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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   30516 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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I'm currently dating a women who's family is the typical Fishtown resident Murray describes (She herself is a lovely girl). Her family behaves poorly. Her sisters constantly engage in borderline prostitution. They have no work. No money outside of that which they receive from men. One has multiple children, none of them regularly attend school. They are beaten regularly by their frustrated mother. Their fathers are no where to be found or worse, are actively harmful (ie, taking the son to a drug house). Ive been blessed that both my parents are married and educated. (My mother studied nursing, My father actually had a degree in his home country that did not carry over to the US, and began studying real estate instead, he now has a real estate license, and CDL, we were actually upper-middle class until 2008 hit). She is attempting to make it out herself by studying finance, however one interesting data point that I've come across is that people who grew up poor tend to lag behind, even after obtaining the degree. Which is even more frustrating: even if a Fishtown resident somehow makes it out: they will not have as much of the funds as they had hoped. Perhaps this may because of the types of degrees they obtain (ie. someone from the hood obtains a degree in education, hoping to help and educate others who are in her same position.) Given that education correlates pretty highly with income, ive always felt as if fostering values around education and its importance would be a crucial first step and the environment many are in seems to make this highly difficult, even after obtaining such education. She herself has told me how awfully stubborn her mother is with her bad health habits. I want to preference this by saying im no elitist who wants to look down on such people: My heart is quite heavy with sorrow for them.

I can tell you almost exactly why you see the cycles of underperformance despite what the statistics say should happen. Turns out who your family is matters a lot. And if you come from a family of high time preference dirt bags, that will almost always set your default. You'll find yourself making weird, "out of character" high time preference decisions that add up to a serious drag on your potential. Every time you hit a rough patch in your career, your marriage, or your social life, if you make the mistake of opening up to your dirt bag family (and what son or daughter, when the chips are down, won't seek comfort in their father or mother), they'll give you terrible advice. To say nothing of all the family that will see you doing better than them, and constantly come around to leech off you.

I'd also caution you about entering a relationship with someone from that background. I'm sure they do seem like a lovely person. But I can nearly promise you, when the chips are down, you'll see that side of them you thought was different from the rest of their family. Things completely unthinkable to your upper middle class cultural sensibilities are the default option for them. That said, no relationship is without challenges, so you know, damned if you do and damned if you don't.

She doesnt like her family all that much, she constantly complains about them is actively looking to get away. I can certainly see your concern with a potentially darkside of her rearing its ugly head, but i also somewhat feel that this risk exits in dating anyone to begin with. You never truly know who someone is or how they may be until shit hits the fan. This type of faith is typical in relationships, and it in her until she shows me otherwise. My own parents came from a poorer country and pathed there way, if someone has the consistent work ethic regardless of class to do the same, there has to something special about them that would make them differ enough in my book, especially doing so when all the other cards are stacked against you.

I'm sure they do seem like a lovely person

I'm not picking on you in particular, but I see this all the time and genuinely wonder why people do this. The person in question is clearly identified as a "girl," and OP consistently refers to her with the appropriate female pronouns. Why the "they/them?"

To me it feels like people are losing the ability to keep track of a individual's sex in their heads when forming sentences. It's as if 'they' is becoming the universal pronoun for 'person' even when the person in question is explicitly female in the sentence.

Yeah, you see even older people refer to “their partner” rather than wife or husband, even though HR doesn’t care (at least for us) and they’re talking about themselves, not assuming the sex of somebody else’s spouse.

I don't fucking know. When you point it out to me, even though I said it, I do wonder why the fuck I chose to say it like that instead of "She sounds like a lovely girl". I guess the language I hear around me has rubbed off on me.

Oh no! It's contāgious!

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