Comment by tvmalsv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tvmalsv | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I was going to say much the same. As I have gotten older (46yo currently), I've come to realize that my thoughts are generally the same as when I was a teenager. It was a rather enlightening moment when I discovered it was true for a great many people that I would consider old.

Sure, I know more things, but forgotten others. I like to think the former outnumber the latter. Perhaps I'm wiser. Perhaps not.

But, for the most part, I still have the same thoughts as before, be they wonder, delight, dirty, sad. Hopefully I will express the correct ones at the proper times, but probably won't.

I found it fascinating when I realized that most others are in the same boat. The guy standing next to me at the bank might be 73 but he is obviously enthralled with the pretty teller behind the window, and I'm sure that if I told him a dirty joke, or even one that disparages someone's race, gender, or religion, we would both laugh because we are too old to care about political correctness, and besides, we are thinking like the teenagers we feel we are, anyway.

And we'll laugh without guilt because we understand that a joke can be funny and still not lower our respect of those that resemble the characters in our jokes, and I hope others are telling equally funny jokes with characters bearing a striking resemblance to myself.

And this is why aging should be cured.

Read his post again. There is nothing there to suggest any diseased thinking in need of curing. If anything, it is as humble in its honesty as it is hope-giving for a world beside itself with anxiety about aging.

Not diseased thinking. Diseased body, as there's a healthy mind in an ailing body. That's how I read it, anyway.

That's how i meant it.

I said nothing about diseased thinking. The fact that old people are like young people, only in failing bodies is why aging should be cured. There is nothing positive about aging, contrary to what some people like to insist.

You are obviously using this context to make a personal point. Not everyone gets lazy about being sensitive as they get older.

It's hard to get lazy about a habit that you never possessed.

That’s an awfully awful defense of bigotry. So unaware, so unempathic, so awful through and through.

I really hope that I will never think that way, no matter how old I am.

Ok.

Well done attempting to show an example of perceived bigotry by displaying proper bigotry.

But don't worry, as you age, if you are as lucky as the OP has been and as many other aging folks have for years ... nothing should change!

>That’s an awfully awful defense of bigotry. So unaware, so unempathic, so awful through and through.

Did you use his simple remark as an excuse to have an outlet for your own hatred?

There are far greater injusticies in the world to be so furius about than two old people laughing (and betweem themselves too) with a "culturally insensitive" or even racist joke.

The one's who can't stand such things, are the ancestors of the very countries that perpetuated the worst racist crimes. So a lot of this PC fervor can be ascribed to guilt, or as an outlet for the same puritan and prudish thinking that made those cultures consider blacks as inferior (immoral, lustful, etc) in the first place.

In the 7 billion-something world (and I've been to most of it), regular people enjoy what you'd call a "racist" joke, INCLUDING for themselves and their own cultures. It's a way to laughs at one's neighbors but at one's self too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com