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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

#331

Post by floxy »

ErigmolCt wrote: post #87
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.

It's wild how much of what we chalk up to merit is really just the invisible scaffolding of luck: being born in the right place, with the right wiring, at the right time...

>the invisible scaffolding of luck: being born in the right place, with the right wiring, at the right time...

That seems overly dismissive of the contribution of our ancestors, fighting against entropy, who paid it forward to their offspring, creating the civilization we now inherit.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#333

Post by Dumblydorr »

psychoslave wrote: post #71

>“It’s not so difficult to be a buddha,” says Thich Nhat Hanh. “Just keep your awakening alive all day long.” And it’s not too complicated to be a permanent tightrope walker either: just stay calm, still and balanced. While ninjas with ignited swords jump all around you and acid-proof sharks lurks at you from the sour sea waiting your fall. Sleepwalking, that’s a perfect title for our current Zeitgeist indeed. Ok, th…

Buddha would probably say it’s very easy to “be” a Buddha. To become one, on the other hand, is hard in my opinion, takes thousands of hours of practice. Once you’re there however, it is open effortless awareness and not hard to maintain, so they say!

Most practitioners get tiny glimpses of aspects of enlightenment, but to integrate and sustain it all is very rare indeed. I wonder if there even 100 Boddhisatvas in the world

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#334

Post by pythonaut_16 »

malnourish wrote: post #178
flanked-evergl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being married or not is just signing a paper. If we ignore almost all of human history save for the past 50 years, then yes. If we redefine marriage to not mean what most humans that have ever used the word meant by it, then yes. But why would we do these things? If you call all relations between two human beings marriage, you gain nothing, you just lose a word. Marriage is a covenant between two people, a man and…

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?

Technically it does make you irrelevant to statistics about child rearing outcomes.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#335

Post by thegrimmest »

CM30 wrote: post #325
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.

Yeah, and it's kinda depressing how hard it is to get people to accept that. Every community and group seems to operate under the assumption that anyone who's not 'successful' is too lazy or selfish to deserve it, and that those who are winning have to be the smartest, hardest working people around. The just world fallacy is strong in communities, especially for artistic and creative endeavours like writing, art, mus…

Best only to worry about what you can control, no? If there are external and internal factors to your success then you should spend 100% of your time focusing on the internal ones, since these are the only ones where productive gains can be made.

Also, the research is in. Grit is the single biggest predictor of economic success. Anyone who is lacking in economic success can be reasonably assumed to lack grit. Whether you label that “lazy” or not is semantics.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#336

Post by unfitted2545 »

dasil003 wrote: post #312
unfitted2545 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sure was lucky to be white. Do you think he could have rolled the dice if he was shackled up?

What a cynical and dismissive take, of no value to anyone. Are you saying that no one of color in that era made any worthwhile contribution to the world? Or are you saying that every white person of the era should hold themselves to the standard of achievement of Thomas Jefferson since that is the power of the privilege they held?

There is truth in saying working harder does seem to generate more luck, in so far as, if you lay in your room all day and did nothing, you won't be getting any luck.

It's just silly to paint yourself as this hard worker that got back what you put in, whilst ignoring the ills that you put in. I'm sure he did good stuff because of work he personally did, but it's laughable to think he could get to where he did, if he wasn't born into the planter class.

And no, that doesn't mean if you were culturally disadvantaged you couldn't do anything, it's just a lot harder and you had no free will in that. Every opportunity (and decision, really) is just a consequence of where and when you are, and should be taken not as a personal character assessment. I guess you could argue that means Jefferson is morally fine because that's just the kinda life he was born into so how would he know different, or maybe he just lacks some empathy :P

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#337

Post by tdrz »

only-one1701 wrote: post #188
hshshshshsh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not prepared. More like a willingness to be open to possibilities. Preparation assume you know something good is coming and can prepare now to face it. Those kind of events are probably not that life changing. Of course there are exceptions. But best things in life come from opportunities that you cannot prepare for in advance. Just willingness to accept it.

Not recognizing and pursuing opportunities is one of my greatest regrets in life. Going to work like hell to teach my kids different.

I used to think the same (and still have regrets about missed opportunities, ie sleepwalking them). But then I think that I'm probably disregarding some other opportunities that I did take and just forgot about them because "For it falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth ..."

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#338

Post by imp0cat »

squigz wrote: post #111
aaronax wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.onedayyoullfindyourself.com/

There's some fairly strange and dated advice in here, like entering a door before a woman being impolite (unless it's a revolving door; those require strength, which women do not have?) or being emasculated by shaking hands while sitting down?

Nope, those are still valid. Revolving doors can really be quite hard to get started even if you're a strong (and heavy) man.

https://www.onedayyoullfindyourself.com/opening-a-golf-umbre... - Hey! I feel attacked! :D

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#339

Post by id »

hamburglar wrote: post #327
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.

I think that in a sense, there is a skill to being lucky. You may have exactly the same opportunities as another person but you may have more capacity to take advantage of those opportunities due to being open minded, adaptable, giving, and curious. I call that lucky.

>due to being open minded, adaptable, giving, and curious

And how do you become that? Exactly, by being lucky.

Re: Nine things I learned in ninety years

#340

Post by fpsvogel »

bluGill wrote: post #311
fpsvogel wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adsolutely. I agree that our lives aren't determined by family background, and we can draw on many other resources, both within ourselves and from other people besides family. If I overstated my point, it's only because I was pushing back against the idea that education, employment, and a traditional family are equally attainable by all, and if someone has failed in any of these areas, it's because they lack virtue c…

Education, employment, and traditional family are useful things to work with though. They give a direction to try to get the poor to go. We can ask questions on how we can get their kids to go to school and study. We can ask questions about how we can get them acceptable jobs. We can ask how we can get them into stable family situations. We will fail a lot, but it gives us a proven framework to work towards. Yes ther…

I agree that these are useful frameworks. When I said they're not equally attainable by all, I meant that for people who are better off, these things can sort of just fall in their lap, whereas poor people more often have to struggle for them. I know I'm saying something that is common sense, but I just wanted to make the point that inspiring people to be more virtuous is great, but a lot of people face material and psychological obstacles which make attaining these things "without much difficulty" (quoting the parent commenter) not very realistic. I think we agree there.

Not many people would openly say that poor people deserve to be poor. Those aren't the words that the parent commenter used, and maybe that wasn't even the intention. But this line of thinking can encourage people who feel this way, by giving their feelings a moral justification.

All I mean is, we should be empathetic toward people who have fewer resources than we do, and not be too quick to credit our accomplishments to our virtuous living.

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