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You know friend, I understand how you feel. When I look out at the world, I see so much garbage that I can’t even believe it. Then I hang out with my four year

• bamboozled 6y ago
  What happens to grow up to suck so hard? Why can't we just look at each other and imagine the child that person once was, then maybe we'd care more about others like your 4 year old does.
  • hluska 6y ago
    This is beautiful writing and it deserves a reply, but for now I’m just going to read your words and wonder along with you. I’ll edit this comment at some point but for now, thank you friend. This is beautiful and poignant. :) Edit - I notice you edited your reply but I’m happy I got to read the original. You’re a beautiful writer.
  • redvenom 6y ago
    We are taught in Western and most other societies of today to numb pain. The problem is that we have knowledge of the problems of this world. I think if we allow ourselves to feel the pain of our knowledge and understand our existence through it, we can return to a childlike state and realize the pain is not something wrong with us, but our natural inclination and love for the world telling us that we are doing something wrong. We may not be able to solve the problems created by our species, but if we learn to live with respect for the planet then we can at least know we are doing as much as we can with our own existence.
  • fsloth 6y ago
    Thank you, this is beautiful and deep. I think I will try to imagine people as children and imagine them growing up more. Much easier to project loving-kindness that way.
  • oconnor663 6y ago
    > Why can't we just look at each other and imagine the child that person once was As hard as it is to generalize, I'd say it's because sometimes our needs aren't getting met, particularly our need for safety. When we feel like we're in danger, it's very hard to appreciate wonderful things. ("This person feels like they're in danger" is also a decent way to broadly sympathize with other folks, along the same lines as "imagine the child that person once was.")
  • katbyte 6y ago
    Because the adult that person is now often is the source of so much pain and anguish to others?
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Because allocating limited resources isn’t in the purview of a 4 year old. As you grow up, you begin to learn who wields the power and resources and how it’s allocated and what the consequences are for those who forgo it or can’t get it.
    • bamboozled 6y ago
      I actually do wonder though if in the end, it really matters? Everyone with power ends up losing it, or acquiring some strife, maybe if we cared less we'd find out it wasn't that much of a concern anyway. I mean, do people chose power or does power choose them? Would you appreciate it if you had it?
      • kortilla 6y ago
        The entire lifestyle of the west is mostly unsustainable if everything started getting allocated equally. So it matters to a lot of people.
  • xupybd 6y ago
    It's a lie that kids are naturally good. Leave them alone long enough and it'll go Lord of the flies real quick.
    • DeRock 6y ago
      The lord of the flies was made up. Here’s an actual anecdote of what happens (spoiler, they work together): https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...
      • konart 6y ago
        >Here’s an actual anecdote of what happens Sometimes this happens, sometimes not.
        • LarvaFX 6y ago
          Or it does always and not the other way around.
  • notabee 6y ago
    On a positive note, doing this is a very good way to understand people. Even their bad actions make a lot more sense if you delve into some developmental psychology along with just engaging your intuition about what their inner 4 year old wants out of life. On a negative note, I think most people convince themselves of being much more grown up than they actually are. Really it's far easier to just get meaner and more calloused to survive while suffocating the core self. Maturity is more like a deliberate and careful edifice built with a lot of work, self-reflection, and self-forgiveness. It's not a given that just getting older does that, other than the inhibitory part of the brain getting better at restraining the emotional part after adolescence. (Usually, unless trauma happens that's sufficient to get stuck in a particular development stage.)
• rv-de 6y ago
  > As cynical as I am okay ... are you ready? > She doesn’t understand racism give her and her friends blue t-shirts and an equal number of other kids red t-shirts. do this for several weeks. lo and behold the basis of racism unfold. racism is an inherent human feature which can only be overcome by education. something adults have to provide for children.
  • bonaldi 6y ago
    No, racism is not an inherent human feature. A claim like that needs better justification than ... none at all.
    • pfisch 6y ago
      ingroup and outgroup is an inherent feature of ALL social animals.
      • 0_____0 6y ago
        ingroup/outgroup behavior ≠ racism
        • pfisch 6y ago
          racism is just a subgroup that is a type of ingroup/outgroup behavior.
          • bonaldi 6y ago
            Spoken French is just a subgroup that is a type of communication behaviour, which is an inherent feature of all social animals. Doesn't mean speaking French is innate or inherent.
            • yholio 6y ago
              Nor does it mean that antisemitism, white supremacism, apartheid or nazism are anything but dialects of the same age-old social pattern.
• lopmotr 6y ago
  Pull yourselves together. The previous century had trench warfare, famines, WWII, The Khmer Rouge, the cultural revolution, the Spanish flu, polio, threat of a nuclear holocaust, threat of overpopulation, AIDS, Imperial Japan, Apartheid, lobotomies, etc. Most of that stuff is now under control and probably will be for your kid's entire life. There's no chance global warming will be anywhere near as bad as many of those things for anyone alive today. For even further in the future, we have no idea. Your despair is probably a result of being fed emotionally manipulative stories from the news and social media for too long. The real world has never been better, and it hasn't stopped improving. Try looking at some of Bill Gates's writing for inspiration. That's somebody who's not afraid to see the bright side of life while not ignoring the dark.
  • sedachv 6y ago
    > The real world has never been better Better for whom? And why do you think Bill Gates is any kind of authority on this subject? Read some of Derrick Jensen's writing instead.
    • kortilla 6y ago
      Better for the vast majority of the planet. Extreme poverty has been on a constant decline.
      • tsimionescu 6y ago
        Extreme poverty has been on a constant decline only as defined by the world bank (by choosing an arbitrary dollar amount of 1.90 international dollars that could barely buy some food, but not medicine or shelter). In real terms, it has been stagnant or increasing, especially as people who were living well off the land have been forced to participate in the monetary economy or die of starvation. And even by the world bank standards [0], the only gains have been because of China (a planned economy that has ignored any american or european economic orthodoxy), and to a lesser extent, India, which has mostly advanced by freeing itself from the burdens of colonialism (before colonialism, it was one of the richer areas of the world). In sub-Saharan Africa, extreme poverty has actually been increasing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:Total_population_living_in_extreme_poverty,_by_world_region_(PovcalNet,_World_Bank_(1987_to_2013)),_OWID.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty#/media/File:To...
• rad_gruchalski 6y ago
  > Then I hang out with my four year old. She doesn’t understand racism, politics or climate. To put this in perspective: Hitler was once a sweet 4 year old. Stalin was one too. Mao? Yup. Putin? Sure he was. Everyone on this planet was once that sweet 4 year old not grasping any of what you mention. And yet, look where we are.
  • edoceo 6y ago
    Some four year old grew up and thought this was an insightful comment. Hope mine don't.
  • hluska 6y ago
    What an unbelievably low quality comment. I can only make two possible replies: 1.) You managed to miss the point completely. 2.) Go and fuck yourself. Be sure to stop by ‘emotional intelligence’ on the way, but mostly just go and fuck yourself. It takes a degree of work to write something this low quality and frankly, the world would be better served if you put that labour into a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise.
    • qualitylandlor 6y ago
      Wow, what a rude comment...
    • konart 6y ago
      I mean, yours is even worse. You behave like an angry kid in an online game.
      • konart 6y ago
        Hopefully people do realize that above is the reply to a deleted comment by hluska
    • rad_gruchalski 6y ago
      Wow, you are actually the person I replied to in the first place. There goes the hope.
• glaugh 6y ago
  My boomer parents were raised by parents who were taught not to tell their kids they loved them. My (privileged) five-year-old has emotional tools that I didn’t have until I was 25. I do think we’re generally getting better at raising empathetic kids. It’s not uniform, but it’s better.
  • tommica 6y ago
    I'm curious, why do you think having emotional tools is a "privilege"? I might be wrong in my understanding of the term, but isn't it more of a right than a privilege?
    • kazagistar 6y ago
      Privilege is something good, unequally (and/or unjustly) distributed. Rights are something good that should be afforded to everyone. So there is a lot of overlap but also distinction. Rights are an ideal, privileges are a material reality.
    • golergka 6y ago
      Having your right realized and not tampered is a privilege.
    • xenocratus 6y ago
      Nothing is either a right or a privilege, objectively speaking, so it can be a right in one historical/social context and a privilege in another.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • ricardo81 6y ago
    I think you're too hard on the older generations. They lived in a time where kitchen appliances were a new thing, most work involved manual labour and lots of time. Getting used to hardship and not whining about it was their way of getting through it. Tired? Tough! There is a balance to be had which I usually sort by "needs" and "wants". There aren't many needs and the rest is a luxury.
• tappio 6y ago
  Have you considered that you might also be living in denial? As far as I know your brains are full of chemical reactions that make your little princess seem perfect. I'm a father as well and it is sometimes hard to distinguish "I love my kid and she's perfect" from "my kid is actually very kind". I hope the latter is true for you!
  • hluska 6y ago
    This is an interesting comment and I’ll reply with two points: First, my kid can be a real little shit. :) Second, I think about that a lot. My Dad and I have a close relationship and sometimes I wonder if that’s because we are personally compatible or whether there’s something biological that’s just beyond our consciousness. In terms of my kid, I wonder the same thing (particularly when she’s being a little shit). I hope the truth is somewhere in the middle. I’m her dad so I’m very biased in her favour. There is an entire biological side that I don’t think my conscious brain has direct read access to. But I still hope that my little girl is perfect and stays this wonderful kind little angel.
• globular-toast 6y ago
  > There’s hope. There's hope because 4 year olds aren't racist and "respect pronouns"? I hate to break it to you, but no children are born racist and they will believe and copy whatever you tell them whether it's religion, racism or alternative pronouns. None of this puts food on the table, though, does it?
• hungryforcodes 6y ago
  Wow, so having kids is the only way to be a participating human being in life and climate change?