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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 4, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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  1. Become worthy of the kind of sacrifice that someone would have to make to be with me: become worthy of having someone willingly endure disgust simply to make me happy. I know maybe one or two people who might meet that standard, if anyone does.

  2. Cultivate the virtues necessary to be a good partner, father, husband, nurse, and caretaker. Be the guy who’s got enough slack to live a decent life…and absorb a six hundred pound woman, or deal with a heroin addict, and still be a good community member, friend, and person.

This actually makes a lot of sense. That sounds like ‘be a fit, charismatic, fashionable guy who is extremely hardworking, very diligent, altruistic, prosocial, caring, has a very high tolerance for both frustration and pain, and is well-connected especially with healthcare providers, mental health resources, and local law enforcement’. Those traits would have made the lives of some of my friends a little better. More resources, a little less resentment at their mothers’ failings. Some of them weren’t all that harmful, on the order of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Others were ‘attempted murder’ or ‘failure to provide basic medical care in early adolescence, leading to minor but lifelong problems’. It’s essentially figuring out how to stand between your children and tragedy, because the ambulances are coming and your goal, your fucking job, is to keep them away from your kids as much as is realistic, and when you can’t, provide them with a good role model and good coping skills and resources to deal with it.

Thank you.