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Social Quotes thread

I'll be real, I don't half believe it, I just, don't believe it. I see it as glorifying suffering and misery, to paint these things as necessary for "real, macho men." I've seen people who argue in defense of it, and their arguments are usually pretty bad, pointing to stereotypes and misunderstandings of history. The person who came up with the quote has a page where they talk about it, and they fall into these same traps. They say that weak generations are complacent, but their exemplar of a weak generation of someone sipping Starbucks on their laptop to criticize capitalism. Criticizing the current system is the opposite direction of complacent, but the author would seemingly be happier if the Starbucksier just shut up about changing the world for the better and complacently accepted the gifts they have, not asking more for themselves or others.

Preface: I know you're a new user, and I don't want you to feel like you're doing something wrong because someone with a bunch of sparklies is going to write a bunch of text in your general direction. You're fine. I just thing this stuff is valuable to talk about it, I have a lot I can say, and I want to explain myself well. If you disagree with it, that's up to you. It's not even really "at" you – you only half agree with it anyway, and some of what I say is explicitly directed at the person who made the quote.

As a student of politics, psychology, and history, I'll offer an alternative message with some arguments and analysis.

Hard times create hard men, hard men create hard times. Good times create good men, good men create good times.

In general, changing the status quo is hard. By default, societies continue mostly the same as they are from year to year. A hard times society will probably stay that way tomorrow, same with a good one. Citizens value stability, don't like changing all the rules every year, and create psychological attachments to justify and accept the status quo (more about that soon), and they tend to oppose continual sweeping changes. People with power in society tend to value stability too, as they have relatively a lot to lose and relatively little to gain if chaos turns everything around. There are of course exceptions to this stability, societies change, but if a society has 700 years of good times and then falls apart, it'd feel weird to blame that on "soft men". Like, every society has an expiration date at some point, and 700 years is a lot of time to preserve good times for, well done!

Experiences also create benchmarks. When you're exposed to something negative, when it's enmeshed in your society and life, you are more likely to see it as normal and perpetuate it. People exposed to hard times are probably more likely, on average, to impose hard times on others. Think "I had to pay for my student loans, so you should to." Past experiences serve as a model that helps train us for our behavior in the future. Obviously, we have choices to not repeat the past, but even bad past experiences tend to creep into our psyche to influence how we see and act on the world. For example, some of the risk factors for intimate partner violence are one's parents being violent towards themselves, being violent towards you, or otherwise being a poor parent from you. We learn from those who come before us, sometimes for worse. My prior "on average" is important here: I'm describing a general trend across groups of people, not saying how every individual person will behave. Individual people behave in lots of different ways.

Another idea is that undergoing hard times threatens one's personal security. Feeling safe, physically and psychologically, is a really intense personal need. If hard times deny you that security, you can suffer trauma, even PTSD in certain circumstances. Trauma makes it harder to do some good things that are important for good times, like forming relationships with people. Feeling secure helps you reach out and be vulnerable to connect richly with others, while being scared of being hurt makes you want to retreat to your own corner more. Like with societies, there is an inertia, momentum-based element here: security both comes from growth and makes it easier to grow. Again, it's important to say I'm talking about averages across wide groups of people, and individual people can behave in all sorts of different ways.

I'll offer an alternative quote that better clarifies my point of view.

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." - John Adams, 2nd U.S. President.

I don't know about you, but at least for me, studying things like mathematics, commerce, music, and architecture is hard! The "good times" still include suffering! But it's a different kind of suffering than having to study war to survive because you're inside a war that is killing your community. Suffering that comes in moderate, tempered doses as you pursue the things you care about is generally a lot healthier, and a lot more likely to result in good outcomes, than gigantic external spikes of suffering that destroy your security and force you to prioritize them to survive. In other words, suffering is necessary to some extent in the pursuit of good things, but we shouldn't glorify it for its own sake. Suffering doesn't create good people – people make themselves good, and they'll experience suffering no matter the times.

Let's go back to our Starbucks girl (she's a girl now, that's canon now) from the intro. She reaps some benefits from capitalism, given that she's able to sit in a Starbucks and write on her laptop. But instead of calling her selfish for not accepting the society she has, I'm glad she has a safe and pleasant environment to write her thoughts, and I'm glad she has a tool to reach many people with her message from her heart. These are good things! I'm happy for her! Also, I bet she suffers under capitalism too. Maybe Starbucks is the only place she feels she can get away from her busy 40 hour work week. Maybe she can't afford a good or safe apartment, and that's why she retreats to Starbucks. Even if she's not suffering under capitalism specifically, I'm sure she has some struggle in her life, and if her suffering is not about capitalism, I'm proud of her for fighting for a better system even though she doesn't need it herself.
 
"'That's that, and this is this.' I see you are resorting to your favored justification. Does it hold true, however? Do you think that the boundaries between what concerns you or not could be defined so conveniently? Such a carefree statement you are making. You know better than anyone, yet you refuse to face it more adamantly than most others. It is not that you cannot see the suffering of others. You are merely turning a blind eye to it. That is what makes the citizens of the city so vulnerable. Their own anguish is the most tangible; they believe it matters more than anyone else's. However, they know deep down that their belief is untrue."
-Binah
 
"People from Southern California have a hard time conceiving of the existence of a world outside of Southern California."
-John Darnielle, Southern California native
 
adjectivenoun said:
"People from Southern California have a hard time conceiving of the existence of a world outside of Southern California."
-John Darnielle, Southern California native
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turns out the nerds you find on smogon or nicher areas with more leftist thought is not representative of the actual american population

john darnielle knows 20 people who are stupid as fuck and that is who he is referring to
 
Adeleine said:
I'll be real, I don't half believe it, I just, don't believe it. I see it as glorifying suffering and misery, to paint these things as necessary for "real, macho men." I've seen people who argue in defense of it, and their arguments are usually pretty bad, pointing to stereotypes and misunderstandings of history. The person who came up with the quote has a page where they talk about it, and they fall into these same traps. They say that weak generations are complacent, but their exemplar of a weak generation of someone sipping Starbucks on their laptop to criticize capitalism. Criticizing the current system is the opposite direction of complacent, but the author would seemingly be happier if the Starbucksier just shut up about changing the world for the better and complacently accepted the gifts they have, not asking more for themselves or others.

Preface: I know you're a new user, and I don't want you to feel like you're doing something wrong because someone with a bunch of sparklies is going to write a bunch of text in your general direction. You're fine. I just thing this stuff is valuable to talk about it, I have a lot I can say, and I want to explain myself well. If you disagree with it, that's up to you. It's not even really "at" you – you only half agree with it anyway, and some of what I say is explicitly directed at the person who made the quote.

As a student of politics, psychology, and history, I'll offer an alternative message with some arguments and analysis.

Hard times create hard men, hard men create hard times. Good times create good men, good men create good times.

In general, changing the status quo is hard. By default, societies continue mostly the same as they are from year to year. A hard times society will probably stay that way tomorrow, same with a good one. Citizens value stability, don't like changing all the rules every year, and create psychological attachments to justify and accept the status quo (more about that soon), and they tend to oppose continual sweeping changes. People with power in society tend to value stability too, as they have relatively a lot to lose and relatively little to gain if chaos turns everything around. There are of course exceptions to this stability, societies change, but if a society has 700 years of good times and then falls apart, it'd feel weird to blame that on "soft men". Like, every society has an expiration date at some point, and 700 years is a lot of time to preserve good times for, well done!

Experiences also create benchmarks. When you're exposed to something negative, when it's enmeshed in your society and life, you are more likely to see it as normal and perpetuate it. People exposed to hard times are probably more likely, on average, to impose hard times on others. Think "I had to pay for my student loans, so you should to." Past experiences serve as a model that helps train us for our behavior in the future. Obviously, we have choices to not repeat the past, but even bad past experiences tend to creep into our psyche to influence how we see and act on the world. For example, some of the risk factors for intimate partner violence are one's parents being violent towards themselves, being violent towards you, or otherwise being a poor parent from you. We learn from those who come before us, sometimes for worse. My prior "on average" is important here: I'm describing a general trend across groups of people, not saying how every individual person will behave. Individual people behave in lots of different ways.

Another idea is that undergoing hard times threatens one's personal security. Feeling safe, physically and psychologically, is a really intense personal need. If hard times deny you that security, you can suffer trauma, even PTSD in certain circumstances. Trauma makes it harder to do some good things that are important for good times, like forming relationships with people. Feeling secure helps you reach out and be vulnerable to connect richly with others, while being scared of being hurt makes you want to retreat to your own corner more. Like with societies, there is an inertia, momentum-based element here: security both comes from growth and makes it easier to grow. Again, it's important to say I'm talking about averages across wide groups of people, and individual people can behave in all sorts of different ways.

I'll offer an alternative quote that better clarifies my point of view.

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." - John Adams, 2nd U.S. President.

I don't know about you, but at least for me, studying things like mathematics, commerce, music, and architecture is hard! The "good times" still include suffering! But it's a different kind of suffering than having to study war to survive because you're inside a war that is killing your community. Suffering that comes in moderate, tempered doses as you pursue the things you care about is generally a lot healthier, and a lot more likely to result in good outcomes, than gigantic external spikes of suffering that destroy your security and force you to prioritize them to survive. In other words, suffering is necessary to some extent in the pursuit of good things, but we shouldn't glorify it for its own sake. Suffering doesn't create good people – people make themselves good, and they'll experience suffering no matter the times.

Let's go back to our Starbucks girl (she's a girl now, that's canon now) from the intro. She reaps some benefits from capitalism, given that she's able to sit in a Starbucks and write on her laptop. But instead of calling her selfish for not accepting the society she has, I'm glad she has a safe and pleasant environment to write her thoughts, and I'm glad she has a tool to reach many people with her message from her heart. These are good things! I'm happy for her! Also, I bet she suffers under capitalism too. Maybe Starbucks is the only place she feels she can get away from her busy 40 hour work week. Maybe she can't afford a good or safe apartment, and that's why she retreats to Starbucks. Even if she's not suffering under capitalism specifically, I'm sure she has some struggle in her life, and if her suffering is not about capitalism, I'm proud of her for fighting for a better system even though she doesn't need it herself.
Click to expand...

Like I said i half believe it. I never glorify pain. I am just saying we should not take freedom for granted. The people who died in WW2 did so because the wanted to create a peaceful future but it should have its limits. We can't just abuse the term "freedom" here. And I am not being offensive to anyone. If you want to do something do it, as long as your not interfering with society or society interfers with what you can. If society stops you in doing something that's more private and not impacting society like being gay or trans do fight for your personal rights. Being gay or trans is nothing wrong as long as it is not toxic. Like don't disrespect straight people as long as they respect you, and you are pretty good. This comment is NOT homophobic or transphobic.
 
Vivaan12 said:
Like I said i half believe it. I never glorify pain. I am just saying we should not take freedom for granted. The people who died in WW2 did so because the wanted to create a peaceful future but it should have its limits. We can't just abuse the term "freedom" here. And I am not being offensive to anyone. If you want to do something do it, as long as your not interfering with society or society interfers with what you can. If society stops you in doing something that's more private and not impacting society like being gay or trans do fight for your personal rights. Being gay or trans is nothing wrong as long as it is not toxic. Like don't disrespect straight people as long as they respect you, and you are pretty good. This comment is NOT homophobic or transphobic.
Click to expand...

I wish I did not say anything wrong if i did I am sorry
 
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