341–350 of 405 posts
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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.
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Statistics without context can be misleading. It’s reasonable to assume that the cause is the prior situation which lead to it , not the act itself. Picture two scenarios: 1. A loving unmarried couple, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or child bearing, lives in an affluent neighbourhood, in a rich country, have steady incomes, and decide to have a child. After ten years they decide “I love you so much. I don…
Proof by analogy is fraud" - Bjarne Stroustrup Yes; page 692 of TC++PL. A good analogy is an excellent way of illustrating an idea, but far too often such analogies are not accompanied by solid reasoning, data, etc
It is the simple things that is the hardest. If anything, having children revealed many of the mentioned. To me, having children is enlightenment
Having children is the literal purpose of all life forms. Birth control is the worst thing that humanity has invented.
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I was thinking something very similar as I read the letter and hear people talk about luck in a similar way. I think attributing things to luck, while seemingly humble, can be dismissive and/or simplistic. Yes, we're all lucky to be in our situations -- living in this time, fed, privileged. Though, whether this luck is experienced positively or not is entirely subjective. Also, to ascribe our given situation to luck…
I was searching for what to answer people who attribute everything I’ve done to luck. There’s the classic “It’s strange because the more I work the more I’m lucky”, but that’s very condescending. Thank you for offering me a positive alternative. In a sense it makes me owe work to my society.
On the other hand, if you received nothing in return for your work, would you do it?
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On the other hand, many things attributed to chance are actually the aggregate effect of other people's choices. If we make choices based on not just what's best for ourselves but what's best for all of us, we will all suddenly become more "lucky". And vice versa, if we only think about ourselves that luck will diminish.
That's a nice point. A society where everyone makes everything just a little bit better for the next random person will be a society full of nice surprises, rather than nasty ones.
Love these. This quote stuck out to me: > It follows, I think, that the luckier you’ve been, the more humility and generous spiritedness you need, and the unluckier you’ve been, the more compassion for yourself you need, and unfair as it may seem, the more you need irrepressible resolve.
Few among the lucky are humble, few among the unlucky are serene, and irrepressible resolve is often met by irresistible fate.
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It's really essential that one have (1) down (to be self-constituted) down in order for (3) not to lead to a circle of confusion. If I feel very assured in my own relationship with the universe, that doesn't depend on how anybody else sees me, and my security does not depend on others being happy with me. And when I don't need to make anybody happy, connection and compassion arise naturally from a place of curiosity-…
Any particular books you recommend? people keep mentioning _how to win friends and influence people_ and I am not sure if it's just mindless productivity gurus hype
I wouldn't recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People, it is all about fine-tuning behavior to make a better impression on people, and that doesn't sound like the heart of the issue you described. The heart of that issue _could_ be that one clings to mind-concepts rather than trusting the whole being and feeling a connection with the universe. If so, one must slowly learn to trust the felt experience of life, to know that gut feelings and open-heartedness are just as important as thoughts (moreso in many respects), to trust that one can relax one's whole being and be carried by an infinite love within. It is a gradual progression.
>“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 th…
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An even more outsized role is played by a virtuous life. It may not make you a billionaire, but if you finish high school, get a full-time job once you finish school, get married before you have children, then you are quite likely to have a good life. We are doing a disservice to our fellow man by not telling them this truth.
To take one of your examples, high school graduation rates vary from ~25% to ~98% in U.S. school districts. It's not because some districts have a lot more virtuous young people, but because some districts are poor and others are wealthy, among other factors. Even if one of those factors is virtuous parents, kids can't choose their parents. I'm not denying our moral agency, but it is often constrained by environment.…
I completely reject the notion that wealth is at all a factor in the intelligence or educational success of a child. Wealth is just a correlation. Neither does national educational systems or policies have more than a tiny effect on education success.
What matters for educational success is the genetical and cultural material of the children. If they are born smart, or are brought up in families who value intelligence or brought up in cultures which value intelligence. Even poverty and schooling become small factors if the child has any of these foundations.
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Nope. Statistically, having children before you get married is much more likely to result in worse outcomes. Maybe cause and effect is inverted, but maybe the better option is to not run a social experiment in fatherless children as we have been doing for the past couple of decades with absolutely no research to suggest that it can result in positive outcomes and loads of data to show that it's almost definitely can'…
I don't think you need to run any experiment. Being married or not is just signing a paper. What matters is if the couple live together and in harmony. You can do so without being married and having children, and it's everyday more common. That's why I'm saying you have cause and effect in the wrong order: children issues are tied to one or both parents not caring about them, and a symptom of that was having children…
If a couple lives together in harmony and have children together, they are married.