What Do People Actually Want? by 6ixStringJack

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Interesting.

A few observations and questions ...

You have to be of a certain age before you feel nostalgic. Young people haven't laid down enough memories and experienced enough displacement, so they can't compare "now" "then" and can't experience a longing for what once was.

Do Americans really develop a sense of belonging? The feeling of "home" was very important in European communities "back then". "Home" was/is important to my dad, and my husband. It was a place, a community, a culture. I inherited that, and still feel displaced and uprooted in LA, decades after leaving home. Sis moved back after having lived in Colorado and Texas and, curiously, most of my cousins moved back after having lived in Delaware and California. There are a couple of cousins we lost track of, one bc he was a hellraiser and always getting in trouble, and another bc she was lesbian long before it was fashionable, so maybe they never really felt "at home".

In my sis' neighborhood, people have lived there for decades. They know each other, help each other thru the blizzards, and have gotten to be neighborly... even the hardcore MAGA Republicans stuck in moderate Democrat territory. This constant moving about for jobs or "trading up" houses doesn't help the feeling of belonging.

That sense of belonging, and nostalgia for it, might come from having had a decent stable childhood. It's hard to feel nostalgic for something that was, as he says, indifferent or abusive.

So, can people feel nostalgia for what they never knew?

And, having dissected the feeling of "belonging", once basic needs are met, maybe it's comprised of familiarity and acceptance and security and mutual commitment? IDK, I can only look at this from my very personal POV.

What say you?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025 1:27 PM

I didn't view his video as necessarily referring to your immediate family unit. In fact, I didn't even consider he was actually referring to a physical home, as in the house you would share with them.

That's part of it, but I think he was hinting more along the lines of being in a place where you share the same history with those around you. Where there's a social code that is more or less unspoken.

I remember my grandpa talking about it when I was a little kid and he'd say we never even used to bother locking the front door, but not these days. And that's funny to me, because despite what the newspapers might have been telling him to say stuff like that, I never felt unsafe as a kid. Being latchkey kids, we'd be outside all the time, blocks or even miles from home on some days, and everything was just fine.

Now every place that I grew up (there were quite a few) are all ghetto shitholes. Nothing is safe. Nowhere is safe.

And the last 20 years the Media and the Democratic Party have done a hell of a job letting me know that I'm a bad guy and I'm not welcome anywhere because I'm a white dude.

And I'm just left asking why that is when I've seen everywhere I grew up get destroyed by politicians.

And if you don't have a family, or you barely have a family, where is home for you if everything outside of your house is not for you anymore? There is no home.

Quote:
That sense of belonging, and nostalgia for it, might come from having had a decent stable childhood. It's hard to feel nostalgic for something that was, as he says, indifferent or abusive.

And unfortunately, that isn't true at all. It's sadly all too easy to be nostalgic for something that was indifferent or abusive. I'm glad that you appear to have lived a life that was kind enough to you to not consider this a possibility.

I don't want to go back to my specific childhood in my specific house. But I do miss the neighborhood back then. If I could go back to the 90's and live there I would.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025 1:41 PM

I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025 10:33 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I didn't view his video as necessarily referring to your immediate family unit. In fact, I didn't even consider he was actually referring to a physical home, as in the house you would share with them.

That's part of it, but I think he was hinting more along the lines of being in a place where you share the same history with those around you. Where there's a social code that is more or less unspoken.

I remember my grandpa talking about it when I was a little kid and he'd say we never even used to bother locking the front door, but not these days. And that's funny to me, because despite what the newspapers might have been telling him to say stuff like that, I never felt unsafe as a kid. Being latchkey kids, we'd be outside all the time, blocks or even miles from home on some days, and everything was just fine.

Now every place that I grew up (there were quite a few) are all ghetto shitholes. Nothing is safe. Nowhere is safe.

And the last 20 years the Media and the Democratic Party have done a hell of a job letting me know that I'm a bad guy and I'm not welcome anywhere because I'm a white dude.

And I'm just left asking why that is when I've seen everywhere I grew up get destroyed by politicians.

And if you don't have a family, or you barely have a family, where is home for you if everything outside of your house is not for you anymore? There is no home.

Quote:
That sense of belonging, and nostalgia for it, might come from having had a decent stable childhood. It's hard to feel nostalgic for something that was, as he says, indifferent or abusive.

And unfortunately, that isn't true at all. It's sadly all too easy to be nostalgic for something that was indifferent or abusive. I'm glad that you appear to have lived a life that was kind enough to you to not consider this a possibility.

I don't want to go back to my specific childhood in my specific house. But I do miss the neighborhood back then. If I could go back to the 90's and live there I would.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

I know what you mean. Even tho ppl locked their doors in our neighborhood, we were "free range" children ourselves and played thru the neighborhood (until troublemakers forced the neighbors to put up fences) and biked miles from home. For quite a number of years the moms kept and eye on the kids. It was one thing being yelled at by your mom, but if somebody else's mom yelled at you, well... maybe you hid in the garage for a while!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 12:16 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.

What was mutually understood?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 12:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I know what you mean. Even tho ppl locked their doors in our neighborhood, we were "free range" children ourselves and played thru the neighborhood (until troublemakers forced the neighbors to put up fences) and biked miles from home. For quite a number of years the moms kept and eye on the kids. It was one thing being yelled at by your mom, but if somebody else's mom yelled at you, well... maybe you hid in the garage for a while!

I remember when I was too young to be as far away from home as I was with my younger brother that we really had to pee and we did it on somebody's tree. We weren't even sly about it or nothing, in the middle of daylight. Running and hiding in a neighbor's yard until the coast was clear was exactly what we did.

Except for a few bad nights back in my going-out drinking days, I never did anything like that again.

Me, my brother and a buddy of mine went down to a park once with a backpack full of stuff to make torches out of because they had a huge sewer we could walk into and we wanted to see what was on the other side. We were in there for hours, trekking through knee high water with sludge underneath it with our flashlights since the torches didn't work out, but we were ready with our spray paint cans in case we had to scare away any rats.

Eventually we turned around because we started to worry that there wasn't a way out on the other side.

When we came out, we got stopped by a cop who told us somebody had a backpack with paint in it and was spray-painting graffiti. My buddy was smart though and brought clear-coat paint. I'd say he saved our asses, but come to think of it, I doubt there was any graffiti around they could have pinned on us. My neighborhood wasn't a shithole when I was a kid, and cops actually did things like approaching kids with spray paint back then.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 12:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.

That's cool. I never really had anything like that, although I did see glimpses of it when I was a kid with the elders of the families. I had a huge Italian family on one side, and a huge Polish family on the other side. But by the time my brothers and I were born, we were European mutts with no real claim to any of that. Didn't feel like I was really a part of either family, and we only saw them about once or maybe twice per year, so that didn't help.

But back when they were all young and starting their own families, they owned city blocks together. All the Degos in one area and the Polacks in another area. They all had a sense of culture, and similar tastes in food brought from their own countries. They had very different ways of carrying themselves around each other.

By my mom's generation they were already mixed enough that they were just "white" and my mom and dad never thought much or cared much about their history. Maybe they did, but they never talked about it.

Then your own family decides to move all over the country at some point because why not? There's no real roots anyway.

Home is gone. There's no real sense of belonging anywhere like there used to be.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 6:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.
What was mutually understood?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

That were both Indigenous.

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 6:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.

That's cool. I never really had anything like that, although I did see glimpses of it when I was a kid with the elders of the families. I had a huge Italian family on one side, and a huge Polish family on the other side. But by the time my brothers and I were born, we were European mutts with no real claim to any of that. Didn't feel like I was really a part of either family, and we only saw them about once or maybe twice per year, so that didn't help.

But back when they were all young and starting their own families, they owned city blocks together. All the Degos in one area and the Polacks in another area. They all had a sense of culture, and similar tastes in food brought from their own countries. They had very different ways of carrying themselves around each other.

By my mom's generation they were already mixed enough that they were just "white" and my mom and dad never thought much or cared much about their history. Maybe they did, but they never talked about it.

Then your own family decides to move all over the country at some point because why not? There's no real roots anyway.

Home is gone. There's no real sense of belonging anywhere like there used to be.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

I've had that happen before. My mum and I were talking to an older lady that we knew and she said her grandfather was French Canadian and she was also part Cree. I asked for her grandfather's name and she said,"Pambrun." And she started spelling it and I finished it. We both stopped and looked at each other because there was a very real possibility that we were distant cousins. Her grandfather could have been my great grandfather's brother. Her grandfather stayed in Canada and again a trapper while my great grandfather went to the US. My mum just sat there a little lost. Had to explain it after to her.

My mum didn't have much family and only kept in touch really with one aunt who lived in the US in Montana. As I've said my mum's side was all white.

There were lots of Scots in the area of Alberta where my dad grew up. My grandfather, his father never lost his accent because he was always talking to a Scot. And with my grandfather selling horses in the US, my dad was able to meet some of maybe his grandmother's people and pull a little bit of our history together that he passed on to me.

I don't always get that feeling. Sometimes we make family with friends.

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 6:30 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.
What was mutually understood?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

That were both Indigenous.

Ok, but what does that mean?
Shared bad history with white man?
Feeling a little unbelonging in the dominant culture?
That knowing one's tribe, and the other's tribe, is important?
For example, would it have made any difference to you if he had said Lakota? Cherokee? Navajo?
Just trying to figure out what you were thinking/ feeling.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.
What was mutually understood?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

That were both Indigenous.
Ok, but what does that mean?
Shared bad history with white man?
Feeling a little unbelonging in the dominant culture?
That knowing one's tribe, and the other's tribe, is important?
For example, would it have made any difference to you if he had said Lakota? Cherokee? Navajo?
Just trying to figure out what you were thinking/ feeling.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Perfectly reasonable question Sig.

Identifying our tribes was about shared bad history with the white man and an acknowledgement that knowing who we are is important.

No, it wouldn't have mattered if he had said another American tribe after I had identified my people. There would have been the head nodding and the understanding.

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Friday, April 25, 2025 12:09 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I think I understand now. Thanks for the explanation, BRENDA.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, April 25, 2025 9:19 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I think this is a pretty good answer to Sig's question that never gets answered when she asks "What are American's Best Interests?"

Funny that the best answer I've seen to the question comes out of the UK, but they've got it a hell of a lot worse right now than we do.

The video speaks of "metaphysical chains" at 9:45. Buddhism is for escaping your "metaphysical chains". Your suffering arises from craving and attachment to things that are not truly permanent. This includes attachment to material possessions, sensual pleasures, people, and even one's own sense of self. Your suffering can end through liberation from craving and attachment to your "metaphysical chains".

https://www.google.com/search?q=buddhist+on+suffering

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 25, 2025 11:48 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
The video speaks of "metaphysical chains" at 9:45. Buddhism is for escaping your "metaphysical chains". Your suffering arises from craving and attachment to things that are not truly permanent. This includes attachment to material possessions, sensual pleasures, people, and even one's own sense of self. Your suffering can end through liberation from craving and attachment to your "metaphysical chains".

What "metaphysical chains" drive you to lie, defame, threaten, and hate endlessly, SECOND? YOU can escape your metaphysical chains too, which for you seem to be both a source of intense pleasure and intense pain.

Breathe.
Let it go.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, April 25, 2025 11:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I think this is a pretty good answer to Sig's question that never gets answered when she asks "What are American's Best Interests?"

Funny that the best answer I've seen to the question comes out of the UK, but they've got it a hell of a lot worse right now than we do.
The video speaks of "metaphysical chains" at 9:45. Buddhism is for escaping your "metaphysical chains". Your suffering arises from craving and attachment to things that are not truly permanent. This includes attachment to material possessions, sensual pleasures, people, and even one's own sense of self. Your suffering can end through liberation from craving and attachment to your "metaphysical chains".

https://www.google.com/search?q=buddhist+on+suffering

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

One shouldn't be forced to turn to spirituality and religion to escape from what their government has inflicted upon them.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, April 25, 2025 12:38 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I think this is a pretty good answer to Sig's question that never gets answered when she asks "What are American's Best Interests?"

Funny that the best answer I've seen to the question comes out of the UK, but they've got it a hell of a lot worse right now than we do.
The video speaks of "metaphysical chains" at 9:45. Buddhism is for escaping your "metaphysical chains". Your suffering arises from craving and attachment to things that are not truly permanent. This includes attachment to material possessions, sensual pleasures, people, and even one's own sense of self. Your suffering can end through liberation from craving and attachment to your "metaphysical chains".

https://www.google.com/search?q=buddhist+on+suffering

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

One shouldn't be forced to turn to spirituality and religion to escape from what their government has inflicted upon them.

It is a very Trumptard attitude to believe your suffering is caused by the government rather than your inability to adapt to very ordinary reality.

Buddhist meditation practice calms a brain screaming like a caged monkey in the zoo, “What do I want?” That is a reference back to “What Do People Actually Want?”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 25, 2025 12:50 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

One shouldn't be forced to turn to spirituality and religion to escape from what their government has inflicted upon them.

You can download this non-religious book from https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Why+Buddhism+is+true

Full title: Why Buddhism is True - The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

Any book with a title like Why Buddhism Is True should have some careful qualification somewhere along the way. We might as well get that over with:

1. I’m not talking about the “supernatural” or more exotically metaphysical parts of Buddhism—reincarnation, for example—but rather about the naturalistic parts: ideas that fall squarely within modern psychology and philosophy. That said, I am talking about some of Buddhism’s more extraordinary, even radical, claims—claims that, if you take them seriously, could revolutionize your view of yourself and of the world. This book is intended to get you to take these claims seriously.

2. I’m of course aware that there’s no one Buddhism, but rather various Buddhist traditions, which differ on all kinds of doctrines. But this book focuses on a kind of “common core”—fundamental ideas that are found across the major Buddhist traditions, even if they get different degrees of emphasis, and may assume somewhat different form, in different traditions.

3. I’m not getting into super-fine-grained parts of Buddhist psychology and philosophy. For example, the Abhidhamma Pitaka, a collection of early Buddhist texts, asserts that there are eighty-nine kinds of consciousness, twelve of which are unwholesome. You may be relieved to hear that this book will spend no time trying to evaluate that claim.

4. I realize that true is a tricky word, and asserting the truth of anything, certainly including deep ideas in philosophy or psychology, is a tricky business. In fact, one big lesson from Buddhism is to be suspicious of the intuition that your ordinary way of perceiving the world brings you the truth about it. Some early Buddhist writings go so far as to raise doubts about whether such a thing as “truth” ultimately exists. On the other hand, the Buddha, in his most famous sermon, lays out what are commonly called “The Four Noble Truths,” so it’s not as if the word true has no place in discussions of Buddhist thought. In any event, I’ll try to proceed with appropriate humility and nuance as I make my argument that Buddhism’s diagnosis of the human predicament is fundamentally correct, and that its prescription is deeply valid and urgently important.

5. Asserting the validity of core Buddhist ideas doesn’t necessarily say anything, one way or the other, about other spiritual or philosophical traditions. There will sometimes be logical tension between a Buddhist idea and an idea in another tradition, but often there won’t be. The Dalai Lama has said, “Don’t try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a better Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.”

—Robert Wright

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 25, 2025 12:58 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Sounds like Buddhism would be good for you, SECOND. You should try it.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, April 25, 2025 1:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I think this is a pretty good answer to Sig's question that never gets answered when she asks "What are American's Best Interests?"

Funny that the best answer I've seen to the question comes out of the UK, but they've got it a hell of a lot worse right now than we do.
The video speaks of "metaphysical chains" at 9:45. Buddhism is for escaping your "metaphysical chains". Your suffering arises from craving and attachment to things that are not truly permanent. This includes attachment to material possessions, sensual pleasures, people, and even one's own sense of self. Your suffering can end through liberation from craving and attachment to your "metaphysical chains".

https://www.google.com/search?q=buddhist+on+suffering

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

One shouldn't be forced to turn to spirituality and religion to escape from what their government has inflicted upon them.
It is a very Trumptard attitude to believe your suffering is caused by the government rather than your inability to adapt to very ordinary reality.

Using trillions of dollars in debt to inorganically and intentionally change the demographic makeup of our nations is not ordinary, and it is no longer our reality.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, April 25, 2025 1:39 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think I understand now. Thanks for the explanation, BRENDA.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

No worries Sig.

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Friday, April 25, 2025 2:43 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Using trillions of dollars in debt to inorganically and intentionally change the demographic makeup of our nations is not ordinary, and it is no longer our reality.

If you read the book Why Buddhism Is True, you would be impervious to silly talking points about the National Debt and all the other transitory concerns Trumptards worry about or crave with all their heart. From the book:

. . . when we see that doughnut sitting there, we immediately imagine how good it tastes, not how intensely we’ll want another doughnut only moments after eating it, or how we’ll feel a bit tired or agitated later, when the sugar rush subsides.

Why Pleasure Fades

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to explain why this sort of distortion would be built into human anticipation. It just takes an evolutionary biologist—or, for that matter, anyone willing to spend a little time thinking about how evolution works.

Here’s the basic logic. We were “designed” by natural selection to do certain things that helped our ancestors get their genes into the next generation—things like eating, having sex, earning the esteem of other people, and outdoing rivals. I put “designed” in quotation marks because, again, natural selection isn’t a conscious, intelligent designer but an unconscious process. Still, natural selection does create organisms that look as if they’re the product of a conscious designer, a designer who kept fiddling with them to make them effective gene propagators. So, as a kind of thought experiment, it’s legitimate to think of natural selection as a “designer” and put yourself in its shoes and ask: If you were designing organisms to be good at spreading their genes, how would you get them to pursue the goals that further this cause? In other words, granted that eating, having sex, impressing peers, and besting rivals helped our ancestors spread their genes, how exactly would you design their brains to get them to pursue these goals? I submit that at least three basic principles of design would make sense:

1. Achieving these goals should bring pleasure, since animals, including humans, tend to pursue things that bring pleasure.

2. The pleasure shouldn’t last forever. After all, if the pleasure didn’t subside, we’d never seek it again; our first meal would be our last, because hunger would never return. So too with sex: a single act of intercourse, and then a lifetime of lying there basking in the afterglow. That’s no way to get lots of genes into the next generation!

3. The animal’s brain should focus more on (1), the fact that pleasure will accompany the reaching of a goal, than on (2), the fact that the pleasure will dissipate shortly thereafter. After all, if you focus on (1), you’ll pursue things like food and sex and social status with unalloyed gusto, whereas if you focus on (2), you could start feeling ambivalence. You might, for example, start asking what the point is of so fiercely pursuing pleasure if the pleasure will wear off shortly after you get it and leave you hungering for more. Before you know it, you’ll be full of ennui and wishing you’d majored in philosophy.

If you put these three principles of design together, you get a pretty plausible explanation of the human predicament as diagnosed by the Buddha. Yes, as he said, pleasure is fleeting, and, yes, this leaves us recurrently dissatisfied. And the reason is that pleasure is designed by natural selection to evaporate so that the ensuing dissatisfaction will get us to pursue more pleasure. Natural selection doesn’t “want” us to be happy, after all; it just “wants” us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, April 25, 2025 2:58 PM

Shut up, idiot.

Your party is dead, and your mere existence reminds us every single day of why that is.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, April 25, 2025 3:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.
What was mutually understood?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

That were both Indigenous.
Ok, but what does that mean?
Shared bad history with white man?
Feeling a little unbelonging in the dominant culture?
That knowing one's tribe, and the other's tribe, is important?
For example, would it have made any difference to you if he had said Lakota? Cherokee? Navajo?
Just trying to figure out what you were thinking/ feeling.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Perfectly reasonable question Sig.

Identifying our tribes was about shared bad history with the white man and an acknowledgement that knowing who we are is important.

No, it wouldn't have mattered if he had said another American tribe after I had identified my people. There would have been the head nodding and the understanding.

I was able to glean as much. Even decedents of smaller, lesser-known tribes I would imagine would share that sort of kinship with each other if they ever just happened to randomly bump into each other one day by chance.

Outside of family, which mine was never that great even at it's best, and that has pretty stretched thin all over the country at this point, I've never really had that feeling anywhere.

"White People", of which I very much am one of, as are most people of highly-mixed European descent by Generation X have no real ties to each other, although we're thought of in the media and culture as some sort of monolith. As I said, "White People" did have that several generations before genX, and that ended when the Boomers intermingled with people outside of their own heritage and in only 2 generations you had your "White People", may of whom were already mixed with up to 8 different genetic backgrounds, all the while their parents completely neglected to bother trying to instill any part of the "Old World" into their kids and the entire history and any sense of national pride for their roots was just lost in translation somewhere along the way. If I want to know what my families were like before they mixed, I have to go back and watch movies from the 70's to have any clue.

Come to think of it, I think that (and this entire concept and conversation) was probably the reason that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was such a phenomena when it came out in 2002. Pretty late for a family-centric movie surrounding the "Greek" heritage as the main plot point. Besides its sequels, I'm not really sure there's been many "White" movies that have touched on these feelings of home and nostalgia.

... and I think that's because "White People" are just kind of lost to history at this point. Not really knowing or caring at all about their past... Aimlessly wandering around in the present with no place to call home in a country they thought was theirs but which has been calling them bad guys for the better part of a decade and a half now if they don't just bend the knee every day and allow everything all around them to just fall apart. No real plans for the future... just skating by and seeing what will happen.

I'm not going to say that I could or would never share any knowing look with a "White" stranger while out and about for any reason. But BOY would it have to be a pretty good flippin' reason and would never just be a fleeting moment felt out of the blue like that. We would have to be unwittingly thrust in the middle of some deep doo doo for that scenario to take place.

I've always said that when I grew up everything around me was pretty white and I never even saw a "minority" until I was 7 or 8 years old and went Downtown for the first time. And things remained more or less that way until around my early to mid 20's when everything changed...

But I still remember my predominantly "White" youth, and I always figured that only about 30% of people out there are worth any of your time. The rest of them are pretty much assholes. And I've carried that assumption with me and applied it everywhere else and it doesn't seem to be any different when it is applied somewhere else. Most people kinda suck for one reason or another.

Ain't even judging anyone about that either. I didn't get it when I was a kid, but you gain an entirely different perspective on life when you get older and I get it. Most of that 70% of people that are assholes aren't doing it for the sake of being assholes. I'd give the percentage of actual, truly bad people out there to be pretty safely in the lower to middle single digits. People get beat up over life though. That Social Battery that most healthy folk can still manage to get near-full every morning before going out for the day in their mid-20's just don't charge up nearly as much to full every morning by the time they're twice that age.

And if everybody's walking around all miserable and at each other's throats over politics every day for 12 years and nobody's happy, why should I expect anybody to be able to charge that battery up every morning?

I don't know how we do it, but THIS is what really needs fixing. How do you make people feel like the future is something to look forward to again?

Because once you take all the boxes and identity politics away, all I see right now are two groups of folk...

The people who remember how much better everything worked 25 years ago, and people who are stuck completely in NOW with no real plans for the future, and no way to pay for any of it even if they did.

How do you get people to feel like there is a good future on the horizon and make that something that people want to work towards?

I'm just tired of this constant bickering and bullshit.

If we can't find a way to get past that, then I don't think we really have anything worth fighting for in the first place.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, April 25, 2025 6:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.
What was mutually understood?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

That were both Indigenous.
Ok, but what does that mean?
Shared bad history with white man?
Feeling a little unbelonging in the dominant culture?
That knowing one's tribe, and the other's tribe, is important?
For example, would it have made any difference to you if he had said Lakota? Cherokee? Navajo?
Just trying to figure out what you were thinking/ feeling.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Perfectly reasonable question Sig.

Identifying our tribes was about shared bad history with the white man and an acknowledgement that knowing who we are is important.

No, it wouldn't have mattered if he had said another American tribe after I had identified my people. There would have been the head nodding and the understanding.

I was able to glean as much. Even decedents of smaller, lesser-known tribes I would imagine would share that sort of kinship with each other if they ever just happened to randomly bump into each other one day by chance.

Outside of family, which mine was never that great even at it's best, and that has pretty stretched thin all over the country at this point, I've never really had that feeling anywhere.

"White People", of which I very much am one of, as are most people of highly-mixed European descent by Generation X have no real ties to each other, although we're thought of in the media and culture as some sort of monolith. As I said, "White People" did have that several generations before genX, and that ended when the Boomers intermingled with people outside of their own heritage and in only 2 generations you had your "White People", may of whom were already mixed with up to 8 different genetic backgrounds, all the while their parents completely neglected to bother trying to instill any part of the "Old World" into their kids and the entire history and any sense of national pride for their roots was just lost in translation somewhere along the way. If I want to know what my families were like before they mixed, I have to go back and watch movies from the 70's to have any clue.

Come to think of it, I think that (and this entire concept and conversation) was probably the reason that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was such a phenomena when it came out in 2002. Pretty late for a family-centric movie surrounding the "Greek" heritage as the main plot point. Besides its sequels, I'm not really sure there's been many "White" movies that have touched on these feelings of home and nostalgia.

... and I think that's because "White People" are just kind of lost to history at this point. Not really knowing or caring at all about their past... Aimlessly wandering around in the present with no place to call home in a country they thought was theirs but which has been calling them bad guys for the better part of a decade and a half now if they don't just bend the knee every day and allow everything all around them to just fall apart. No real plans for the future... just skating by and seeing what will happen.

I'm not going to say that I could or would never share any knowing look with a "White" stranger while out and about for any reason. But BOY would it have to be a pretty good flippin' reason and would never just be a fleeting moment felt out of the blue like that. We would have to be unwittingly thrust in the middle of some deep doo doo for that scenario to take place.

I've always said that when I grew up everything around me was pretty white and I never even saw a "minority" until I was 7 or 8 years old and went Downtown for the first time. And things remained more or less that way until around my early to mid 20's when everything changed...

But I still remember my predominantly "White" youth, and I always figured that only about 30% of people out there are worth any of your time. The rest of them are pretty much assholes. And I've carried that assumption with me and applied it everywhere else and it doesn't seem to be any different when it is applied somewhere else. Most people kinda suck for one reason or another.

Ain't even judging anyone about that either. I didn't get it when I was a kid, but you gain an entirely different perspective on life when you get older and I get it. Most of that 70% of people that are assholes aren't doing it for the sake of being assholes. I'd give the percentage of actual, truly bad people out there to be pretty safely in the lower to middle single digits. People get beat up over life though. That Social Battery that most healthy folk can still manage to get near-full every morning before going out for the day in their mid-20's just don't charge up nearly as much to full every morning by the time they're twice that age.

And if everybody's walking around all miserable and at each other's throats over politics every day for 12 years and nobody's happy, why should I expect anybody to be able to charge that battery up every morning?

I don't know how we do it, but THIS is what really needs fixing. How do you make people feel like the future is something to look forward to again?

Because once you take all the boxes and identity politics away, all I see right now are two groups of folk...

The people who remember how much better everything worked 25 years ago, and people who are stuck completely in NOW with no real plans for the future, and no way to pay for any of it even if they did.

How do you get people to feel like there is a good future on the horizon and make that something that people want to work towards?

I'm just tired of this constant bickering and bullshit.

If we can't find a way to get past that, then I don't think we really have anything worth fighting for in the first place.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

They would. I even established that bond with the lady who used to come in and look after my mum when she was at that point dying with cancer. She is pure blood First Nations from BC here. She told me her tribe but it was a name that I didn't recognize. Still talk to her when I see her and we email too.

I didn't know a whole lot about my mum's family till one of her aunts came up for a visit when I was in high school and I was able to ask her some questions and I wrote her answers down. Still have the answers too.

Yeah, I get that. But if you had met Europeans from Europe which I have. Knew a family while I was growing up the Valley here in BC, the parents were from Italy and the spoke pretty good English and of course hadn't lost their Italian. Their daughters spoke both. Grandfather that lived with them couldn't speak English except for hello. Knew another family from Croatia. The parents had good English because they ran businesses in Vancouver and in the city where I am. They told me where they were from or I wouldn't have been able to tell from their accents. Knew another young woman with an accent and I asked her where she was from and she said Poland. I knew she was somewhere in middle Europe but I couldn't tell.

Accents in Canada and the Northern United States sound the same to me. I can tell when someone is from Quebec of course, the French and farther east like Newfoundland because they are very hard to understand. In the US you have states like New York and others on the East coast that to my ears make a mess of English. So, I think that is why identifying ourselves by tribe is important because when he speak English we basically sound the same.

Yes, I think you are right about why "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was so successful because it harken back to a time when families first immigrated to North America and hadn't moved outside of their communities.

My youth was mostly white but living the Valley their was a fair sized population of East Indians that is to say families from India and a few Asians. Of course that number increased when you were in a bigger city like Vancouver.

Well, I was a shy kid and so making friends and even having conversations was difficult. But my dad always said never judge someone by what they look like, judge them by their actions and I do try to live by that and I like to think I succeed most of the time. I hope so anyways.

That bit of advice from him was because as he was growing up him and his brothers and sisters along with his mother, would have been seen as just Indians and judged on that.

I agree with you life beating people up. I'm sure a good number of people who have been on this board have been beaten by up life in one form or another.

When you take all the boxes away and just plain politics that's all we are just people. We have to see beyond all the garbage to realize that we share more similarities than differences.

That's the million dollar question. How do we fix society ills. We have to look back to see that in some ways society has always had some form of poverty, people with disabilities and mental illness. It's just now in the present we have ways to elevate some of that. But the lost contact with family and in some ways the not wanting to shoulder the "responsibility" is not helping.

I got and I don't how to describe it but I got looked down on for caring for my mother both times she had cancer. This was by people who were around her. I told a cousin of mine about this and she said these people were wrong. I had done the right thing.

Similarities, similarities, similarities are there for us to see. It's the garbage of noise that we throw up around us that drowns them out.

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Friday, April 25, 2025 9:52 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, did we ever have a national sense of belonging? Recent immigrants and their children probably feel isolated to some extent ... not that there's much "there" there when it comes to culture and community, or even family, here. It's not something the USA elites want valued. In fact, they've been working on atomizing our society (progressive atomization) for over 100 years.

Most ppl don't think even society exists, or should exist.

Quote:
How do you get people to feel like there is a good future on the horizon and make that something that people want to work towards?

It would be hard to convince people who never experienced it IRL, but we COULD model it in the media. Like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Instead of stupid family comedies where dad is clueless and nobody talks to each other, how about TV shows where people actually enjoy each other's company? Instead of "vengeance" movies where "the victim" takes it and takes it until he/she finally explodes in righteous violence, what happens if people actually negotiate? People WORKING together, not detective movies or hospital movies, but people trying to build something together? Building a dam, building a team, teaching apprentices, being a friend, creating a neighborhood, holding together in the face of difficulty, HAVING FUN TOGETHER?

It may not be realistic, but look at what's shown. You'd think that the world was full of detectives and criminals, or doctors and patients. Try counting the number of married couples on TV shows ... zilch. According to TV, everyone's divorced, or gay, or trans or some kind of special entitled minority. Hardly realistc.

In reality, people are mechanics and barristas and truck drivers and waitresses and teachers, most are married, most have children, and we all depend on each other.

I read something interesting about one of those small tight knit religious communities/ cults that we, the larger society, would disapprove of. Some of the cult members left, and altho they didn't miss the belief system or practices, they did feel adrift. They missed, REALLY missed, the sense of belonging.

So maybe we could take lessons from the Amish or Mennonites. See what they do to keep their communities together?

Quote:
But the lost contact with family and in some ways the not wanting to shoulder the "responsibility" is not helping.

I got and I don't how to describe it but I got looked down on for caring for my mother both times she had cancer. This was by people who were around her. I told a cousin of mine about this and she said these people were wrong. I had done the right thing.

I thought that's what families were supposed to do - look after each other.
We took care of my MIL as she was dying of cancer. It wasn't an easy process. I had a particularly bad early AM, I had been crying and showed up to work kind of haggard looking, and one of my co-workers, a guy from the Philippines looked at me and said "I guess there's hope for Americans yet". I guess he thought Americans were too individualistic, too selfish, to tend to family. Taking responsibility for your family, or a friend, is hard. OTOH, if we don't, we wind up where we are now: most people have one or two friends, real friends - people they can count on in a jam. That's it. And the poorer you are, the fewer friends you have.

I don't think money creates friends, I think isolation creates poverty.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 12:00 AM

Looking after family was what I was taught and it is hard. But those people around my mum just didn't get it. So basically I ignored them.

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 2:20 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Good for you.

The problem is everybody else.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 6:36 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Reading this thread for the past day or 2, I was thinking about Indigenous attitudes.

For legal immigrants, they would strive to integrate into the colonies, USA. They wanted to blend in, meld into the melting pot of USA.
Natives did not want to integrate with the invading white man - why would they? And they resisted.

These attitudes are opposite each other.
One group wanted to retain their culture, while the other wanted to start anew in a new land, and was more willing to leave their culture behind.

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 1:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Good for you.

The problem is everybody else.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Yup and that type of thing was another bit of advice from my dad.

My mum one time was talking to a lady one time and as ladies do she mentioned my dad was part Indian. This lady drug as many stereotypes out that she could. Main ones being was he a drunk and was he abusive. My mum of course said no and when she got back to me. I had to talk her out of her upset. That her comments were her problem and not ours. WE knew what a good and caring man my dad was. He never harmed any of his family and nor did he drink to excess. "Date night" for them and he had maybe one beer.

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 1:47 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What Do People Actually Want? Doctor Irvin D. Yalom asked them. He got answers.

PROLOGUE

Imagine this scene: three to four hundred people, strangers to each other, are told to pair up and ask their partner one single question, “What do you want?” over and over and over again.

Could anything be simpler? One innocent question and its answer. And yet, time after time, I have seen this group exercise evoke unexpectedly powerful feelings. Often, within minutes, the room rocks with emotion. Men and women—and these are by no means desperate or needy but successful, well-functioning, well-dressed people who glitter as they walk—are stirred to their depths. They call out to those who are forever lost—dead or absent parents, spouses, children, friends: “I want to see you again.” “I want your love.” “I want to know you’re proud of me.” “I want you to know I love you and how sorry I am I never told you.” “I want you back—I am so lonely.” “I want the childhood I never had.” “I want to be healthy—to be young again. I want to be loved, to be respected. I want my life to mean something. I want to accomplish something. I want to matter, to be important, to be remembered.”

So much wanting. So much longing. And so much pain, so close to the surface, only minutes deep. Destiny pain. Existence pain. Pain that is always there, whirring continuously just beneath the membrane of life. Pain that is all too easily accessible. Many things—a simple group exercise, a few minutes of deep reflection, a work of art, a sermon, a personal crisis, a loss—remind us that our deepest wants can never be fulfilled: our wants for youth, for a halt to aging, for the return of vanished ones, for eternal love, protection, significance, for immortality itself.

It is when these unattainable wants come to dominate our lives that we turn for help to family, to friends, to religion—sometimes to psychotherapists.

Download the book by Irvin D. Yalom Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy from the mirror at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Irvin+D.+Yalom+Love

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 6:10 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Asking "successful, well-functioning, well-dressed people who glitter as they walk" what they want is likely to to generate metaphysical answers. Asking a woman in impoverished Africa will probably get a different set of answers:

I want to go to bed with a full stomache.
I want to stop shitting from my vagina.
I want my child to survive this illness.

I can't speak for African men. IDK what drives them to mine in illegal mines or join gangs.

Maybe he should try this exercise with different sets of people.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Saturday, April 26, 2025 6:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Reading this thread for the past day or 2, I was thinking about Indigenous attitudes.

For legal immigrants, they would strive to integrate into the colonies, USA. They wanted to blend in, meld into the melting pot of USA.
Natives did not want to integrate with the invading white man - why would they? And they resisted.

These attitudes are opposite each other.
One group wanted to retain their culture, while the other wanted to start anew in a new land, and was more willing to leave their culture behind.

JSF that idea of assimilation is what caused the Indian Wars in the US.

Not to say that didn't happen in Canada. It did but mostly in the east with the Iroquois Confederation. In the west it was the Metis. Louis Riel was the leader of the Metis who was fighting for a Metis homeland. The Metis like all the Nations in Canada just wanted to be able to practice their culture which was derived from taking traditions from their European fathers and mixing them with mainly their Cree heritage.

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Sunday, April 27, 2025 7:24 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Asking "successful, well-functioning, well-dressed people who glitter as they walk" what they want is likely to to generate metaphysical answers. Asking a woman in impoverished Africa will probably get a different set of answers:

I want to go to bed with a full stomache.
I want to stop shitting from my vagina.
I want my child to survive this illness.

I can't speak for African men. IDK what drives them to mine in illegal mines or join gangs.

Maybe he should try this exercise with different sets of people.

How about you stop talking about massive failure in lands living without civilization? (Owning a smartphone is not the same as living in civilization, Signym.) Signym, in a country that has not fallen into chaos, your real "Wants" are:

Quote:
Well, did we ever have a national sense of belonging? Recent immigrants and their children probably feel isolated to some extent ... not that there's much "there" there when it comes to culture and community, or even family, here. It's not something the USA elites want valued. In fact, they've been working on atomizing our society (progressive atomization) for over 100 years.

Most ppl don't think even society exists, or should exist.

Signym, there is a do-it-yourself fix for "progressive atomization". It is called friends. Making friends is a different do-it-yourself fix than Buddhist-style meditation, which is for mitigating existential crisis. Siddhartha Gautama, a.k.a. The Buddha, naturally fell into such a crisis, and so can anyone, but not so many climb out.

How to have friends past age 30
A quick and simple guide.

By Noah Smith | Apr 25, 2025

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-to-have-friends-past-age-30

“And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split”
— Bob Dylan

One thing I am good at is having friends. Not everyone knows this about me, but in fact I’ve always been an extremely social person. I’m pretty good at assembling a cohesive group of friends, who do things together regularly and become friends with each other. And at least since my college days, I’ve also had quite a number of very close friends — people I can tell anything, people I know will have my back, some who feel as close as family.

Apparently this is somewhat unusual for an American man in this day and age — or at least, more unusual than it ought to be.

But anyway, here’s how I do it. More at https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-to-have-friends-past-age-30

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, April 28, 2025 12:57 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Wow, the most unpleasant guy on the inlet, the one who hates half of the people and who looks down on EVERYONE, the lying sociopath, is giving advice on how to make friends????

A sense of belonging occurs on many levels... family, neighborhood, work, culture, religion (if you have one), nation. "Friends“ hardly encompasses the scope.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, April 28, 2025 8:05 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, the most unpleasant guy on the inlet, the one who hates half of the people and who looks down on EVERYONE, the lying sociopath, is giving advice on how to make friends????

A sense of belonging occurs on many levels... family, neighborhood, work, culture, religion (if you have one), nation. "Friends“ hardly encompasses the scope.

Signym, I think you are not making friends with your sympathy for Russia's reasons to annihilate Ukraine.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=12174
66#1217466

Signym, you are not making friends with your antipathy toward USAID, which Trump has shut down and caused starvation and death.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=66397&mid=12174
67#1217467

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, April 28, 2025 1:23 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND- First you say I'm poor. Then you think I have plastic body parts, and my car crashed. Now you're worried about my friendship quotient?
You're weird.

I think you're just poking around, looking for a defensive response.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, April 28, 2025 1:59 PM