For me, driving. Its not that driving is difficult or i’m just not able to drive. Its that there are just too many awful drivers and pedestrians you have to care about on the road.
That my future is dependent on thousands of people I don’t even know
Everyone wants something from you and they want it NOW, but when you need something it’s like pulling teeth to even get acknowledgement.
Not being able to stand up for yourself against people who can control/manipulate you financially.
I would say having less and less ability to stand up to corps that control you financially. It just keeps getting worse and worse with fewer and fewer options. I mean yeah there are people behind it but its the corp that gives them power.
Lack of empathy is not something people grow out of, it seems like it is something that grows more severe the older people get.
I’m more empathetic now than I was 40 years ago.
People don’t become less empathetic as they get older. They were assholes already.
While that can certainly be true, I would say I’ve gained more empathy as I got older. I was never hateful, but I probably was more dismissive entering adulthood. I didn’t understand what I had when I was younger and thought everyone should be able to do what I did and just didn’t for some reason I didn’t understand. Over time I realized how wrong I was. I saw what advantages I had that led me to where I was, and how many MANY people didn’t have those same things, and that expecting them to have equal success was unrealistic and shameful on my part.
It is so easy for life to knock a human off course or keep them off course. An injury, addiction, an abusive family member, poverty, chronic illness, genetic disorder, political instability, bigotry, victim of crime, economic recession, or a natural disaster. Any one of these things and more can do it. I had little to no concept of these when I was younger. Growing up, meeting people, learning about the world, learning history made me much more open to others suffering and the desire to use what I have been lucky enough to have to help others, and recognize we, as a society, must help others. Its the only way we’ll all survive. Divided we fall.
I can say the same for myself, I just don’t see it as often as I had hoped in others.
I reflect on my past self and wish I had been a better person in my teens/early 20s. I can’t change who I was or how I behaved or thought back then but I can change the person I am now and who I aspire to be. I am also trying to foster that attitude and the skills to be empathetic in my kids.
I truly did not understand how intense, widespread, and long lasting “massive resistance” was in the US south after reconstruction until my 30’s. Like holy fucking shit. Some states had an average of a public lynching every month for almost 60 years.
We do NOT teach this here. It’s baffling. And it explains so much about the current state of identity politics and race relations in the US.
The NAACP used to hang a black and white flag that read “a man was lynched yesterday” at their HQ any time it happened. It almost never came down for decades until the 50’s/60’s and even then it flew frequently.
Public lynchings were also a spectacle that was advertised out of state. You could take a drive to visit multiple lynchings as a road trip. It wasn’t uncommon to bring your kids and to take souveniers from the victim. It is untaught because America wants it forgotten
Am I seeing the same comment you replied to?
“Souvenirs” sometimes being a polite way to say “body parts,” which were not always removed after death.
huh???It seems they edited their original comment. They were discussing the commonality of lynchings
Oh. I wonder why they changed it?
Judging from post history it is a privacy thing. They seem to do this with comments after they reach a certain age
Yup, there were even black defense groups and militias (and are still many today), like the Deacons for Defense.
But you won’t learn about them in school, on purpose, and you’re taught the illegitimacy of Malcolm X’ ideology and the Nation of Islam on purpose. The state wants you to think that peaceful protest is the only acceptable and legitimate means of protest.
and you’re taught the illegitimacy of Malcolm X’ ideology and the Nation of Islam on purpose.
I’ll say mostly yes, but there was one thing in my school textbooks that contradicted that narrative. It was this picture of Malcolm X and Dr. King:
I felt I got a semi-decent education in public schools about the Civil Rights era hitting the highlights of:
- Rosa Parks/Bus boycott
- Lunch counter sit ins
- Dr King’s speeches and approaches of non-violent protest
- March on Selma + Edmund Pettus Bridge
- Brown V Board of Education
- Little Rock Nine
With all of that picture of Malcolm X and Dr. King said something to me that words in the textbook never did. Dr. King, the man who preached non-violence and moved the USA forward to a better future chose to meet with Malcolm X. Malcolm X could not have been “all bad” or illegitimate if Dr. King wanted to interact with him. Further, after seeing pictures and film from Bloody Sunday (Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing), Malcolm X’s actions made much more sense.
Malcolm’s autobiography is a very good read.
The nation of Islam is not without fault of it’s own though, none that justified the actions of the state, but still not exactly a beacon of morality.
Like most religions, but particularly for those sorts of cult of personally spinoff “new religions”, I’d say it’s far too caught up in its own woo to ever be taken seriously.
The messaging about not needing to confirm to the religious identity imposed upon people of color by their oppressors is well and good, but replacing it with something arguably worse is not the way.
Yeah, like most cults it doesn’t seem like it’s so bad on the surface, but once you start digging deeper into it things very quickly go off the rails.
As a kid I trusted adults knew what they were doing. As an adult I now know they have no clue what they are doing.
As a young adult I found out adults have no idea, as an older adult I found out it’s not about knowing what to do in advance but being able to figure it out.
But it’s truly worrying how many people are just phoning it in most of the time.
Im not worried about how the average pedestrian acts. Its totally the average driver.
That hischool never ended for most people and the shitty cliques and drama continue for decades.
The fact that vtubbing just had a Mean Girls moment last month, the woman being late 20s/early 30s made it so much worse.
The fact that I know nothing of this tells me I made some right choices along the way.
Success in life is 75% luck. Everything you control (dedication, tenacity, ambition, follow through, dependability) is in the first 25%. The remaining 75% is just luck that you have no control over. That doesn’t mean you can slack on that first 25%, but even if you absolutely kill it on the first 25% you can still fail in life. I say this as someone that most would consider successful. Yes I worked hard to get where I am, but lots of people work far harder and have far less. I was born in the right place, with the right talents, in the right period in time/history, and with enough of the preferred genetics. Even had everything else been equal and I was born 20 years earlier or 20 years later, I wouldn’t be nearly as successful.
It shouldn’t be like this. Its not fair its like this, but this is reality.
A local YouTuber I follow said this once: “There’s no guarantee that you’ll succeed after working hard, but I guarantee that you won’t if you don’t”.
It sounds cheap and all, but it finally ingrained itself to my brain because it’s a less optimistic quote.
Success is luck, but you can even the odds by throwing my chips on the table.
Not actual gambling advice, but it’s something I heard years ago and it’s stuck with me.
there are common factors of succesful people. Working hard in some areas tends to result in more success than others.
WDYM? I can be a railroad mogul one day, or an oil baron, an automotive entrepreneur, a sugar plantation owner, or even a privateer, if I hustle hard enough, right?
Those are the only definitions of success?
I dont know about you but that’s not “succesful” to me. Or at least not what my goals are.
I know that tongue-in-cheek snark can be difficult to detect for many people, but consider the context here: I responded to somebody who said that success is 75% luck. There is no amount of hustle that would let a person become a railroad mogul, an oil baron, an automotive pioneer, a sugar plantation owner, or a privateer today. Being born into the correct historical era to become one of those things is part of that luck. And my secondary implication is mocking the idea that many of those people achieved their success by working hard, or even working at all.
You need to define succes first. Depending on your definition I will either agree or disagree.
definitions are personal. If you are looking for advice find a definiton that is less about luck.
You need to define succes first. Depending on your definition I will either agree or disagree.
I using the conventional western definition here for this conversation. All of my basic needs are met, I have no worry for my future needs for probably the rest of my life if I need it to be. I am in good health. I have loving relationship. In addition to this I have extra resources that allow me to explore my interests.
definitions are personal. If you are looking for advice find a definition that is less about luck.
No amount of redefinition will help you if you have a genetic condition like Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy which can cause you to keel over dead at 27 years old. No amount of redefinition will help if you’re 8 years old in and are living in an active war zone. In those two examples, they didn’t choose their circumstances. Nothing in their power caused them to be in their situations. Nothing in their power could change their situations. I would be equally powerless in their place. There is nothing intrinsic about them that makes them responsible for their situations. Why is it that those two people have those life threatening issues and I don’t? Luck. Thats life.
Now, I get where you’re going about taking what circumstances you have, and making the best of it. Or possibly exploring the philosophical nature of existence and coming to a different conclusion on what our few decades on Earth are for and how we can all ourselves successful. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to do personally, but understand that’s a luxury that someone starving or dying from exposure likely can’t seriously entertain. Entirely ignoring the base reality, even if we don’t like it, is dangerous, and potentially callous and can lead us to indifference of the suffering of others and how they arrived there through no fault of their own.
i guess I didn’t explain well. If your success means a private jet with pilots on call 24x7 that you can afford to fly where and where you want: you need a lot more money than I can help you with.
your success says something vague about resources to explore your interests. How much resources? If you want to make prinitive pottery that is cheap and a great hobby to be interested in. many other interest are more expensive. There is a reason boat owners call them ‘a hole in the water you pour money in’ - boats are also a fine hobby but if your success includes a boat you need more resources.
i agree that health is partially luck and so there is always a luck element. there is much you can do to earn money - keeping a great job is partially luck. There is a lot you can do to keep a relationship but there is some luck on if the other person doesn’t leave you. There is a lot you can do for health but some luck as well.
i guess I didn’t explain well. If your success means a private jet with pilots on call 24x7 that you can afford to fly where and where you want: you need a lot more money than I can help you with.
your success says something vague about resources to explore your interests. How much resources?
I’m sorry, I’m not going to divulge my personal financial details on the open internet. Why does this number matter to our discussion? I appreciate if you’re trying to offer financial or life planning advice. I don’t think I’m in need, but I appreciate your concern.
I’ll say this. On this chart, I believe I am past the fourth level (Esteem) and working on number 5 (self actualization).
there is much you can do to earn money - keeping a great job is partially luck.
Getting the job initially is a whole series of lucky events sometimes decades in the making.
There is a lot you can do to keep a relationship but there is some luck on if the other person doesn’t leave you.
Not only do you have do work hard on keeping relationships (this is part of the 25% I was talking about) you have to live to enjoy it. Further, your mate has to live and there’s all kinds of things that can happen to them through no fault of their own (this is part of the 75% luck I was talking about earlier).
i agree that health is partially luck and so there is always a luck element. There is a lot you can do for health but some luck as well.
There is a tiny tiny fraction you can do to keep/improve your health vs the vast majority of the things in this world trying to kill you or make you sick/injured. I’d change the percentages on this even further: 10% in your control to 90% luck.
I don’t mean you should tell me your criteria. if your idea of success is chess world champion - many have worked 12 hour days for years at it and failed - thus much luck is needed. likewise you may be great at business without ever making CEO. However more modest goals are reached by many - chess national master is in reach of many more. Engineers don’t make near what the CEO does but many more get there.
i can never figure out relationships but those who study it tell me there are predictive measures of what they call success. (The experts don’t always agree)
I don’t mean you should tell me your criteria.
Gotcha, I wasn’t trying to put words in your mouth. My apologies for misunderstanding your question.
if your idea of success is chess world champion - many have worked 12 hour days for years at it and failed - thus much luck is needed. likewise you may be great at business without ever making CEO. However more modest goals are reached by many - chess national master is in reach of many more. Engineers don’t make near what the CEO does but many more get there.
All of those examples assume you’re starting from a reasonably high baseline of stability, mental & physical health, resources, and likely education. My point is that you can’t assume those things. Lots and lots of people aren’t even lucky enough to have that starting baseline to even start working toward any of those achievements in your examples.
That’s why I said that my particular personal goals are irrelevant, but where I’ve gotten most would look at and define it as successful, and that I recognize that so many points on that path I was lucky to have the “upside” outcome rather than the “downside” outcome which would have left me far less successful, or at worst, dead. It really doesn’t take many of the inflection points in our lives to not go our way for us to be knocked way down or knocked out entirely. I am very lucky that hasn’t been my fate.
What comes to mind to me are two things:
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The absurdity of religion. I was raised Christian but always asked tough questions, to which people responded with the various platitudes religious people love to use. (The most popular being “God works in mysterious ways.”) I missed out on a lot of sexual experience and mistreated a lot of people because I was taught to behave in certain ways, and I regret it deeply.
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How much I was lied to or information omitted by my educators growing up, particularly on history. I read history books for fun, and have learned over time about many things that were deliberately withheld from my education, like the Tulsa Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain, or stories of the Black Panthers’ community building work, or the wholesale exploitation and destruction of indigenous people to make handful of people rich via the Indian Ring.
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The consequences of wear and tear on the body. If I’m conscious, something hurts.
Shower sex.
In the movies it looks so hot, but in reality, you’ve got a eyes and mouth full of soap and your freezing. 2/10
You are doing it wrong.
Depends on the shower set up.
One place I lived at had accessibility handles in the shower and a grippy floor, the shower head positioning and spray options kept both of us covered, and one of those heat lights that kept us both warm for the small bits that weren’t in the spray. Most other places have had issues with one person not getting enough heat to stay warm, although a special shout out to the one hotel we stayed at with multiple showerheads.
I haven’t run into the lubrication issue in showers or hot tubs, but also don’t use condoms (monogamous relationships with other forms of birth control). Hot tubs were not public and we were very good about the water maintenance.
Rinse your hair and turn up the temperature?
Not too mention how slippery it is.
…in the wrong places
You start in the shower. Wash yourselves, wash each other, tease a little, then dry off, get into a clean bed and have at it. Standing sex in the shower is mediocre at best.
Life is only shades of gray it’s not a marvel movie with clear cut Good and Bad
Nobody gives a single shit about you.
U havin a bad day or somethin?
No they just aren’t delusional.
