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Even though responsibility is what gives life meaning. I feel like many men are 'checking out' of society's responsibilities (which need not be related to raisi

Even though responsibility is what gives life meaning. I feel like many men are 'checking out' of society's responsibilities (which need not be related to raising children) for a number of factors.

llampx 8y ago
Responsibility for the sake of responsibility is not going to suffice for most people. Why take on more responsibility than you need to? For example, having kids was a direct advantage in earlier times. More hands on the farm, or more muscle for your clan, or other advantages like receiving dowry. This is also why some cultures preferred one sex or the other. Today, what do you get by raising a kid that you then have to support for an extended period of time, maybe until he/she is in his/her mid-twenties? If there's nothing to be gained there's no surprise more people are opting to delay it, sometimes to the point of no return.
- YinglingLight 8y ago
  "The higher degree of responsibility you voluntarily choose to bear, the richer your life will become. ...You have a complicated job, you try to solve problems, to aid suffering, and there's weight to that. There's deep meaning in that." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg7NhHJsGq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg7NhHJsGq0
  - mercutio2 8y ago
    You might be shocked to learn that many people do not consider Jordan Peterson an authority on philosophical questions like what the good life consists of. Also, minor etiquette point, many of us block YouTube, so for people like us, providing a link that forces us to open a separate browser that doesn’t block YouTube so that we can figure out who you’re quoting isn’t the ideal way to convey your point.
    - YinglingLight 8y ago
      Beautiful example of an ad hominem! I'd love to discuss what you disagree with in Peterson's view on responsibility.
      - mercutio2 8y ago
        Someone disagreed with the notion that responsibility is intrinsically useful. In response, you posted an opaque quote from some random person without any relevance to any moral framework I’m culturally connected to who thinks responsibility is awesome in and of itself. I don’t know or care about Jordan Peterson, so I don’t think I’ve made an ad hominem; rather, I think you’re attempting to make an argument from authority, which isn’t very convincing. I’d feel similarly about a biblical argument, except in the case of the bible, I’d at least acknowledge that while I don’t consider it a moral authority, it has significant cultural heft and is thus worth wrestling with occasionally. I personally am happy to have most of the responsibilities I’ve gathered in my life, with child rearing high on that list. But I don’t resonate with the idea that it’s the responsibility itself that gives meaning to my life.
pdimitar 8y ago
> Even though responsibility is what gives life meaning. This is only true until a certain point is reached and it plateaus and even declines after. Personal character development -- gaining more courage, finding strength within oneself in the face of extreme adversity (example: "pay mortgage installment in the next 2 weeks or end up on the street"), managing to stay optimistic even when everything seems to go wrong, getting outside your comfort zone to find unconventional solutions to immediate problems, learning to sell yourself without humiliating yourself... all of these things are extremely valuable and end up making you a beautiful person who can handle a lot. But this piques. From one point and on you just collapse and if you haven't invented some sort of a safety net for yourself a this point in your life, then what follows can only be described as a band of vandals kicking you and beating you up while you are down on the ground and are desperately trying to defend yourself. Everybody has a breaking point. I found several of mine. Now I can handle almost anything life throws at me and I like myself MUCH more compared to even 2-3 short years ago. You learn your lessons and you don't make the same mistakes anymore. But if you don't get some stroke of luck or drastically change the way you make money and move to a higher economical class, then it's only gonna go downhill for you from then on.

Even though responsibility is what gives life meaning. I feel like many men are 'checking out' of society's responsibilities (which need not be related to raising children) for a number of factors.

llampx 8y ago

Responsibility for the sake of responsibility is not going to suffice for most people. Why take on more responsibility than you need to? For example, having kids was a direct advantage in earlier times. More hands on the farm, or more muscle for your clan, or other advantages like receiving dowry. This is also why some cultures preferred one sex or the other. Today, what do you get by raising a kid that you then have to support for an extended period of time, maybe until he/she is in his/her mid-twenties? If there's nothing to be gained there's no surprise more people are opting to delay it, sometimes to the point of no return.

YinglingLight 8y ago
"The higher degree of responsibility you voluntarily choose to bear, the richer your life will become. ...You have a complicated job, you try to solve problems, to aid suffering, and there's weight to that. There's deep meaning in that." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg7NhHJsGq0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg7NhHJsGq0
- mercutio2 8y ago
  You might be shocked to learn that many people do not consider Jordan Peterson an authority on philosophical questions like what the good life consists of. Also, minor etiquette point, many of us block YouTube, so for people like us, providing a link that forces us to open a separate browser that doesn’t block YouTube so that we can figure out who you’re quoting isn’t the ideal way to convey your point.
  - YinglingLight 8y ago
    Beautiful example of an ad hominem! I'd love to discuss what you disagree with in Peterson's view on responsibility.
    - mercutio2 8y ago
      Someone disagreed with the notion that responsibility is intrinsically useful. In response, you posted an opaque quote from some random person without any relevance to any moral framework I’m culturally connected to who thinks responsibility is awesome in and of itself. I don’t know or care about Jordan Peterson, so I don’t think I’ve made an ad hominem; rather, I think you’re attempting to make an argument from authority, which isn’t very convincing. I’d feel similarly about a biblical argument, except in the case of the bible, I’d at least acknowledge that while I don’t consider it a moral authority, it has significant cultural heft and is thus worth wrestling with occasionally. I personally am happy to have most of the responsibilities I’ve gathered in my life, with child rearing high on that list. But I don’t resonate with the idea that it’s the responsibility itself that gives meaning to my life.

pdimitar 8y ago

> Even though responsibility is what gives life meaning. This is only true until a certain point is reached and it plateaus and even declines after. Personal character development -- gaining more courage, finding strength within oneself in the face of extreme adversity (example: "pay mortgage installment in the next 2 weeks or end up on the street"), managing to stay optimistic even when everything seems to go wrong, getting outside your comfort zone to find unconventional solutions to immediate problems, learning to sell yourself without humiliating yourself... all of these things are extremely valuable and end up making you a beautiful person who can handle a lot. But this piques. From one point and on you just collapse and if you haven't invented some sort of a safety net for yourself a this point in your life, then what follows can only be described as a band of vandals kicking you and beating you up while you are down on the ground and are desperately trying to defend yourself. Everybody has a breaking point. I found several of mine. Now I can handle almost anything life throws at me and I like myself MUCH more compared to even 2-3 short years ago. You learn your lessons and you don't make the same mistakes anymore. But if you don't get some stroke of luck or drastically change the way you make money and move to a higher economical class, then it's only gonna go downhill for you from then on.