglay wrote: post #79

Suicide is a hard topic. My mom did it. I don't talk to my father. I might be autistic or have aspbergers, and I dont understand why I wake up. I'm a robot emulating a human. I have to do weed to grt any mystery of a cosmic connection because we are strange primates. I hate my job which causes a disease of more when even after excelling in a fang job making over seven figures, I feel very little joy. I just have hope…

Congrats on your retirement, sorry to hear about your family difficulties.

Pothead here, also probably autistic, also dealt with a lot of family trauma, also positioned to retire soon.

If you're smoking weed to feel a "cosmic connection" (which is reasonable IMO), you might want to look into trying more powerful psychedelics.

There's a lot of interesting research going on with mushrooms for depression: https://www.webmd.com/depression/news/20210415/study-magic-m...

I'm planning on waiting until I'm fully out of tech, then tripping balls and working on fixing myself instead of fixing code.

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