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>The default is people like me. I think not finding things in common with young people isn't abnormal. My childhood was miserable partly BECAUSE of the samenes

>The default is people like me. I think not finding things in common with young people isn't abnormal. My childhood was miserable partly BECAUSE of the sameness of it all. I find the suburban vanilla Stepford ways soul-killing. I had no exposure to culture. The internet didn't exist yet. I was ignorant and brainwashed in many ways. I felt out of place and like I was a freak because I didn't believe what I was told was "correct". The city was "bad" and "city folk" were "bad". The family and people in those places still have the same narrow beliefs and I am still "wrong". The people I know that grew up in multicultural cities had so much richer experiences and opportunities to grow and explore their beliefs and ideas without their parents ideologies infecting them as much.

rayiner 7y ago
Having rich experiences and exploring different ideas is admirable, in some respects, but I'm not convinced that's a good basis for sustainable, tight-knit communities. Your choice of phraseology is interesting--parents "infecting" kids with their ideologies. Most people would consider it a key function of parenting (and society) to socialize children in the community's values, rules, and orthodoxies. One of the things I find ironic about "experience seeking" is how often people go to places like India or China to have "rich experiences." But people from those places generally would relate much more easily to people like your parents. Circling back to the topic at hand--people in my home country of Bangladesh, where there is a rigid social order and strict indoctrination of children, may suffer from many things, but loneliness is not one of them.
- hestipod 7y ago
  If the sustainable tight knit community is awash with horrible "values" like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, tribal bigotry and arrogance etc then I don't want to be a part of it. It's perpetuating the wrong things in my view and is like any bureaucracy just existing to serve itself. Kids should be taught the basics of human decency like honesty/empathy/kindness/sharing/helping etc, and then allowed to arrive at any specific spiritual or political views themselves through varied experience, not indoctrinated from a malleable age into mini-mes who never know anything else, as is usually the case in areas like I mentioned above.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Few tight-knit communities would consider those to be "values" (i.e. beliefs that are core to identity). Your view is also a bit of "throwing the baby out with the bath water." Humanity has lots of vices, and those vices are often amplified in tight-knit communities. But those shortcomings can be improved without undermining the social order or adopting pernicious individualism. Again, I can't help but notice the irony of your assertion. What is the virtue in not being xenophobic against Bangladeshis, if you're going to condemn the way they structure their communities and raise their children?
    - devdas 7y ago
      They absolutely are values. Just not good ones.
vonseel 7y ago
> The people I know that grew up in multicultural cities had so much richer experiences and opportunities to grow and explore their beliefs and ideas without their parents ideologies infecting them as much. I’m from rural East Texas and would agree with that statement 100%.

rayiner 7y ago

Having rich experiences and exploring different ideas is admirable, in some respects, but I'm not convinced that's a good basis for sustainable, tight-knit communities. Your choice of phraseology is interesting--parents "infecting" kids with their ideologies. Most people would consider it a key function of parenting (and society) to socialize children in the community's values, rules, and orthodoxies. One of the things I find ironic about "experience seeking" is how often people go to places like India or China to have "rich experiences." But people from those places generally would relate much more easily to people like your parents. Circling back to the topic at hand--people in my home country of Bangladesh, where there is a rigid social order and strict indoctrination of children, may suffer from many things, but loneliness is not one of them.

hestipod 7y ago
If the sustainable tight knit community is awash with horrible "values" like racism, homophobia, xenophobia, tribal bigotry and arrogance etc then I don't want to be a part of it. It's perpetuating the wrong things in my view and is like any bureaucracy just existing to serve itself. Kids should be taught the basics of human decency like honesty/empathy/kindness/sharing/helping etc, and then allowed to arrive at any specific spiritual or political views themselves through varied experience, not indoctrinated from a malleable age into mini-mes who never know anything else, as is usually the case in areas like I mentioned above.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Few tight-knit communities would consider those to be "values" (i.e. beliefs that are core to identity). Your view is also a bit of "throwing the baby out with the bath water." Humanity has lots of vices, and those vices are often amplified in tight-knit communities. But those shortcomings can be improved without undermining the social order or adopting pernicious individualism. Again, I can't help but notice the irony of your assertion. What is the virtue in not being xenophobic against Bangladeshis, if you're going to condemn the way they structure their communities and raise their children?
  - devdas 7y ago
    They absolutely are values. Just not good ones.

vonseel 7y ago

> The people I know that grew up in multicultural cities had so much richer experiences and opportunities to grow and explore their beliefs and ideas without their parents ideologies infecting them as much. I’m from rural East Texas and would agree with that statement 100%.