I happened to stumble across this blog post. I don't know how old it is or who this guy is. I just thought that the ideas were a bit thought-provoking because it's contrary to what people normally say.
- Society judges people by what they can do for others. Can you save children from a burning house, or remove a tumour, or make a room of strangers laugh? You’ve got value right there.
That’s not how we judge ourselves though. We judge ourselves by our thoughts.
“I’m a good person”. “I’m ambitious”. “I’m better than this.” These idle impulses may comfort us at night, but they’re not how the world sees us. They’re not even how we see other people.
Well-meaning intentions don’t matter. An internal sense of honour and love and duty count for squat. What exactly can you and have you done for the world?
It has a ring of truth and a ring of cynicism. Or is it just a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do you agree with his assessment of life? I'm curious to see what other people think about this view.
As a person on his way to improvement in that area, I'd like to ask: could you share what you believe are the qualities of a person other people want to be around? Or, perhaps, is there something that one shouldn't have in order to be attractive to other people from the start?If you want to have friends and you don't, become the kind of person other people want to be around.
The scary thing to think about is that the Just World Hypothesis is real and we really do get what we deserve. I don't buy it. One of the reasons that I am a liberal that favors many social programs is that it is not fair for a child to be judged based on the sins of the parent. A kid born to a single crack mom should not be destined to a life of suck just because he lost the birth lottery. Just as a kid born into the 1% should, in theory have the right to go bankrupt and lose everything. And then I realize I life in a reality that is not fair, often not just, and try not to scream. No, fucking, shit. Shouldn't that be the way it is in a fair world? You go to school get good grades don't mess around, you get noted and rewarded for that. Suck at school but you are really good at a trade, where you get better and more skilled and now earn a decent income while raising a family and buying the house etc? Should both of those people be judged as 'good people' or not? The reverse is that if you steal, do drugs, partake in riots etc, should we not judge you as someone 'bad' and treat you accordingly? I would love to redo high school. Kick out calculus and replace it with finance and statistics. Literature classes should focus on giving students a unifying culture of Western Literature, and use that as a jumping off point to philosophy and ethics. Then the last year of school focus on civics, citizenship and the skills needed to do things like get a checking account, pay taxes, write formal letters to representatives, make a resume etc, basic computer security etc. Maybe figure out a way to work with community colleges so that when you got the kid who is amazing at programming, you send him to the local CC to hone those skills and start that path while they are learning the rest of the stuff. Right now high school exists to do one thing and one thing only: create college students. And I realize I am off on a tangent here, but stick with me. Less than 1/4 of all kids in high school will go to college. And from what I have seen out here in Redneckistan, those 3/4 are being undeserved and treated as an afterthought. A welder does not need to know calculus, but he damn well better know trig and geometry. Carpenters don't need to know 18th century poetry, but they need to know how to write a letter, make a budget etc. And you guys really need to see his bio page When I saw the name it looked familiar; he's the guy fighting the "cookie law" in the EU.You’re judged by what you do, not what you think
I think I missed a conversational turn somewhere, but yes, there were goth (emo! you wound me!) girls. I submit that there are also women with difficulties socializing in person who spend a lot of time on the Internet too, though it's not clear to me what they have to do with the correlation between funny hats and naively confusing right wing politics with human nature, bloviating bloggers in general, or school shootings.
There are, but they hate the guys in fedoras. Goth girls (Sorry about the confusion!) like goth guys, and vice versa. Foreveralone guys, on the whole, would like foreveralone girls, but foreveralone girls outright hate foreveralone guys. The foreveralone for women subreddit for example has blocked all members of regular /r/foreveralone (The male version) from contacting them. It's not 'one big community of men and women that are ostracized' it's 'Ostracized men' and 'ostracized women' and both of those groups are antagonistic towards each other as well the world at large. (NORMIES REEEEE) I submit that there are also women with difficulties socializing in person who spend a lot of time on the Internet too,
The universe gives zero facks about us. Thinking that life or society somehow owes you a fair chance just seems like setting yourself up to be majorly disappointed. ....putting that down in writing makes me realize how cynical I must be. Wow. That said, hopefully there's someone out there with a viewpoint that balances mine out.
We have the capacity to think and feel, to be mesmerized by the world around us, to love the people in our lives. We have the ability to elevate each other, help each other become stronger, smarter, and more beautiful bit by bit, day by day. Conversely we also have the ability to oppress each other, to cause great pain and sorrow. The choice is ours to make, both as individuals as well as collective societies. The universe is cold, hard, and uncaring. We are not. Each of us burn inside as if our very hearts are made of fire. Whether we allow ourselves to burn with love and compassion, or anger and hate, we will burn either way until we pass on, the flames of our hearts forever snuffed out. We all know better. We can all be better. Whether or not justice is a natural state of being doesn't matter. What does matter is that we choose to be just, and true justice, true fairness, stems from love and compassion. Embrace it. It's not always easy and we won't always get it right, but being mindful and trying our best can do more good than we can ever realize.
On the news this morning, I saw that there had been some serious flooding in West Virginia and some homes were washed away, and some people died. I immediately felt compassion for these folks, but then asked myself, "Didn't these people know that they'd inhabited homes in a floodplain? Isn't there some local geologic evidence that would have indicated that homes built there stood a decent chance of being lost in a flood? Did anyone know this, or did anyone have anything to gain/lose by sharing or ignoring this information? Or, did some folks just get a discount on their property that was built on a floodplain and decided, at one point, that the risk was worth it." The rules were there all along for any person that did or did not build in that floodplain, but now it is a tragedy. It sure doesn't feel fair, but the rules were there all along. Where does the responsibility fall? Why wouldn't life be considered fair? As far as science has revealed, all human beings play by the same laws of physics. Our world operates under the very same rules wherever we exist. Unfortunately, we all start out our existences in very different circumstances. Maybe, our job is to find a way to help each other navigate the world so that we can all have more desirable outcomes.
Everything looks like a competition because some 18th century pricks decided it was and convinced everyone else to play along. If you like that game more power to you, but if you don't the answer isn't "that's just how it is", it's "play a different game." I don't like the Stoics, but they were right in saying happiness is valuing only the things that depend on you.
there's always this side of crazy apparently Life isn't fair. Nature isn't fair - we all need food fuel and shelter from The elements. We can't cheat death either. Not fair.