shrug
I don't really get the sad pessimistic spin people such as the author put on the idea that we have to realize our partner has problems and will piss us off. Maybe it's because I never bought in to the whole "Mr./Mrs. Right" romantic mumbo jumbo bit but that just seem incredibly obvious. I know my BF's issues and he knows mine because we are here to help each other grow. I know that if we have kids he will be able to excel in ways that I can't and they'll get more out of it that way. That is stuff to get excited about, not pessimistic. Personal growth is always exciting and getting to share that journey is great. It also doesn't hurt that he cleans a lot.
something something ad-hominems don't really prove a point something something something. It is true though. Also his wiki article mentions his work receives mixed reviews: positive reviews for bringing philosophy to a wider audience, and negative for pompously restating the obvious and lack of focus. Everyone who wants to get philosophy to a wider audience gets the same criticisms, probably because only someone searching for the same revelation the author was will find it in his work.
His background gives some insight into why he thinks the way he does. If the article was "Why I will marry the wrong person" his background would be completely relevant. But he didn't so whether what he wrote applies to the world or its just crap is what is relevant.
I've lately come to think of the misalliances I've embraced, not as mistakes, but as my life. Just as being bald is another way of having your hair, mistakes or misalliances are us, are how we live our lives, how we grow in wisdom and learn to love better. By the way, I've enjoyed everything I've read by Alain de Botton, particularly his book on what's his name, the guy who nibbled a madeleine -- oh yeah, Proust.We should learn to accommodate ourselves to “wrongness,” striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and in our partners.
I think the article would be better titled "why intentions sometimes pan out differently." If I look back on every decision I made, would I make them the same way now? No, but those decisions and events made me who I am today. Can I be certain the opposite decision wouldn't be similarly looked at as "wrong" in hindsight? As a bald person, I think your analogy is a good one. Ask a person with a full head of hair if baldness is unfortunate, and many will say it is. Ask a person who's been bald for fifteen years if their baldness impacts their life (beyond protection from the sun), and I expect most won't even remember they're bald until you ask. I wouldn't. And I think the same is true of many decisions an outside observer might call "mistakes." If one likes who they are after a marriage dissolves, is it fair to say they married the wrong person? I don't think it is.
You are correct! From "The picture of Dorian Gray" (and it's 'lifelong passion', but I only know that because I googled it).
Jesus-candy-flippin-christ. This article is what is wrong with the internet: It's a megaphone that allows any moron with a half-baked idea informed by nothing other than his trust fund cloistered upbringing, to spew his blatherings to a wide and gullible audience. People should be prevented from writing in public spaces until after they are 35. Now get off my lawn, ya damn kids. (This shitpost brought to you by kleinbl00's righteous and totally spot-on vivisection of this "writer". I can add nothing of further value beyond his post, so I shall spew indignation and poorly constructed sentences in some sort of flailing attempt at ... something or other. Grumble.)
Since I am never getting married, does that mean I win? I think that people fail to understand that marriage for love is very recent, less than 250 or so years old. Before that you married the person your parents set you up with, you stayed married to that person and that marriage was an economic contract, not a statement of love. HOLY SHIT IT IS THIS ASSHOLE. Atheism is the lack of a belief in a god, not a philosophy. Wow, this was five freaking years ago. I've been on the internet so damn long that the jackasses come circling back around to the beginning.
Just watched the TED talk. I certainly didn't agree with all of it (particularly the parts about Art), but I think it raises some interesting points about bringing in aspects of organized religion into secular settings, such as the academy. I'm not really seeing anything that suggests the speaker is an asshole/jackass, though perhaps I'm missing something?
Man, the answer to this is depressing, long, and honestly just gonna piss me off. but I'll give a short answer. Back in the 90's the atheist and skeptic movements began to take off, slowly on message boards, alt.religion, alt.atheism and alt.skepticism newsgroups. The community was small, tight, and fought like family. When I came back from Alaska after an adventure, there were meet ups and conferences. By the later 2000's the "Four Horsemen" were writing books giving speeches and raising hell. In all but the most backward parts of the US and Canada, saying that you don't believe in god was met with a "meh" instead of violence. I've had conversations with people who had windows smashed, bullets fired through the walls of their homes etc and this was a HUGE shift. Then, atheism got popular. This kills a movement, sadly. The hanger's on and profiteers jumped all over the movement and guys like de Botton were starting to look at the atheism and skeptic communities as a new, secular faith. They were trying to turn atheism into a church. A sizeable group of the influx were real Marxist/Communist types, and they did nothing but stir shit with the Libertarians and rally didn't care about reducing the roles of religion in our schools and governments. TAM7, the one I went to had over 2000 people! The one in 2015 I don't think hit 1000, which is sad as Randi is one of the great good people out there. He himself is not the full blame, but the people like him that jumped onto the train as it was gaining steam ended up derailing the momentum. Fortunately it is very hard to kill and idea, and there is still an active atheist community in the West.
I don't really understand why this is such a terrible thing. I mean, I wouldn't be part of an atheist church, but if others do, what's wrong with that? Surely there are enough atheists nowadays that there's room for more than one varietal/expression of atheism. guys like de Botton were starting to look at the atheism and skeptic communities as a new, secular faith. They were trying to turn atheism into a church.
Honestly, its more of a "you had to be there" thing. The problem with churches is that you get into building dogmas that cannot be challenged, holy books of faith and unquestionable prophets. I started to get a real weird vibe about this time where they did not want us to worship god anymore, but we have this stuff over here to bow towards instead. Myself and a few others in the friend circle who grew up in very religious families all had the same shudder when they started getting prominent. It's ancient history now, but in the wake of that era, there are millions of people out there without a faith or religion who now know they are not crazy, they are not alone and that there are places to go and talk. That is the most important thing in all of this.I don't really understand why this is such a terrible thing.
That's fair. I don't think this is necessarily the case at all churches, though I could see that it would be at some. That's fair, I definitely wouldn't disagree that this is a good thing. I do also think that atheism needs to move forward from always seeing itself as having to do battle with organized religion, although I'm sure that many would disagree. Honestly, its more of a "you had to be there" thing
The problem with churches is that you get into building dogmas that cannot be challenged, holy books of faith and unquestionable prophets.
there are millions of people out there without a faith or religion who now know they are not crazy, they are not alone and that there are places to go and talk. That is the most important thing in all of this.
I've not met a Unitarian yet that has been an asshole. Anyone asking me about a church, I tell them to go find a UU group in their city. If I had to go to a church, that is the one I would pick. And this is the diversity we need: diversity of opinion. There are people now in the 'atheist' movement who have had real violence done against them; I'm talking bullets through windows etc. Those folks have a different take on the argument than we do. In many parts of the country being an open atheist is a social death sentence and the courts have to get involved to let these people raise their kids and go to schools. The latest crapfest, just to show you a glimmer of what is sort of going on, there is going to be another reason rally in 2016. They have a code of conduct that prohibits the mockery of organized religion I think they are talking about Tim Minchin's screeds here where he basically called religious people idiots. Interesting to me, is the Issues page. Note that there is LGBT issues and Climate change, but no separation of church and state. I saw a few people talking about this elsewhere but have not had time to digest, and honestly, I don't care. Well, I care a little bit. It's one of the reasons I stopped giving money to the ACLU and dumped my cash into the EFF instead. Gay issues are still (sadly) needed to be talked about and acted upon. So are Women's reproductive rights. I'm still in shock that we are having this fucking fight still in 2016. But, the ACLU went full on gays and abortion because those issues generate donations, and spent the last 20 years forgetting that the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments are being shredded and turned into toilet paper. If you want to support free speech today, join the EFF and give them money. I'd love to see the ACLU fight asset forfeiture laws, and if they started working on the insane parts of the drug war that would be nice too, I'd even start giving them money again. I've gone on a ramble again, sorry. The point in there is that in the US, roughly 40 million people claim "no faith" and they fit every political and cultural box you can think of. And every year it gets better for them.I don't think this is necessarily the case at all churches, though I could see that it would be at some.
That's fair, I definitely wouldn't disagree that this is a good thing. I do also think that atheism needs to move forward from always seeing itself as having to do battle with organized religion, although I'm sure that many would disagree.
The Reason Rally Coalition recognizes that mockery of religion occurred at Reason Rally 2012, and we welcome such discussion. However, the harassment of individuals for their religious beliefs will not be tolerated.
All that stuff is true, but I think the atheist activism loosing steam has a lot to do with religion in politics and to a lesser extent backwards evangelical sects being on the decline. I'm sure there are people who really want to eliminate religion entirely as if that were possible, but for the most part atheism became attractive because of intelligent design nuts, socially conservative legislation, and the like and a president probably wasn't, but gave a good impression of being, the bad crazy making their faith a burden if not outright threat to the rest of us, and is becoming less attractive as they loose influence. As for the A+ thing, who were mostly just liberal activists and not communists, meh, most activist communities have ties to each other as an artifact of the two party system, so when you need numbers you can get people who don't care very much about your thing to back you up anyway. New Atheism was weird in not wanting to do that.
Oh, god don't get me started on the whole A+ thing. No, the influx that I am talking about was about 1-2 years before that. I was gone by the time A+ happened; being the angry Atheist ass on the internet was no longer what I wanted to be when I grew up. And yea, Obama, no matter what you may think of him as President, really put a damper on the wacky religion in government stuff. Most of that activism is at the state level now, fighting school boards, etc. We still have Cruz, Santorum, Brownback, Rand Paul et al to deal with, but the national stuff in the last few years has thankfully gone nowhere. There are still hard core groups here in Kentucky not on the margins, but their power seems to be waning. At least the guys calling Catholics sodomites and brides of Satan are not able to win primaries this year.
Oh, I'm aware the fight's not over at the state level, I live in a red state too. But even there, there's a desperation to it. Wingnuts have become bad for business, they're not useful idiots anymore. The bathroom brouhaha is a joke and everyone knows it, dinosaurs giving the finger to the oncoming asteroid.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/04/public_schools_are_visiting_ken_ham_s_creation_museum.html I think we are winning the war, but the battles are many. My tax dollars are going to this abortion of a museum to build a life-sized ark park. With the new governor, the hope is that the state runs out of cash and they have to recall the tax breaks they are trying to hand them.
I had no intention to get married. I wasn't opposed but there was certainly never anyone that made me feel like it was something I wanted to be involved in. I was content to be a bachelor for life. I met the woman who would someday be my bride and could not think of any reason I would not want to keep being with her. I see many people who are unhappily married or just unhappily commited. I don't know how they chose their life or why they endure it. I'd rather never marry than go through a divorce. I don't fear that divorce is in my future.
Reminds me of a therapy model called Imago.... I can't help but think of what I've heard from older family members who are still together voicing similar ideas. As for the huge spin on pessimism, welp. That's just a mood-killer. For what it's worth, I can get behind the idea that romanticism is backwards in contemporary views, I guess.But though we believe ourselves to be seeking happiness in marriage, it isn’t that simple. What we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of his anger, of not feeling secure enough to communicate our wishes.
he person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.
Nobody can give that to you and that's pretty freeing if you ask me. You don't have to wait around for a successful relationship to end the melancholy feeling, you can just take control of your situation right now and take steps to get where you want to be mentally.
Rhetorical question that I've thought about also. If you believe that loneliness causes depression, then is it your belief or the loneliness that causes the depression? I've seen the articles on the correlation between loneliness and depression, but I'm not convinced of the causation. This is a video by Noah Elkrief on youtube that's a different take on loneliness. He has a few other videos on loneliness and being single.
Yes, and it's also complicated by the idea that loneliness and being alone are the same thing. In this article, some of the suggested antidotes to loneliness are getting a pet, finding a passion, traveling, altruism, and believing in a higher power. In most of those, other people are optional. Loneliness in that case is tied to how people look at themselves. It's the same with depression. It's not clear to me if one causes the other or if they're the same phenomenon with different labels.
Is that a request? 'k look. From about 15 to about 25 you feel everything a lot. Joy, despair, melancholy, spirituality, all of it. Your endocrine system and your neurological system are both giving you that last burst of developmental energy and it's a frickin' 5-alarm chili of hormones and bad decisions. There's lots that's great about that - but part of the downside is that seeing the abstract is a lot harder. Everything is immediate. Everything is permanent. Two points determine a line and that line stretches out to mutherfucking infinity. This column is rankest tripe because it holds two competing notions: AND He only separates those two competing notions - marriage used to be for no fucking good reason at all and marriage is an impetuous fling writ large with pure conjecture about what bullshit marriage used to be so he can rant about what bullshit marriage is now. The exercise mostly illustrates that the author has a distaste for marriage that has driven and justified his poor understanding of marriage. The facts of his argument - that marriages can be successful despite their basis in diametrically-opposed emotional states - only serve to illustrate the resilience of the human social compact. Or, in less distancing terms, love conquers all. I mean, look - are you really looking to get married right now? 'cuz I'll tell ya - unless you have a whole bunch of reason to stick together with Mrs. Right Now, odds are good you will both do a lot of growing in the next ten years and fuck yeah you'll likely decide that you'd be happier with someone else. Something not mentioned by the author is that from a historical perspective, "teenagers" are a radically newer invention than marriage for love. Prior to WWII the idea that an adolescent would linger around their parents' house pursuing academic education that will not directly aid them in a trade was purest aristocratic garbage. If you want to know why people are marrying later, look only as far as the delayed onset of adulthood. How do you think a 24-year-old in 1897 would take to the idea that he was somehow too immature to rent a car without his parents co-signing? He'd probably been the sole breadwinner for his household for a decade and likely had between 2 and 6 children. Nowadays she's wondering if she made the right choice about grad school. Back then the 24-year-old father-of-5 would, if he were self aware enough, be grappling with the notion that his life was mutherfucking half over instead of dreaming of a time when his car insurance rates would go down. The author has never been married. Is he happy? I'll bet he is. I'll bet he knows he is. I'll bet he's decided that marriage isn't for him. I know a girl who got married at fifteen... in 1991. Know what? Still married. Still happy. So. Gonna let some Swiss lordling with a title from fucking King George the Fourth tell you how to live? Your choice, you'll deserve what you get. Tom Leykis used to argue that if you hadn't married the girl within a year you never would. He's been married four times. It makes just as much sense to let a puerile shock jock rule your romantic life as it does Mr. "My $270 million Euros don't count 'cuz they're in a trust". The way to control your happiness is to not willfully give it over to choads who pronounce dire edicts like "You will marry the wrong person." Because fuck that guy. He doesn't know you and doesn't want to. His success, however, depends on you thinking he does. That what you were looking for?For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text.
What matters in the marriage of feeling is that two people are drawn to each other by an overwhelming instinct and know in their hearts that it is right. Indeed, the more imprudent a marriage appears (perhaps it’s been only six months since they met; one of them has no job or both are barely out of their teens), the safer it can feel.
So to me the first 3/4 was BS, but the last 1/4 was a different kind of BS. At the end his "philosophy of pessimism offers a solution" which I could agree with when turned around and mage optimistic. I agree on not getting hung up on perfection. But instead of pessimism [I don't have time to find a good way to explain it- maybe I'll edit later] if each person can find some happiness for the other when giving something up for them in a compromise, they will last longer and be happier than if they both took the pessimistic view that "the grass is brown and dead here, but I'm sure it's brown and dead everywhere else too."
Relationships can be summed up with some simple Maths in my view. A relationship between A and B is positive and will last if: E(A plus B) > E(A) plus E(B), E(A), E(B). Where E is the expectation of life-time utility defined as as emotional balance, economic success, personal enrichment, etc... Add to this the phenomena that the more you work at the tools and skills of relationships (my significant other and I just completed a book on constructive arguing for example) then over time E(A+B) should increase, even as the expected years of your life-span and ergo your life together diminish. It is not about right person or wrong person as if this characteristic was 100% a passive trait of another, which puts all the pressure on partner selection. But about whether the other person has enough of the same life expectations and whether they are willing to invest in a relationship for it to weather the storms of life. When the fire of passion fades to a warm glow this in the end is what will count, I believe.