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My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "m

My mother told me to not care what other people thought. She also told me that words can't really hurt people ("sticks and stones..."). She also believed its "mean" to have any preference about people, calling it a version of "keeping score". In fact, "keeping score" was one of the worst things you could be accused of in my household. Her advice fails to accept the reality of social and emotional needs. It also fails to address the (sometimes severe) downside of non-conformance. This advice made me an Outsider whether or not I wanted to be. I now believe that these were tools she formed to get her through her own family and social trauma, which she falsely assumed would be generally useful, and did her best to arm her children with her best tools. I also believe there are upsides to the approach, but the trade-offs are real and cannot and shouldn't be swept under the rug. I imagine others had similar experiences with religious parents. Advice is dangerous. It has built in moral hazard. Advice is too often given in well-meaning ignorance and pride - but ultimately advice gets someone else to test your hypothesis for you. So if you've not gotten any life-changing advice, be glad!

jemmyw 4y ago
To be fair to your mother, this particular advice and view was rampant when I grew up in the 80s/90s. My experience was that this is quite backwards. Physical altercations at school didn't hurt that much, but the name calling, social shunning and constant verbal put down was very painful and has affected my whole life.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I’d agree. I was hurt by bullying enough that if I had ever made it big I would have found the most outrageous bullying case I could find and try to sue a school district out of existence? Maybe if teachers thought they could lose their pension maybe they would put a stop to bullying.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Suing to threaten the pensions of underpaid teachers. Makin’ a difference in the world.
    - MonkeyClub 4y ago
      Does raise an interesting question, though: Is it the teachers' or the parents' responsibility to teach manners to a child? Isn't this something that you'd pick up at home first, before ever stepping a foot into an institutionalized pedagogical setting? Perhaps instead of suing the entire school district, GP should rather sue the parents of the offending child? /s To remove the tongue from the cheek, though, and provide some anecdata in the same breath, let me say that I have a number of close friends who are teachers; their constant complaint is that the children reach school already too spoiled (in the rude and egocentric sense). Which apparently gets worse every year. It's easier to make a case for a society-wide pandemic of negligent upbringing by parents who - goes without saying - are under-educated in child rearing, lack the traditional support networks ("it takes a village to raise a child") and generally overburdened by life's other demands. The children then get passed over to underpaid and overworked teachers (and overflowing classrooms), where the egos of the little cute monsters clash, occasionally loudly and physically, more frequently in passive-aggressive, bullyish manners. But yeah, "back in mah day..."
      - gabereiser 4y ago
        100% the parents… teachers can influence but it’s the parents legal responsibility to not raise a monster.
        blooalien 4y ago
        Legal, ethical, and moral responsibility…
      - scotty79 4y ago
        It's schools responsibility to ensure safety. If you are forcing a person to interact daily with bad people the least you should do is ensure that those bad people won't hurt this person.
- gabereiser 4y ago
  “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will hurt for life” is how I used to say it. Never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing you say to someone. You’re words matter more than you realize.
  - aeternum 4y ago
    Most people have never come anywhere close to being beat sufficiently to have a bone broken. I guarantee you words come nothing close to that experience. Being beat to that extent can cause both physical and emotional pain for life.
    - gabereiser 4y ago
      Not dismissing physical abuse at all. That’s not a stick, nor a stone. I’ve had numerous bones broken. Some because of me. Some because of others. Some from my parents. One from my child (technically my fault). Both forms of abuse hurt. When the abuse goes on for a long time it feels like it takes 10x as long to heal.
      - aeternum 4y ago
        The rhyme is about physical abuse though, it's not like accidentally falling into a pile of sticks and stones was a frequent occurrence.
  - theGnuMe 4y ago
    I mean words only hurt if you let them in so that’s why we think of things this way. It sucks to be in a relationship with someone who can’t forgive or forget. Mean vindictive people who will twist words and who are suppose to love you unconditionally.
    - booboofixer 4y ago
      Something to consider, as more and more people say things to you, you start to understand the different ways in which people are terrible, which isn't all that bad because nobody is perfect. But then you start to understand the ways in which all people are flawed, that's when you really lose faith in humanity. So words might not hurt, but they offer more and more reasons to disengage, not just from terrible people, but from otherwise "normal, friendly, would-never-commit-a-crime people"
- bergenty 4y ago
  Fists fights are great. Quick resolution of said problem and emotions. One of my best friends over the last few decades was a person I hated till we physically fought each other in our 20s. Another example is American parents. Since you can’t spank your kids you have to resort to hurting their feelings with words to discipline them. No wonder teens in this country hate their parents.
  - xivzgrev 4y ago
    Those aren’t the only options. My mom enforced clear consequences based on what I valued and she valued. Break rules, I lose computer time. Trespass on someone’s property, I write an apology letter and deliver it to them. Etc
- carabiner 4y ago
  It's incredible how common the "it's just words" refrain is on HN. Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    > Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too. Words are not the cause of these events. They might, in several ways, trigger them, of course. After all, a declaration of war is nothing but words and so is a legal divorce filing. However, for these and other conflicts, if we dug down to root causes, we always find a lot more than just spoken or written words. Two that come to mind would be, in the case of war, strategic/national interests and, for divorce, infidelity or serious lack of agreement on matters the couple deem to be important.
roenxi 4y ago
I have some similar stories. The issue of generic advice is it assumes a social context or a specific mistake that may not be relevant. In a gang of violent ruffians, "be less violent!" is great advice. A gang of extremist pacifists being beaten up by outsiders probably needs "be more violent!" as advice. Your case particularly hits a nerve with me because "do not care what other people think!" is good advice to someone who makes decisions based on where they think the crowd is going (which is the normal way) but may as well be the kiss of death to the typical engineering mind. Engineers do not need any advice that encourages them towards independent thinking. They already have lots of training in making decisions based on objective or internalised criteria. Engineering types usually need advice on how to read body language and make decisions using social techniques. When dealing with smart, numerate people it is better to discuss scenarios or statistical frequency of mistakes rather than "give advice". Generic advice is often useless without context. I wish I'd had some training on how to care what other people think when I was in my teens. Would have done me the power of good.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I had to re-read the post, because I misunderstood the opening statement. <<Generic advice is often useless without context. I agree. Some of the advice we are imbued with is in 'not great' category. The more annoying thing is that it does not get better ( I got ridiculously bad generic advice looking back in my 20s, but I only had enough knowledge in my 30s to know how bad it was ). <<I wish I'd had some training on how to care what other people think when I was in my teens. Likewise.
- _huayra_ 4y ago
  > A gang of extremist pacifists That is: a Jain gang [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
wodenokoto 4y ago
“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break hearts”
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  Not to nitpick, but the words have no value. The value comes from what you or me assign to them. Certainly there are things in your past (or mine) that we heard and effectively ignored. But if heard again we'd laugh or cry. The point is, the meaning we attach to the words are literally in our heads. We determine the worlds they create. It's not the other way around.
  - annyeonghada 4y ago
    Completely disagree. The "heaviness" of an insult is determined by various factors: how much you value the person holding that opinion, how much you want to be accepted, how many rejections you got through... We are not robots that can automatically choose to not care: in the past I was in the stoic camp, red Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and so on but now I recognize that that philosophy brought me lots of pain: even if I cannot control something, like others opinion, it doesn't mean that I should not try to change it. Humanity get by by dreaming of something better: being through religion, riches, wisdom and so on; stoicism (and in part meditation) destroyed that impulse to improve.
    - javajosh 4y ago
      The insult is a signal that something is wrong in the world, and may require effort and attention, even if you aren't suffering because of the insult. But no this isn't particularly useful to actual humans who are still (easily) overwhelmed to madness with reactive pain, and the stoics compassion feels like that shown by the (non-hysterical) passengers in that one Airplane! scene [0]. (It occurs to me that expressing cruelty toward those suffering from hysterics is more than mere sadism; it may be a legitimate coping mechanism with their own fear. Focusing the mind on something, even hatefully, can save the hater from their own fear that the world is completely out-of-control.) 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c
edmcnulty101 4y ago
nkrisc 4y ago
Not caring what others think doesn’t mean you can’t “fit in.” Of course it sure doesn’t sound like that’s what she meant, but it’s still solid advice, I think. I do lots of things that basically boil down to “social lubricant.” I really don’t care what most other people think, but I still “play nice” when it’s low-cost and easy because makes everything easier. I won’t go out of my way or expend too much effort to please others though. I’ll make socially acceptable small-talk but I’m not going to bother with designer clothes and fancy cars to fit in.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  It was also advice to Feynman from his wife, “What do you care what other people think?” :-)
  - checkyoursudo 4y ago
    I think this should also not be seen as free-reign to be an asshole. I live by a similar creed, but it is more nuanced. I like to tell my children that they should not care about what other people think about who my children are as people, but that they should comport themselves in society with kindness and sincerity because that is the right way to behave. Like, I literally could not care any less about what people think about who I am. I am just me, and I am fine with that. But I try, for my own sake, to be trustworthy, honorable, kind, and just. The problem is when people take this mentality and justify it to act like a total dickbag.
    - huevosabio 4y ago
      Yes, exactly, you behave properly because it's how you would like to be treated and because it is the right thing to do. And ideally you behave well independently of whether the other party doesn't.
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    I always interpret the word "think" in the phrase "Why do you care what other people think?” to mean "Feel free to ignore others' conclusions", and never "Feel free to ignore others' knowledge or data." By all means find out why others think X (if you think there is a reason they are capable of enunciating, and that they might be conscious of it, which is not nec the common case.)
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Fascinating. I'm finishing up "Art of Possibility" by R and B Zander. They make a case for not keeping score, and for creating - and believing in - a construct beyond traditional bounds. And then walk through examples. I'm not doing it justice. And yes, it's a bit abstract. But it might be worth your time.
maegul 4y ago
> Advice is dangerous. It has built in moral hazard. Advice is too often given in well-meaning ignorance and pride - but ultimately advice gets someone else to test your hypothesis for you. I've become somewhat convinced of "it takes a village to raise a child" thinking on the back of similar observations. It seems to me that it's a horrible thing to do to a child to force them to learn and absorb from only one to two people. Variations between people, even between parents and their children, and between social and economic needs, even over single generational spans, are too great, especially in the modern age. Which is to say nothing of when a child's parents just happen to be broken people. It feels like a travesty that children, such as yourself in your story, aren't given the opportunity to get different perspectives on how to live and be and to benefit from multiple guiding hands.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  Marx would be proud of you, alienation from village, extended family etc was a very specific, central concern for him when looking at how capitalism had changed life in his time. He wasn't the only one to recognize this change or be appalled by it, of course.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
> Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen. I, like you, grew up with religious parents who tried to equip me with the tools that helped them navigate their lives. As an adult, I try to be extremely skeptical of unsolicited advice, but I absolutely seek advice from people who have been in situations similar to mine.
- woleium 4y ago
  Baz Lurman!
jmull 4y ago
Context matters. I don't think it's a good idea to treat advice as if it's given as a statement of absolute truth.
solardev 4y ago
Not that I disagree with you, but what does "keeping score" actually mean? I don't understand how it's related to being mean or having "preferences" about people...
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  My own interpretation: this person said something negative about me. I now like them less and don’t want to spend time with them. That is not okay, because I’m keeping score (remembering their past actions and using it to decide future outcomes) and I’m preferring not to spend time with them. Combined with the other comments, you’re also not allowed to change your own behavior based on what other people say (sticks and stones, outsider). Sounds like a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma from a family member. Your parent is horrible to you, but you want a parent to love and be loved by, so you decide keeping score is immoral. You also don’t want to feel responsible and lessen the impact, so you decide words don’t hurt. It’s horrible advice for a kid. You won’t mold yourself to fit into the group (also called socialization, totally normal and healthy) and you won’t cut ties with people that are awful to you. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find another kid who accepts you. Much more likely a bully will latch on.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Oh yikes. Yeah I can see how that would be horrible advice...
- javajosh 4y ago
  "Keeping score" was primarily a charge used by my mother against people who questioned her or charged her with wrong-doing. She used it to avoid responsibility and put the focus on the victim. This mixed with her brand of extreme egalitarianism into a general dictum "it is wrong to dislike people". This is very poor advice. It's not wrong to dislike people! If you believe it is, then other people are wrong to dislike you. If being wrong is bad than you have no basis to like them, and they are not good people, not worthy of being friends with. Furthermore, that they are not being punished reflects on the failed state of authority (the school teachers and admins). Her advice was untested and didn't take into account basic human social or psychological needs.
akulbe 4y ago
I think your mother's advice was well-meaning, for sure. I would qualify it as follows: FOR WHAT OTHERS THINK: You shouldn't care what most people think of you. Ones that matter: your boss, your spouse, (if you are religious) your Maker. The others don't get the same weight. FOR "STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES...": This one doesn't work. Words can (and do) hurt, and we should be careful what we say to others. But having the framework of the previous piece of advice, helps take the sting out of it if someone says something to you that is harmful/hurtful.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  > You shouldn't care what most people think of you. Ones that matter: your boss, your spouse, (if you are religious) your Maker. I agree, but even those can be limited. I care about my boss' opinion when it comes to my work and what I do while paid. For a spouse, there are limits as well, hard to think of specific examples, but I guess it depends on the couple. For my creator, he wouldn't care whether I prefer Angular over React, or .Net over Java. As long as the choice is not made out of malice, for example I pick Rust for a greenfield project with a deadline even though I don't know Rust and hoping to learn it.
blooalien 4y ago
Also, advice that works perfectly well for one individual can (for various possible reasons) turn out horrifically bad for some other individual person. Some of the best advice I ever got was from my gran'pa; "Take the advice of others with a grain of salt…" ;~)
huevosabio 4y ago
Interestingly that is also some of the advice from my parents and I think I am much happier for it. In my experience, being able to just fly by without thinking too much about others is like traveling light, unencumbered.

jemmyw 4y ago

To be fair to your mother, this particular advice and view was rampant when I grew up in the 80s/90s. My experience was that this is quite backwards. Physical altercations at school didn't hurt that much, but the name calling, social shunning and constant verbal put down was very painful and has affected my whole life.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 4y ago
I’d agree. I was hurt by bullying enough that if I had ever made it big I would have found the most outrageous bullying case I could find and try to sue a school district out of existence? Maybe if teachers thought they could lose their pension maybe they would put a stop to bullying.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Suing to threaten the pensions of underpaid teachers. Makin’ a difference in the world.
  - MonkeyClub 4y ago
    Does raise an interesting question, though: Is it the teachers' or the parents' responsibility to teach manners to a child? Isn't this something that you'd pick up at home first, before ever stepping a foot into an institutionalized pedagogical setting? Perhaps instead of suing the entire school district, GP should rather sue the parents of the offending child? /s To remove the tongue from the cheek, though, and provide some anecdata in the same breath, let me say that I have a number of close friends who are teachers; their constant complaint is that the children reach school already too spoiled (in the rude and egocentric sense). Which apparently gets worse every year. It's easier to make a case for a society-wide pandemic of negligent upbringing by parents who - goes without saying - are under-educated in child rearing, lack the traditional support networks ("it takes a village to raise a child") and generally overburdened by life's other demands. The children then get passed over to underpaid and overworked teachers (and overflowing classrooms), where the egos of the little cute monsters clash, occasionally loudly and physically, more frequently in passive-aggressive, bullyish manners. But yeah, "back in mah day..."
    - gabereiser 4y ago
      100% the parents… teachers can influence but it’s the parents legal responsibility to not raise a monster.
      - blooalien 4y ago
        Legal, ethical, and moral responsibility…
    - scotty79 4y ago
      It's schools responsibility to ensure safety. If you are forcing a person to interact daily with bad people the least you should do is ensure that those bad people won't hurt this person.
gabereiser 4y ago
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will hurt for life” is how I used to say it. Never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing you say to someone. You’re words matter more than you realize.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Most people have never come anywhere close to being beat sufficiently to have a bone broken. I guarantee you words come nothing close to that experience. Being beat to that extent can cause both physical and emotional pain for life.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    Not dismissing physical abuse at all. That’s not a stick, nor a stone. I’ve had numerous bones broken. Some because of me. Some because of others. Some from my parents. One from my child (technically my fault). Both forms of abuse hurt. When the abuse goes on for a long time it feels like it takes 10x as long to heal.
    - aeternum 4y ago
      The rhyme is about physical abuse though, it's not like accidentally falling into a pile of sticks and stones was a frequent occurrence.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  I mean words only hurt if you let them in so that’s why we think of things this way. It sucks to be in a relationship with someone who can’t forgive or forget. Mean vindictive people who will twist words and who are suppose to love you unconditionally.
  - booboofixer 4y ago
    Something to consider, as more and more people say things to you, you start to understand the different ways in which people are terrible, which isn't all that bad because nobody is perfect. But then you start to understand the ways in which all people are flawed, that's when you really lose faith in humanity. So words might not hurt, but they offer more and more reasons to disengage, not just from terrible people, but from otherwise "normal, friendly, would-never-commit-a-crime people"
bergenty 4y ago
Fists fights are great. Quick resolution of said problem and emotions. One of my best friends over the last few decades was a person I hated till we physically fought each other in our 20s. Another example is American parents. Since you can’t spank your kids you have to resort to hurting their feelings with words to discipline them. No wonder teens in this country hate their parents.
- xivzgrev 4y ago
  Those aren’t the only options. My mom enforced clear consequences based on what I valued and she valued. Break rules, I lose computer time. Trespass on someone’s property, I write an apology letter and deliver it to them. Etc
carabiner 4y ago
It's incredible how common the "it's just words" refrain is on HN. Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > Wars happen over words. Marriages and divorces too. Words are not the cause of these events. They might, in several ways, trigger them, of course. After all, a declaration of war is nothing but words and so is a legal divorce filing. However, for these and other conflicts, if we dug down to root causes, we always find a lot more than just spoken or written words. Two that come to mind would be, in the case of war, strategic/national interests and, for divorce, infidelity or serious lack of agreement on matters the couple deem to be important.

roenxi 4y ago

I have some similar stories. The issue of generic advice is it assumes a social context or a specific mistake that may not be relevant. In a gang of violent ruffians, "be less violent!" is great advice. A gang of extremist pacifists being beaten up by outsiders probably needs "be more violent!" as advice. Your case particularly hits a nerve with me because "do not care what other people think!" is good advice to someone who makes decisions based on where they think the crowd is going (which is the normal way) but may as well be the kiss of death to the typical engineering mind. Engineers do not need any advice that encourages them towards independent thinking. They already have lots of training in making decisions based on objective or internalised criteria. Engineering types usually need advice on how to read body language and make decisions using social techniques. When dealing with smart, numerate people it is better to discuss scenarios or statistical frequency of mistakes rather than "give advice". Generic advice is often useless without context. I wish I'd had some training on how to care what other people think when I was in my teens. Would have done me the power of good.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I had to re-read the post, because I misunderstood the opening statement. <<Generic advice is often useless without context. I agree. Some of the advice we are imbued with is in 'not great' category. The more annoying thing is that it does not get better ( I got ridiculously bad generic advice looking back in my 20s, but I only had enough knowledge in my 30s to know how bad it was ). <<I wish I'd had some training on how to care what other people think when I was in my teens. Likewise.
_huayra_ 4y ago
> A gang of extremist pacifists That is: a Jain gang [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

wodenokoto 4y ago

“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break hearts”

chiefalchemist 4y ago
Not to nitpick, but the words have no value. The value comes from what you or me assign to them. Certainly there are things in your past (or mine) that we heard and effectively ignored. But if heard again we'd laugh or cry. The point is, the meaning we attach to the words are literally in our heads. We determine the worlds they create. It's not the other way around.
- annyeonghada 4y ago
  Completely disagree. The "heaviness" of an insult is determined by various factors: how much you value the person holding that opinion, how much you want to be accepted, how many rejections you got through... We are not robots that can automatically choose to not care: in the past I was in the stoic camp, red Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and so on but now I recognize that that philosophy brought me lots of pain: even if I cannot control something, like others opinion, it doesn't mean that I should not try to change it. Humanity get by by dreaming of something better: being through religion, riches, wisdom and so on; stoicism (and in part meditation) destroyed that impulse to improve.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    The insult is a signal that something is wrong in the world, and may require effort and attention, even if you aren't suffering because of the insult. But no this isn't particularly useful to actual humans who are still (easily) overwhelmed to madness with reactive pain, and the stoics compassion feels like that shown by the (non-hysterical) passengers in that one Airplane! scene [0]. (It occurs to me that expressing cruelty toward those suffering from hysterics is more than mere sadism; it may be a legitimate coping mechanism with their own fear. Focusing the mind on something, even hatefully, can save the hater from their own fear that the world is completely out-of-control.) 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNkpIDBtC2c

edmcnulty101 4y ago

nkrisc 4y ago

Not caring what others think doesn’t mean you can’t “fit in.” Of course it sure doesn’t sound like that’s what she meant, but it’s still solid advice, I think. I do lots of things that basically boil down to “social lubricant.” I really don’t care what most other people think, but I still “play nice” when it’s low-cost and easy because makes everything easier. I won’t go out of my way or expend too much effort to please others though. I’ll make socially acceptable small-talk but I’m not going to bother with designer clothes and fancy cars to fit in.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
It was also advice to Feynman from his wife, “What do you care what other people think?” :-)
- checkyoursudo 4y ago
  I think this should also not be seen as free-reign to be an asshole. I live by a similar creed, but it is more nuanced. I like to tell my children that they should not care about what other people think about who my children are as people, but that they should comport themselves in society with kindness and sincerity because that is the right way to behave. Like, I literally could not care any less about what people think about who I am. I am just me, and I am fine with that. But I try, for my own sake, to be trustworthy, honorable, kind, and just. The problem is when people take this mentality and justify it to act like a total dickbag.
  - huevosabio 4y ago
    Yes, exactly, you behave properly because it's how you would like to be treated and because it is the right thing to do. And ideally you behave well independently of whether the other party doesn't.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  I always interpret the word "think" in the phrase "Why do you care what other people think?” to mean "Feel free to ignore others' conclusions", and never "Feel free to ignore others' knowledge or data." By all means find out why others think X (if you think there is a reason they are capable of enunciating, and that they might be conscious of it, which is not nec the common case.)

chiefalchemist 4y ago

Fascinating. I'm finishing up "Art of Possibility" by R and B Zander. They make a case for not keeping score, and for creating - and believing in - a construct beyond traditional bounds. And then walk through examples. I'm not doing it justice. And yes, it's a bit abstract. But it might be worth your time.

maegul 4y ago

> Advice is dangerous. It has built in moral hazard. Advice is too often given in well-meaning ignorance and pride - but ultimately advice gets someone else to test your hypothesis for you. I've become somewhat convinced of "it takes a village to raise a child" thinking on the back of similar observations. It seems to me that it's a horrible thing to do to a child to force them to learn and absorb from only one to two people. Variations between people, even between parents and their children, and between social and economic needs, even over single generational spans, are too great, especially in the modern age. Which is to say nothing of when a child's parents just happen to be broken people. It feels like a travesty that children, such as yourself in your story, aren't given the opportunity to get different perspectives on how to live and be and to benefit from multiple guiding hands.

Nomentatus 4y ago
Marx would be proud of you, alienation from village, extended family etc was a very specific, central concern for him when looking at how capitalism had changed life in his time. He wasn't the only one to recognize this change or be appalled by it, of course.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago

> Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen. I, like you, grew up with religious parents who tried to equip me with the tools that helped them navigate their lives. As an adult, I try to be extremely skeptical of unsolicited advice, but I absolutely seek advice from people who have been in situations similar to mine.

woleium 4y ago
Baz Lurman!

jmull 4y ago

Context matters. I don't think it's a good idea to treat advice as if it's given as a statement of absolute truth.

solardev 4y ago

Not that I disagree with you, but what does "keeping score" actually mean? I don't understand how it's related to being mean or having "preferences" about people...

travisjungroth 4y ago
My own interpretation: this person said something negative about me. I now like them less and don’t want to spend time with them. That is not okay, because I’m keeping score (remembering their past actions and using it to decide future outcomes) and I’m preferring not to spend time with them. Combined with the other comments, you’re also not allowed to change your own behavior based on what other people say (sticks and stones, outsider). Sounds like a coping mechanism for dealing with trauma from a family member. Your parent is horrible to you, but you want a parent to love and be loved by, so you decide keeping score is immoral. You also don’t want to feel responsible and lessen the impact, so you decide words don’t hurt. It’s horrible advice for a kid. You won’t mold yourself to fit into the group (also called socialization, totally normal and healthy) and you won’t cut ties with people that are awful to you. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to find another kid who accepts you. Much more likely a bully will latch on.
- solardev 4y ago
  Oh yikes. Yeah I can see how that would be horrible advice...
javajosh 4y ago
"Keeping score" was primarily a charge used by my mother against people who questioned her or charged her with wrong-doing. She used it to avoid responsibility and put the focus on the victim. This mixed with her brand of extreme egalitarianism into a general dictum "it is wrong to dislike people". This is very poor advice. It's not wrong to dislike people! If you believe it is, then other people are wrong to dislike you. If being wrong is bad than you have no basis to like them, and they are not good people, not worthy of being friends with. Furthermore, that they are not being punished reflects on the failed state of authority (the school teachers and admins). Her advice was untested and didn't take into account basic human social or psychological needs.

akulbe 4y ago

I think your mother's advice was well-meaning, for sure. I would qualify it as follows: FOR WHAT OTHERS THINK: You shouldn't care what most people think of you. Ones that matter: your boss, your spouse, (if you are religious) your Maker. The others don't get the same weight. FOR "STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES...": This one doesn't work. Words can (and do) hurt, and we should be careful what we say to others. But having the framework of the previous piece of advice, helps take the sting out of it if someone says something to you that is harmful/hurtful.

Bilal_io 4y ago
> You shouldn't care what most people think of you. Ones that matter: your boss, your spouse, (if you are religious) your Maker. I agree, but even those can be limited. I care about my boss' opinion when it comes to my work and what I do while paid. For a spouse, there are limits as well, hard to think of specific examples, but I guess it depends on the couple. For my creator, he wouldn't care whether I prefer Angular over React, or .Net over Java. As long as the choice is not made out of malice, for example I pick Rust for a greenfield project with a deadline even though I don't know Rust and hoping to learn it.

blooalien 4y ago

Also, advice that works perfectly well for one individual can (for various possible reasons) turn out horrifically bad for some other individual person. Some of the best advice I ever got was from my gran'pa; "Take the advice of others with a grain of salt…" ;~)

huevosabio 4y ago

Interestingly that is also some of the advice from my parents and I think I am much happier for it. In my experience, being able to just fly by without thinking too much about others is like traveling light, unencumbered.