[HN Gopher] What will you do with the stories entrusted to you?
___________________________________________________________________
What will you do with the stories entrusted to you?
Author : 5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN
Score : 250 points
Date : 2022-09-18 01:27 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (joylere.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (joylere.substack.com)
| eyeball wrote:
| Reminds me of David foster Wallace this is water talk.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
| c0ax9 wrote:
| Such an important topic. Thanks for reminding me.
| mlambie wrote:
| gouda-gouda wrote:
| The most important shift I've made in my life was when I started
| approaching conversations with the attitude that the other person
| could teach me something, no matter who it is. Sometimes it takes
| some digging, but I've found it to be true.
| apocadam wrote:
| Out of interest, what and when inspired this change?
| NovaVeles wrote:
| I think I have heard Ram Dass say that a few times before. ;)
| callmejorge wrote:
| There's a proverb that says, for every 3 people walking there's
| someone who can be your teacher.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The concentration can vary though. There are places I've been
| where everyone could teach me a lot, and then there are the
| other places.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Often, I find those other places teach me a lot, but not
| intentionally. Seeing someone's mistakes is easier for me
| to learn from than explicit messages. Less survival bias,
| too.
|
| I didn't feel this way when I was younger. YMMV.
| imron wrote:
| This proverb is an actual 'Confucius said'
| scaramanga wrote:
| Until you meet enough people and talk to them on a deep enough
| level and then you realise that those stories are all remarkably
| similar and that we're all really experiencing the same world
| together.
| jes wrote:
| For much of my life, I was a jerk. I was insecure and often
| became offended and unkind when things didn't unfold the way I
| thought they should. It really screwed up my relationships and in
| my mid-50s, I found myself pretty much angry and alone in the
| world. I was constantly stuck in a story no one else really knew
| much about.
|
| What I came to understand was that I had picked up certain ideas
| about myself over the course of my life. "I am this" and "I am
| that." They weren't really true, and so I was always kind of at
| odds with the world.
|
| Over a period of years, I started to understand the situation
| better. I was fortunate to be able to hire a good therapist, and
| I worked with him for four years. I started reading about
| Buddhism, Advaita-Vedanta and other non-dual philosophies. I
| began to meditate and attend a local Buddhist temple.
|
| I also listened to a lot of Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, Francis
| Lucille and other spiritual teachers.
|
| I also read and watched a lot of the work of Sam Harris, Robert
| Sapolsky, Gabor Mate and others.
|
| Eventually I came to realize that my false, egoic self was just
| an illusion, and that I no longer needed to take anything
| personally. I also developed a greater sense of compassion for
| other people, and started to notice how they were caught in the
| same trap that had held me for so many decades.
|
| At this time, I don't really take things personally anymore. I'm
| generally at ease in the world. If this kind of stuff interests
| you, you might enjoy the following video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX1IFUDNtto
|
| edits: Fixed up typos and missing words a bit.
| elevaet wrote:
| It's not easy to make a fundamental change to your outlook like
| that, well done. I think most of us have at least a bit of what
| you're describing of yourself pre-mid-50s, and could use a
| little more untangling of these fixed narratives about
| ourselves.
|
| I'm a big fan of Alan Watts', his talks are absolute gold.
| jes wrote:
| Fully agree, and thank you.
|
| Regarding Alan Watts, maybe check out the chillstep
| recordings of his different talks on YouTube, if you have not
| already done so. They are excellent!
| mistermann wrote:
| Now that you have been through this once, do you think it's
| possible that if you went through all of the material you
| consumed in this period (assume photographic memory), would you
| be able to prepare a presentation (customized for yourself)
| with content that would be adequate to accelerate this process
| (and speculatively, a plausible range of how much) if you were
| to deliver itself to your past you (say, at the time that you
| originally started, and maybe also earlier points in time in
| your life)?
| jes wrote:
| I do think that would be possible.
|
| Your question seems to be along the lines of "Is it possible
| to speed up the process of seeing that the separate, egoic
| self is an illusion?"
|
| I think it is. In fact, Rupert Spira and others talk about
| "The Direct Path" for doing exactly this.
|
| Why do you ask?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Anyone else picturing google, facebook, etc. employees reading
| this headline, loling and muttering under their breath "That's
| what you think Joy. How's your [insert issue shared privately on
| their platform here] doing?"
| [deleted]
| lelandfe wrote:
| Thank you for this.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| This is really apparent if you've ever worked in retail,
| specifically small stores with few customers at a time. One of
| the parts I loved about working at vape shop was talking to
| people.
| samtimalsina wrote:
| I'm a little drunk and I have not even read the article but I was
| discussing this very thing with my friends. We have so many
| stories and we are each going through so much struggle
| individually. Why can't we be kind and considerate of each other?
| sumedh wrote:
| > Why can't we be kind and considerate of each other?
|
| Because if you miss an opportunity you might miss putting food
| on the table specially if you live in a developed country.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Why can't we be kind and considerate of each other?
|
| Well _I_ , for one, would love to. It's those hateful divisive
| _others_ who are the problem.
| user_named wrote:
| Sharp sarcasm.
| csours wrote:
| In a word, righteousness. The human mind grew up in a world of
| divided bands and fighting. Us vs Them is a very comfortable
| paradigm. So now we have people fighting about Woke-ism or
| Gamer's Gate. People get bitterly angry about this because
| their personal morality is challenged; shame is a knife to cut
| the sinner. We feel a shared sense of righteousness with our
| own band - how dare they oppress minorities / how dare they
| challenge the way I was raised / how dare they take away my
| rights and personal choice / how dare they behave so
| recklessly.
|
| Maybe you're angry about one of those things right now. Anger
| is an emotion that tells you to change something. If you can't
| change the thing you get angry about, then you get angry at
| that feeling of not being able to fix things; you get angry at
| people that get in the way. You get angry at people on 'the
| other side'. Then they respond by defending themselves and
| saying things that make you more angry. Once the fighting
| starts, you have the original problem and the original feelings
| about the problem, and you also have anger about the fighting,
| which quickly becomes bitter.
|
| I don't know how or if humanity will stop this at scale. A path
| forward would be choosing not to use shame and righteousness,
| but that is a deeply alien feeling. Of course you want
| racists/wokists to feel bad; they are doing harm and they want
| you to feel bad! It would be unrighteous to not attack them!
|
| ----
|
| I do not believe wokism is a problem in the way that racism is
| a problem. I believe that many people experience historic
| structural inequality. I believe that some people want their
| own race to prosper ahead of other races. I believe that people
| try to advance their own personal interests without regard to
| the power structures they participate in. I don't believe that
| shaming non-minorities really helps fix this.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Because empathy and kindness have to be instilled in children
| for it to develop. We all have the capacity for it, but the
| capacity has to be nourished.
|
| Adult lives generally unfold in either one of two ways:
|
| 1. Wondering how so many people have made it to adulthood
| without having developed empathy. Even if you ignore empathy as
| a moral condition, it's acquisition is a practical condition
| which is a pre-requisite for managing many other aspects of
| adult life (careers, relationships, interactions with
| strangers, etc.). The idea that so many people are roaming the
| earth without having developed this capability is astonishing,
| slightly terrifying.
|
| 2. Wondering why, despite all my best efforts, I am unable to
| connect with anyone. Does everyone else experience this
| profound sense of hurt and isolation? Even when I am with
| people, I feel alone. Nothing I do alleviates this condition,
| except momentarily. I feel like I even lack a connection to
| myself, or that my self doesn't exist, except maybe in rare
| moments. It's like there is a void and I must fill it with
| something: religion, drugs, sex, spending, etc.
| routerl wrote:
| From Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's _Good Omens_ :
|
| > Crowley, a demon: [during Jesus's crucifixion] What has he
| said that made everyone so upset?
|
| > Aziraphale, an angel: Be kind to each other.
|
| > Crowley: Oh yeah. That'll do it.
| fibonacc wrote:
| > Why can't we be kind and considerate of each other?
|
| inflation and social media.
|
| before we had just inflation. now we have social media that
| magnifies it.
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| And the recent heatwave? The last argument with my brother
| was so over the top it did permanent damage to our
| relationship. Upon reflection I do wonder how much heat had
| to do with it.
| fibonacc wrote:
| heatwave is also caused by global warming caused by co2
| levels as energy use rises with inflation.
|
| inflation then widens wealth parity gap and social media
| reminds individuals to take risks they cannot afford and so
| on....
|
| inflation causes stock prices to rise and factory outputs,
| exports to rise leading to more energy consumption.
|
| edit: i think i know why your brother is mad at you
| gjs278 wrote:
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Again, non sequitur. If anything, energy use _falls_ with
| inflation, as people can 't afford to use as much.
| [deleted]
| eulgro wrote:
| No. I would rather think its the lack of proper education on
| how to behave morally, how to have make valid argument, how
| our choices impact the life of others, and lack of self
| control training.
| gjs278 wrote:
| fibonacc wrote:
| inflation causes rapid drop in education quality
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Non sequitur. Inflation and education quality are
| unrelated.
|
| (Perhaps they are related when inflation gets really bad,
| but we aren't anywhere near that. And, education wasn't
| great when inflation was very near zero for a decade, and
| neither was social kindness.)
| fibonacc wrote:
| inflation means everybody takes home less pay year after
| year
|
| if income is stagnant money loses value faster due to
| inflation.
| randomdata wrote:
| Incomes have held stagnant, on average, for hundreds of
| years. This time won't likely any different.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Do you think earth was some kind of paradise before social
| media?
| shark_laser wrote:
| Ironically, the author mentions what you've done here directly
| and calls it "Narrative Take Over":
|
| "We try to communicate "I understand" and go on to provide a
| personal anecdote. Our story is usually of something that we
| think is in the experiential vicinity of what someone is
| sharing with us. This, however, is not empathy."
|
| The easiest way to be kind and considerate is to listen and
| attempt to understand rather than making assumptions. Even on
| the Internet :)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Why would those two things be connected?
| scaramanga wrote:
| Glad you asked. There are two types of kindness:
|
| - The one you employ as a manipulation to get something you
| want out of an interaction. Not to make a moral judgement on
| this, we all do it, when you want to buy a pack of gum at the
| convenience store you affect kindness (we call it "being
| polite") in order to make the transaction go smoothly.
|
| - The one which requires empathy. Empathy requires a sense of
| self, combined with the ability to recognise the same
| selfness in others.
| pshc wrote:
| When you live in a system that increasingly benefits the few at
| the expense of many, anger is a natural immune response. A
| healthy catalyst for change, really.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Because going through a struggle tends to turn people inward
| and makes them see everything, including the harm they do to
| others, as if they were a victim just doing what they have to
| do to survive. It is very hard to overcome it because you have
| to become a kind of martyr, who accepts the reality of their
| suffering but who's too holy to blame it on everyone else, or
| even on yourself.
|
| Kids are often nicer than adults because their lives are so
| easy, but if they don't learn to bear a cross (this is the best
| metaphor I know) they'll become nasty as they get older, as
| people reject them and their health starts failing. It's one
| thing to be a nice young man, another one entirely to be a nice
| overweight balding 60 year old with joint pain and a skin
| disease. That's not to say it's about age. It's about how good
| you feel, and age is just the big conveyor belt that everyone
| goes down whether they're ahead or behind their demographic.
|
| You can watch this play out in you next time someone says or
| does something annoying when you're still smarting from a minor
| injury, like a stubbed toe. You'll tend to act as if they were
| the ones who stubbed it because blame wants to earth itself.
| scaramanga wrote:
| I think that what you call "learning to bear a cross" is
| really an application of empathy, and an important one. It's
| the knowledge that "if I have an emotional meltdown, those
| close to me will be forced in to the role of caring for me,
| which emotionally drains them."
|
| It's such an important skill to know when to hide or bear
| your hurt, to spare others the burden of care, and when to
| share your hurt to acquire some care. It's a difficult
| balance to strike because if you go neglected for too long,
| you will completely meltdown, but if you elicit care too
| often, you will also elicit compassion fatigue from your
| carers (especially as an adult, I mean, parents will pretty
| much pour all the care required in to their young children,
| it's not that they are limitless, but the limits are way
| higher).
|
| To be less transactional about it: you don't make every
| negative event be all about you, because you recognise that
| things affect others, even things that seem to only affect
| you. That requires a quite refined and well-developed sense
| of empathy where you are balancing various overlapping and
| conflicting needs of, potentially, several people at once.
| airstrike wrote:
| This is a very insightful take (and really well written too)
|
| Thanks for sharing
| scaramanga wrote:
| Generally, people who experience childhoods which are
| impoverished of the stimuli necessary to develop robust
| senses of self and the coping skills that come with it are
| left much less resilient to life struggles in adulthood.
|
| If you have developed a sense of self early in childhood,
| then you are able to develop empathy for others, if you bring
| empathy in to a relationship, then you can be trusted and
| trust others. Think about it, you cannot rely on a
| relationship that does not have trust as it's basis, you
| cannot be trusted in a relationship if you cannot perceive or
| understand the other persons needs and feelings, and you
| cannot perceive or understand the other persons needs and
| feelings if you cannot perceive or understand your own.
|
| If you have a sense of self, and then you have developed
| empathy, and then taken that empathy in to relationships, and
| if you have then made the moral choice with that to be a kind
| person, then that enables you to form resilient
| relationships. And you take those relationships with you in
| to adulthood. These relationships, and the coping mechanisms
| that got you them, are highly effective cushions for the
| shocks of adult life. Life changing struggles can still
| afflict such people and bring them down, but then they are
| much more able to recover since they still have the
| scaffolding they developed in childhood and they can rebuild.
|
| For those with a childhood impoverished of the necessary
| stimuli, it is much more difficult, because they are
| rebuilding it all from scratch.
|
| And then there are those for whom the experiences of life
| have been so damaging, possibly combined with genetics, that
| they may never be able to develop a functioning sense of
| self, or empathy and go through their entire lives. And yeah,
| the older you get, the more difficult it gets because you may
| not have the attributes that would enable you to turn it
| around earlier in life (family or school friends with whom
| relationships haven't yet been completely poisoned, good
| looks enough to meet someone new, meeting ambitious people
| your age at the start of their careers who are looking to
| network, etc..)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| This is this human in this setting living. That is a story by
| itself. So call live in the moment.
|
| Not all of course. We do not just live for this moment, ... at
| least not all of us believe in ...
|
| Just cannot say "nothing about". Possibly "not all about".
|
| Tb;dr
|
| Too bad a title do not read la.
| eric4smith wrote:
| This is true.
|
| But you should probably maybe ignore most of it. Because there is
| more shared between us than we want to admit.
|
| I was talking to some guy here in Bangkok recently last night.
| He's Jewish and I'm Jamaican. It turns out our lives were
| remarkably similar. Right down to me working in the same city he
| lived in 30 years ago. We were making jokes about both of our
| Jewish friends because we experienced the same things with them.
|
| We experienced a lot of the same things too. It was very
| interesting having that more than hour long conversation.
|
| He experienced a lot of negative things in his life. I
| experienced many of the same negative things in my life. We spoke
| about a guy on my team here from a totally different very poor
| South East Asian country who experienced similar things in his
| life too.
|
| So yes, maybe the order of things, or the severity of things that
| happen in each of our lives are different, but most of the
| encounters and experiences are similar to what other people see.
|
| We are not that special. We are not that unique. We eat the same
| things, watch the same shows, want the same things for our
| children.
|
| The difference between now and before, is that we could put
| people in fewer buckets, now there are a few more buckets we can
| put people in. And really, if you stop to thing, not that many
| more buckets, since human nature sort of remains consistent
| regardless of the times.
|
| And the sooner we understand that a white nationalist has many
| similar experiences to a black nationalist, the sooner we will
| realize, that hey, "that guy is very much like me".
| throwaway84535 wrote:
| theknocker wrote:
| rwhyan wrote:
| This seems trite. What's more fundamental to our lives than the
| utter uniqueness of each individual experience?
|
| Merely examining ones own life would reveal the infinite
| complexity within our conscious experience.
| braindead_in wrote:
| The important question is how much of the story is true. We only
| remember a version of events that occurred and some other witness
| will have a slightly different version. Ultimately, the story
| which we make up is entirely our own and it might be far away
| from the reality.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a
| life as vivid and complex as your own--populated with their own
| ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness--an
| epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill
| sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to
| thousands of other lives that you'll never know existed, in which
| you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the
| background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a
| lighted window at dusk.
|
| This word was popularized by the site Dictionary of Obscure
| Sorrows, and I believe it, as the opposite, hearkens back to
| solipsism, the philosophical idea of you being the only one to
| exist. It is interesting to see this word "sonder" not referenced
| at all in the article, I would have imagined it a meme within the
| Internet at this point.
|
| [0]
| https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/...
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| This is a concept I've wanted a word for, for over 20 years.
| Thank you for sharing it.
| carabiner wrote:
| The sad thing is, it's a fake Tumblr word not recognized by
| any dictionary. Not OED or MW or anywhere else. Tumblr has
| coined a lot of interesting words though; "genderfluid" is
| another that started as a joke, then had people adopting it
| as sexuality for real.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| Official language recognition generally lags the real world
| by a significant amount. A word can be in use for many
| years before it even gets a consideration into a
| dictionary. Dictionary's reflect the world, not dictate it.
| Kye wrote:
| You've misunderstood the function of a dictionary. It
| doesn't create or validate words, or identities.
|
| Also: genderfluid isn't a sexuality. You've taken a
| terrible tumble into things you do not understand.
| rzzzt wrote:
| That's the goal of the author, to make up words for complex
| feelings and phenomena:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/obscuresorrows
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I'm not sure when this supposed joke began, but from what I
| found[1] with a quick search "genderfluid" was used at
| least as early as 1994 and not as a joke. The same source
| cites an appearance in Urban Dictionary in 2007, but the
| entry doesn't appear anymore and the Wayback link is
| currently returning 503 errors for me.
|
| 1: https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Genderfluid#Etymology
| hatsunearu wrote:
| maybe I'm just an asshole but I've felt whatever is the
| opposite of sonder these days when I come across people that
| are so clueless and inattentive they might as well be zombies.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I try to remind myself that there are perfectly fine reasons
| for this to occur. For example, the person might suffer from
| insomnia. They might have a lower functioning brain due to
| developmental issues. They may have been in an accident which
| caused brain trauma. They might operate on a wavelength
| sufficiently different from you in that moment such that
| communication seems impossible, and you perceive that as
| their deficiency rather than a mutual problem.
|
| The reasons to be compassionate are far more realistic and
| numerous than the possibility of a person being a zombie.
| It's best to assume they have a story and a reason attached
| to their current state that, given time to consider, you
| would probably relate to them easily.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Or, they might have been zombies for real. That is, people
| who merely exist, but do not really live anymore. The world
| is full of them.
|
| People who have no more hopes or dreams, other than to make
| it somehow through the day.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| These people likely have rich inner lives. What makes it
| hard to hope and dream other than incredible sensitivity,
| difficult experiences, and complex stories and histories
| that paralyze a person as they move through life?
|
| Life can be incredibly difficult. It can become scary to
| dream. The will and desire to do so comes much more
| easily when you world tells you it's permissible and
| rewarding to do so. For many of us, this doesn't happen.
| Dreams get crushed over and over, hopes washed away, and
| fortune doesn't favour us nearly as much as others.
|
| Not all of us are Epictetus, Viktor Frankl, or other wise
| philosophers who could take adversity and transform it
| into meaning and joy. Even so, I doubt very much that
| this kind of person is anything like a zombie. Maybe
| outwardly so, but that means very little.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You know the condition burn out?
|
| Some people have this as default, after being grinded
| down enough.
|
| There is then also no more rich inner life.
|
| Only different grades of sadness, stress and numbness.
| fllawless wrote:
| There's another explanation which should be very
| realistically considered, but which people are (probably
| intentionally) blind to: they're not as dumb as you think,
| and you're not as smart as you think.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The most common explanation is one that didn't make your
| list, which is that they might not care at all about the
| subject being discussed. If it's a work situation that
| prompted it, that's by far the most likely answer to why
| they aren't using any brainpower to think about how to use
| the new system: their brainpower is already being used in
| the background to compare fishing lures. :-)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Absolutely! I love this point.
|
| This was me as a child, quite literally. What kind of
| lure should I use after school at the lake, and how can I
| function minimally to survive class until then?
|
| My teachers thought I was a complete idiot, haha.
| atoav wrote:
| Sounds like a thing that everybody would acuse each other of
| in any given hyperindivisualistic society. I mean especially
| in the US you sadly have quite some people who would rather
| hurt themselves than have a penny go to the help of others.
| This is beyond pure _indifference_ towards strangers. People
| actively _despise_ living in a society (even if they
| ultimatly profit from it).
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| I could easily imagine people accusing each other of it in
| a hyper-communalist society, as well!
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| This is water.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=eC7xzavzEKY
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| That was much much better than I could have expected, and
| I'm glad I used my annual YouTube visit to watch it.
| finnh wrote:
| it's hard to reconcile, right? conversely I've been the
| clueless guy enough to realize we all do it. like getting
| angry at random trash and then thinking "you know, maybe
| someone dropped this by accident when they thought they got
| it into their pocket"
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Every time I try to think so charitably I end up driving
| behind somebody who chucks a plastic water bottle out their
| window into a national forest.
| kirbys-memeteam wrote:
| chaps wrote:
| At some point in your life, somebody's undoubtedly thought
| the same thing about you. Probably even a bunch of people
| over many years.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Although you may be right, and they may be wrong. Not that
| I advocate going around thinking like this as it'll only
| lead to unhappiness and poor relationships (and you'll also
| very possibly be wrong).
| thombat wrote:
| Shades of the old joke: A man driving on the autobahn
| hears a newsflash on the radio "Warning for drivers on
| the A7 northbound! A car is going the wrong way!" "The
| hell ya say!", snorts the man , "It ain't just one car.
| It's hundreds of them!"
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| This reminded me of another joke. Apologies if I botch
| it, I'm terrible at joke delivery.
|
| A person is driving with a passenger. The driver goes
| straight through a red light. The passenger is terrified,
| "that light was red! Aren't you afraid we'll be hit?" The
| driver says "don't worry, my brother does it all the
| time." After crossing several red lights this way, they
| come to a green light and come to a complete stop. The
| passenger says, "why did you stop? The light is green
| now!" The driver says, "my brother might be out driving."
| jvm___ wrote:
| A man climbs into a taxi, "Airport please, I'm late!".
|
| The driver speeds up and starts going straight through a
| red light. The passenger is terrified, "That light was
| red! I'm not that late, aren't you afraid we'll be hit?"
| The driver says "Don't worry, my brother does it all the
| time."
|
| After crossing several red lights this way, they come
| closer to the airport, and at a green light they come to
| a complete stop. The passenger says, "Why did you stop?
| The light is green now!" The driver says, "Oh, my brother
| works on this side of town."
| b3morales wrote:
| As depicted by xkcd: https://xkcd.com/610/
| cwillu wrote:
| I, for one, am thinking this about them at this very
| moment!
|
| <ducks>
| bigbluedots wrote:
| It's ok, to other people you are like that!
| cstuder wrote:
| As always, there is a relevant XKCD comic available for you:
| https://xkcd.com/610/
| routerl wrote:
| I've always thought of this as another perspective on
| Shakespeare's
|
| "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,
|
| Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
|
| To believe otherwise is to have lost the wonder of discovery.
| atoav wrote:
| This is the great thing of having a nerdy side: You know that
| literally _everything_ will get interesting if you just dive
| into it deep enough.
|
| Sometimes I feel sad for people who cannot experience that
| joy.
| jvm___ wrote:
| My current theory is that everything is a network.
|
| Prove me wrong, find something that's not a node on a
| complication network.
| NovaVeles wrote:
| Alternatively - "The nicest thing about anything is not
| knowing what it is." - George Carlin.
|
| Not knowing how a cloud works is magical for instance. But
| taking this line of thinking too far can be disastrous.
| There is a happy middle ground.
| atoav wrote:
| I don't think so. There is of course a childlike magic in
| looking at the clouds and dreaming of the people who live
| there. But the feeling of fantasy a child gets when
| looking at clouds does only partly stem from not knowing
| what they consist of.
|
| I have many topics that still fascinate me as much as
| they did when I was a kid - to be honest, maybe even more
| than back then, because now I know how ridiculously
| complex they are and what ultra-specific conditions
| needed to be there for this to emerge. Knowing more
| doesn't make things less miraculous, but more so.
|
| And despite knowing a lot about fluid dynamics and clouds
| I can still just stare at a beautiful cloud in awe and
| wonder how it would be to live up there in the naive,
| romantic sense. I know a lot about acoustics and what
| makes my instrument work, but in the end I can still just
| sit there and _play_ it. If anything that knowledge
| allows me to connect more intimately with the world
| around me
|
| Losing your childlike side is something that happens to
| many people, because they are afraid of how it is being
| perceived from the outside - and then they internalize
| this so much that they don't even allow themselves awe
| and wonder even inside the privacy of their own heads.
|
| Maybe this is coupled with the Dunning-Kruger effect? So
| if someone is in the valley of people who don't know a
| lot, but think they know everything, the wonder of the
| world around them might indeed be lost for them.
| prox wrote:
| It's called the Aesthetic. From aisthanesthai "to
| perceive (by the senses or by the mind), to feel." , it's
| when your senses are working at their peak and thinking
| goes to the background.
|
| So you can enjoy an aesthetic experience in a far
| different manner than the unaesthetic, like reading, or
| figuring out a puzzle, etc.
| Y78434221423 wrote:
| This argument was dealt with by Richard Dawkins in his
| book Unweaving the Rainbow:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow
| btilly wrote:
| You think you know how clouds work?
|
| Did you know that water vapor is less dense than air, so
| it rises, and this is part of why clouds form?
|
| Seriously, the atomic mass of H2O is 18. Compare to the
| other major parts of air which are N2 at 28, O2 at 32, Ar
| at 40, and CO2 at 44. Everything beyond that is a
| rounding error.
|
| Therefore, all else being equal, wet air rises.
| dorkwood wrote:
| > Sometimes I feel sad for people who cannot experience
| that joy.
|
| I feel the same, but then I think to myself: maybe those
| people are experiencing some quality of existence that I'm
| not, and thinking to themselves "this is the life".
| boredemployee wrote:
| I usually have that reflection when I'm travelling. It's indeed
| a depressing feeling. Last time it happened I was in the middle
| of Rome/Italy with many unknown faces around me, that I was
| seeing for the first time and - thinking at that time - that I
| will never see them again.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > It's possible to grow numb when inundated by stories of
| hardship and pain.
|
| Sometimes the problem is skepticism. There are people that tell
| stories who I'm relatively sure are fabulists. It's a lot of work
| to act engaged with a story that doesn't ring true.
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| A hallmark of immaturity is a person who makes assumptions about
| how easy someone else's life must be just because they are well
| off financially, have a bubbly persona, or live in a state of
| peace and gratitude. To be human is to suffer and at the very
| least to watch people you love suffer and sometimes die. I wish
| people would remember this, but more often they attempt to
| quantify the pain and create portraiture of a person they know
| nothing about, compare it to their own and then assume they can
| be bitter, resentful, or dismissive towards them.
| paulpauper wrote:
| But suffering and wealth are mutually exclusive events. plenty
| of non-rich people also suffer. This would only apply if you
| knew the rich person was suffering. Without this info, it's
| reasonable to assume that their life is actually better.
| As_You_Wish wrote:
| meh. We all are born, eat, sleep, shit, fuck, then we die.
|
| Everything else is just variations on that theme. You like
| Italian food, and this person likes Amish food, well whoop-de-
| doop.
|
| People make a bigger deal out of Italian food or Amish food or
| Istanbullian food because what else are ya gonna do? I'm not
| saying it is good or bad, but I think I pretty much know almost
| everyone's story. You're born, you do stuff, then you die. And
| some will go to heaven, most to hell even though they think
| they'll go to heaven, and we atheists are just going to die.
|
| .
|
| If you like Bill:
|
| All the world's a stage,
|
| And all the men and women merely players;
|
| They have their exits and their entrances,
|
| And one man in his time plays many parts,
|
| His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
|
| Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
|
| Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
|
| And shining morning face, creeping like snail
|
| Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
|
| Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
|
| Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
|
| Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
|
| Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
|
| Seeking the bubble reputation
|
| Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
|
| In fair round belly with good capon lined,
|
| With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
|
| Full of wise saws and modern instances;
|
| And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
|
| Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
|
| With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
|
| His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
|
| For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
|
| Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
|
| And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
|
| That ends this strange eventful history,
|
| Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
|
| Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
|
| .
|
| Or if you like your Ecclesiastes:
|
| 8 All things are wearisome,
|
| more than one can describe;
|
| the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
|
| nor the ear content with hearing.
|
| 9 What has been will be again,
|
| and what has been done will be done again;
|
| there is nothing new under the sun.
|
| 10 Is there a case where one can say,
|
| "Look, this is new"?
|
| It has already existed
|
| in the ages before us.
|
| 11 There is no remembrance
|
| of those who came before,
|
| and those yet to come will not be remembered
|
| by those who follow after.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I have a similar philosophy (if I dare call it that): every
| person is living in their own world, shared by no one else.
|
| What I mean is, reality is an interpretation of what we observe.
| Not only does everyone observe a unique combination of events
| from mostly unique perspectives, the unique events and
| experiences before an event change how current events are
| interpreted.
|
| Two people can look at the same thing and see two different
| things, but build upon that and consider that no two people, from
| their own perspectice, live in the same world. You can find other
| people that share many of your perspectives but never all. No one
| will live in your world after you and no one has lived in it
| before you and no one will ever know it.
|
| Thinking this way has helped me understand a lot of things. When
| I was younger, I couldn't understand how some people do this and
| that but then as life and time changed me so that I do or say
| those same things, I am seeing how those people didn't just make
| different decisions, they were really living in a different
| world.
| abstractbill wrote:
| _When someone dares to step forward and speak up, listen. Just
| be. It 's one of the most powerful things you can do. Hijacking
| conversation doesn't create connection, it breaks it._
|
| I might be in a minority here but I feel a huge sense of relief
| when someone shares an anecdote that tells me they understand
| what I'm going through, because they've been through similar
| things themself.
|
| (I'm probably oversharing, but one of my daughters has some
| rather severe developmental difficulties and has threatened to
| kill me, my wife, and our other daughter more times than I can
| remember. It is oddly comforting to hear other peoples' stories
| and know I'm not alone).
| alluro2 wrote:
| I feel the same, it's not that clear-cut. I think it can serve
| to convey understanding, familiarity, and also safe space to
| share that particular thing without judgment (i.e. like saying
| "don't worry what I will think, I've been there"). That's why I
| also have the need to do it when listening to others and caring
| to make them more comfortable and trusting to share.
|
| Of course, the difference is usually whether it is done more as
| a side-note while keeping focus on the first person, once or
| twice in that conversation - vs getting excited and shifting
| focus to own experience, continuing to expand and branch the
| retelling, or remembering 5 additional occasions when that
| happened...
|
| I think it can generally be clear whether you care and are
| participating in the conversation by doing it, or being self-
| absorbed and not really wanting to hear and emphatize...
|
| Also, that sounds like a quite difficult situation, and glad to
| hear that you had opportunity (at least at those occasions) to
| share and feel un-alone in it. I hope it gets better.
| SleepilyLimping wrote:
| It depends if they're using it to empathize, or if they're
| using it to call attention to themselves. It requires a self-
| awareness to know that the moment is "not about them".
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| That is very interesting. I've never understood that
| phenomenon. I've been through a bunch of hard things but
| another person telling me they've gone through it too
| essentially does nothing for my emotional state. I actually
| prefer not to hear more about problems and distract myself
| instead with doing something else.
| larve wrote:
| Same here. If the person doesn't derail the conversation, but
| provides context to how they interpret what I might be saying,
| that's comforting and shared empathy.
| satisfice wrote:
| The Narrative Takeover section is lazy thinking and lazy writing.
| Nearly every sentence is a claim made in thin air, devoid of
| practical guidance.
|
| So much advice about communication is couched in the language of
| victimhood vs unspecified aggressions. That's fine for memes on
| LinkedIn, maybe. We should expect more from someone who studies
| psychology for a living.
|
| No one should say "It's not about me." It's always, for you,
| about you, first. You judge yourself, position yourself, posture
| yourself, plan your next move, on and on relentlessly. You must
| do this. Even the author of this piece wrote it for her own
| needs, first, and expressed a philosophy that makes her feel
| better.
|
| Conversation is an exchange. When someone points a finger at a
| supposed "takeover," that in and of itself, is attempt at a
| takeover. EVERY utterance can be interpreted as a takeover if you
| choose to see it that way. Or instead of takeover you can see it
| differently: as energy flow. Sometimes I talk to a friend who
| needs me to hear him. He indicates this by talking without
| stopping. He hasn't "taken over," though. He has signaled his
| need and I can choose to accept it or make a counter proposal of
| my own need.
|
| A better way to have written about this would be for the author
| to stop blaming people for wanting to share anecdotes and connect
| in that way (which IS a kind of empathizing, regardless of what
| she claims). Instead, simply say "if you don't make room to hear
| quiet narratives from ambivalent or timid people, then you may
| never hear them. If you care about these people, consider how
| your behavior might be disabling them." In other words, it is all
| about me, and I am playing a First-Person Talker game as I live
| my life. So if I want be safe and happy I better do things that
| encourage the people my happiness depends upon to open up to me.
|
| That is my choice, and it is a pragmatic choice, not a moral one.
| No moral order requires me to self-censor my voice, because if
| that were true then we would have to say that anyone who ever
| spoke up in a conversation was committing a sin, since anyone who
| breaks the silence has blocked others from talking.
|
| I went on a date with a woman in 1991. I talked constantly. She
| seemed reluctant to say anything. We were married a few weeks
| later. I am still married to her 31 years later. After we were
| married she helped me learn how to make quiet space for her to
| share her thoughts with me. I do this because I choose for her to
| be happy; because it's all about my own safety and happiness,
| which comes through her.
| b3morales wrote:
| That section is not wrong, it's just being implicit about the
| second-order choice that you allude to in your last sentence.
| You certainly don't have to do anything that the article
| suggests, unless your conversational partner, and your goals
| for the relationship require it.
| jmathai wrote:
| > Our compassion can fatigue when we consume a high volume of
| trauma narratives through the media
|
| I have never thought about this or know if I believe it to be
| fully true. But it's a fascinating perspective that, if nothing
| else, has some level of truth to it.
|
| Definitely something I'll ponder as I think about important, real
| life relationships.
| leach wrote:
| Hmmm I like the message but I partly disagree with some of what
| they are saying in regards to narrative tap out. I've found some
| things no one can truly understand some things that people go
| through unless they went through it themselves.
|
| I've encountered it both ways, and theres just some things that
| people seem to only be able to understand on their own through
| experiences.
|
| Opening up to other people is exhausting, they frequently either
| don't know what to do or they try and act sympathetic or
| empathetic but eventually usually aren't.
|
| I think often about Frodo in lord of the rings. The burden he had
| to carry alone and how it changed him. I think many people have
| that one ring they carry around. You have to look at it from a
| Birds Eye view, the way our lives all run and are interconnected.
| It's said that either someone you know directly is going through
| something rough or that person knows someone who's got it rough.
| Thinking of that helps me be nicer and more patient with people.
|
| But i think it's foolish to expect them to be. I've been burned
| many times putting faith in people I shouldn't. The only people
| who usually truly get you understand you because they went
| through it themselves. Of course this is just my experience, but
| I've found it keeps on ringing true as i get older and older.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I've felt this way before. But is it the same as your feeling?
| Probably not exactly, but I bet we could connect on it at some
| level.
|
| Ultimately I've learned that it doesn't serve me well either
| way to be too guarded or to expect a lot from others. I strive
| to be open and vulnerable with people despite past
| disappointments. It doesn't always work out, but sometimes
| something beautiful happens that I could not have anticipated.
| pryelluw wrote:
| I appreciate the use of Frodo as an example.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| I don't agree with this article.
|
| I do agree that everyone is living a story that you know nothing
| about. But I think everyone on some level is aware of this lack
| of knowledge about other peoples' lives. In fact I feel it's
| rather obvious that even the most random person on the street
| lives a very complex life.
|
| A call for compassion because people are "unaware" of the complex
| lives other people live is a feel good narrative that isn't true.
| Everyone is fully "aware."
|
| The true horror of human nature is this: We are all aware of the
| hardships and the stories everyone else goes through. But our
| compassion has limits. At its most fundamental level, nobody
| cares about you and you don't really care about others.
| vasco wrote:
| It still works. Same way the bad guy in the movie gets told "I
| have a wife and kids" and sometimes spares the bank guard.
|
| It is very different what we know when we sit on the couch and
| muse about it, from what we know when we are directly engaged
| in a particular set of actions. It helps when you're in the
| second to be reminded.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| Spared because he slightly cares. Slightly, or else why did
| he instigate the hostage situation in the first place? On a
| gradient you can say he cares about 0.001%.
|
| 0.001% rounds to 0 which is inline with what I said. On a
| fundamental level, we don't care.
|
| >It is very different what we know when we sit on the couch
| and muse about it, from what we know when we are directly
| engaged in a particular set of actions.
|
| You're musing too. And you mused the opposite of what I
| mused.
|
| I would say, my analysis goes beyond simple musing. It's
| evidence based.
|
| Observe the actions and inaction of the world and yourself.
| How much of your wealth have you donated to people in need?
| You have enough wealth to save dying people. There are
| definitely people in the US who need money to pay for chemo
| or some other treatment for some terminal disease. How much
| effort did you spend to find these people and donate a
| fraction of your wealth to save a life?
|
| None. People have already died because of your inaction.
| Entire complex stories have been already been lost... And
| does this inaction keep you awake at night? No. Because you
| don't care. And neither does anyone else.
|
| This is evidence that what I am saying is more inline with
| truth then simple musing.
| [deleted]
| ekianjo wrote:
| Title is completely different from the actual post. This is
| against the guidelines.
| carabiner wrote:
| I'm not living a story. My life is really boring.
| Bakary wrote:
| Unless you are stuck in a very poor country or with a
| debilitating illness, there are few other eras in history where
| you have as much freedom to change this.
| lioeters wrote:
| You may be at the start of a classic story of an unexpected
| journey.
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