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.
Lack of empathy is not something people grow out of, it seems like it is something that grows more severe the older people get.
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’m more empathetic now than I was 40 years ago.
People don’t become less empathetic as they get older. They were assholes already.
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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
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
Am I seeing the same comment you replied to?
Unfortunately the OP edited their original message. See my other comment in this thread. It would seem that they clear their comment history by editing their old comments rather than deleting. may be automated
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.
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.
Not being able to stand up for yourself against people who can control/manipulate you financially.
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.
Most Americans can’t read past an 8th-grade level, and that shocks hell out of me. When I was in 6th-grade, standardized tests pegged me at “college level”, which I figured was utter bullshit, thought I was being buttered-up somehow. Turns out it was true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
In 2023, 28% of adults scored at or below Level 1, 29% at Level 2, and 44% at Level 3 or above.[1] Adults scoring in the lowest levels of literacy increased 9 percentage points between 2017 and 2023. In 2017, 19% of U.S. adults achieved a Level 1 or below in literacy while 48% achieved the highest levels.[2]
Anything below Level 3 is considered “partially illiterate” (see also § Definitions below).[3] Adults scoring below Level 1 can comprehend simple sentences and short paragraphs with minimal structure but will struggle with multi-step instructions or complex sentences, while those at Level 1 can locate explicitly cued information in short texts, lists, or simple digital pages with minimal distractions but will struggle with multi-page texts and complex prose.[4] In general, both groups struggle reading complex sentences, texts requiring multiple-step processing, and texts with distractions.[4]
This explains so much about all the stupid shit I see. Most Americans literally aren’t literate enough to follow a piece of literature, would struggle with any given novel.
That’s one reason so many people cling to quick catchy slogans and memes, or let good looking people spoonfeed them on TV. Reading Is soooo haaaaaarrrd!
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
Not too mention how slippery it is.
…in the wrong places
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.
You are doing it wrong.
People are mostly dumb. Justice is largely a myth. Chaos reigns.
It’s kind of amazing that we get people to collaborate as well as they do. The downside is that we need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of self-interest.
What comes to mind to me are two things:
-
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.
-
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 reservation system and Indian Ring.
-
Many adults have a much self-reflection and critical thinking skills as a 3-year-old.
Also, you can be highly intelligent yet very dumb.
I don’t understand the last part…
Everyone wants something from you and they want it NOW, but when you need something it’s like pulling teeth to even get acknowledgement.
That “adults” are just kids that got older. Same goes for “old people”. Everyone was once a 14 year old. There is no dividing line where you suddenly become an adult, and there is no dividing line between being an adult and being old.
We’re all born, and we live a life of days, months years, decades… it’s just you and your one, single life. You’re always going to be you.
Make this one life count. Don’t wait. Don’t procrastinate. Make shit happen. You’ll regret it if you don’t.
If more people realized this, life would be a lot more simple. I never grew up. I just got older.
I’m 28 so not old by any means, but at this point I have an established career with a lot of responsibility and a number of people working under me.
Very regularly I sit in my office and wonder who the hell decided to hire me for this job. Like I’m just some dumb kid! Obviously it’s not true, and imposter syndrome is a hell of a drug.
Definitely. I think imposter syndrome is basically the same phenomenon.
I used to think there was this Council of Smart People running the world and keeping the nuclear weapons from accidentally launching and the planes from crashing and the electricity on and the bridges from collapsing.
It can’t just be me and all the absolute idiots I grew up with now running the world. That can’t be right. Oh, Jesus…oh no.
No they’re not still kids!!
Nobody cares. You’re homeless? Nobody cares. You just got dumped? Nobody cares. You’re sick? Nobody cares. You’re struggling? Nobody cares.
Sure you might have some friends who care in a very superficial way, but when the going gets tough, everybody leaves.
There’s just no hope, and you’re on your own.
Ain’t that the truth!
That is indeed life as an adult!
All the adults in my life with the exception of a very few are exactly as stupid or far stupider than I thought when I was a kid.
An adult secret I love to teach kids is that none of us really know what the fuck we’re doing either, we’ve just gotten better at winging it over the years.
If you’ll forgive the cliche “Adulthood is realizing that Cheese is expensive and SO many people are on cocaine”.
Cheese is horribly expensive, and THEY ARE??? God I’m oblivious then.
It depends where you are. London, New York, LA yeah it’s pretty much made of coke. Other places might be full of pill heads or stoners. Santa Cruz springs to mind. I swear every man woman and child in that town is baked off their tits.
