‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’
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I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or being true to yourself, or really thinking about yourself at all. It's in being of benefit to the human beings around you. And in serving those around you, you become something that is worth being.
It doesn't matter who you are or where you live, there are poor people around you. There are parentless children, drug addicts, parks that need cleaning, animal shelters that need dog walkers. You can always do something meaningful with your life. Try that, and see what kind of relationships you make. Look at and actually see a homeless person. See how that makes you feel. See if your worrying about your own future maybe drops away, or gets morphed into something you can do something with. See what kinds of other people you run into that way. Focus on, if not bringing joy to other people, then at least making their lives better. See if that doesn't - as a pure byproduct - change your own self-worth. Or maybe just make you less focused on it.
Learning to code in high school is great, you should be proud of that!
So can computers and programming, come to that.
I fundamentally agree with you.
We need things (that we imagine to be) outside of ourselves that are good in order to structure what we do. That otherness can be in the form of God or in the form of ethics, or in the form of whatever we unconsciously pickup as meaningful.
Culturally (in the US at least), I don't think that there are a lot of serious options just laying around for people to pick up if they aren't into religion, and so we unconsciously pick up other people, transient material successes, short term goal fulfillment, or novelty seeking as a substitute for these long term orientations.
When we unconsciously adopt those things (human relationships, solving our short term projects, being smart, or whatever) I think that we're bound to be disappointed because all of those things are pretty finite in what you can do with them: there is always a limit to how close a relationship can be, how healthy your body can be, how much professional success you can attain, and so on.
I have a 17 year old who lives with me, and when he goes off to college, I will be happy. I am glad that I have a lot more in my life than just my children, because in the end it's important that they leave, eventually.
Even your closest human relations need to have limits.
So the choice seems to be between living with short term successes, picking up religion, or doing a lot of intellectual work to try and find meaningful stuff that doesn't have the same frustrating limits as the short-term goals.
At this point, I have been finding that last option much more useful... finally, after two decades of being a dead weight of alienating drag, my degree in philosophy is starting to work out some things.
So, yeah, I think that you're right: an ethic where you place meaning in your life in the wellbeing of humanity in general is a strong idea.
We don't want happiness out of life, we want meaning. And we have the most meaning when we're impacting other people. Impacting people can start small, like your wonderful examples, or be huge like starting a successful company. There are so many ways.
Of course, I understand that achieving happiness can be challenging, and that seeking meaning can be a meaningful step on that path.
But it is possible to have happiness without meaning, and that seems more valuable than meaning without happiness, or happiness that relies on a sense of meaning.
Upon deeper introspection, my own personal experience of “happiness without meaning” is closer to “the meaning is just the universe/physics unfolding (and I happen to be a part of that)”, which is so all-encompassing that it has little meaning itself, in the Kolmogorov complexity sense. And concomitant well-being, which I would define as closer to “completely neutral affective experience” rather than the “positive affective experience” described as hedonic well-being in the study you referenced.
The pursuit of a meaningful life puts way too much pressure on identifying what is meaningful and worth our energies. That would probably decrease my happiness.
What if I can't find any pursuit that I consider to be the most meaningful? Am I OK committing to something that could potentially be less than optimal in terms of meaningfulness?
It isn't that important for me to evaluate my actions on meaningfulness - I'm bound to disappoint my self by that metric.
Prioritizing meaningfulness over happiness is putting the cart before the horse, in my mind.
Today we are experimenting with new phenomena that have never been available to humanity en mass. Effective birth control, gender equality, freedom from restrictive social norms, all of these are very new, and indeed evolutionarily novel. We have not yet learned a tradition of how to operate in this space, we are the pioneers, and unfortunately a lot of missteps befall the pioneers.
Eventually through trial and error, and a kind of evolutionary process, we’ll figure it out, and then that will get passed down as the new value system. Then we’ll have kids again more or less following in the footsteps of their parents, they’ll just be footsteps we wouldn’t necessarily expect.
Pretty sure every generation from the beginning of time has thought of itself as a pioneer exposed to new forces and new phenomena. It's a bit arrogant to think that you're the one and only.
There are a multitude of other changes that have transformed our environment (agriculture, spoken language, written language, barter, commerce, etc.) over the millennia.
> There is no need for anything mystical to be involved.
And yet something mystical has been involved for thousands of years, in virtually every culture. When we tried to eradicate it forcefully (communism), bad things happened. Perhaps there's more to it than you think?
> And yet something mystical...
People need explanations for things, when they don’t have them they invent them.
This is a little disingenuous.
Yes, states described as communist attempted to eradicate religion; to do that, they merely replaced religion with the state. The state became the church, its leaders became the saints.
Don't conflate the example of failed, corrupt Stalinist communist states with the concept of the eradication of religion, they're not at all mutually inclusive.
Can you name a single attempt to eradicate religion that didn't end up with the very description you provide?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_t...
> After he was done with the Nazis, he went back to his old tricks.
According to the article you yourself linked, he was pretty soft on them from after the war until his death.
The difference is that the social structure which promotes the value system is valuable in and of itself (this said as someone who grew up religious but is not anymore). A lot of people can't "walk the path" without others to walk with them.
The only issue is that sometimes that social structure has downsides like occasionally becoming politically charged, self-serving or abusive.
What if at the end, we end up realizing that all there is to life is a struggle in order to propagate our own DNA, and that really this struggle may not be worth it? Humanity as a whole could decide that this is all there is, and then that ultimately there really is no point other than what you make it. What if humanity bucked it's genetic programming, recognizing it for what it really is. And recognizing that what we are really up against, is the laws of physics themselves. That we've been dealt a raw deal, meaning that we must work in some way to sustain our own being, and that only the laws of the universe stop us from being truly free. That in the end, birthing children really isn't a blessing, but a curse. And that truly the best gift you can give your unborn children is the gift of non-existence.
God?
Those questions are semi-rhetorical (although I'd love to hear an answer if you want to have a convo about it), but your paragraph rings some alarm bells for me. Have you read Thomas Nagel's "The Absurd"? I think it directly and decisively addresses many of the concerns you bring up.
Here's a link to the paper: https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Absu...
There lies the rub. What if you don't find anything to be meaningful to you. This implies that there are some activities that are inherently more meaningful that others and you just have to find them. Now you are back to square one.
Can it be rewritten to
> You can always find meaning in anything you do
This doesn't handwave the problem away. Main task is to find meaning in yourself not keep looking for activities that will give you meaning and hope you get lucky.
As you expressed, you see the task as "find meaning in yourself," a concept that can maybe be expressed as "meaning comes from within." This sounds nice! I think what OP was getting at is that this perspective has two problems: 1. It requires you to produce your own sense of "meaning" (whatever that means) that is self-satisfying, AND that works well in the society/community in which you exist; and 2. it is fundamentally self-centered. A hypothesis could be that this perspective seems to most frequently result in a failure to find "meaning" (probably better called "contentment") in anything.
As OP said, faith/religion traditions tend to hand you a set of pre-defined "here's what's meaningful" morals, and these also tend to be skewed towards group value instead of just self-satisfaction. When handed this outlook on meaning/morals, it seems possible there might be benefits - not having to come up with a self-fulfilling sense of meaning that also meshes with broader society, as well as a focus on being useful to the community instead of just yourself.
I personally find the whole "be yourself" / "do what you love" dogma-du-jour to be terrible, and prone to actually resulting in depression and shame. It is at the same time selfish, and self-sabotaging.
For my parents and their siblings that meant the furthest apart they were until mid life, ignoring war service, was around 50 or so miles. Not by choice, but there were jobs, opportunities and housing locally. Not in each other's pockets like in a small village, but near enough to meet up regularly, visit when passing, take me over to my uncle or gran if they needed to go somewhere. There was some overlap between friends. There was always someone pretty locally.
For me and my siblings, friends and cousins, we are a far flung bunch, and it is the same for most of my friends. I have a relative 300 miles one way, one on another continent, another 200 miles the other way who I've almost completely lost touch with. Some friends have even more far flung friends and family. For the most part that seems to have come at a high cost. Not just when someone is taken ill, or at Christmas, but in day to day life, in our ways of parenting, in our closeness (or more accurately our lack of closeness) in day to day life. The lonely mum stuck miles away from relatives, the dad trying to keep it together alone. Maybe it even explains some of the addiction to social media.
Maybe I read far too much into it, having reached an age where mortality is far more apparent, and people I thought as young have died. My parents and their peers seemed to have had a level of contentment with their lot, even though many were in WW2 - sometimes at great cost, that me and my peers have utterly lost.
I have no answers. I wish I did.
I think this is something that VR tech good enough to make you feel like you're really in the same room as someone (meaning not just visuals, but sight, sound, touch, smell) will help with. That may be hundreds of years away though.
If you strip away all the industrial entrepreneur worshiping, there is a beautiful lesson about the ethics of expressing what you want and allowing loved ones to do things for you, because they want to see you happy, because they love the real, full you. I guess one can come from many sides but in the end I agree with the writer of this piece, it is about accepting yourself, including the things you don't like. If you've seen Naruto, this is the height of the series for me: [0] (None of the movies will play though.)
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=naruto+hugs+himself&t=ffsb&ia=vide...
There isn't anything to 'do' to solve this - because there is no problem. She's made trade-offs she wasn't fully aware of and now she's coming to see them for what they are. She'll pout for a few days/months/years and then move on with her life.
This 'become something that is worth being' aka Jordan Peterson cult of 2018, is going to run it's course too, because most people are average, and this 'worth being' is always something an average person isn't already doing. When they start doing it, 'worth being' will become something more difficult surely because it's never enough. What a great way to view yourself as above others and continue being an ego-maniac (what Jordan Peterson is)
Most people are average, which means they can become well-above average at some one useful thing that is "worth being." Most people do get there. "Worth being" clearly implies, that being enough.
If J.P. were actually an ego-maniac he would have been chewed up and spit out by society long ago; standing against the crowd isn't easy work.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DaveRamseyShow
This man specializes in this.
That obviously doesn’t mean a sincere belief in one’s own omniscience, more that the the aura of ‘importance’ bestowed upon things naturally emanate from the centre of the Universe, which is you.
Mind that humans are already pretty much hardwired to do this. Removing external factors of pressure and adding validation in the form of the mass market gospel of ‘find yourself’ just made this a lot more visible.
Funny enough, the people who end up going down to the deep end of this road of finding yourself often find that there is nothing to find, since all your life, you’ve spent it looking for yourself and you never added anything to it. It’s an empty box. You’re the pot at the end of the rainbow that you never thought you needed to put gold into.
From there, people usually split to a few branches. The more transcendentalist amongst us call it the Buddha, the folks with a more philosophical bent call it existential nausea.
The more practical, most of us, go ‘oh.’ and they move on with their lives. Which is probably the most healthy way, anyway.
Sadly, this reflection is quickly forgotten.
Yes, there are issues, the incentivisation around publication etc makes it easy to game the system. However, to extrapolate this to a blanket attitude of distrusting science, "especially when it conflicts with one's own common sense", is incredibly dangerous because it's partly what has made large numbers of us so susceptible to overt manipulation.
"Common sense" is no such thing, and much of proven science could be construed as contradicting common sense. The light-speed limit, quantum spookiness, spacetime curvature, biological evolution - all were once considered contrary to "common sense" - mainly because "common sense" is ultimately derived from the extremely narrow and limited range of human experiences.
It's not about trusting or distrusting "science," it's about trusting or distrusting people who put too much trust into "science," on the principle of it being "science" that "scientists" have determined is truth. I'm not saying let's all go full Amish (or Kaczynski) and live off the land, I write code for a living. I'm just saying that it's easy to fall into the "religion is an old and outdated concept, only idiots and traditionalist fools would believe in such a thing, yet putting complete faith in anything said by anyone who calls themselves a 'scientist' that gets sufficient attention, that's completely totally different, Because Science" trap.
So yes, I would argue that even if someone doesn't understand all the scientific principles behind climate change, they can still reasonably trust "science" and "scientists", since that work is built on top of empirically-backed, peer-evaluated research. In fact, this is necessary since the expertise required to have a critical opinion of the vast majority of scientific research is well beyond us.
Imagine trying to convince someone of incredible religious conviction that their earthly Church demonstrably has repeatedly fallen victim to corruption over the years, only to have her respond to you with, "but that can't be; the Word of God is unquestionably infallible!" There shouldn't be any problem in holding both of those ideas ("the Word of God (Bible) is literally Gospel and infallibly true" and "absolute power corrupts man") in your head at the same time (if anything, the former explicitly reinforces the latter!), and you'd be hard-pressed to find a Catholic today that won't admit that their earthly Church hasn't gone through periods of incredible corruption and downright evil.
Nobody's going to argue the validity of the scientific method, but when you look at the innate nature of man (demonstrated time and again over the course of all recorded history), it's easy to believe that modern "science" is just as corrupt as any other institution man has made at any point in time that rose to power in the minds of the people, i.e. "very"
Both are institutions constructed by greedy, corrupt, stupid, fallible human beings. It's just that the latter has built in several mechanisms to address this. Like science.
So over a long period of time, democracies have proven to be less corrupt then monarchies, and like-wise, science has proven to be less wrong then religion.
But even putting that aside, and accepting for sake of the argument that the political system in use in countries such as the United States is a "democracy" ...still, yes. Did political corruption magically disappear overnight when we stopped being ruled by monarchs? Were all monarchies corrupt to begin with?
"Democracy is to monarchy as science is to religion" is an incredibly muddled comparison that does not make much sense when you break it down. Modern Christianity would not be where it is today without Protestantism questioning core fundamental beliefs and then-current leadership. When does what is accepted as "Science" get to have its version of Protestantism, questioning not just the dogma of "settled science" (the most hilarious oxymoron of all time), but those who spread it to the masses as well?
Why is it that Christians, even Catholics have no problem admitting to the fallibility of what they consider to be their holiest of institutions, yet atheists seem to believe that "science" is inherently always impossible to be anything but utterly pure use of the scientific method conducted with nothing but the utmost honesty, at every level?
The motivations of man are not always pure, especially when in positions of power and/or authority. Even if you want to disregard religion entirely, at least take lessons from the history it has given us.
Science had its "protestant" moment - it was called the Enlightenment, and it result from questioning the dogma of settled knowledge as promulgated by religions through the infallibility of scripture.
I'm not knowledgeable about philosophy or metaphysics but is there even anything approaching consensus on whether or not there even is a "knowledge ceiling" that an individual or even society could ever achieve? (If so, I'd love to know how anyone came to that conclusion lol)
>Science had its "protestant" moment - it was called the Enlightenment, and it result from questioning the dogma of settled knowledge as promulgated by religions through the infallibility of scripture.
You seem to have misunderstood the analogy I was making. I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, yet view Protestantism as having been a positive thing for Christianity as a whole, including Roman Catholicism. When is dogmatic belief in whatever passes for "science" these days going to be scrutinized? Systemic corruption of any sufficiently powerful institution of man is inevitable, and just because the scientific method is about as pure of a means of reasoning about the world around us as we can come up with and has led to profound advancements in technology and our understanding of our world... doesn't mean that everyone's just going to ignore the fact that using the now-widespread dogmatic belief in its infallibility is a pretty powerful means of achieving external political and personal goals unrelated to the pursuit of truth. It's naive to think otherwise.
Yes, agreed that human systems have a tendency to corruption, however the scientific method at least has within it the seeds to "keep the bastards honest" (as we say where I come from). i.e.
1. Nothing stops you from learning and becoming a scientist. 2. Nothing stops you from attempting to repeat published experiments, or if you can't, then to point out why (which are likely to be faults in either the description or execution of the original experiment).
In other words, there is transparency and a basis for objective comparison. Lack of transparency (either through gatekeeping or lack of detail) is considered a bad sign in science. That's what differentiates the scientific method, from say, the "political method", or "the religious method".
As a system, science has brought about a better understanding of the physical world around us and has dramatically improved the lives of every human on the planet.
1. It places empirical observation as the ultimate form of evidence, as opposed to scripture/existing knowledge.
If you observe something that contradicts existing theories and other people can make that observation then existing theories are disproven, the end. This still takes time to propagate, but really only for highly complicated abstract theories(of which climate change might be one!)
2. Science has a built in competitive market type process for selecting 'scripture' and an incentive to constantly be updating it.
Religions have more bureaucratic/despotic approaches to updating knowledge(college of cardinals/pope, influential preachers etc).
3. The core questions science tackles are physical and amenable to observation and maths. The core questions religion tackles are metaphysical, or to put them in evo-psych terms to do with selecting and reproducing rules of behavior that produce good societies in which to live over tens/hundreds of generations.
In as much as science tries to enter into that hyper-long term planning game it should be treated with extreme suspicion, it's a different statistical environment to that of physics and the existing statistical tools of science are probably not up to the task. It's the land of Taleb's fat tails and iterated games and exponential chaos, not statistically modelable quantum experiments(top pick a complicated but tractable problem).
Shitty metaphor: Hard sciences are about solving P problems, or at worst approximating NP or worse, but still computable, problems. Religion and social science are about providing heuristics to uncomputable problems(if you have a C program and all it does is return then it definitely halts etc). In as much as people take the NP approximations as seriously as the P solutions, they're in for some rude awakenings. In as much as a lot of our society does then we're in for a bumpy ride.
Let's break it down into a few constituent parts. We have a thing (scripture / spiritual belief OR the scientific method as applied to the world). Then, nasty, messy fallible people who probably don't floss... do stuff with that thing: they teach it, they do it, they investigate it in their own messy wayd. And then regular joe-schmo's who aren't so involved in the doing-something-with-the-thing get reallll impressed by these doing-stuff people (priests/rabbis/gurus whatever OR scientists of all sorts).
Okay, well here's the thing. I agree that everybody is messy and fallible. I agree that hand-wavy "Science people are right!" talk is wrong, imprecise and has potential to be harmful. At the same time, I believe in the scientific-method-applied-to-the-world. I believe in its power to reveal truth. I do not have that same belief in scripture-or-organized-religion-applied-to-the-world. And I think that's REALLY important. Of course people do stupid things and make mistakes, but when someone puts blind faith in people-trying-to-adhere-to-science, it scares me a lot less than when someone puts blind faith in people-trying-to-adhere-to-a-religion. In fact, I'd much rather people put blind faith in "scientists" than in... any other type of group, really, at least when it comes to revealing knowledge.
Hopefully that made sense, if anyone has thoughts or disagrees, I'm more than happy to hear it.
Yes, day to day there's a certain level of trust put in what scientists say based on their research, everyone can't know everything, but it's not blind faith. With priests, ultimately there's an expectation of belief without evidence.
An alternative would be a community-outlook. I am part of a greater whole. I don't really own anything. We are living a story, together.
I think it's important to subscribe to some kind of overall framework with a worldview and community. We're hard wired for it and if you don't choose it, then consumerism will fill that vacuum and you will find yourself ensnared in mindless consumption.
I have an 80 year old aunt who is a nun who I consider to be one of the wisest people I know. I'm not religious and I have frank and honest discussions with her about religion and philosophy, completely free from judgement. Once we were sharing a drink at a family event and I asked her something to the extent of "at what point did you find yourself?". She replied that she's still finding herself will continue as long as she's alive.
> you will find yourself ensnared in mindless consumption.
Funny how you're both following the religion thing only on the surface. Take a bite, already! Western culture is based on a specific religion whose philosophy hinges around the realization of slave morality as the superior state of being. Following a school of fish is all you get from consumerism, but all those fishes take away things. The reason why it's not going to fill you up is exactly that there's no interest between you and the next fish, and you weren't going to give them anything, anyway. The only thing you effectively give is a few cents towards blood, sweat and tears in some Asian factory or sweatshop. And you're feeling that somewhere, deep down there.
Mind that humans are already pretty much hardwired to do this."
I had trouble parsing your perspective as it was written in a unique way. I don't think humans are hardwired for this, can you back up that claim?
If you study evolutionary biology, there is a wealth of information and studies suggesting we are reciprocally altruistic and help others if they have helped us previously or we think they might help us in the future i.e. reciprocal altruism.
From a innate neuroscientific perspective, mirror neurons respond to actions that we observe in others which, if I recall correctly (correct me if I'm wrong), suggests several counterpoints to people in the west believing they are the "only one that matters" when our brains are constantly lighting up by noticing the actions of others which we are inclined to notice and react to (e.g. help those in need, whether family, friends, relatives, or stranger on the street).
This is a fascinating subject, hope others who know more about Neuroscience can chime in, I only minored in it in undergrad. Also, fusiform face area might be worthy of exploring w.r.t. noticing other and what this implies for the notion of human altruism.
More like objectivisim or individualism. Many of my small talks with people in the west include discussion about Ayn Rand and her work on FountainHead and Atlas Shrugged. After hearing about it for a long time I read the book. And frankly, the whole concept of individualism is strange to me.
Ultimately, the author is making a case for a modern version of Stoicism.
Matthew 11:28-30 - “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
If anything she is blessed to have finally reached the end of her self-effort and encounter the weighty truth we find in Ecclesiastes -- that everything under the sun is indeed meaningless (vanity).
"“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn
“ ‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’"
Or maybe Mark 11:12 and on:
"12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it."
Interestingly enough, this line of thought is not new. People like Auguste Comte in the 1850s saw the industrial and technological revolution as an engine working to erode religion, and he wanted to work towards an alternative.
For many people, religion generally provides two things: 1) An overt faith-based explanation of why we're here, how the world came to be, and how important events are driven (God), and 2) a system of ethical and moral rules evolved over centuries to allow everyone to life their "best life".
As science and technology advanced, many people lost the need for #1, and started to abandon religion entirely. That kind of makes sense, because #1 is often the marquee headline of religion. But in abandoning religion, they also lost #2, the quieter, but perhaps even more important, aspect. There is nothing in today's modern society that can seriously fill that gap. (In the past, fraternal organizations played that role to some extent, but they are largely irrelevant today.)
Comte put together a "Religion of Humanity" in an attempt to provide people with point #2, couched in the familiar structure of religion and ceremony, but without the faith-based belief of point #1. It saw some medium-level success in its day but is now defunct. It was perhaps too early for its time.
However I think the idea is more important now than it ever was. People need an ethical, community-based, traditions-based societal structure they can attend regularly and fall back on, but without the requirement that one believe in faith-based myths and legends. We need a new "Religion of Humanity".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_of_Humanity
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/auguste-comte/a-general-vi...
If, on the other hand, moral rules and ethics are due to the natures of things then there must be someone who intended things to exist in the manner they are intended to exist. That being must be a person because of the principle of sufficient cause (since we exist). Faith is the response to communication from this person. It does not require abandoning of reason, but simply picks up where reason cannot ascend to because of its lack of perspective.
This is not at all clear to me. Can you clarify?
I’m not sure that there is such an absolute reference frame for morality, but this is too long a conversation to get into here!
Following an ethical life path does not provide the same value as rediscovering it.
It's clear to me how all of the reaction and distraction we've started to discover that the current Internet lets us cling to will drive people to start seriously evaluating teachings of mindfulness and Buddhism.
Mindfulness interest is trending the highest it's ever been: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=m...
Also interesting, searches for Buddhism peak yearly in the fall/winter?: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=b...
As long as the US will demonize socialism, people who have nothing won’t get help from the government.
Otherwise, we definitely agree. We are fallen creatures and will drive earth to hell, regardless of which car we decide to drive there in. Only external help can save us from ourselves.
In the past, without the safety net, and with anti-vagrancy laws, the street people would have been doing the work now done by low wage legal and illegal immigrants. It was a hard life, but better than slowly poisoning themselves to death with opioids while living on government aid.
The message in religion, particularly in the message of Christianity, is that life is suffering because of ubiquitous sin - BUT - God came here bodily to teach us how to live, freeing us from the sin of broken laws, and died as a final blood sacrifice to wipe the sin slate clean.
Jesus is definitely the superman to model one's life after (be charitable, be loving, forgive, don't lead others to sin, speak truthfully, don't be a hypocrite, etc...) But, the main point the religion teaches is that salvation can only come through faith that Jesus is God and not by any good works you do.
You can get all rational and say that's all magic mumbo jumbo, but it's actually really good psychology. Belief in a higher power that saves leads to good people. It's beneficial to mental health when you can surrender the notion that anything you do will fix the world and that life isn't hopeless. And there is a power to prayer. We can definitely make things better here, and we are, but no works can eliminate all of the evil in the human heart.
That said, I'd also encourage this person to seek therapy. Sometimes knowing the answer isn't enough and you need help getting there...perhaps with the benefit of medication.
Then again, perhaps religion is just helpful here in the sense that people -- especially those going through emotional/existential crises -- might find it easier to climb out of a hole with dogma as a guide rather than rational thought.
That being said, religion does a pretty poor job of spreading the gospel of loosing oneself in the service of others. It tends to focus on religiosity instead. But imho it does a better job than almost any other institution we have.
Which is to say that as a culture we are pretty terrible at it.
There is no such thing as not worshipping.
Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it J.C. Or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mothergoddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles –
is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things – if they are where you tap real meaning in life – then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level we all know this stuff already – it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart – you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
David Foster Wallace, from This is Water, a commencement speech he gave in 2005.
The only reason he has to assert it like that is because it isn't true. He has a lack of imagination if he's not able to imagine someone who doesn't worship anything. I imagine he'd just move the goalposts though, and say "oh well they worship their lack of worship, which is a form of eating them alive." It's disingenuous at best, but probably just ignorance, so that he can sound profound without really giving a convincing argument.
Perhaps they should read your dissertation on it?
/s
I both agree and disagree with you. On the one hand, you're right that most people would be happier if they committed more and gave more. Human relationships are a positive-sum game.
But people who mindlessly follow that advice are asking to be exploited. History is full of dictators who grew rich and powerful off the backs of people whom they persuaded to think of something other than themselves. "Blut und boden." "Deus, pátria, e família."
What religion is supposed to be (whether it succeeds is a different question) is a moral compass so that one may find happiness and meaning in service to others, without your good intentions being exploited or usurped against your interests.
American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc.
I think parenting has over-corrected from the overly didactic and stern parenting of previous generations to endless "follow your bliss" and "you can do anything" -- which is causing a lot of young people to spin their wheels for decades at a time, never growing up while their body is growing old. It's a shame to see.
I think we're seeing the result of the baby boomer generation, essentially. They rejected the old, as you put it -- stern way of parenting. I'd argue, perhaps it wasn't so much stern as it was the structured.
There was structure, expectations, and responsibilities. Things previous generates required to live. Since then, we've grown increasingly accustomed to insane amounts of wealth (or perhaps debt?).
This enabled us to lax our expectations, because you didn't need to be super disciplined to make the wealth.
The fact that we rebuffed the social norms has it's good and bad, unfortunately it does appear that we took it too far -- at least from a "you can do anything perspective". Yes, you can do anything, but you have to work to get there. It appears a lot of people forget that last part and feel entitled to their wealth / place in society.
I'd put this as "not an extreme" /on any of the axes that we're considering/. Life has an awful lot of dimensions -- if you imagine a very high-dimensional hypercube and draw the optima randomly, the optima are almost guaranteed to be close to some surface (some "extreme").
To my eye, the real problem is finding the correct perspective -- the one at which an optimum lies at an extreme.
Something which has brought a lot of happiness to my life and dramatically changed the way I live is taking responsibility for my own happiness and life choices. I used to spin my wheels and drift through life but at 30 I was diagnosed with cancer. It's a long story and it turned out to not be serious, although I did have two surgeries. There was a time period where it seemed very serious, however, and this period completely changed how I view my own life. I didn't want to die with this sense of being so unfulfilled and I wished I had made better choices. Now I try to make these choices as I live.
And I am envious. I have no impending doom looming above my head and I feel that this really makes me slow and feeling that I have time. I am 38 now and I am pretty aware that my time is ticking away. But there's always another crysis to salvage... I am trying my very best to crawl out of this hole but it's taking way too long.
I feel I lack the very important perspective that you have but these things are profound epiphanies; you can't just talk somebody into having them. They are transformative experiences and the resulting change in you cannot be duplicated by just talking or reading others' stories...
:(
1) Wife cheating on me 2) Divorce after a year of attempting to make it work 3) A clinically diagnosed major depressive episode (mainly brought on by the wife stuff but also some unresolved personal issues) 4) Cancer diagnosis
These years were incredibly formative, despite happening at ~30 years of age. The years since have seen me take control of my own life in ways I would never have before. If I want something I find a way to make it work.
One thing that helps me now is I don't worry about things. There is typically always a way out of a shit situation if you're willing to work for it. I don't know your personal situation but I recommend trying to be grateful for what you've got, set a 5-year plan for what you work and start doing the things you need to do for that 5-year plan (even if they're difficult and don't pay off for a long time). Treat your future self as someone to whom you're going to give a great gift.
You know what they say: "No good sailor is formed by windless sailing" or some such. It's absolutely never too late to not only learn but to get transformed dramatically.
I also got through a ton of crap lately -- been jobless for 6 months but that was only the tip of it. Not gonna bore you, bottom line is that yes, these things make you shift priorities and look at everything with new eyes. That much is true.
What is still not true is that I don't have that mythical perspective that people with near-death experiences gain. I wonder if it's possible to gain it without outlasting cancer or barely surviving a car crash.
As for not worrying, at 38 I learned for the first time in my life to take everything that's happening in stride and without sweating. Basically, if paying the bills and food isn't the threat, I really seriously cannot even get stressed or pissed anymore. Took me several months of a ton of stress to transform though. Looking back at the process, even though it's still ongoing, makes you appreciate how painful and slow a profound change in your character can be.
Being grateful for what you got is, again, not something you just read somewhere and start doing it tomorrow and until you die. Suffering and pain gave me much needed perspective to really become grateful. Nowadays I can't even get upset at my wife or mother if they get pissy at something; I just smile widely because I am happy that they are alive and well, and with me. (In rare cases this is misinterpreted which makes the situation even more hilarious.)
As for own schedule and plans -- thanks, that's a good perspective. I am a pretty relentless guy and I have a "grand vision" and I almost never lose the horizon but I fully appreciate that having a self-imposed deadline can be a motivator.
Do you have an advice on how do I sparkle the strong emotional reaction that makes one not want to waste another minute? I really cannot consciously replicate that. I envy people like you who got that epiphany and are now living under its flag.
In the past I've had goals, I "try to make it work" as you say. How do you not worry about the thing that you are trying to make it work?
> Treat your future self as someone to whom you're going to give a great gift.
Thank you for writing about your perspective. I've heard similar suggestions before, but never really focused/internalized it.
jefftk makes this point in a reflection on raising his own child--that there is great value in providing an environment which is predictable: https://www.jefftk.com/p/how-to-parent-more-predictably
I just wish I had gotten patents for the things I worked on in grad school, even if those patents belonged to the university.
These days I strongly advise young people to just get a bachelors and forget the rest unless it's required (e.g. for teaching).
Really depends what you want from life doenst it? It becomes problematic when people do it without realizing the consequences.
My wife's family wasn't rich, but the parenting attitude was "whatever you want, follow your heart". The kids had painting, sculpting, pianos, guitars, drums, dance lessons, soccer, karate, foreign language tutors, and anything else they desired. As soon as they got bored or frustrated, they quit and moved on to the next thing. The hope from the parents was if they were exposed to enough stuff, they'd find their passion. Of the three kids, only my wife has a steady job, and only because I nearly broke up with her when she was job hopping while we were dating. The other siblings quit their jobs at the first sign of any real struggle and move back in with their parents. I believe it's because they've never been forced to work past the uninteresting or difficult parts of any hobby or job in the past.
I don't know where the line should be drawn between giving kids every opportunity to find their passion versus making them stick with something they may not actually enjoy. I hope I figure that out before I have kids.
You taught yourself to use a computer, without taking an expensive "kids learn computers class", right?
Signing kids up for all these classes and structured activities can lead to a sort of passivity where they expect adults to tell them what to do.
My early family life resembled the parent's. The difference in my case and related to your point wasn't the absence of distractions it was to get at them I had to learn how to make the damn computer work. I once tricked my 286 into thinking it was a 386 so that I could install Windows 3.1. All for the purpose of... playing solitaire. Yeah, that's how bored I was.
I'm not even sure I could replicate doing that today. As a 9 year old I was better with a rudimentary BIOS than I am today with a modern one. I'm pretty sure it was because there was a barrier between me and what I wanted and the only way to get it was to figure out that horrendous system.
Whether I carry the piano into my adult life doesn't matter. I've still learned how to stick through something difficult without quitting and moving on to the next exciting thing. The most valuable lesson learned in this story is that everything worth doing is boring and difficult sometimes. If you never stick through it beyond that point, you'll never learn that lesson.
You can be the most dedicated piano player, but if you later decides to channel that dedication into e.g. writing you are very likely to be struggling anyways. So now you are essentially in the same boat as everyone else.
Young people are mainly struggling because education, housing and long term careers are competitive and costly. Of course dedication can help with being successful in almost any sense of the word. But overall it is very likely overshadowed by other factors as e.g. your position in the housing market.
How many people who could afford a mortgage in a major city in their early twenties, by any means, are struggling with their lives today? Certainly a few, but surely a lot less than those who don't yet have a stable home in their thirties.
I'm arguing that it's not what skill you learn, but rather that you did. You moved past something being new and exciting, got to the point where it was frustrating and boring, and you kept going anyway. I'm now wishing I hadn't use a computer as my example because I still feel like you're taking the wrong lesson from my anecdote. I don't credit my childhood computer use for my successful career as an adult. I credit my (forced) single-minded focus, where giving up was not an option.
In this story, my siblings-in-law never knew that it gets easier, never knew that there is a plateau you can overcome, and never made it to the other side. Because they never had to. It's a story about not giving up, not a story about how everyone should learn to use a computer.
So I'm not sure that sort of life is an inherent quality of growing up with a computer. It's perfectly possible to push through the hard parts and find a passion with music.
Anecdotes, is all.
If a millennial loses a once-profitable career due to sudden market shifts, "that's his fault for not persuing additional skills". But if a Boomer loses a job, it's never their fault.
I've been getting really into history recently so if anyone has any resources on the socio economic impact of other generations, specifically boomers, please let me know!
For me, the balance has been most aptly described by the phrase: you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. You can travel, follow your bliss, whatever it takes to find some self-actualization (very important in the western world), but you pay a price. This way, you’re not completely discounting the value of ‘finding yourself’, but, like any major decision, you assess the ROI.
It will likely be the last generation that has this opportunity. I don't imagine our children or their children living on a planet with much 'bliss' compared to their parents. Earth's trajectory is not looking good.
Even here we'll get a few blog posts a month from a one-man-show who's just got their start-up off the ground -- or alternatively, the one that's just burst into flames.
It's the same story. "I keep putting all my money into lottery tickets hoping to make it big, with no plans for what to do when I don't." No one tells us to romanticize it. We're not ignorant of the risks. And yet, we still do.
I have two kids, and the ONE THING I try the hardest to teach them is personal responsibility. Yet I recognize that generally the term "personal responsibility" is kind of used as a gatekeeping term against the poor and the young. Whatever their problems are, they are self-imposed as they lack personal responsibility. Sympathy, compassion, charity not required.
Every generation of parents is a generation of first-time parents. The best we can do is learn from past generations. I don't see any harm in identifying causes and effects of generational shifts in parenting style in order to better correct for the next round.
Travel for self-discovery has the well-understood problem that self-discovery is not about the places you go or things you do. It's about how you react and change in the process.
Hedonistic travel is fine and can be restoring, but pleasure only gives you insight into what you like, not how you handle life's challenges. The latter is where you actually find yourself. For that, travel is useful because it makes you uncomfortable, but first you have to seek discomfort.
The people who are spinning their wheels aren't the once who just want a decent job and modest life. It is if you don't want to go into debt, you don't to move to a major city, you can't or don't want to get help from your parent and you believe in making your own way that you are spinning your wheels. The "follow you bliss" kids are all getting money from their parents.
It is easy to have an opinion about how other people should live their lives. So just tel me, after they had your ideal upbringing, what do they do then and why would they not in that scenario benefit from essentially being spoiled?
We grew up with high expectations to study hard, go to a top university, get a 6-figure job, and start a family in the suburbs. Throughout years 4-18 our parents told us "You will do X, Y, and Z because these are the ingredients that worked for us to live a good life in America, so this is what will work for you."
While this does a good job providing structure, it doesn't take the individual into account. So many of my friends from immigrant families came out of college wondering "Now what?" because being a person was new to them in the sense that they had to figure out what to do with their life once things were no longer as pre-determined.
This created a new wave of 'failure to launch' where 20-somethings found themselves living at home trying to figure out what to do, or working down a path of some job they hate because their parents wanted them to do it. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a good way to describe the situation.
"You can do anything" is a troublesome parental mindset to establish, but so is a mindset of "You can't do this because this is not one of the 5 jobs we believe is best for you". For example, my 25y.o. Chinese female friend is just now getting into CompSci (what she is good at) after dropping out of pharmacy school (her parents goal for her because "you are a girl, you should be a pharmacist or a dentist").
And it isn't just a generation gap - a whole set of institutions are like this, motivating the popular "Millenials killed tradition" genre of journalism. And for the Millenial generation that amounts to having to reinvent each institution in a new form. Not an ambition anyone particularly signed up for, but one where the jobs are now.
My SO is doing all theses things, a bit to the extreme too but she feel EXACTLY like that person in the post.
- She planned for rainy days, much more than anyone I know, much more than her parents, much more than mine too.
- She was in love with someone for a pretty long time, way too much, but he had pretty big issues and whatever she did, he would never fix his issue, he was taking her down so hard, yet she loved him and she kept committing to him, it took her 5 years to decide it was enough, 5 years where he was the priority and not her own life.
- She worked pretty hard, again, way too much, she had a good well paid government job, they had nearly no resource because of cuts, the department of one of her colleague went from 8 to 2 employees. Right before she quit, they learned that they were only replacing 1 out of 8 employee that was quitting (she was one of the youngest, most were 45+). She pushed herself up to a depression, again also after nearly 5 years of this.
- Cherish friends and family even when it's difficult. That girl has a heart so big, it's crazy. She hated spending time with her mom, her mom always denigrated her, she always pushed her to her limit and never ever she would fight back. She die recently and my SO was there for her up until the end, more than anyone else in the family.
It has NOTHING to do with what you say. You may believe that's the right way, fine, but it has no bearing over the feelings of that person.
I only started reading the answer from Polly and that make much more sense. It may help quite a bit my SO.
My parents and most of their peers got married right out of high school just to get out of the houses their 1st generation Catholic parents filled to the brim with like, seven or eight semi-neglected kids.
A lot of them didn't make it out of those environments unscathed, and there's no guarantee they learned how to save money or hunker down for the long haul with a partner because of it.
It's easy to look back on those times with rose-colored glasses, especially if you weren't there.
And what I mean by that is, that those who have come of age over the past 20 years have spent pretty much their entire lives being read a recipe for success. Go to college -> get a degree -> get a job -> live a successful live. It's a simple step by step plan that every single person in our lives have reinforced ad nauseam, because for most of the 20th Century that has been the surest path to a happy middle class life.
The problem is that of course every single step in that path is now significantly more difficult than it was 20-30 years ago when our parents' generation did it. You can't just go to college anymore. It costs 10x what it did in the 80's and you can't even compare the cost to the 50's or 60's. It's also way more competitive getting into a top school. Even if you manage to get into college and pay for it, it's no longer good enough to just get a degree. You need to get a degree in the right thing and or find a way to differentiate yourself from the other 1 million students who graduate each year, because oh by the way our generation is the most well educated in the history of the world. Even if all those things go right finding a job is harder than ever. People retire later if at all now so the market is flooded not only with too many well educated applicants but the multitude of experienced candidates competing for the same entry level jobs. And even if you get a job, the crushing levels of student debt and the fact that wages haven't kept up with inflation, basically mean that it's incredibly hard to live a successful life on your own.
So basically the issue is that people have spent their entire lives calibrated for a set of conditions that no longer exists. There isn't a golden path to a cozy middle class lifestyle anymore. And once you start compounding that with the normal issues everyone runs into adjusting to an adult life you get this malaise. Everyone's poor and hates their life and social media is there so you can compare yourself to the 10% of the population who seem to have it all figured out either because they have rich parents to subsidize their life, or they got lucky and picked a major that actually pays decently, or they married their HS sweetheart and hate life somewhat less than everyone else.
And because it has to be said the fact that everyone keeps calling Millenial's lazy, and entitled for somehow not being as successful as previous generations despite the changing landscape doesn't help.
I'm not trying to sound harsh, but what I hear in the article is just a lack of perseverance and persistence. Relationships are hard, if you leave because the other person fails to lift the toilet seat, or you quit your job because your boss is an a-hole I find that to be a lack of character.
Strife is what gives people a sense of satisfaction. Buying the new car after driving a POS for years that needed constant work on the weekend is massively more satisfying than having mommie buy you a BMW for your birthday. Having a good year with the wife after a couple where you barely talked... That is how people grow, not sitting in flower beds having everything handed to them and running away every-time the world doesn't respond as you wish.
But on the other hand, I'm sympathetic to their impulse to reject the parenting styles of their parents. My father's father beat him brutally throughout his childhood. My mother's mother would shame her relentlessly for any slight failure to comply to her will, even well past childhood - when she earned her PhD, despite her mother's wishes for her to instead become an MD, after 7 hard years of working on her dissertation her mother's 'congratulatory' card ended with "I'll still pay for you to go to medical school" (and she had not helped her pay for graduate school).
They rejected the cruelty of their parents world, but gained a false optimism from the progressive, high growth times of the 60s through 90s, and failed to prepare me for the real world which is still plenty cruel.
I generally agree with what you're saying except for this. You should cherish friends and family... unless doing so ends up being a net negative. Maybe that goes beyond "even when it's difficult", but... life is too short to keep people around who hurt you, even if they're blood relatives.
Set boundaries. If people fail to respect those boundaries, then they don't deserve to be in your life, at all. Cutting someone out of your life shouldn't be a decision taken lightly or on a whim, but it's a tool in your toolbox for keeping toxic people from bringing you down.
Meanwhile, the original prompt of the inciting content has... Two days' hotel stay of savings.
That's what this is about. The lack of meaning, the alienation after being told "we could be anything we want" when we grow up, to having no choice but to settle for careers in "whatever almost pays bills" since the collapse of 2008.
We're bitter. We're ashamed of where we've been and what we've done to survive. And you know what happens when we get over that? We get angry, we may get political. We might even snap.
If we're technically minded? I'm mad that I dont see more hacktivists.
If you're skilled enough to be a hacktivist that can contribute significantly than you're also skilled enough to find well-paying work and you won't become bitter.
If she was in a committed relationship, had offspring, a home with equity, savings, and a career, there is no guarantee that would bring her fulfillment.
And even if you had that fulfillment, there is no guarantee it lasts.
Life is hard, it's cruel and not at all fair. And the way to survive is learn that no matter how hard it hits, you have to keep moving forward. I feel for the author. I do.
I had "everything" going for me and in less than a year I found myself jobless, homeless, and prohibited from seeing my kids except for a few hours a day. Why? Because I finally stood up for us and called 9-1-1 on their mother for domestic violence.
I'll edit:
I'm now working on a new startup, loving every minute of it. I have a small apartment, and I have joint custody and parenting decisions with my kids. I'm getting help through a DV survivor group, making sure to prioritize my self care, and starting to date again. This struggle has brought me closer to friends, family, and to God, and has made me a better father. And it reminds me never to take for granted the things in life that I find joy in.
Nobody really wanted to help me beyond that, though. One lawyer I visited said "I cant help you," because she assumed I was the aggressor. I explained I wasn't and that I had proof, then said, 'yea I know most of the time it is probably is the guy who is the aggressor' and then she said "I knew you were a rampant sexist." What in God's name is this?
Nobody seemed seriously interested in putting things down to help me. Several other people seemed to end up hating me without ever even talking to me. It turned out my state had strict 2-party consent laws so whatever other evidence I could have possible have had was illegitimate. Many others privately told me they were sorry and that I should just 'move some new place and dont tell anyone.' Jesus Christ, I dont know, I didn't ask for this. Honestly, what the fuck. Sometimes the world seems insane.
I would venture to guess that the majority of domestic violence is male against female, but we have to start recognizing and allowing for the fact that it happens the other way around more often than we might be willing to think.
To determine the predominant aggressor, police must consider:
The seriousness of injuries received by each party
The height and weight of the parties
Which party has the potential to seriously injure the other party
Orders for protection that have been filed by a party
Whether a party has a fearful demeanor
Whether a party has a controlling demeanor
Why?
The data suggests it’s close to 50-50.
More numbers here:
There is also more to DV than just physical violence.
Its not about the crazies on reddit by the way. It starts off a bit rough talking about controversial article written by mens rights activists, but just keep watching, I swear they explain it.
We have so many communication tools at our disposal today - ideally, it should be ridiculously easy to make friends, love/date etc as one can reach a person on the other side of the planet. And yet, more people are single and lonely than ever :(
Things are bad for men than women, from what little I see around me. Broadly, I find people are more willing to help women than men, all else being equal. Maybe this is why men's lifespans are shorter than women's? Men are expected to "man up and shut up", whatever that means. So they don't seek out friends, don't speak up...
I literally finished this sentence in my mind - before reading it to the end - with "she'd be fine!", which just goes to show how easy it is to misconstrue fulfillment with its signifiers.
All of this. Also, I'd bet more than a few of her friends in relationships with homes are jealous of her! They probably have a false impression of how exciting her life is.
Also, I am happy you were able to get out of your DV situation and can see your kids. Can't imagine what that must have been like.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
This is an old true story. And the answer given by the article is mostly useless, some nonsense about the nature of art and accumulating a "treasure that doesn't disappear" or something.
One thing you realize when you're old is that time is finite and life is all about trade-offs. Every day by choosing the things you do you are continuously foreclosing a whole range of things you aren't doing, and soon will never do.
We live in a consumerist culture increasingly dominated by those with a financial interest in keeping us ignorant of this fact, but that doesn't make it any less true.
And you might be racing for something you don't really want.
Figure out what you really want before you chase after it. If you're unmarried at 35, do you really want children, or do you think that you're supposed to have children and that doing so will make you feel more fulfilled? Not everyone needs or wants to be a parent and there's nothing wrong with not being one.
One of the more subtle, but powerful cultural subplots in the TV series "30 Rock" was the salutation that Dennis Duffy[1] would greet Liz Lemon with whenever she involved him in her life:
"Hey dummy..."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_30_Rock_characters#Den...
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say
I've made and abandoned friends at almost every stage in my life. I have no idea who will be the best man at my wedding because to be honest my brother probably isn't up to the "responsibilities", but I have no alternative.
I now live on the west cost, a tough 6 hour flight away from home. I visited my family this Thanksgiving and am noticing so many changes, people are dying, babies are being born, my cousins who I've always viewed as children are about to graduate college. It's tough being away from home and not feeling like I have roots (I'm considering a move to Seattle or the Bay Area in early 2019), but at every step I've justified my actions because the next step always came with a significant pay increase and more career opportunities.
This January will be my 13th anniversary with my high school girlfriend (soon to be fiance). I can't describe how valuable it's been to have someone so close in age (I'm 3 months older) that can relate to the things that I'm going through, and who has my back, and knows that I have hers. Things haven't been easy, but it's become so much more than a girlfriend/boyfriend relationship, which is why marriage is in our future.
I've met so many fellow millennials who are serial monogamist or date freely, I don't judge them at all and at some times have felt a tinge on envy, and these folks may have a friend or family member who is to them what my girlfriend is to me -- I guess all this is to say that in today's society I just don't know how we can traverse this reality with at least one person who you are tightly integrated with. It's just too tough out there.
“under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.”
Now I'm torn between putting down roots in Toronto, moving out to the sticks, moving to Europe to be close to everyone or doing the right thing for my career by going to the US.
I am thinking about all those same options except the moving to the US thing. Even though I could earn much more money, I don't think that would be worth it living in a country like the US.
Hell. I'd take a 10% hit on salary for a week of unpaid vacation.
One major issue though is education. Giving a good technical education to people is fundamental. No matter how much a person falls, they have something that they can build on. They are never starting from scratch, as many people in this generation do, over and over again.
Admittedly much of what she describes could apply to either gender, but it’s women who are hit hardest by fading looks and declining fertility.
It used to be accepted cultural knowledge that if a woman desired marriage and children, she should probably spend her ‘best years’ looking for and committing to a husband. Now you’d be labelled a misogynist for even suggesting that.
Women have been indoctrinated to think that they can spend their 20s and early 30s being ‘the poster child for serial monogamy’, and then have a husband fall into their lap when they’re ready for it. I’m sure it works out for many of them, but I feel sorry for the ones for whom it doesn’t.
I’ll try to summarise what I mean. Women used to be under great pressure (cultural, religious, family) to find a good man and settle down. They were also shamed for promiscuity.
In the western world, we’ve largely got rid of all this pressure and shame (thank goodness) but the fact remains that women face a very different biological reality to men. Most of them have a powerful urge to be a mother, and a limited window in which to do it.
Anonymous city living, dating apps and the removal of shame associated with promiscuity have made it extremely easy for a young woman to enjoy being a “25 year old sexpot” (her description, not mine). Male attention is plentiful, and as a result there’s no reason to hang on to a particular man, why not keep looking and see what else is out there? Ask any younger guy who has been on the dating scene recently - 20-something women are increasingly flaky and unwilling to commit to anything.
I don’t begrudge women any of this, but the big lie I mentioned is the idea that a woman can just switch into “long term partner mode” when she decides the time is right. Building a relationship stable enough to have kids in takes years, and a man (generally speaking) doesn’t want to feel like he’s been chosen just as a sperm donor. Guys who want to commit, want to commit to a 25 year old sexpot. And the ‘alpha’ guys who will never commit can always find another 25 year old sexpot.
This is what I meant by the big lie. I’m not trying to say it’s all terrible or that society is going to hell, but it has backfired on the women who don’t recognise it.
I don't know if I agree with you about the idea that women want children more than men do as a matter of biology. Speaking "as a younger guy who has been on the dating scene recently" (your description, not mine), women seem really varied to me in terms of what they want. Some hate the thought of having children and wish other women would stop talking about them. Others tell me being a parent is something they've always wanted. I've known plenty of 20-something women that don't really care for children, but their long-term 20-something male partners vehemently do. I say this as someone partaking in anonymous city living in a "liberal" west-coast environment. I think women's attitudes on children are actually pretty varied, and the shadow of how we used to expect them to act/live still lingers over the twenty-first century.
Philosophers like Butler[1] often propose that we're treated as a child specific ways due to our sex, and we internalize it and kind of have this self-reinforcing culture. I think this plays a lot into our assumptions about women's attitudes, and how we treat them in turn, and they respond in turn.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_gender#...
Me and my wife have an 8 year old son, however I'm 36 years old and right now I don't feel like I'm capable of having another child.
Our son is a premature baby, born at 30 weeks, after what was a very troubled pregnancy. And then when he was one year old he suffered from Lyell's syndrome. Plus he's always been more sensitive to catching cold, etc. Now at 8 years old he's a healthy, good looking boy, does well in school, etc and I tell you, it's a miracle that he turned out as well as he did.
We were also fortunate to live with my mother in law. It's great to have one of your parents around. She babysits for us, she cooks for us, etc. Other people aren't as fortunate.
Being a parent is freaking hard sometimes. Being a parent is also the only thing that I'll never regret, possibly the best thing we ever did in our life.
But you need the energy of your twenties to do it. The sooner you do it, the better. Even if you're a man.
I totally understand why you don’t have the energy for another kid. We’re the same age and I don’t think I’ve got the energy for one kid.
But the fact remains that biologically you could have another kid now or in 10, perhaps even 20 years. For a woman that’s a virtual impossibility. You can’t pretend it’s the same thing.
I didn't plan for it to be this way; my wife is 10 years younger than me, and she wasn't ready to have kids until she was in her mid 30's.
I do sometimes wish I'd been able to have kids sooner; I'll be pretty old by the time my kids go off to college, and I'll be very old if/when I ever see any grandchildren.
However, I'd like to say, don't not have kids just because you may be a bit older than average. I'm pretty able to handle it so far, despite the lack of sleep and stress that goes along with having kids. It's such an incredible experience and greatly enriches one's life.
> You’ve also been holding in… your intentions. We have this really nasty habit in our society of labeling women very cruel and unfair things when they express their desire for very normal things. Monogamy, exclusivity, a relationship, a family, babies. Right? We like to call them desperate, sad, psychos, baby crazy. “We’ve been married for six years. She already wants a kid! I’m a fuck man! They can’t get me.” It’s very normal to want these things.
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2018/07/30/iliza-shlesinger-el...
That.
> The pop idea was that fucking was good, so good that the more there was of it, the better. The pop idea was that people should fuck whom they wanted: translated for the girls, this meant that girls should want to be fucked—as close to all the time as was humanly possible.
She continues (at p. 91):
> Empirically speaking, sexual liberation was practiced by women on a wide scale in the sixties and it did not work: that is, it did not free women. Its purpose—it turned out—was to free men to use women without bourgeois constraints, and in that it was successful.
Hence Iliza Shlesinger's point:
> > You’ve also been holding in… your intentions. We have this really nasty habit in our society of labeling women very cruel and unfair things when they express their desire for very normal things. Monogamy, exclusivity, a relationship, a family, babies. Right? We like to call them desperate, sad, psychos, baby crazy. “We’ve been married for six years. She already wants a kid! I’m a fuck man! They can’t get me.” It’s very normal to want these things.
Calling women "baby crazy" for wanting kids is the product of a male-centric sexual revolution that prioritizes what men want out of sexual relationships and criticizes women for wanting perfectly normal things out of those same relationships. I haven't read the "Selfish Gene," but I strongly suspect it doesn't "debunk" the idea that it's normal for women to want kids and that our popular culture shouldn't stigmatize that desire.
I think that calling this empirically true requires a highly dubious operationalization of “free”; it is absolutely the case that sexually (and in other ways which are indirectly related to sexual and reproductive choices), women have more options that will not lead to near-universal condemnation.
It is true that this is not cost-free for women of all preferences (and particularly for women who strongly desire universal acceptance), in that the one option that previously had near universal approbation now only produces large minority approbation, overwhelming majority (but not near-universal) acceptance, and small minority condemnation.
Alternatively, it requires (as seems to underlie most of Dworkins fact claims, in RWW and elsewhere), simply the willingness to claim whatever suits your ideological agenda as proven fact no matter whether it has any correspondence with reality whatsoever.
> in that the one option that previously had near universal approbation now only produces large minority approbation, overwhelming majority (but not near-universal) acceptance, and small minority condemnation.
This is an understatement. It's not one option--it's the option. Wanting kids is a nearly universal preference: https://news.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.asp.... Among adults age 45+, if they had to do it again, only 11% would have chosen to not have children. (7% of those who had children, and 44% of those who never had children). But for women, expressing this nearly universal preference is quite taboo these days during their prime reproductive years. And if they choose to have kids (which men and women want at similar rates), the sexual revolution has meant that they are much more likely to be bear the cost of taking care of them alone, because reciprocal male obligation has been greatly diminished.
This kind of miss a massive aspect of the sexual revolution. It dramatically reduced the reciprocal obligations women used to have in connection with sexual activity: i.e. giving birth to the resulting kids. Roe v. Wade decriminalised abortion nationwide in 1973. The sexual revolution happened between 1960 and 1980. A rather big coincident that.
No, when I'm not ignoring the fact claim you point to when I say that Dworkin’s fact claims tend to be unsupported Fabrications of whatever is convenient for her ideological agenda.
> The sexual revolution dramatically reduced the reciprocal obligations men used to have in connection with sexual activity: i.e. taking care of the resulting kids.
Except that it, well, didn't do that at all. Except maybe in a transitory way, at the height of the sexual revolution, as far as informal social obligations within the subculture at the center of the sexual revolution, but that subculture had almost entirely collapsed as a coherent group and social force by the time Dworkin wrote Right-Wing Women, and is a distant memory today.
There's actually a not insignificant political movement centered around the fact that the increase in women's acceptable (including legally acceptable) choices in recent decades (in part, but not entirely, stemming from the Sexual Revolution) was not matched by a reduction in men's obligations (which the movement sees now as unilateral rather than reciprocal) but instead increased vigor in social and formal/legal enforcement of those obligations.
It's also hilariously ironic that people are resorting to Right-Wing Women as an authority in support of a reversion to the previous degree of support for traditional gender roles for women, quoting bits where she paints the sexual revolution as a false effort at women's liberation foisted upon women by patriarchal elements on the Left, since the central point of Right-Wing Women was describing how Dworkin saw those values as tools of patriarchal enslavement of women and, more to the point (hence the title of the work) female support for such values as a defensive adaptation to patriarchy that reinforces and normalizes their enslavement by it.
At the end of Chapter 2 of Right-Wing Women, Dworkin writes:
---[begin quote]---
Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on- one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.
---[end quote]---
/s, in case it was not obvious.
And what's the revolution about today? Because its still here. And women are advancing into every social institution continuously, the risk having been abated by chemistry and physics. Is it still male-centric? Should it now stop because of a 1960's confused theory?
But on the other hand, I still think it’s ok to feel pity for someone who has been misled by a social movement that claimed to have all the answers, when it really didn’t.
And most importantly, we should be free to criticise that social movement and point out its shortcomings.
Think about it like the stock market: Would you buy a stock that it is being pumped by the media. Maybe yes, maybe not. But if someone is profiting it is probably not you.
I am sorry, but of course there is no hope of a normal family for a woman of this age. Her fate has already been sealed by feminism. Life is tough. The question is, what happens with the next generation.
Eh. While we married much younger, my wife and I had our two kids when she was 38 and 40, and we have age peers who found life partners around or after 35. Unless you are involving a simple tautology by defining “normal family” to be one started before leaving the 20s or something like that, you are just dead wrong.
But I think both you and the parent commenter are deliberately missing the point. The amount of “hope” is severely diminished, and it gets smaller every day.
The woman is faced with the task of finding a guy who wants kids as much (and as quickly) as she does, without the chance to first bond and grow together in a relaxed and unhurried relationship. She’ll have to reassure him that no, she isn’t settling just because she wants a baby, even though the same thought sometimes crosses her mind.
Plus she’s broke, so this guy will have to love her enough to make a considerable financial sacrifice and then continue to support her through motherhood. (NB this applies whether or not they stay together).
So sure, there’s hope, but you’re being disingenuous if you pretend that there’s a lot of it.
There are tradeoffs (nontraditional family dynamics with kids being raised by older parents, hassles with the adoption system itself, etc.), but a) you could consider those tradeoffs to be in exchange for the benefit of spending the first parts of your life doing other things, and b) the benefits to adopted kids are often truly huge.
You could adopt, coparent, or marry a spouse who already has kids.
None of those things are "well, duh"; they have their own challenges and tradeoffs, but so does starting a family when you're young. There are many, many other options, especially as a first-worlder, and many kids that could benefit from another parent, or that could benefit from any parent.
So the first thing we did was move to the place we wanted to try and stay forever.
The second step was to go to school and get a skill. We both worked while I went to college for computer science. I'd been building computers since I was a little kid, was always good at math, decided it would be an easy way to get into the job market at a decent salary. I was right.
Next, we paid off all that student loan debt. Stayed in our tiny apartment with next to nothing and just put that new tech salary into the debt until it was totally gone.
Then we bought a house where the mortgage wouldn't be much higher than our tiny apartment. We could afford something three or four times bigger on my salary, but we didn't do that. Stayed small. Maintenance costs are low, cleaning it up is easy, and we don't even have an HOA to bother us (and I don't care, because it's not like I bought my dinky little house as an investment).
Next came the kids. Started having one after another. She stays home, I work, we spend time together as much as possible. We have friends and family nearby that make life so much better in a million ways. Honestly, I have all these roots and commitments and still...zero stress. Life is great.
And now all our extra money is going into long-term investments and traveling. We've started going all sorts of places. We'll be doing a tour of Europe in the next few years and I am in my early thirties at this point.
So here is my message to anyone that read the person above and is reading this post now and hasn't yet spent their twenties and thirties having hobo adventures:
Life is so much better if you just do what you evolved to do. There's no way to hack life and make it better in any real way. Pair up, get a trade, build a home, and enjoy that for what it is.
How did you know that's what you wanted? What gives you the authority to say that's the best path for everyone?
Consider an analogy for me - you mentioned travel. Have you ever driven through the mountains? Hiked up a few? Even from the road, it's easy to look up and see spectacular peaks calling out your name, begging to be climbed.
And coming from a flat, midwestern state, you may need to recalibrate your eyeballs for distance: You can't park the car for lunch and walk up most of them if you start in the afternoon...it's likely to take most of a vacation to hike in and up one or two peaks, so you need to plan your route before you arrive at the park.
The tragedy of the story is that there's no better viewpoint from which to gaze at a distant mountain and imagine a climb up it than from the path up the adjacent one you're climbing up.
I'm not yet thirty and have a family, a home, savings, a degree, and a career. I've got life-long commitments and am building solid roots like I thought I should, but now that I've got that all checked off it's not what I thought it would be. I've just got to continue trudging up this mountain I picked as a 17-year-old applying for college and dating one of the girls from high school. It's time to work my 40 hours, enjoy a few weeks vacation every year, and wait for retirement until eventually dying. It's quickly starting to feel unfulfilling and stifling.
The author of the article has spent her twenties and thirties bouldering up dozens of smaller cliffs and clambering over foothills all over the place. You denigrate them as "hobo adventures" but it sounds magnificent to me. I won't get to spend my thirties adventuring like that because I have a wife and a kid and a trade and a home, and it's just not all it's cracked up to be.
Gratitude for what you have is a critical component of the formula. You seem to lack that. I hope you find it. You won't last long without it.
I recommend church. It helps. You evolved to do that too.
Wait, what? I laughed out loud at that.
One is a social construct.
The other is science.
Religion doesn't have anything unique to create community and bonding, other than large numbers. It's not any better at fostering that things over any other shared interest, and at it's worst causes significantly more damage to communities.
What is another shared interest that builds positive community bonds at or above the scale of religion.
Procreation.
What religion at scale hasn't also done significant damage to communities.
Are we evolved to have religion? Maybe, but the answer to that has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not evolution itself is true.
Is that not what "an evolved social construct" means? Some cave man's explanation was a social construct happened to have good characteristics in favor of its survival in the environment of human society. Like the process of evolution in biology, it contained traits that were useful for its preservation and propagation. It possibly (but not necessarily) included utility for its adherents, and it possibly formed an effective foundation of social order.
You're right, that's exactly what I think religion is. This stands in stark contrast to where most religious people think their religion comes from: not from some cave-man's misguided guess but from the genuine revelation from God to people.
I do not want to feel like part of something bigger than myself if it consists of mutually pretending that something false (or at least uncertain) is certain. If it is untrue, I do not wish to believe it, regardless of its utility.
What you've written (own a home, have job, make kids, go to church) really only applies to american's, who make up ~300m out of 7b people currently inhabiting our planet.
That definition of what we're evolved to do, is incredibly myopic; more so if you consider that definition of middle class has really only been around since the mid 1900's?
Home ownership is very much ingrained in American culture because of it's ties to the US economy (for those who own homes, it's typically they're only investment).
FWIW, I think it's great that you and your spouse have found meaning in your lives.
No... This is true for middle middle class and richer people almost everywhere in the world.
And to be clear, I don't mean "own a home" when I say "build a home." A home is composed of the people you are committed to and the people you love. I don't mean buy a house or buy anything, actually. I mean building an identity for yourself that includes the notion of "home."
We may evolved to follow each other but just because one person wrote a hit sermon doesn't mean we evolved to mindlessly church it out every week. Religion is really just something we do on the side that usually doesn't get in the way of evolution (unless it involves sacrifices or suicide).
Also i think i'm just lucky but my software job has been pretty smooth sailing i got very lucky with my company. The weeks are going by so fast now, i just cruise thru the workday and cant wait to go home and see my little baby!
I traded my 20s for "hobo adventures" and I hope to have another round of them.
> Pair up, get a trade, build a home
You have evolved to reproduce.
Getting a trade, building a home are very recent constructs and certainly not what you "evolved to do"
I agree you can't fight your nature and win. However, the counter argument would be:
1. Evolution is not concerned with your happiness, it's concerned with successful survival and reproduction - and keeping you just happy enough to do so.
2. Building a stable relationship and career in one place is quite counter to the thousands of years of itinerant hunter-gatherer, questionably-monogamous lives of our evolution lineage.
I would also point out that thousands of years of itinerant hunting and gathering is not the same as evolving to be itinerant. We are a highly adaptive species and we can live many different ways - we often do - but that doesn't mean we are ideally suited to all of them. The vast majority of people, including those in under-industrialized nations, are not itinerant and of those that are, it's not often by choice. There are clear advantages to staying in place. The fact that most people, in their current evolved state, choose to remain where they are, is just as valid evidence that we are suited to be stationary as the existence of itinerant hunter gatherers in the past is evidence that we are suited to move around.
However, you could argue that we evolved to optimize our reproduction in one of several strategies. For some, it means their best bet is to settle with one family, for others it means profligate mating with dozens of partners. If so, by your logic, neither lifestyle would have any more inherent meaning than the other.
And, well, the 400,000 years of itinerant existence with much stronger evolutionary selection pressures vs. 10,000 years of agrarian society with less intense selection pressures doesn't seem commensurate.
You're arguing very hard for your chosen lifestyle, which includes some sunk cost bias.
Personally, I've done the settled-down thing and the hobo life and neither is more inherently meaningful than the other.
Perhaps you could argue that a pair-bond and a single location and community makes climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs easier in our current society - that I might buy.
That could be challenging for many people for multiple reasons. Have you considered the possibility that you found (by luck) a rather exceptional partner and thus your model could not be replicated on the society at large.
That's where we differ. It's great that you enjoy your life, but it sounds horrible to me. "Pair up, get a trade, build a home" ends up going very badly for some people, there is no single path to an enjoyable life.
This is a very close-minded statement. You've found happiness in your personal life by successfully aligning your actions with a traditional value system, and that's great! But, it's apparent you haven't fully considered other walks of life that align with different value systems.
Take, for example, a man I know who is paralyzed from the neck down, has no family to call his own, yet is probably the happiest man you'll find around. He has found meaning in his injury and its ability to help others grow.
The mind is extremely resilient and adaptable. I would argue that your life path is the EASIEST path to long-term fulfillment in modern western society, but it is NOT the ONLY way. Making such a claim is doing a huge disservice to people like the woman in the article.
"Realize that sleeping on a futon when you're 30 is not the worst thing. You know what's worse, sleeping in a king bed next to a wife you're not really in love with but for some reason you married, and you got a couple kids, and you got a job you hate. You'll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon. There's no risk when you go after a dream. There's a tremendous amount to risk to playing it safe."
You wouldn't have been the same without her, so once again - lucky ;-) Many modern men, I'd estimate at least 65%, need to settle down (happily of course) to truly become men, and civilized human beings.
Seemingly unrelated, but what was your relationship with your parents like?
It sounds like going from one end of the spectrum (aventuros, yolo) to the other (a family, fast), all while punching above their weight, so to speak, in terms of compatible long term partners.
Most young women can easily find "serial monogamous", short term, male partners with highly desirable qualities such as physical good looks, relative success, social skills etc., but most of this limited pool knows they are desirable and do not really want to get bogged down with a family.
When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth. Their "family" started a long time ago with mutual investment - you can choose not to make that trade-off but cannot have the cake and eat it too.
They are not rooted in science in the sense of sophistry where they are anti-authoritarian and anti-conformist. Its impossible to express something new without being in conflict with established authority.
Its actually a fairly normal situation for all paradigm shifts. Kuhn wrote a book about it named "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" about a half century ago; it seems a pretty accurate model for how real paradigm change happens in societies (as opposed to idealized theory).
I'm not saying you're wrong and certainly not in any sort of value judgment but am saying that historically there seems to be no possible way for a paradigm shift to roll out without those relatively standard feelings and attitudes toward change you express.
The legacy model seems to result in sad middle aged lonely cat ladies for no obvious reason; clearly that model doesn't work well enough; the paradigm shift proposes a workable model with successful predictions, perhaps workable solutions.
I used to be 260lb and invisible to most women. I decided to get my act together, start lifting weights, and dropped a significant amount (nearly 100lb over the last three years) and wouldn't you know: interest is through the roof. Couple that with a burgeoning business and money getting stable and it's point and shoot.
Most men (people) don't like that reality because it means a few harsh truths about looks, status, and money. It also means you have to take responsibility for your results which is the antithesis to ideologies that push as-is self-acceptance and "good enough" ideals. That is to say, my starting to understand and accept this reality hurt beyond belief. It took the better part of a year to really swallow the changes that were taking place.
You have a ranking and women especially are either subconsciously or (for a select few) consciously aware of it. Coincidentally, men are too (read: they don't like you climbing the ranks; their behavior in response makes this clear). I've lost a lot of friends in the process of getting my stuff together—people who I'd consider second family. Serious food for thought.
And also ugly men unwilling to commit.
I think that your view of males is unfairly negative.
Also, a men who is having relationship with you solely because he can't find replacement likely sux as a partner. Or maybe she sux or they don't match, but in any case, that relationship will be crap.
And that relationship will become real bad after children.
There are plenty of good-looking men in committed relationships. You're reading the relationship in reverse. It's not that "men who hop relationships look all that better". It's that better-looking men can hop relationships.
That being said, the desirable men are either committed (unavailable) or available because they can hop and choose to do so. So only a minority of desirable men are available. This is in strict contrast with the large majority of young women, who can almost always hop relationships should they so choose. Since overall there needs to be gender equilibrium, females are sliced by age to a much larger degree, allowing the minority of desirable men of all ages to pursue the minority of younger women.
The asimetry is caused by the fact that females are selective and males are partner-maximizing. It's not good or bad, it's a sociological truth.
Also real sociologists do not claim what you claim. They have a lot more nuance into it and in terms of marriages, talk a lot a lot more about economy and it's affects.
Your version sounds like something that emerges on chat when people cherry pick half understood studies, not what sociologists says.
You're forgetting about a) divorcees and b) men who have also gone down the same path.
People who are no longer young should simply ignore this sort of advice. Unless you're in (seriously) poor health, just go for it.
When you're 83 and your kid is my age, he'll probably wish there was anything he could do to make you 20 years younger.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have had a kid, or anything like that, but I don't know how you can suggest that it will never be a problem that you are a relatively old father (versus if you had kids in your 30s, other things being equal, which obviously they aren't).
The average life expectancy for a male in the USA is 76. All other things being equal, a 51 year old father will die when their offspring is 25 years old. This is too early to lose a parent. Think about how this would have effected you, reader of this post. This is also assuming that the father does not experience any debilitating illnesses prior to dying, such as dementia, which would place an inordinate burden on a young person, who would have far fewer resources and life experience to draw on during such an ordeal.
These are not small potatoes. Think before you act, be responsible. You’re gambling with someone else’s life and wellbeing.
And maybe taking care of a parent with dementia is actually more of a problem when you're older and have kids of your own?
At my advanced age, I have the advantage of remembering things like the arguments you would hear back in the 1960's about why interracial marriage was a bad idea. Not because we're racist of course! But think of the practical difficulties. Like, the kids won't fit into either community! I'm sure you can think of more reasons too.
The later the better.
> And maybe taking care of a parent with dementia is actually more of a problem when you're older and have kids of your own?
It would certainly be easier to deal with when you have more stability in your life and are more emotionally mature.
> At my advanced age, I have the advantage of remembering things like the arguments you would hear back in the 1960's about why interracial marriage was a bad idea. Not because we're racist of course! But think of the practical difficulties. Like, the kids won't fit into either community! I'm sure you can think of more reasons too.
Do you really think this is a reasonable comparison? Of course you’ll say that you do. It’s not.
The fact is that every kid comes into the world with some advantages and some disadvantages. Any disadvantages from having an older parent are at most on a par with the disadvantages from not having particularly wealthy parents, or not having parents with perfect genes, or having parents who were abused by their own parents, or having parents who aren't citizens of a first-world country, and so on and so on.
In reality, you may be 51, and may be in a good position otherwise to have a kid, and the question is whether being 51 is a reason not to. And the answer is "no", it is not. Not unless you also think that other people with non-major reasons not to have a kid shouldn't. In other words, not unless you think nobody should have kids.
I meant that women who don't become interested in having a long-term committed relationship until later in life have the option of dating men who followed the same path as them, as well as the option of dating divorced men.
No they don’t. A 35 year old man can date a 25 year old woman whereas the reverse is a lot less common.
As such the 35 year old man has a lot more options than a 35 year old woman.
> as well as the option of dating divorced men.
Divorced men tend to have very different life goals and expectations than early 30s women.
Perhaps a lot of 35 year old women have realized that the value of a young attractive partner isn't very high and have realized that a committed relationship can bring happiness?
Imagine how a man might pick a woman if attractiness was completely off the table - an older woman is generally more mature, more sure of herself, simply had more life experiences and knows how to handle more situations. A 21 year old has barely spent any time supporting herself; a 35 year old has moore than a decade of life.
Perhaps women value men this way; with physical attractiveness less important than emotional maturity? Which tends to increase with age?
Loyalty, playfulness, flexibility, kindness, intelligence, high energy levels, ability to have kids, doesn’t already have kids, etc.
None of which are positively correlated with a woman’s age.
I feel like this list is really answering the question "what do I find attractive, besides her face/body?", and not "what kind of traits in a partner actually bring me happiness?" - with the exception of kindness and loyalty.
Even as someone who used to identify as a man and thus was in the dating market as such, I can't understand how emotional maturity is of no value; it's one of the most important traits to me in a partner and essentially the reason I picked my last partner for a long term relationship.
For everything else, we have friendship. (Setting aside the evolutionary advantages of e.g. male coalition-building, which we really can't, but whatever!)
I am someone who exists outside of evolution's traditional goals. I'm a transwoman, and predominantly lesbian at that. In all honesty, I'm so far outside the norm (even for a transwoman) that it causes most people I date not to have a script for it; the usual reaction is for them to become "starry eyed" and metaphorically eat out of my hand.
This is extra bizarre to me, as someone who used to be read as a relatively uninteresting, effeminate male; being passably female in pretty much every sense (including hormonally) should not increase my attractiveness to other women, yet it does. Not a single woman I've dated has expressed any particular interest in me as a fertile partner, and in what biological sense am I, really? While I have banked sperm, my testosterone levels are lower than most cisgender women's - in all likelihood, I am not fertile. There's very little way for a casual observer - even one who has access to my blood to run non-genetic tests on - to recognize that I am transgender.
I'm not just bragging; I straight up don't understand it. It was one of the things that kept me from transitioning for so long - being afraid women would have no interest in me if I did. I have postulated that the unique mix of hormones that I currently have, somehow, smells like perpetual ovulation; and yet if so why am I apparently far more attractive to women than men? Most girls I date seem particularly attached to my smell in a way they weren't before, but the interest I get from men is somehow less than before I transitioned.
I am promiscuous and unwilling to commit; I neither seek nor am particularly attractive to women seeking someone to support them and potentially their children. I regularly date women who have or have previously had male partners (in an ethical way).
Unless my humanity itself, the fact that I am living authentically and being who I truly am is more attractive, more valuable to the women I date, I simply have no explanation for the reactions I get now.
As a result - my own lived experience tells me that humans, and our relationships, are so much more than evolutionary motivations - at least as we understand them.
The testosterone running through my veins was just as real as the estradiol running through them now; the queerness of my life does not in any way diminish my humanity nor that of those who have interacted with me.
If you come at it from a queer perspective, you plainly see that your argument falls apart. Us queers are very sexual people, but by nature of being queer, don't feel compelled to follow any particular script; as a result our interests are very diverse. Some lesbians might prefer childbearing hips; the ones that date me definitely don't! And yet my femininity is nonetheless compelling; I've had girls tell me how nice it was to date someone so feminine (and how hard that was to find).
The women I find the most attractive tend to be KPop stars; east Asian (usually Korean) women in their early 20s (if that), often who are borderline underweight. The woman who I bonded with like nobody else in my life, the one I loved, the one I always thought was beautiful even when she couldn't see it, the one who gave my life meaning, the one who I still sometimes weep about even months after I last saw her was an obese scots woman in her early 30s with a serious disability.
And she was beautiful to me. Even before I transitioned.
Humans are wonderfully, fabulously, beautifully complex creatures. Our culture and social complexity has run far ahead of our genetics in so many ways. If we accept we have gone past our genetically programmed ways to figure out what to eat, consuming endless salt and sugar, causing us cavities and diabetes and unhappiness, why can't we accept that, too, our genetics were never meant for a world with Tinder and plastic surgery or even fast fashion? That our basest instincts do not bring us happiness - unless we examine them from a perspective that we are something greater, that we can be better than that?
The truth is, we can. The truth is, happiness - mediated by oxytocin and dopamine and all of that evolutionary history - DOES exist beyond merely eating and sex. We are programmed for empathy, for cooperation, for belonging. For love. We may desire things that will make us unhappy but we can make a choice.
If you ignore that, whether you are male or female- if you insist that, no, your life is just about having sex with the most attractive partner because evolution demands it - you will wind up like the parent of this entire conversation. You will be sad. Whether you are a 60 year old man or a 35 year old woman, you will realize at some point what you have been doing is refusing to be human, to have real relationships; you have been using sexuality to protect your feelings, and suddenly, it doesn't work any more.
Choose to be human; choose to be more than your selfish genes.
The argument I am encountering, the one I disagree with, is that attractiveness is a linear function and substantially the only thing that matters when dating. By virtue of being in her mid 30s, the letter writer is right to realize her value is low and declining. She will only find low value partners and even those doors are closing as she creeps closer to menopause.
I'm trying to argue that no, her value as a person AND as a romantic partner is much more than that.
I'm even going one step farther than that to say that picking a mate based on attractiveness as correlated with age is a strategy that will not bring you happiness whether you are a man, woman, or a queer degenerate like myself.
A lot of people follow other strategies, even if they are in the minority, and while it might take some time, she should seek out those who do, who value the things she has done in her life, the perspectives she's gained, all of that, and not just her youthful good looks.
tl;dr - Girl needs to chill. Her life (even romantic life!) isn't over because she's single and 35. She needs to stop evaluating herself that way.
How does a string of short term relationships show loyalty?
> flexibility means (ability to adapt to change?
Yes and the willingness.
I’ve known plenty of early 20s women who will drop their careers to follow their boyfriend overseas and very few in their 30s who will.
> I can't understand how emotional maturity is of no value
Why should a man find it valuable in a partner?
Age says nothing about what prior relationships someone has had, other than that they've had more time to have them.
It translates to loyalty (albeit weakly) in that a woman who is older has better self awareness and knows what she wants in a relationship, where a younger woman might still be figuring that out (and realize only later on that her relationship isn't what she wanted)
>I’ve known plenty of early 20s women who will drop their careers to follow their boyfriend overseas and very few in their 30s who will.
So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent? Who doesn't have her own life or hobbies and gets fulfillment solely through her partner?
> Why should a man find it valuable in a partner?
Seriously? You don't know why emotional maturity is valuable in a partner?
Than why are there clear correlations (for women) between # of monogamous relationships and likelihood of divorce? As well as between # of sexual partners and likelihood of divorce?
> So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent?
Of course! More flexibility and dependence up to a point is certainly better.
Of course the idea that this means a woman can’t have her own hobbies seems to be taking things to the extreme.
> Seriously?
Yes and honestly.
I married young and I think the troubles we went through together have deepened our relationship in a way that would never have been possible if we were both “emotionally mature”.
I’d also question whether people really do mature “globally” that much - vs maturing in specific contexts and relationships.
For example if women matured significantly in a “global” sense between mid-20s to mid-30s you would expect a big drop in obesity as women started taking better care of their health. But you don’t. Etc etc.
not sure if many men can partner up with someone 15 yrs younger.
The thought of ending up as one of those husbands genuinely makes my skin crawl. Imagine the woman you adore secretly resenting you for not measuring up to those alpha dudes she met on Tinder and dated for a few weeks at a time.
I sometimes wonder if we’ll see total change in relationship dynamics in my lifetime. Perhaps even a return to a “harem” system, where women decide that sharing a very high-value man is preferable to having a low-value one all to herself.
It will be a strange time when & if it starts happening out in the open.
Just because it is misogynist does not mean that women don't participate in it. But whenever you reduce human relationships to something "simple", you're likely doing something offensive.
Furthermore, even if it is true for a wide swath of the group, that does not mean it should not be criticized and torn apart for the assumptions that it rests on. A lot of people of both genders internalize negative messages about themselves and operate as though they are more fundamental truths.
Often, seeing them successfully challenged is what allows a person to grow and live a happier life.
The person in the original article believes, at least on some level, that her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and thus her age. Clearly a lot of others in society believe that too. It's still harmful to her and often them as well and it is a misogynist belief. Simply because a lot of people believe it and operate on that assumption does not mean everyone does, and it does not mean that doing so is beneficial.
On average, smoking is harmful. On average, women’s perceived attractiveness is highly tied to their beauty and youthfulness.
It’s a shame if the woman in the article believes her value as a person is tied to her attractiveness and age. Given that “value as a person” is an entirely subjective concept, there’s no reason for this to be true.
However, her value in the “dating market place” is tied to her attractiveness and age. That’s a fact, it’s objectively measurable and it’s as cold and uncaring as natural selection. It certainly doesn’t care how offensive you find it.
This is exactly my point (and that's why I used that phrase). The letter writer feels that her value in the world is diminished by her age; with her most fertile years squandered she hasn't much else to give it. The response author goes to pains to illustrate that even someone well into her 90s still has value - that she values her interactions with the older woman.
The letter writer's is a misogynist worldview. To get there, you have to assume that women aren't really contributing anything to the world beyond reproduction. Men's lives have meaning without a woman and children, perhaps, but women's don't.
Separately, I think saying that someone's value as a romantic partner is primarily in their physical attractiveness is obnoxiously reductionist. I went off on quite the drunken rant about that last night in another thread (not my best work, tbh).
But basically, I argue optimizing for the most attractive partner I can find for someone at my level of attractiveness and then locking that down (via marriage or similar monogamous institution) is a poor strategy, even if it is the most common one and one implied by genetics. My genes would also love me to sit in bed eating sugar all day, and that won't make me happy.
Ultimately: I accept that people approach dating (especially app dating) primarily by looking at attractiveness, aiming for someone in their "league" or a bit higher as evaluated visually. However, I don't think it's the best approach for your overall happiness, nor is it one that everyone employs.
I mean, can you imagine dating a teenager? They're at peak fertility. But not only is it illegal depending on the exact age and where you live, it sounds like a nightmare. Like just talking to them gives me a headache.
Me? I'm a transwoman and a lesbian so I'm a bit of an evo-psych nightmare. Despite having no real fertility to speak of and a noticeable lack of childbearing hips, I do quite alright. I'm doing much better dating women as a 36yo transwoman than I did as a 31yo cis male. I've been trying to figure out why, and the only explanation I have is that me being more authentic is, in fact, valuable to the people I date.
Frankly it would be great to have real, impartial numbers about all of this so we could actually reach some conclusions, but it’s so politicised that’s effectively impossible.
In other words, differences in preferences for choosing sexual partners follow directly (logically) from sexual dimorphism, nothing else required, and are thus in a sense “correct”.
And, well, no. We live in an industrialized world where we have all the food we could ever need and yet we have fewer children than ever before in history. People make human decisions that are more than their genetics, even when choosing romantic and sexual partners. Why would we take the most socially complex species we're aware of, and then look at one of the most complex social interactions that species engages in, and say "well, but it's really just about making babies"?
Another way to put it - I accept these things as true 1) Physical attractiveness is important to most people in picking a partner 2) Physical attractiveness is correlated with fertility 2) Physical attractiveness negatively correlates with age
Yet I still argue that a woman's worth, not just to the world but even as a partner, is more than her physical attractiveness. Biologically, a post-menopausal woman is not contributing new humans to the world, but she still can contribute to the world as a whole, contributing happiness and meaning to others, doing all kinds of things that make the world a better place. I would argue that meaning in romantic relationships isn't limited to fertility, either.
I don't think is even that controversial a viewpoint, but as a woman, there is certainly a cultural notion that your value IS your attractiveness. If you justify the viewpoint that a woman in her 40s is of no value simply because her fertility is phbbt, that's misogynist.
It is a biological reality that men can remain fertile much longer than women. Using that fact to justify a worldview that women in general have less value, especially past a certain age, is misogynist.
When we’re anthropomorphising facts and telling them that they’re bad, something has gone wrong. Facts are not social actors, they don’t care if you try to shame them, they’ll still be true.
> The male human may as well be the male anglerfish and the life of the female is barely more meaningful than that.
I’m honestly not sure what meaning you’re looking for here, or what bearing that has on the conversation. There isn’t any meaning to life other than that which we make for ourselves.
> Why would we take the most socially complex species we're aware of, and then look at one of the most complex social interactions that species engages in, and say "well, but it's really just about making babies"?
Because that statement is true? Is your argument that we should reject reality in order to tell ourselves pleasing lies about the world?
> Yet I still argue that a woman's worth, not just to the world but even as a partner, is more than her physical attractiveness.
I agree. There are different kinds of value to be sure. However this is a discussion of sexual attraction and romantic partnership. Someone’s, let’s say, java skills, are not very likely to factor heavily. Nor are they likely to be a replacement for sexual attractiveness if it is absent.
And yet science has a history of creating "facts" that exist to promote a certain worldview with a veneer of impartiality. These "facts" are created by and to be social actors. Racist and misogynist ones in particular.
> I’m honestly not sure what meaning you’re looking for here, or what bearing that has on the conversation. There isn’t any meaning to life other than that which we make for ourselves.
This is exactly my point; there is more meaning to our mating choices than merely optimizing for making children. We take meaning from, and find happiness in, things that are much more complex than raw physical attractiveness.
> Because that statement is true? Is your argument that we should reject reality in order to tell ourselves pleasing lies about the world?
It is not; it is absurdly reductionist. We live in a world with as much food as we could ever want, yet we make fewer babies than we ever did before. We live in a world with homosexuality. We make countless choices about our romantic and sexual partners that have nothing to do with their fertility. A lot of our choices have to do with social signaling, for instance; things that genetics alone can't be controlling directly.
>I agree. There are different kinds of value to be sure. However this is a discussion of sexual attraction and romantic partnership. Someone’s, let’s say, java skills, are not very likely to factor heavily. Nor are they likely to be a replacement for sexual attractiveness if it is absent.
It is a discussion of physical attractiveness, romantic/sexual value, and overall human value. I am arguing for decoupling all three.
There is a viewpoint that couples all three, and that viewpoint is not merely wrong; it is toxic and pernicious. It is fundamentally the viewpoint of the incel community. A viewpoint that, at its extreme, motivates people to acts of violence because they believe their lives are worthless as a result of unchangeable physical traits. It is also a view that is clearly held, at least to some degree, by the letter writer in the parent article. It is a drain on humanity.
Is it the case that a more attractive person will have more people interested in them sexually? Of course. Almost by definition.
However, attractiveness (particularly of the youthful variety) is neither necessary nor sufficient to have positive romantic relationships. Furthermore, positive romantic relationships are neither necessary nor sufficient to having a meaningful, happy life.
Ultimately I'm arguing that a 35 year old, 40 year old, whatever-year-old woman's life is not over if she's "still" single. Her dating life isn't over either. Do I expect all men to be attracted to her? Of course not; but some definitely would be, and she still has a lot to offer in that context.
Which reads as an excuse to dismiss any inconvenient finding as a lie.
Also, to nitpick, the facts themselves still cannot be social actors, they aren’t people.
> We make countless choices about our romantic and sexual partners that have nothing to do with their fertility.
Fertility? Try perceived reproductive fitness instead. Now remove the conscious element, where someone is actively selecting for reproductive fitness, and replace it with a host of emotions and drives that have been selected by evolution for the perception of reproductive fitness without the benefit of reason.
This is where all of the magic of emotionality and meaning that you are talking about comes from. They’re a bunch of imperfect heuristics designed to ensure survival and reproduction. As they are simple they often go wrong and are easily hijacked, see the term super-stimulus for an example.
> It is a discussion of physical attractiveness, romantic/sexual value, and overall human value. I am arguing for decoupling all three.
You seem to want to pretend that attractiveness does not have the value it does so that people who are low in it don’t feel bad. On top of this, you seem to want to force other people to pretend along with you.
> Ultimately I'm arguing that a 35 year old, 40 year old, whatever-year-old woman's life is not over if she's "still" single. Her dating life isn't over either. Do I expect all men to be attracted to her? Of course not; but some definitely would be, and she still has a lot to offer in that context.
I agree. But is she justified in feeling bad about it, knowing that her opportunities have narrowed? Yes. Indeed you seem to acknowledge this. Her life is by no means ruined, but she’d be lying to herself to pretend that it were a bed of roses. This is also about giving advice to younger people, and telling them that following in her footsteps is fine and dandy would be doing them a disservice.
No? I'm not even sure what fields we are talking about any more, but the findings of some fields and some works are so thoroughly polluted by their political motivations that they can indeed be dismissed entirely.
There are no doubt scientific works that are manipulated not merely for commercial reasons (e.g., the classic publication bias with pharmaceutical research) but for ideological ones as well. Some fields attract this sort of thing with such regularity that every work in the field is at least somewhat suspect, if the field itself has any credibility left (e.g. phrenology)
> Also, to nitpick, the facts themselves still cannot be social actors, they aren’t people.
Perhaps the term "actor" is the source of the nitpicking; my belief is that some science is done primarily to be a social force; to push a certain ideology.
> This is where all of the magic of emotionality and meaning that you are talking about comes from. They’re a bunch of imperfect heuristics designed to ensure survival and reproduction. As they are simple they often go wrong and are easily hijacked, see the term super-stimulus for an example.
Perhaps we agree here; I am arguing attraction and partnership and all of that is very complex, that there is a lot of emergent behavior. And that, to use your "super-stimulus" as an example, it is often beneficial to consciously override the simplest impulses in order to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
"I only date the most attractive person I possibly can; it's my genetics after all" is about as good a strategy as "I only eat sugar; it's my genetics after all".
> This is also about giving advice to younger people, and telling them that following in her footsteps is fine and dandy would be doing them a disservice.
I stand by my previous reply in that the destructive forms of an attraction-focused ideology are the far larger disservice. The message that a woman's worth is strongly related to her attractiveness which is strongly related to her age is the far more dangerous (and honestly, pervasive) message.
Far too many people are embracing a message that tells them to "lay down and rot" because they aren't attractive and have no chance at a normal, meaningful human relationship. Far too many people are convinced their attractiveness is extremely low, when it is low-average.
Far too many people believe that they are unattractive and unloveable and let that view trap them in bad relationships and decisions; I know I did it. I've seen this stuff rip through my friends and communities far too often. It doesn't even need to be age; there are countless ways people of both genders can be less than ideally attractive and feel worse for it.
My own lived experience tells me that as a 36 year old woman I'm more successful at dating than I was at any previous point in my life. Would I be even moreso if I was 10 years younger? Probably, but in my case success has come only with age, so I find it hard to accept a narrative that insists otherwise.
It’s an easy strategy to fall back on, you don’t like the implications of a piece of research? Claim the researchers are just propagandists. Make this claim of anyone who finds against your claims, actively attempt to damage their careers due to their obvious bias, and effectively censor any research proposal that doesn’t declare it’s findings as being within acceptable bounds before being carried out. Of course this can be applied to honest and dishonest researchers alike, muddying the waters to the fullest.
> Perhaps the term "actor" is the source of the nitpicking; my belief is that some science is done primarily to be a social force; to push a certain ideology.
Indeed, the most obvious example that comes to mind is this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels...
> I stand by my previous reply...
My take on your position is that you want everyone to lie about the way the world really works in a misguided attempt to make things better for some.
This is damaging in the long term, people can only make the best decisions for themselves if they know the relevant facts. Telling young women to ignore the implications of this letter while also telling them a mixture of “it’s not true” and “society is morally bankrupt because it’s true!” does not help them, in fact it actively makes them worse off.
What's at the top of HN at this very moment? An article on the severity of the replication crisis in psychology. The very area we're talking about here. (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psycholo...)
It's an imperfect heuristic, but I can't accept every claim that's given to me as a "fact" as true; some I have so little respect for due to a long history of falsehood that they go straight to the circular file. Climate change, for instance, I have seen very detailed research on and personally witnessed, and I am satisfied that it is real and meaningful. If my mom sends me an email with "facts" showing it to be false, I no longer pay them attention. There was a time when I considered them and researched the conflicting data, but I've consistently found it to be of such poor quality that it would take exceptional circumstances for me to consider it again.
Credibility is real, in other words. It's not a perfect measure, but I can't thoroughly debunk (or validate) every "fact" that comes into my world.
> My take on your position is that you want everyone to lie about the way the world really works in a misguided attempt to make things better for some.
> This is damaging in the long term, people can only make the best decisions for themselves if they know the relevant facts. Telling young women to ignore the implications of this letter while also telling them a mixture of “it’s not true” and “society is morally bankrupt because it’s true!” does not help them, in fact it actively makes them worse off.
Too many people are taking "the world values attractive people more" to such an extreme that it diminishes their existence. I would say that it applies to men as well; as I've mentioned, incels are in service to that same ideology to their own detriment.
Yes, in most areas, attractive people do better. Yes they have more dating options. I'll even accept that people have a bias towards seeing them as more trustworthy and other positively in other traits that have nothing to do with fertility or partner selection. (Though for women, there's a tradeoff; being perceived as more attractive often means being perceived as less competent)
As a person, you cannot let that fact run your life. You cannot look in the mirror and say you'll never find a boyfriend because you're in your 30s now; no girl will want you with this skull shape; since you had a kid nobody is ever going to want you, etc.
You can find happy relationships in your 30s, you can find them with a less than ideal skull shape, if you're a single parent, if you have a "dad bod". It does happen. It is possible.
Society isn't morally bankrupt. In fact what I'm saying is there's hope and love out there for everyone. If you try, if you compromise, if you open your heart. But age, weight, finances... these are not reasons to give up on life.
Yes, people do need to think about what will make them happy, what they want to do with their lives, and the earlier the better. If you are someone who wants to have children and a family and you know that when you are 25, doing nothing to advance that goal for 10 years will not help you. It will be harder for you.
But that is not the end of the story. If you just figured that out at 35, if it took that long to realize who you are, you have options. Some of us are infertile, for instance, but that doesn't mean we can't have children in our lives.
My perspective is colored by the communities I inhabit and the friends I have, but the number of people I see squandering their youth? Basically 0. The number of people allowing something like age or body shape to convince them they have no options, at times to seriously consider suicide? It's not 0.
After I finish this reply I'm going to message a friend who is deeply depressed and feels they can't live authentically because of their body shape. This person is brilliant, young, amazing, one of the most interesting people I know, but can't see it. Because of how they see their body. They think it's impossible to have the life want.
I see people deciding it's impossible to make changes in their life at 20 because of their age that I know I made in my 30s. People who resign themselves to defeat over things I know can be overcome.
There are a lot of things that make a lot of areas of life harder. Privilege comes in all kinds of forms, not just race and gender - being born attractive, having parents that support you financially, being a US Citizen, being young, it just goes on and on. Not having these things makes life hard.
But hard isn't impossible. I'm telling people out there not to give up. It's a message I wish I could have given myself so many times over, to tell her the person I was who she could be. I was in an abusive relationship for years because I thought it was all I deserved, all I was worth. If I could go back in time, for even for 15 seconds, to show me what future awaited me... I could've saved years of the deepest, most soul rending pain.
The surest way for this woman to never find what she wants in life is to resign herself and stop trying. Resigning yourself to your fate only lets the hole gradually get deeper. You can always fight your way out of it.
The fight might be hard, and choices she has made will make that fight harder. But the past is the past. As the proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
How can something that's an accurate description of reality be misogynist? Unless you are claiming what I said to be false.
It's just that, like me, by 25 they're married. If you're 35 these people are pretty much permanently unavailable to you unless you have very auspicious financial or cultural circumstances.
Source: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-millenn...
My friends who enjoyed dating for fun, found they had trouble with it, because most guys were looking to commit - they weren't too interested in merely flings.
But this is anecdata, from Europe, so it may have limited applicability.
You just sound grouchy, making excuses for yourself. Also, attractive men don't want a life of serial monogamy either.
As someone who has his cake and eats it too (and has ice cream) I can tell you that this is incorrect. Highly desirable partners could still be interested if you have used your younger days to acquire the skills that would compensate for not being a 25-year-old sex pot.
Unless she is Miranda Kerr she better be prepared for a life of someone who needs to go to the grocery store even when it is raining, and needs to take out trash even if she does not feel like it and needs to deal with a washing machine being broken all while a cat peed in a rug because her partner did not clean the litter box. And boy if she has been a sex pot between the ages of 17 and 35 she is in for a surprise.
Women stopped being overly monogamous compared to men since the introduction of birth control. I wouldn't be surprised if tables have turned.
> I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years?
I hope she can learn to stop thinking about those years as wasted. She saw and did things that most people never get to see or do because they're too busy working. Plenty of 35-year-olds are in debt, upside-down on their houses, in miserable marriages, and just a few years from getting divorced, buying a convertible, and dating someone inappropriately young for them. More than a few of them would envy her life.
I have great sympathy for the person asking for advice, and I suspect they may have been hoping for something a bit more actionable. Also, the advice columnist mentioning their new book and book tour in the reply seems a bit tone-deaf to me.
I hope that she finds a way to start making the changes she wants to see in her life.
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This 'haunted' lady was once young and footloose and fancy-free and in pursuit of her dreams. And so were we all. But, once off whatever stage we occupy during the day, we all need to go home. There's where we have to face the same questions ... or distract or anaesthetize ourselves so that we don't.
Nobody has all the answers. Today I like this Kenneth Patchen answer I found yesterday.
"The meaning is in the wonder."
These life problems are classic adult ADHD symptoms. Moving cities every few years. Not being able to hold down a long-term relationship. Your "who-knows-what-number" job. Debt from poor and impulsive decisions. Lack of internal drive. Difficulty making and keeping friends. "Can barely remember to buy dish soap". Enough difficulty with making deadlines that her boss is reminding her of them.
In the end, the point might be mood because the first step is the same, and a therapist will be far better figuring it out in person. The specific labels also seem not to perfectly fit the actual conditions, which are more fluid than what the existing lingo suggests.
Don't dismiss a solution just because "it's a drug". It is, but for people who truly have ADHD, it's so much more.
Awareness is the antidote.
>It's the lack of perspective/awareness.
This is another ADHD symptom: a relative nearsightedness to behavioral consequences that are far away in time.
No, that's not what the parent is saying.
It's completely possible to be a neurotypical person and "getting into the wrong mentality", as you are saying. But that is why the parent suggested a -screening-, rather than diagnosing the person over the internet. Because if it is ADHD, there is help to be found that is much more effective than "just change your mentality around things". In fact, I'd personally suggest a more general screening, as there is a high comorbidity with ADHD and other psychological issues.
Further, getting a diagnosis is not only about the medical treatment itself. Understanding one's problems goes a long way in coping with the symptoms.
It certainly won't hurt though, outside of opportunity cost. ADHD has a genetic component, and growing up with ADHD parents is often a big contributory factor to the life problems that ADHD folks face. But it's not getting screened for ADHD, which if you suspect you have ADHD really should be the first step.
that was my case. Had all those symptoms you described. 30mg of Vyvanse every morning, prescribed by a Psychiatrist, allowed me to get a hold of my life again. The difference is night and day.
I'm 90% sure I have add, but I'm afraid treatment would turn me into a zombie. It would be really nice to be able to work on crap at work I can't stand doing, but at the same time it would be awful.
It might be good to spend a couple of hours reading and learning, perhaps watching some videos with first-hand discussions. This could help cultivate future awareness and potentially reduce impact even if you do nothing else. Or maybe you rule out ADHD as a potential contributing factor entirely. Or maybe you don't have ADHD but some of the strategies are useful anyway. You won't know until you look into it. But even if it's not applicable to you, the knowledge might help you understand someone else in your life.
This stigma about the different medications, along with worry for the view that people who seek treatment are simply looking for ADHD drugs, has prevented a lot of people from seeking treatment. It's very unfortunate.
I think most, if not all problems people have that aren't resource-driven (not making enough money to live) boil down to lack of ability to enjoy the present moment. And maybe even the resource-driven ones as well. If people could just learn how to relax, appreciate what you do have, realize it could be a lot worse, smell the roses, then they could get centered and plan for the future more effectively.
But instead many people just get caught in these catch-22s where they're depressed over not being where they want to be. But there's always somewhere you're going to want to be, you're never going to be 100% perfectly content with everything. Discontent isn't the worst thing in the world, but people let it sabotage their well-being and mental health. So sad.
Not in this case. With no family/child obligations, the short term goal-- and, depending on the size of the debt, midterm goal-- needs to be paying down the debt.
Just take the example of the measly two-nights-in-a-hotel savings. Without debt she could freely decide to save for a month or two and increase that number by one or two orders of magnitude (depending on current job's income). Ahhh.
With debt that savings cannot increase. No decisions are available to make.
Sorry to be flippant but getting out of debt is the only option here. Giving any other advice would be like talking chess strategy to someone eternally stuck playing tic-tac-toe.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
In other words, the only way to escape the concept of incremental time is to not think of it as increments at all.
I'm not one to hark back to the "glory days" of primitive society, but original humans operated in relatively close-knit groups, even when those groups were nomadic.
I don't think we've moved on, psychologically, from that. There's a lot of cliches that touch on this, like "social media isn't the same as real relationships," but ultimately I think what Haunted needs is to just pick one place and find a community. A real community, not just girlfriends to drink with once a week.
In our modern, complex society, it's not as easy as it sounds, since we don't all get a community by birthright like a lot of rural communities in the 99% agricultural days did, but there are tools and such to help you find an interest and a community.
In her case, as someone who also aspires to write, there are writers seeking community with other writers in nearly every town in the USA, and definitely every major city. It sounds weird to say you can fix your problems on meetup.com, but there's no substitution for consistent human contact and real friendships that go beyond work functions or weekend softball games.
This. Some of my friends just wouldn't eat alone - they'd rather starve than eat a meal by themselves. I, on the other hand, have been eating alone for the last 15 years. I didn't understand why it is such a big deal, when I was younger - now, I am beginning to think my friends were right. Friendship, when it is simple/without strings attached/genuine, is a beautiful thing to have.
Sure, in a sense, everything is subjective. All suffering is caused by the lens through which we filter reality. I believe Viktor Frankl writes persuasively on this topic after his experience in a concentration camp.
But that’s a non answer in any practical terms, and telling someone their suffering is all in their head is rarely a solution for anything.
This person made a series of choices over many years that has led to being 35, with no partner, no kids, no career, and no artistic pursuits. This legitimately sucks and is a hard problem that can’t be fixed overnight. It’s certainly not going to go away by denying that it sucks and all you need is an attitude adjustment.
The person who wrote this response has a husband, kids, a prominent column and a book deal. She should be ashamed for her response.
The person writing in can change their life, and all those awesome experiences will be of use and enrich the future. But the change toward the life they want will probably require small, incremental, consistent steps, hard work, and honesty.
Anyway, that’s what I think.
Hm I disagree with this but am open to be shown why I'm wrong.
> This person made a series of choices over many years that has led to being 35, with no partner, no kids, no career, and no artistic pursuits. This legitimately sucks and is a hard problem that can’t be fixed overnight. It’s certainly not going to go away by denying that it sucks and all you need is an attitude adjustment.
You are assuming that this sucks but I would then ask why does it suck?
I imagine there are people who also have no partner, kids, career, or artistic pursuits and are happy living their lives that way.
My understanding is that the unhappiness stems from her own expectations. She's unhappy because she wanted something and doesn't have it.
But the reality is that even if she gets all the things she talks about, she may still be unhappy because she wants other things. It is like people who continue to make more money but also continue to strive to have fancier and fancier things.
So I guess I disagree because I think an attitude adjustment is indeed the right thing to do here. Don't get me wrong, there are very real problems that this person is facing like her finances or lack of close friends. But things like having a career, artistic pursuits, and arguably kids, are not things that are required for living.
I felt like just trying to sit in that situation; sort of ponder the whole thing without coming to any conclusions. How many people do I know who could be Haunted? How many times have I been Haunted myself? What got me out of that space?
I just couldn't read the advice part.
I think to the points when I've been in that dreadful place like Haunted. A few friends reaching out asking "how are you?" without offering any advice and especially not sharing a fucking story riddled with survivorship bias. Those little acts seemed to clear the fog; and even better, I knew that they just wanted to reach out and ensure that I knew they were thinking about me.
I've read a lot of this stuff and it generally feels like a wash. Like someone who has already overcame their problems and is at the high point is giving you these answers and to be honest, there isn't really much advice you can give unless you know them personally. There isn't much you can give a person who is feeling empty and disheartened.
"Be comfortable with yourself" is advice that is technically true, but to get from here to there, so to speak, requires putting yourself into a messy, vulnerable personal relationship with another human being, who cares about you enough to break through and force you to care in turn. "Advice" is useless when it comes to deep interpersonal problems like this.
Also, you can give easily advice like this without having ever fixed yourself: Just repeat platitudes.
Since im replying to your comment you can assume i have worked through a couple of 100 replies here.
The situation is a little close to home and has left me with an overwhelming feeling of dread.
A few days before I left that company, people have taken me out for farewell drinks. We hang out until late at night, having fun, drinking and eating and chatting and so on. Until it's like midnight and we all have to go home.
One of my friends is the new girl. She's pretty attractive, and new in town. She's also from the suburbs and hasn't figured out the basic safety steps to being able to walk through downtown SF safely late at night, so she asks if I can walk her to her apartment. I say of course.
As we start walking, she starts bawling. I take it things haven't been going to well in her life and she's got some demons to grapple with. Well that's fine, I'm not going to ignore a friend in need when she calls for help. So we sit and I listen as she goes for about two hours, telling me her problems.
What were her problems? More or less the same as what was written in this article. She had just turned 30 and was starting to realize that she had nothing to show for it and the time available to her to settle down was quickly evaporating.
It broke my heart. She was a really cool person. She was smart, and pretty, and yet still down to earth. Unlike a lot of people I'd met in SF, she wasn't snobby or arrogant. She had a lot going for her. But at the same time, she was on the same path as OP was and I didn't see her getting off it any time soon.
Her big thing was travelling. She loved to travel. She'd been all over the world. She'd done backpacking, she'd done hotelling. She spent a few years living on a boat the Caribbean doing scuba stuff. She spent a few years living in an expat community in Asia. She had had a lot of experiences. But unfortunately, experiences are expensive, and it's really hard to put down roots when you're constantly on the move. And she was being made miserable by the conflict between her desire for an exciting life and her desire for a stable life.
I didn't know what to say, so I tried my best to be a good friend in the moment. I haven't heard from any of the folks from that company in a few years. I hope she's found the life she wanted, and that she doesn't end up like OP
I think this perennial human conflict raises its head in this post and discussion. It seems that how it presents itself in peoples lives depends on personality, upbringing, culture of influence etc. However, I get the sense that its a real thing in most cultures but with varying degrees of mutuality between 'adventure' and 'stability'.
On the other hand, I'm quite lucky. I have two children who I have more days than not, so I don't have the fertility pressure the author of this article has. I suspect her biggest issue with her life is her fertility, as she sees an entire path her life could have taken fading away rapidly. I've dated a lot of women over the last few years and the one thing I've noticed is that women over 30, and especially 32, often seem more focused on finding a father for their children than a partner. The author even touches on how hard this makes dating, the pressure these women feel to get serious and start a family in a very short period of time.
I'm 33 now and I have a large number of female friends who are reaching the point where things are becoming urgent. They've had these amazing lives so far, full of travel and hitting career goals, but they've neglected to find a stable relationship and now they're looking at their own fertility. I recently attended a small reunion of some college friends and of the 4 women, only 1 had children while 2 are 33+, single and childless and both of them seemed to want a partner/family. These are great women too who would have a lot to offer in a relationship but it's just hasn't worked out that way.
In either 12 or 24 months, my ex-wife and I are moving to another city nearby where her family is. It's smaller, cheaper (I could buy a house immediately), has a really amazing beach culture, etc. I intend to plant roots hard and put in a lot of effort to meet new people and make solid friends
Anxiety is living in the future. Depression is living in the past. Wanting a good experience is a bad experience. Accepting a bad experience is a good experience.
Western culture as a whole has gone a little too far in the “experience” direction. You can see this in little ways, like the fact that Legos are sold as pre-planned structures and not generic building blocks, or how electronics today are replaced and not repaired.
We really need a revitalization of a “creator” culture to combat the present consumer one.
I don't know if this is an "experience economy" thing as much as it is a lucrative licensing deal thing.
I'm sure the lucrative licensing deals help though. :)
Yes! I agree so much. As Hannah Arendt wrote in "The Human Condition":
> The ideals of homo faber, the fabricator of the world, which are permanence, stability, and durability, have been sacrificed to abundance, the ideal of the animal laborans.
If we changed to that, we can change from that.
This is completely tangential, but to be fair they're sold in both ways. I'm what most people would call a grown man, but I still can't help myself (or my girlfriend sometimes) and we pick up the odd set.
You can still buy large sets of mixed blocks, as well as the models. I've got a few models posted around my place because I enjoy them, but we also have [at least one] classic creator kit[s]. Even as a "grown up" it feels good for the soul sometimes.
Artists' studios have long worked in a similar way, employing others to continually emulate an original ideal that an artist would ultimately brand.
I understand it's a little different, but we don't regret people admiring da Vinci as much as they do. People haven't stopped painting since the works of masters, and in many cases are inspired to see what is possible— and people still paint as a creative act. With reference to Lego— I covet that Apollo Saturn rocket model, and I'm often in awe of some of the creativity and skill that has gone into many of the models designed in their studios.
I grew up in the age of Lego models, though less sophisticated than they are now— I did start with my mother's early 70's sets.
Maybe the issue lies elsewhere— not that the predesigned models exist at all, but the consumerist motivation to just buy up those [models] for children instead of first exposing them to the basics without any other aspiration and gradually increasing exposure. I mean, that's how we've done painting for a long time— the kids get finger paints, wax crayons and cheap newsprint first. Then later they can see some master works, and maybe get a paint-by-numbers to see that their hands are just as capable of producing the same with the right practice.
My girlfriend and I share a one bedroom apartment and it’s a touch small (having downsized for reasons not our own).
I do keep a series of bookshelves along one wall that are largely filled with books but leave some space for other things like a couple of models. Others sit on the TV stand. They’re just kind of peppered in places where they won’t get in the way but are still viewable
http://legosteveblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/lego-pirates-wave-...
Not corporate-branded -- but not total freeform.
It can be insidious, and without outside perspective -- either yourself years later, or someone who knows what they're looking at -- really hard to recognize (and fight).
Um no. It sounds like someone with no people to spend time with, that's living paycheck to paycheck, that is one financial emergency from financial ruin.
That doesn't automatically equate depression. When you're worrying if somethings going to happen tomorrow that leaves you penniless that other people around you wouldn't even notice the cost of, and you don't have another human as an outlet and for reassurance, you get frustrated and angry and cold and distant and apathetic all at once. You have to or you go nuts.
I don't see her as depressed at all, and unless you are licensed to practice mental health you haven't any business armchair diagnosing someone.
See my parent comment in this thread, I'm not depressed. I've got a few hundred dollars to my name, a ged, no degree, have been rejected by multiple companies this year, will most likely contract and die of cancer before I die of old age, don't have anyone I can call to hang out with, don't have anyone to call if I have an emergency and need help, don't have anyone to ring me up and ask how my life is going without wanting something.
I'm not depressed, I'm fucking tired. I imagine she's not depressed either, just tired. Worn out. In need of something to go in her favor for a change.
It's perfectly normal to feel despair and frustration with your life, that doesn't automatically make you depressed.
Try walking in her shoes, or my shoes, are millions of other shoes. We get out of bed in the morning and ranger the fuck up because we have to to survive. Just because we aren't excited to run off to our shitty jobs and come home to our empty lonely lives doesn't make us depressed, it makes us disadvantaged.
There's situation (which may be shitty, been there doing that even if I am playing life on the easy setting of straight white male) and there's also attitude /outlook/approach /how you feel. They influence each other, but they're not the same thing. Your situation may make you depressed, but it's not going to give you depression. On the other side, depression doesn't mean you're in a bad situation except that it includes depression which may make it terrible because it colors everything you perceive. No friends? Maybe, or maybe you can't recognize that people really are friends and do care because depression makes you feel that way. No prospects? Maybe, or maybe...
There are a ton of ways that people get medicated (rightly or not) for depression and for some that may help, but for other people therapy to develop the ability to recognize what's going on and tackle it is going to be enough. Along with developing those skills the simple act of discussing problems with someone may also help a lot, and paying a consultant sorry therapist may mean that you take more from it because you're paying for it.
If you don't have a plan for your life other than reliving being a college freshman over and over every year, when you eventually hit the wall or get tired of the lifestyle with no way out, it'll shatter you, like the woman in the linked story.
It opens with an old couple who live in a land misted by a fog of forgetfulness. And one of them remembers they have a son they love very much. They haven't seen him in many years, because they had forgotten and they have to get back to him. And they set out to do so.
That feeling of, oh this is an important thing, person, event, skill, and why have I forgotten about it? Why didn't I attend to it? That is just part of the human condition as you get older.
I don't think your life is "wasted". Just accept that regret is part of all lives. Even the person who is happy, has thoughts and ideas about alternatives. Not that you would trade what you have, but you do play out alternative lives. Its perfectly natural.
So true, and so hard to do.
Remember this piece before you argue with someone that they should move away from their friends, family, their support systems for work or other development opportunities. It Takes A Village, and your local support system is not to be underestimated.
In the end, all we have is family and/or loved ones ("chosen family"); everything else is fleeting. Spread your wings, but know where Home is (and remember Home is something to be cultivated, and not to be taken for granted).
So far so good.
Then, three months later she drops dead of lung cancer.
It is very fortunate that I live nearby too, total coincidence, that branch of my family I have very little contact with. So now this 80+ year old guy that just lost his daughter, the only regular link to his past and provider of all his needs has to depend on me, the nephew he hasn't really seen in the last 35 years or so.
No more circle of friends, no walks about town, just some crap flat for old people and a whole day to wait for night to come again. Card games once every week and the occasional game of Scrabble. And the rest of the time you are just alone with your thoughts of life the way it was.
The good news is he definitely did not waste his life, but it is super hard on him and there isn't a visit that leaves me unmoved about how incredibly harsh life can be.
Poor guy.
From one internet stranger to another, you are a good person Jacques. We're all just walking each other home.
-- Keith Hebden
For me it's also a way to expand my own life beyond my own life. That is, to take joy in the wellbeing of others, even though I can't feel their wellbeing as they do, still multiplies the joy I can have in life immensely. Compassion can bring sadness, sure, but I think it's more than made up for by the satisfaction it can bring, too. You might say I try to not always be selfish for purely selfish reasons.
In a rather free and bad translation, couldn't find it in English:
> Humans keep themselves in a passable height above hellish depths towards which they gravitate only by using all their powers and helping each other lovingly. Among each other they are connected by strong ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around a person get loose and they sink a little lower than the rest into the empty void, and it's horrible when the ropes around a person break and they fall. This is why one should stick with others. I suspect that girls keep us up high because they are so light, that is why we should love the girls and they should love us.
-- Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak, 20th December 1903
It's from 1903, so I hope it's possible to enjoy the wisdom and cuteness without getting up on the last sentence :) Also "stick with others" is particularly badly translated and sounds weird, but keep the "lovingly help each other" bit in mind, don't hold my translation against Kafka.
Blood is certainly thicker than water as they say, for good and for evil. I used to think exactly as you stated the above and I don't mean to suggest how rigid you are but my recent experience with family is that relationships must go both ways, and when your attempts at expressing yourself go unheard or ignored then perhaps cutting ties is the right approach.
I would encourage you to use this as a growth opportunity. I had a similar situation occur with a close family member who died unexpectedly, and years later, my heart still hurts every day because of it. Take care of your self, but grow emotionally to put yourself out there when you can.
I won't discount that cutting ties is appropriate under certain circumstances. For myself, it is a last resort. People are people, fallible to their core.
Forgive my reaction, my family is adept at that very thing: pretending to listen then dispensing the advice they think will fix you and your problems; I've now realized that empathy means simply listening actively, and generally the complainer will come to the correct conclusion on their own, they just need a willful listening ear.
At least, I've never been genuinely convinced I was in the wrong unless someone first recognized my pains then gave advice or I noticed someone else's example. My entire life has constituted shame-based discipline, and not even the direct "you're stupid for doing x thing" but "she's your mother, she brought you into this world." Like, yeah, but that doesn't help me not be upset, and I may have even agreed at the time but the point is my emotions are high and ignoring my feelings leaves me subconsciously believing that my emotional being is wrong or unimportant.
tl;dr I'm a big boy, I can get over it but understand me before giving advice
Of course I'll leave my immediate family for opportunity - in my case, they're terrible people who posed a detriment to my future.
On the other hand I never learned how to function as part of a community of people (family, friends, whatever), and am left feeling like I have no support system. Which is apparently super important, but I only realize that now at 30 instead of earlier. :(
Sometimes they are actively used against you. In that case the right course of action should even be clearer.
Absolutely. I've termed this emotional gaslighting, where I'm frustrated about something and bring it up and the family member I'm frustrated with deflects or points the finger right back at me as if they're the ones that were frustrated all along. This leaves me doubting my frustration as if my feelings weren't ever valid at all, which I suspect had a huge hand in my intense anxiety that I've fortunately largely overcome.
Life is really hard and is contant suffering. You might die at 95 year-old, but you might die tomorrow. Taking responsibilities instead of blaming the world is often the only way to go.
A concrete example that I think will echo here is the impostor syndrome many engineers face. We know it is technically possible to sit down and grind huge amounts of value in software in a relatively short period, and we believe it so strongly that we feel crushed if we don't do it each and every day.
>But your concept of yourself makes no sense. You got it from a rom-com.
Bingo. Everything is a trade-off. On top of that, our best-laid schemes often go wrong. Sometimes years or decades of sacrifice to a career, relationship, or family makes one worse off, not better.
I don't know if a perfect system exists for living one's life but here's a nugget or two -
1) Love is a choice, not an emotional state (learned by watching my Dad.) 2) Reassess often. 3) Don't fear changing things, including yourself. 4) Most people will die having achieved little that others would consider worthy of praise. That includes the others. 5) Having lived at all is something 99.99999999+% (by mass) of the Universe will never experience. Though maybe I'm wrong here - stars, nebulae, and galaxies may actually be alive for all we know.
Those decline as you get older, and so does your value. When you are in your 20s you need to "make hay while the sun is shining", leveraging that to get where you want in life before the clock runs out.
It's not a healthy narrative, nor one I agree with. But you can see why she might feel the way she does; she has really squandered the opportunity provided by her youthful beauty.
I feel it myself (as a 36yo transwoman), compounded by a tech industry I work in that also has weird ideas about the value of youth.
She needs to not just "get out of a rut" - she needs to realize that her value to the world is not being attractive, fertile, or wealthy. She needs to get to a place where she feels like she's providing value to others that goes beyond that.
It's an uphill climb, as some of the posts here make very clear - there are a lot of people who view a woman's worth in a similar fashion.
Its also a type of worth that stands above most.There are very few jobs or hobbies the average person would be willing to die for in the same way they would for their infant child.
I have made it an important part of my life and my decision making process to treat my friends like family. That means if I consider a move or any other big change, they are at the forefront of the "is it worth it" question. At 38 it's increasingly hard to make friends (note: not acquaintances), and at this point it's why I have zero interest in leaving Colorado, regardless of the opportunity.
On the topic of this question/answer, I assume most of you are young? Or at least younger than I am. I can tell you now that the way you feel now will not last. Change is absolute. There will be a time where you will look around you for reasons to be thankful. Make as many reasons as you can. You will need them.
I agree, things change and sometimes you can't go back. Doors are always opening and closing, but the rate is never equal.
Very few people care about what's best. Yet so many artists strive to do the "best" something. Write the best story. Write the best song. Paint the greatest painting, and so on...
That's fine. But you've got to know very few people actually care about "best". They care about new, different, someone who's creating art just for them. The ones that actually do care about quality, they're hard to reach, and everyone has different tastes. So no matter how good your art is, a lot of that small group of people who cares about quality probably won't like it still. It's all subjective!
If you want to make a living as an artist, and you don't have an inheritance to live off, stop trying to win the artistic lottery. Start thinking of markets, how to differentiate yourself, how to create something you can sell, how to carve out a niche of people that will buy your art and pay for your living, how to grow that group of people, and over time, maybe you'll grow a big enough following that you can create the exact type of art you want to create.
Until then, create something you can sell or starve. Fantasies are for stories. Life isn't easy.
I'm old enough to know it's not just a phase. It's just who I am.
This can be because of adventure Travel, creating a business, or focusing all your energy on one person and then having that relationship fall apart.
I moved cities to be better positioned for my Startup. Ignored all friends and family for 4 years, and ultimately the company failed and I felt very similar to this woman.
The prison system is developing "re-emergence" programs to help inmates reintegrate with the world after being isolated for 20 years. If they can come back to happy lives, anyone can.
But I think there should be more books/classes and programs focused on integrating back with your own life after a period of isolation.
We do not really invent anything. We mimic nature. All our Mathematics, Science and Technology already exists. Our egos are unjustified.
Just pay attention to who is actually driving your car or riding your motorcycle. You will realise that it is not the conscious you. There certainly is an autonomous supercomputer in our brains. Can we control it?
The best data storage mechanism known to us is the DNA. No SSD comes close. We haven't even really figured out how our brains really store "videos" and "images".
Also pay attention to things like premonition. I have had it. Most of us have had these experiences. Talk to people about these. There is no scientific explanation for these experiences.
We are connected to everything else. Our lives in isolation have no meaning.
That's very Zen of you, but it is SEVERELY missing the point. Burnout and depression do not ask for a new reason to live. They ask for a break from the negative experiences that caused -- and now maintain -- the initial burnout and depression. They also ask for sources of energy and optimism.
Amortizing your already tired lower back while voluntarily cleaning a local park won't give you that. It's very likely it will make you less capable of overcoming your burnout and depression, even. (Well-targeted workout can still help though.)
I am disappointed at the massive virtue signalling in HN sometimes.
Being nice to others in a genuine way builds trust. And building this trust in people around you can help dissipate some of the emotional pain.
Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the point.
> If you want to build a life with a partner, and have a more satisfying career, and maybe have children, you need to treat yourself like a treasured child starting today. If you had a daughter who was 35 years old and felt like all of her traveling and moving was a giant mistake that embodied everything BAD and shortsighted about her, what would you tell her? You’d tell her she was wrong. You’d say, “Your life is just beginning!”
This doesn't help the author and it doesn't help onlookers, either. There is a time window on opportunity. There are serious tradeoffs that need to be pondered when you reach adulthood, and almost none of them are helped with a "you deserve it!" attitude. And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you, like your children will.
It feels off and insincere.
Providing a sincere response, and self-promoting are not mutually exclusive.
It's more like "Hey! I wrote a book on this exact issue. I really hope it helps"
Except that's your notion and not what Polly was doing with their book mention in the article. There it served as a way to kinda say, "Hey, I also share some insecurity issues with you, caused this by book I'm touring on right now, and oh, here's the link to it". There was no other nudging of Haunted to read the book.
Take out the mention that she's on book tour, and you no longer have a frame of reference about her self-shame.
I guess it is a hard balance to strike between self-promotion and good content. Perhaps if the writer could be more open about the promotion stuff in the beginning of the article it wouldn't feel insincere.
Moral was when they got back they realized all that “fun” time accomplished little but transitory happiness. They came back asking friends for job favors and so on.
There are many people in the world who will never know happiness. Life itself is transitory, 'accomplishment' is not a substitute for it, 'security' is a dream. Old men may say 'Youth is wasted on the young'; I say bravo to the young who drink life to the lees.
When you sell today, can you be so sure of tomorrow?
Does a wise person minimax, or do they balance?
Does wisdom figure in, or do people simply externalize a neurological temperament?
To your quote: responsibility, sure, but its corollary is authority, and they exist together in precisely identical degree. Just as we bear the burden, if it is one, of the stories we write of our lives - we do nonetheless retain the ability to write whatever stories of ourselves we choose.
Sartre may consider that a condemnation. I can imagine no more liberating conception of life.
Maybe it depends on the mindset and intent. After all, what is truly permanent in this life?
If you approach traveling as a practice of impermanence and presence, then it can be a very broadening, empowering experience. Traveling can be an excellent lesson on the transient nature of life. Any one of us can lose everything in a moment without warning, no matter how well established or solid your home is.
So from that perspective there actually is no trade-off because it's all the same.
Some things take time and sacrifice to build. Family, friends, community. Most of us really need these things, but there is an opportunity cost to pay to get them. Sometimes we have all of it dumped in our lap and we take it for granted until it's gone. If you are willing to pay the price in time, effort, and emotion, you can rebuild it, but no guarantees.
You're telling the author they indeed wasted their time and it's too late and it's their own damn fault. You're just being honest.
I prefer Polly's advise.
Nor do I see what's wrong with responding to a question with a relevant and timely personal anecdote.
> And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you,
Apple outlived Steve Jobs. Hamlet outlived Shakespeare.
And anyway, why is it anyone's obligation to create something that outlives them. That's hubris.
It's part of the human condition.
It amounts to demand to not talk about it openly, because it would be not nice (or rude) to tell someone else that she/he is lonely etc.
And perhaps this is why so many people get divorced, and even why there are so many bastard children and deadbeat fathers/parents: in some inherent way, such people have already fulfilled some unnamed biological goal and have no real incentive to pursue it further. Because a family, being a committed parent, is a societal abstraction that many need not bother with. Certainly you can see this in other animal species.
Your points on the time window of opportunity and the basic nature of tradeoffs is well-put and correct, and is the better advice to give younger people in the context of hearing this woman's story and reflecting on what the lessons are for them.
I think Polly's advice is way more helpful for the actual woman who wrote the letter, though.
Also the book plug was ham-handed, you're right.
Women have a ticking clock here in a way men simply do not. I'd tell her "I've been telling you to hurry up and start a family for TEN YEARS"...
It's imperative to discuss with your partner your relationship requirements early, otherwise they're unlikely to meet them. If they don't coincide, either make peace or find someone else.
We're not boomers, this generation will rely on their children much more than their parents generation needed to rely on them. Those without children are going to have a much harder time into "retirement", especially if they're living paycheck-to-paycheck.
I'd argue men still have a ticking clock in some senses. Sure you can still get it up and produce children, but your capacity to engage with them and raise them goes down over time. I certainly would like to be hale and hearty enough to see my kids graduate college and be able to travel to visit my grandkids, for instance.
Producing loin-fruit isn't the end-goal unless you have some kind of royal titles to pass on. For most of us it's just about raising a family.
I used to work with a woman who was 47 at the time, in a long-term committed relationship, and still pre-menopausal.
She told me once that she and her partner have discussed the idea of having kids before she hits menopause, and they both ended up agreeing that it would be a bad idea because by the time the kids turn 18, she'll be 65 (and I don't know his age, but I met him a couple of times, and he looks to be around her age), and they wouldn't want any kids to have do deal with elderly parents at such a young age.
I say this is bad advice not because I think what makes me happy will make everyone happy. I know lots of people would find a life with kids in the suburbs stifling. But the "treasured child" type of advice makes the same mistake in the opposite direction. Our culture glamorizes a life of travel and adventure and experiences, but I think it dramatically underestimate the percentage of the population who find such a life unfulfilling and would be more fulfilled with roots and neighbors and a sense of place.
"What would you tell your kid?" My dad traveled the world, visiting dozens of countries helping bring health care to the developing world. He told me that the most fulfilling thing he did in his life was raise two kids. That's very uncool to say these days. But kids are always best served by honesty. They will find fulfilling whatever it is that they find fulfilling. Maybe they'll live a life of experience and die happy. Or maybe the best thing they will ever do will be to make you grandkids. But you're not helping them figure things out by trying to sell them an aspirational version of reality.
For the comment above, it seems like he is blissfully happy because he has funded and followed is true will(as personal and empiric as it is).
In the case of the author in the article, seems like root is the unsatisfied purpose in her life. The depression for the past, the anxiety about the future doesn't help with the present and like a snowball, it just gets worse with time.
Something that seems to come out in what you're saying is personal growth. To be a decent spouse, to be a decent parent, to work through home maintenance projects, and find new ways to interact with your parents as you both age, all of these require you to push yourself to learn and grow. It may not seem like it over 3 months, but over years of ups and downs you realize you've changed and grown a lot, hopefully with purpose.
With jobs and moves, it's easy to change jobs and places just because you get bored. But change isn't equal to growth. Sometimes it's just change and it feels meaningless.
I don't mean to say family is better than career or vice versa. But lots of people (me included) can wander through different jobs without feeling there's any thread of continuity or purpose to those changes - it's just a change. Maybe it's easier for people who can actively manage their career and always have their next move/job be another way for them to grow.
Agreed it won’t intrinsically make everyone happy, but ignoring the suburbs/kids aspect, what you are really describing, I think, is stability and that is a prerequisite for mental health and happiness.
Lack of stability, at any age, but particularly for children is significantly damaging to mental health.
I used to work briefly in dependency court (where the state intervenes when children are abused, abadonded and neglected). These children are subjected to psychiatric evaluations and they all say the same thing, lack of stability in the home devastates a child’s mental health (but also does the same to adults).
Travel/adventure are great in the context of a stable life, but on its own suggest a likelihood instability and thus mental health problems that make happiness damn near impossible. On the other hand if this person were to have sacrificed their travels early on to plant roots, that doesn’t really guarantee stability either, especially in this day and age where even if you do everything right odds are you might face the instability of employment, income, health, relationships, etc...
> Let me be more concrete: Promoting a book — which is what I’ve been doing since __my new book__ came out last month — is fun and exciting. You get to travel and meet new people. But there are aspects of it that feel a little corrosive. Too much focus on the self, on presentation, on sales numbers, on whether or not your work matters.
The columnist is doing the relatively rare thing of going beyond vague platitudes (It’s not easy for anyone, no matter how many deep roots they might’ve nurtured.) and referencing her specific personal circumstance: that even as a touring author -- they kind of life every aspiring writer would kill for -- she has a constant fight against doubt and shame.
Because she doesn't elaborate on what her book is about, nor mentions it again, I had to click through to find out -- a compilation of her "Ask Polly" columns, specifically on the topic of self-improvement. Polly's entire response, according to `wc`, is 2,337 words -- 1,700 of those words come after the link to her book.
Sure, I can agree that she should've taken the time to link to her publisher page, instead of the Amazon link she seems to have bookmarked for sharing. But if she's trying to be honest about her life situation, how is she not supposed to mention being on promotional tour? That's what a writer's life is consumed by after publication: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/th...
Here is another tradeoff for you to consider: One between telling an inspiring lie in order to pick someone up and being brutally honest about their life choices.
If your "advice" is "you missed your chance, you're screwed", then that does not help anyone else either. Advice is as much about inspiring confidence and fostering a change in perspective as it is about dealing with the hard truths.
I think that was the point, given that the whole article was about letting go of shame.
Making a subtly different point - "...are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." Who's to say what "live well" actually means? I mean, you & your friend may have an idea about what it looks like, and I may have an idea about what it looks like, and chances are they might even align. But that doesn't mean that every person needs the husband and kids and career success and creative accomplishments in that image. There's a strong revealed-preference argument that the original letter-writer wasn't actually into that; she should own those choices rather than assume her life needs to look like everyone else's life.
Earth is changing rapidly, I don't think it's a bad idea to travel and experience certain facets of life before they're extinct. Places or things you want to see in the future may not exist by then.
I went on some great adventures as a young man, backpacking round the Middle East and later in a job that involved a lot of world travel. I always thought I'd do more of those things, and while I have enjoyed family life I felt I lost something when I settled down and had kids and a career.
However, now that my kids are teenagers I can share my experiences of the world with them. We've been on some great holidays together, and have more planned. Those old adventures now have value, because they made me the person I am today and I can share that and leverage it in how I bring up my own children and shape their introduction to the world. Those experiences and the stories I have to tell and lessons I learned have acquired a new value, beyond merely myself.
Remember the magic 18-35 demographic? Think about what would happen if the advertising industry could, say, move that out 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? (50 is the new 30!!!).
I'm convinced, either by design or the simple aftereffect of youth worship in America that is what is happening. Consumerism lulls you into a life of minute distractions in empty things, and prevents you from reflecting and appreciating long term / difficult things. AKA having kids.
For men, well, they can sire children pretty late, with some side effects of slight increases to defect rates.
Women? The march of time is brutal on the eggs.
In fact comparing yourself to others is quite a double-edged swords with it's highs and lows, and throws your emotional states off-balance.
I had a similar (but much less pronounced) experience in the first couple of years of reading HN. What was I doing? Comparing yourself to all these super-unicorn-entrepreneurs daily was taking it's toll on my appreciation of what I had already accomplished.
All things in balance. Know thyself.
Also, there are billions of people with far worse lives than you can imagine. Humans just like you and me that live in misery and will never experience a fraction of the freedom that you enjoy. That thought alone should be a sobering realization that your life is not that bad, and it's time to get up and do something.
Not that I'd know. I struggle with this exact problem right now, I'm just younger and less extreme.
Anyway, "Merry Go 'Round" by Kacey Musgraves is a great song.
This is a skill and it takes conscious effort to acquire it.
Speaking generally, I've seen people find their way out of it by making their lives be about something other than themselves. That can mean kids, a community, a cause, or anything that requires setting their ego aside.
I don't think this is a flaw of western culture, as many characterize it. I think our parents and their parents did a poor job preparing this generation for dealing with this because they were rarely prosperous enough to think about more than just survival. That could hit any culture that went through less prosperous times equally.
Yes, I had periods of desperations and self-doubts but I would have had those also had I stayed in the same place focussing on the "career ladder". I'm happy I following my urge to see the world and embrace chaotic life.
"Wasted live" is nothing but a question of perspective.
I don't have debt though - that part is indeed worrisome.
Does that sound awful? Does it matter, if it works?
My latest idea is to study a certification. Has anybody done this before, and does it work? Will that help me start a career?
However if you're a software engineer or IT just do that
> My latest idea is to study a certification. Has anybody done this before, and does it work? Will that help me start a career?
Maybe? I suspect it depends partly on where (the company) you want to work, partly why you haven't been able to find a job yet, and partly where you do (or want to) live.
1. The sort of company you want to work for
Some places want certifications, degrees, etc. so if you identify those places as somewhere you want to work, and they need certifications to apply, or to improve your chances, then you need the certifications.
The places I have worked, and know about (hosting, SAAS, all UNIX based), are mostly interested in what they can get out of you. What you can do for them. As a result even though I have no certifications, I've managed to do well. I did have to start out pretty low on the ladder, Tech Support for a couple of years, but with hard work and motivation I now work from home as a successful contractor/consultant. It should be noted that I've got the jobs I have ahead of people who have certifications or degrees, mostly because I have convinced the people I interviewed with that have something to give. Where you want to work I believe will be an important deciding factor in wether certification will be helpful.
2. Why you haven't been able to find a job yet
If you haven't been able to get a job yet but the reason is something other than certifications then it's questionable how much benefit certifications will help. Try to work out why you didn't get a job or where you failed. Ask the company why you applied to, they might ignore you, they might help.
Are you shy? Do you undersell yourself? Do you present badly in person (disheveled, or strong smell for example)? Do you come across as a mis-understood, hard done by and unfairly shunned by the world? (the answer to that last one is yes, subjectively, from my reading of your medium post[0]. People complaining about how hard done by doesn't look good.
I've seen skilled people fall at the last hurdle, job in the bag except for the final in-person meeting, only to blow it by being a miserable fucker.[1]
3. where you do (or want to) live
I know someone who has a tech job in NZ, it doesn't pay well. NZ is pretty small, are there enough jobs? Are your expectations and/or demands too high? I started out in London, but now work remotely further North. If I were starting out from scratch it would be much harder to get where I am today by being in a much more regional place. It's harder to climb the ladder if there's no ladder around.
Some closing thoughts.
You got a paid internship that seemed to get extended, can you get a job with that company? If not, why not? Can you get another job locally? At least that way any company you apply for will know that you're at least employable. Social Proof. You need to prove yourself. I've met great programmers without a degree (or an unrelated degree in photography) and some terrible programmers with relevant academic backgrounds, having a job and being good at it might actually help persuade people that you're any good.
It might also be that you just can't go to NZ. It sucks. I want to sail around on a yacht and live in the Mediteranean instead of the UK, but kids, a wife, elderly parents etc. make that dream constantly a bit too far away to grasp. You might need to scale your pland and dreams back, or at least move them around a bit.
Good luck.
[0] That piece came across as a priviledged muddled whinge to me and if it were me I'd delete it, or at least rework it into something with observations and then a constructive conclusion. I doubt that campaigning for universities to run courses will help, it doesn't matter if companies want CCNA or whatever, if students don't want to study them universities won't offer them.
[1] If you're not good in person, practice. Go out to user groups, learn to talk to people, and listen.
Please can you teach me how to get better? If certifications aren't the answer, do you have a better solution? I'll lower my dreams and take anything, anywhere.
Don't apologise to me! What you got was my take on how you have presented yourself. I've been responsible for hiring people in the past, and I'll hire people again in the future. Maybe my first impression could be useful to you.
All you need to do is take it (the criticism) or leave it. Defend it if you want, but there's no-one here interested in hearing that. Perhaps more valuably for you would be to try to work out why you came across like that.
> I grew up in the countryside and I don't know how to meet people.
I grew up having no friends at school and was bullied for 5 years. It took me until my 30s to recover from it. This included being incredibly shy and not knowing how to meet people. The process will never be complete.
> Please can you teach me how to get better?
I can tell you how I recovered, your path may differ.
After a year with no real friends in London (pints after work with colleages apart) I went to tech meetups. I learned to talk to people by just doing it. I realised that these people were very very similar to me. I persevered and eventually friendships just fell out of that.
Are you interested in reading? Join a reading group. D&D, join a… you get the picture.
I understand that it's paralysingly hard for some people to talk to other people, so I suggest gently pushing yourself to take small steps by surrounding yourself with relatively like-minded people, people who at least are likely to share a similar mental state.
I can now talk to people, go up to them, small talk. Even convince themselves that I'm outgoing. It's tiring and I need to take a break from it and it feels like an act, but it works, and I make friends and I have a better life because of it.
> If certifications aren't the answer, do you have a better solution? I'll lower my dreams and take anything, anywhere.
A better solution? Not really. Work out why you've not been getting the jobs. Getting a CCNA only to discover that not having a CCNA wasn't the reason you weren't getting the job will set you back $number_of_years_it_takes_to_get_a_CCNA.
Maybe it will help, I don't know. Good luck though.
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
Meg Jay
which has a nice review here: https://youtu.be/BeK7QVzSL64
As has been pointed out by others, bringing up the book was a weird humblebrag. It kind of makes me think that Polly chose to answer this particular request for help because it was an opportunity to continue promoting her book, not that it somehow organically happened to fit in with her advice.
Also, it seems like a lot of the response kind of boils down to "nuh-uh!" and "cut it out!" with no shortage of affirmation-esque platitudes. From my personal experience, I have found that line of reasoning to be frustratingly valid only in retrospect for people that have already overcome the bulk of their depression/anxiety/existential dread. It's easy to be prescriptive or reductive when you have some distance from the issue that you're talking about, and that's not necessarily helpful for everybody.
Anyway, as far as Haunted's post goes, I can entirely identify with those feelings.
On my nineteenth birthday I had my house raided (and entirely destroyed) by the gang taskforce of the local pd. This was because in the middle of the night before, my house had been tagged with some gang related graffiti on the side of the house that faced the freeway. I couldn't afford to fix the place after the raid, and had no way of guaranteeing that the people that tagged the house wouldn't continue to do so.
So I had to move with only the clothes I was wearing.
At 20 I had to move overnight because a stalker broke into my mother's house (where I was staying) and tried to choke me to death. When the police arrived, I was almost arrested because the stalker had friends in the department (this individual moonlit as a kind of "high class" cocaine dealer to lawyers and a few judges in the area). Knowing he was certainly going to come back with no consequences, I moved again. This time I was able to carry my laptop and a change of clothes.
At 21, me and my then-girlfriend up and left everything that wouldn't fit in her car so that we could move in with her parents as a way to get her out of prostitution. When we got there, her parents changed their minds and we ended up selling everything including the car in order to get a ride across the state to an office building I knew we could squat in.
At 22, I was summarily kicked out of the living room that I had been crashing in because I told the guy whose house it was that I wasn't comfortable with covering for him every time he stole money from his wife to buy heroin. He kept my laptop and the bag of half my clothes out of spite.
I have since lived in much more stable circumstances, and the last two time I'ved moved, I've kept all of my stuff and relationships! For the first time in my life! That being said, it's made it difficult for me to shake the mindset of "Don't buy it or care about it if you can't take it with you given five minutes' notice." In fact, I don't know if I'll ever be entirely without that feeling rattling around in my head.
If put on the spot, I would have difficulty making a rational argument that my life hasn't been wasted. There objectively exists a number of periods of my life which I have nearly zero to show for. That being said, it's not a line of thought that I regularly entertain. That type of existential despair is simply too easy to wallow in. It's like quicksand. The idea of a ~Meaningful Life~ (and its opposite) is at once way too emotionally weighty and way too easy to mercurially define to be a useful focus for anybody, especially people that are already struggling with other issues.
As for broke, it is a tangibly anxiety-provoking and embarrassing thing. Every little setback (like schools you're applying for asking for surprise paperwork that you can't access, being "mysteriously" rejected by a school wholesale without an interview just for ASKING if they offer financial aid, not being able to afford basic resources to launch a small business, etc.) makes everything seem more and more like there is some sort of cosmic curse at play, or that the world is actually reflecting my personal worth. All I can really do is keep trying, and personally only the tiny victories help with that sort of anxiety. That's just me of course, others might respond to being broke differently.
As for "friendless", the only thing I can think to say to someone who makes that claim is "Are you sure about that?" I recently moved to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and have yet to make any close friends in the area, but I still have close friends from all around the country that I talk to on a near-daily basis. Group chats are great for this. Whenever I am feeling lonely, I figure that it's on me to reach out.
The friends you"ve moved away from probably miss you as much as you miss them, and while it's not the same as hanging out in person, an extended phone call or a nice text chain full of jokes and news snippets can be a healthy reminder that you haven't just "disappeared".
Sorry this got a bit long, I might've lost and then re-found the thread of my reasoning at some point ;)
Basically, I think it's good that the original author decided to reach out and ask for help, even if the help is from an advice columnist. I would encourage anybody else struggling with these things (like I currently am) to make an effort to do the same in whatever way works for them. Asking for help when needed, and offering it when capable are two of the most satisfying and empowering things a person can do.
Also as stated by many posters, therapy from a good therapist can also be a godsend.
Anyway I'm done rambling for now. If anybody wants to have a friendly chat about depression or isolation etc., feel free to shoot me an email! I am not a professional anything, but I'm pretty friendly and a good listener!
:)
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99 Wear Sunscreen
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, Sunscreen would be it
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience... I will dispense this advice now...
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked...
You are not as fat as you imagine
Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday
Do one thing everyday that scares you
Sing
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts; don't put up with people who are reckless with yours
Floss
Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind...the race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults, if you succeed in doing this, tell me how
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements
Stretch
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life... the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't
Get plenty of calcium
Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary... what ever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's
Enjoy your body,use it every way you can...don't be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll ever own
Dance...even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly
Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for good Be nice to your siblings, they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard, live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft
Travel
Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise politicians will philander you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable politicians were noble and children respected their elders
Respect your elders
Don't expect anyone else to support you
Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse, but you never know when either one might run out
Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth
But trust me on the sunscreen
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-s...
> Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup – they all die. So do we.
> And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and the sane living.
> Think of what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes.
-- Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"
Am I missing something?
1) This feeling of longing, helplessness, and futility resonates with a lot more people than you might expect from sitting on a park bench watching passersby
2) Lots of HN people have hot takes, of varying quality, on how one should behave in light of such a situation.
I'm broke, friendless and have nothing remotely resembling a meaningful life.
I however have not moved all over the place, I live 15 minutes from my childhood home and spend 90% of my life living in the same 3 blocks.
As far as family I barely have any left. My mother and my half-brother.
The bulk of my social interaction is via emails with one individual. On the occasions they reply, they're very terse due to how busy the individual is. I've met them once, for all of maybe 25 minutes. Other than that I mostly just talk to bun, a purple stuffed anthropomorphic rabbit I've had all but a few weeks of my life. As a child I was only invited to a few birthday partings or outings, as an adult I occasionally get asked why I wasn't at so and so's event 'well, I didn't even know about it...' and I was invited to a wedding of someone I went to school with from kindergarten on a couple of years ago, I was even sat at the head table with her father, with the exception of her insisting on a dance with me not a single person talked to me with the exception of the bartender taking my order. At one point I simple gave up and stood quite literally outside looking in, literally in the shadows outside of the barn the reception was at until the bartender cut me off and my contacts were gone through to find someone to collect me and my car.
The few seemingly like-minded people I've found are famous multi-millionaires and billionaires that live thousands of miles from me that I have effectively zero chance of ever interacting with. Put a gun to my head and I wouldn't be able to begin to tell you how one makes a friend because the only person that believes in any amount is essentially a stranger that I've met once and likely may never meet again.
I don't even know how to talk to people. I'm 33 and I've never actually had anything approximating a proper romantic relationship. I've never had a best friend that I do things with. I've never been part of a group carrying on and having experiences. I've never had to deal with a breakup, or co-habitated, or fought with a romantic partner. I've never had anyone phone me just to see how I was doing. I get a birthday card from corporate and sometimes from my mother when she remembers and that's the extent of my birthday being acknowledged.
The last person I got close to romantically, shot and killed themselves after we'd had 3 proper dates.
At 33 I have a GED and no college degree, I've filed bankruptcy, I've been in the same job for 12 and a half years. I'm one mild financial emergency away from being fucked.
I might as well just be a robot although, if I was a robot I'd probably have more human interaction purely from curiosity in me.
If things don't change professionally, in very drastic ways, I'll work until the day I die. I'm lucking if I can put 2-3 grand into my 401k each year.
While the woman writing to this columnist says she hasn't even the energy to contemplate humanity... that's about all I have going for me. I sit back and think about the nearly 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide we will put into the atmosphere this year, the microplastics in the air we breathe and the water we drink, the myopic and manipulated views of the world technology is giving to the masses, the growing wealth divide. I suppose I have more in common with a hypothetical artificial general intelligence though as I lack most of the experiences humans share in common.
She's 35 and had a cancer scare. My father died of cancer 12 days before my 13th birthday, his mother died before him of cancer, my mother had thyroid cancer which is in remission. Cancer is a highly probable death for me too ma'am.
Oh the drink, I know the drink well. At one point I was drinking as much as a fifth a night just to chase that fleeting escape from reality where everything amuses you. It's a trap ma'am, run from the drink, forsake the drink, the drink is a lie.
She may be a ghost but she isn't alone and to be honest her life experiences sound like quite the upgrade to mine.
Sure, there's people out there with it far worse than us. Simply having electricity and being able to read makes us far better off than many millions. Knowing that doesn't make life any less empty and cold and lonely though.
Do you get out much? I was friendless for a year until I went to the local Linux Users group. Now, almost all my friends (except one old school friend I re-connected with a year ago) are Ruby or Go user group people.
I get to see them all twice a month, I invite some of them to my birthdays, we get beers after the meetups. If it weren't for these people I'd have no friends either.
Oh, sure, no-one is going to get a girlfriend from attending these meetups, but it's a start. I now go climbing because of these people (one of the members has been doing it for ages), and the more things or groups you get involved with outside of tech the more exposure you have to candidates for a partner, or even just other friends.
I train at two gyms 4 days a week, aside from my coach saying hi to me and occasionally bye to me everyone talks to each other and I'm off to the side effectively invisible.
I'm an SCAdian. Every few years I'll email the baron or baroness and the seneschal and say hey I'm going to come to fighter practice, haven't been around, could you introduce me to people. They do and without fail 5 minutes in I might as well be a dust bunny in the corner.
Same at church. I go every weekend just to be around people. I don't particularly believe what they do, in fact I'm mostly team simulation hypothesis, but they are upbeat and cheery and friendly... yet again though I have a pew to myself, people will sit elsewhere even if it means in folding chairs. Without fail. Every single weekend.
I'm a Freemason, Lodge was always the same too. The casual hi to me, then everyone breaking off into their little social circles.
Without fail I can try and start a conversation, or insert myself into one, and I'll often get talked over which is an interesting thing as more oft than not I'm the largest person in a room.
It even happens in team meetings at work, it's like I've a damn cloaking device or something. You know in office space when, I believe Milton, keeps being passed the cake and being told to keep passing it... yeah, that, although it's generally more like I'm invisible. I can walk into rooms in plain site and finally say something and startle people if I talk because they were oblivious to my presence. I get the same thing at social groups.
Sometimes I wonder if people that have Cotard delusion think they're dead because they have a similar experience to me and their brain just interprets it as 'omg I must be dead'.
I don't know if it's because I simply lack in-person social skills and people on some subconscious level dismiss me like they would a cat or dog or what.
When someone does engage me though, and starts talking about something that interests me, I'll talk their damn ear off. I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...
I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.
I know there's other people like me out there. I mentioned one above, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be considered a god with the level of responsibility and impact they have and again they are a couple thousand miles away.
Try as I might, I can't find someone like that here or even someone that actually has free time for actual proper chats.
I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are. I don't care about what the sports ball team did or what happened in such and such television program, I don't particularly care that your child got a ribbon at their intermural swim dance piano recital, if you need to vent about your relationship it's a wholly alien subject to me and I haven't a clue what you're on about or what to say, when you're reminiscing about college I'm just like yeahhh no clue. I care about the future of our species, what we're doing to our planet, how we're running out of time to save ourselves, the statistical hopelessness of finding evidence of another intelligent species in the firmament even if human civilization last a million years.
I catch myself talking too much about stuff I'm interested in, it doesn't help. I have to rein myself in. Cut myself off, ask the other person a question. Also, I don't bring up computers or tech unless they did. Turns out it's a niche subject.
> I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...
Talking at great length about something you're interested in isn't fun for the other person, in general, even if they're interested in it too. Perhaps try this, ask them about what they like, then get them to talk about that. Ask followup questions. Remember the answers next time you see them as best you can.
"There's this place that serves your favourite pizza, do you want to go there" or "Hey, isn't that dog one of your favourite breeds?", or "How did you get on at the climbing gym the other day"??
Google "How to talk to people".
> I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.
I'm 40, it took me practice to get to the point I did, and I still have to work at it. It has been rewarding so far.
> I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are.
Yes, me neither. I have (self diagnosed) aspergers and/or ADHD. I have to make a game of social stuff, though not to the point that I'm treating people like toys or subjects.
> I'm just like yeahhh no clue.
I just ask questions. Just simple ones, not argueing, or even discussion. Just exploratory. Even if it's something I don't care about. "So, what was it like at your college", "If you had your time agian would you choose the same place", "Do you stay in contact with people from that time?" etc.
It doesn't matter if you're not interested in the answers.
YMMV, good luck.
That could be starting point, imho.
If you attend a new event like a church group, don't really get involved in any conversations or the ones you have go really poorly or awkwardly, and then end up sitting a table by yourself, it might actually build its own momentum and make people feel more awkward if five weeks later after coming 4 times and just sitting by yourself you try again and try to join a group conversation. It feels very weird to them because at that point they've already categorized you mentally as 'weird guy' or they mentally feel awkward when you join. First impressions matter a lot. As do a lot of the tropey dating advice about confidence, friendliness, conversational skills, etc.
And at that point, you really can't expect people to approach you if you come in and sit alone.
It's honestly better if when you join a new environment like that, you join a big circle of people, try to portray confidence, introduce yourself, try to hang back in the conversation a bit but contribute a little here and there - importantly, not just saying nothing at all or people might start getting weirded out. Maybe when you join these conversations you aren't smiling and being friendly enough. Maybe you don't know how to show people that you care about they have to say or they don't feel like you are interested in them.
Perhaps you haven't learned yet what's 'awkward' and what is not.
I have experienced the 'I may as well be invisible thing' many many times, but I can always trace back how things got there, because I can tell when someone has become awkward, and I usually kind of know why things got awkward. I might say something stupid or weird people out accidentally - but I'll at least be able to tell when I've done that.
Can you tell when things have suddenly become a failure? Or it's a mystery all the way through?
Another thing you could try to is to find some examples of socially successful people in media and try to emulate them. Act like them. Speak like them. See if communicating like they do leads you to better outcomes. And then learn to identify what those 'characters' are doing differently than the normal you.
You may also try a dating coach, but instead of having them help you with dating, you go to events with them joining you and join these group conversations, and afterwards have them debrief you on what to do differently.
You're intelligent, you're awake and have acknowledged the problems you face (as evidenced by the paragraph after paragraph you spent describing them), you're hardworking enough and diligent enough to retain your job for 12 years - that speaks to a certain type of strength of character. I googled you, found your blog, saw a youtube video of you and nothing about your appearance or your bearing was off-putting enough that you're incapable of making some friends.
Two of your biggest problems seem to be able to be categorized into career problems and friendship & dating problems.
As far as the career problems, I think given your intelligence and presence on this forum, you're likely already aware of many of the paths you could potentially take. My guess is your current position affords you _just_ enough comfort in life that despite your misgivings, your fears of the uncertainty of leaving it or undertaking something different is just too much of a risk for you to take. In other words, you likely have some vague ideas about alternatives you could follow, but you're afraid to take the leap. Otherwise, perhaps you'd already be studying at a university with free tuition in Germany or Argentina, teaching English in a poor enough place in Asia that even a GED is enough to get a job, working on a farm somewhere via the WWOOF program while you take stock of what you want in your future, apprenticed in a trade industry to a plumber or a carpenter or some other skilled trade, or something else people do when trying to advance from poor circumstances.
Or perhaps you really aren't aware of the paths you can take, in which case I would spend your internet cycles researching them.
The social problems are both easier and harder to solve.
Easier in the sense of - you have total control over your success or failure, there's no economic forces at work, no job market involved.
Harder in that the 'steps' to social success are not clearly laid out for us the way careers can be, because often you have no idea why a friendship fails to work out with a new acquaintance whereas at least you might have some idea what went wrong with a job application.
But the way to solve your social problems is to think of them the same way you'd think of any other skill you wanted to develop - to practice and put in work, evaluate what's working and what's not, and iterate.
Your failures are most likely due to one of a few things: 1) you're not actually putting yourself in the right places to meet people - that means on a Tuesday night you're sitting at home after work on the computer rather than going to where people are and introducing yourself or going to some sort of event where people work together or suffer together, or 2) you're at these types of places you might meet people but you're not taking some 'next step' - it could be the 'say hello' step, it could be the 'have a conversation trying to find mutual interests and if you do have a mutual interest engage them about it', it could be the 'ask to exchange contact info' step, it could be the 'follow up next week and invite them to another event or meal or for a drink or whatever else' step, etc, but at some point you may be dropping the ball, or 3) you could have some social tic you're not aware of that's off-putting and you're not iterating and experimenting with the way you portray yourself, the way you interact with people, the amount you smile or compliment people or make jokes or share something vulnerable or take it easy and be less aggressive - there's no way to know what it could be but you might not be modifying these variables and evaluating how they help or hurt.
But at a basic level, if you treat making friends or finding a person to date as a series of steps, and you spend your evenings actually taking those shots, and you change your approach, and you don't give up, and you lower your standards if it's not working, then you're almost inevitably going to succeed socially.
But the hard thing is, all of us already know all of this - but we don't do it because it's hard. At least, when I'm in a position where I'm single and alone, or in a new city or a situation where I've gone from having several friends to none, or a few close friends to none, it's only through intense, really agonizing struggle that I slowly build back up the social life I want. And as we get older it becomes more and more difficult.
But it's possible. Many of us who were incredibly weird, or were very shy, or had a stutter, or who were too unattractive, or were awkward, or were virgins, or were friendless - at various points in our lives - we've overcome these things and still gone on to succeed.
Going back to the point about how having just enough comfort in our lives actually paralyses us from taking concrete steps - if you find yourself encountering these same problems, identifying them, coming up with tons of ideas about how to solve them, but then procrastinating on those next steps - then do this - start right now. Get online and RSVP for a meetup tomorrow or in the next few days, or go to a bar, sit down next to someone at the bar - not to hit on them but just to engage a fellow human - and start a conversation. Mention the weather, ask them about what they do, whatever. The point is, don't wait. Because if you wait, you will do nothing. And it will be November 29, 2019 before you know it and you'll be posting the same comment.
My (admittedly incomplete) impression of you is that you seem smart, but that you've got a lot of strong beliefs about things that don't seem to be working that well for you. I'm not sure I have any advice for that, but in my life I've found that my beliefs and values have changed and shifted over time. Usually those changes were started by external circumstances, followed by me choosing to let go of beliefs I was emotionally invested in (definitely not easy).
An example: I used to hold a pretty dim view of people, but I have changed this view over time and now see that most people are a mix of good and bad. The catalyst here was just trying to adjust my belief to be accurate -- people do a lot of good (in addition to the bad), and I couldn't square that with my existing belief that people were basically bad.
Probably the biggest external circumstance that forced me to change many beliefs was getting married, which will probably be unrelatable to you, but I'll try to relate it to you anyways: Getting into a romantic relationship changed my priorities because of the way it made me feel, and how all of a sudden I felt I had someone to really live for and strive to help in a way that I had never even really felt about myself. Things that previously seemed insignificant all of a sudden felt extremely significant. E.g. getting a better job, because I wanted to better provide.
Dating tips? Learn to filter -- go on as many dates as you can and figure out what kind of people you really work with. If you only go on one date every 6 months, you're not going to be able to figure out what it is that you really want in a partner. You might be able to do the same to find platonic friends? I haven't had a group of guys that I hang out with since high school, but my SO fulfills the friendship role mostly, and I'm too busy to even try right now.
Go to the SafeHouse restaurant, it's on the magnificent mile!
I finally got to go aboard U-505 in October which had been a dream of mine since going up there when we camped at Dunes state park and then road the train up to the museum in scouts when I was a pre-teen, after I ended up at that restaurant. It's really goofy but was quite a fun experience from entering in a unique way to exiting in a fun way.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-gfxjAaZg0 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwVRoUxr9pk&t=55 [2] https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
OTOH, yeah it is well written, but great editors will do that for you.
"It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others." -- "Mistakes" demotivator, Despair.com
That yawning void in your soul that constantly whispers to you, "your life is meaningless, and nothing you do matters"? That's exactly what connects you with every other human that has ever lived. Most people who start to notice it just cover it up with a concert poster, or a salacious pin-up, or a photo of a sailboat, or a religious icon, just to avoid looking into it, and hearing it, and having all vitality and joy drain away through it.
But it's still there. It's not wrong. Your life really is meaningless, and nothing you do matters.
"Man is born. Man lives. Man dies. And it's all vanity." -- "Thrills", Cake
There is nothing about your life that had enough inherent value to waste. It just is what it was, the sum of all you were before. And it won't be exactly what you wanted it to be, because of entropy and psychology. You can spackle over the hole with anything that comes to hand, and desperately try to forget it's there, or you can let it remain, droning that high-pitched whine, from all the substance in your life getting sucked out into its vacuum.
A lot of what people do is, in essence, lying to each other, to save one another from that existential torment. Listen to a song on the radio? That's 3 minutes you can't hear the Hole. Watch a movie? That's 90 minutes of not staring into the Hole. Raise a kid? Heck, that's good for almost 20 years. Your Hole isn't any bigger than anyone else's. It has exactly the same amount of nothing in it. No matter what you pour into it, you're never going to fill it up--alcohol, drugs, sex, religion, entertainment, politics; they all get swallowed up in the end. If you accept that it will always be there, no matter what you do, you can slowly acclimate yourself to it. Try it on for size. Tell yourself: "I'm going to die, and everything I am will one day be forgotten."
"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." -- "Ozymandias", PB Shelley
So what's the point of living? Why don't we just lie down and never get up again? Why don't we lose ourselves in endless pursuit of cheap thrills and chemical highs? Because that's against the rules of the LARP game many of us play called "Being Grown-Ass Adults in the Real World". Some people do quit, and stop following the rules, and that's their choice. If you want your life to be yours, you'll just have to come up with your own purpose for it. No one is scoring points for being more noble or more visionary. You won't get judged by anyone or anything that matters for aiming too low, or not making enough progress on any given day.
Even if you don't come up with a purpose right away, you can still go through the motions of survival until you do. If you live another day, that still makes you just as good as any other animal. The cat gets it. Suck up to the human just a little bit, and they'll give you food and take away your poop. Suck up to the employer just a little bit, and they'll give you money to buy food and toilet service. If you can love your cat for doing nothing at all you consider important, some other human can certainly love you for the same level of accomplishment. (That is, if being loved is something you actually want.)
You don't have to be what other people want you to be. You don't even have to be what the person you used to be wanted to become. You don't have to live a life of greatness. You don't have to live a life devoid of meaning. The rules only apply to you if you want to play. Nobody else can be you but you, so you might as well get started.
All that which entices young women these days - moving, traveling abroad, working in 'passionate' or artistic fields instead of real ones - correlates with moving further away from stable long term relationships, family, and financial security.
And a 3+ year relationship ending dramatically - this is the expected outcome if you don't move to invest in family and create a shared future. God forbid her partner wanted children, a stable life in one location, the security of his partner not going out and acting like a 20-something year old, etc.
But nobody ever dares speak any of this, and while previous generations enforced control, they never explained why, except cryptically through religion. So it's no wonder in secular western societies people just do what they feel, and end up like this.
Now at best this no-longer-young woman will try to reform, change her patterns and behavior, just enough to attract a partner for the latter half of her life. And I'm sure she'll find one, as there are many poor male souls as well who know that a large part of their life and opportunities have passed. But what a sad state of affairs that we glorify and waste our youths, and scramble to pick up the pieces like this.
Of course, now I'm much older, and think of 35 and even 40 as being young, but I do remember it as being a big deal at the time.
This woman reached that age and freaked out, since she evaluated where she was at in life and decided she was behind. It's definitely an age where you do take stock of your progress. At least it was for me.
Yet she still refuses to lower her standards, apparently.
Empowerment can be a hell of a drug. Hell, she has dozens of articles explaining away personal responsibilit and rationalizing the wretched state of her life[1]. E.g. she has another post captioned "resist the urge to treat friendlessness as a personal failure."
I think we spent too much time teaching our generation to be confident, rather than teaching us to be competent and practical. Heather really has nothing but her own entitlement to blame, and she continues to be obvlivious.
How do you know what her standards are?
Heather aka Polly writes advice columns.
The person you quoted is asking Polly for advice.
1) declare bankruptcy to get rid of your debts and start over
2) join a religious community, those folks commit much faster!
I wouldn't call myself a believer necessarily, but I do believe in such things as many people now have dismissed due to utter faith in science. So, I'm not "Christian", but I think the bible is an important book and contains wisdom. If you haven't read Ecclesiastes, I suggest you do. It was written by some old, powerful man (no one really knows who), basically reflecting on his life and imparting wisdom. It's the kind of old testament book that has inspired great leaders for centuries.
Anyways, the idea of a church community really comforts me. I would be open with my own beliefs, and the reason why I'm attending church, and hope to build long-term relationships with those people. I also want to do some good outside of my academic work. When or if I have children, I would want them to attend church with me, with the understanding that they don't have to believe in God in order to gain something very valuable. I want them to grow up in a tangible, physical community of people who have their best interests in mind. Now that "inclusive" churches are more popular, I think I am going to find one.
No one knows that it was written by an old, powerful man, either. The tradition is that it was written by King Solomon and contains his parables, and that the framing device of a third-person narrator reflecting on someone else's parable is a rhetorical device, but there are certainly interpretations that, whoever the subject is, the (primary, there are some parts that are generally accepted to come from a different author than the main body) author is (as the framing suggests) a third person narrator, relating wisdom sayings that came from, or at least are attributed to, another source.