You get older, you get more tired(?), serene(?), you can see the progress towards death as a natural process in your own life.
Also you're around more death. I was with my mother when she died. I can't say it was a pleasant process, but it was very natural. She accepted hospice, and seemed to be at peace with death. The last few months with her a lot of positive memories were made that will stick with me.
I don't _want_ to die, but its clearly something I can feel will naturally come and should plan for.
This is wisdom. I had the same thoughts and experiences with my mother’s death, except she was terrified of death and I had to guide her through it.
I don’t know how old you are, or where you’re at in life, but at some point in your life, you may get some bad news and have your life threatened, where your death becomes really imminently real[1].
If you’re like me, you may go through a whole new level of fear. But, remember what you’ve learned and guide yourself back to that understanding.
I am still afraid of dying slowly and/or painfully, but over the last 57 years I have moved from wanting to live forever to accepting that I will die. Like you, it’s not a wish, it’s simply acceptance. Makes you appreciate the little things in life, too.
Reading The Denial of Death was a particularly interesting experience to me in my early 20's and, honestly, brought a lot of peace of mind regarding my future.
I'm leaning towards the belief we can get rid of it to some extent through tech. I think quite likely an AI assistant version of you and then when your biological body is packing up you can take some meds to pass away peacefully and hand your stuff over to the AI you. Or something like that - it's a bit tricky to see how the future will pan out.
Having lived the first third of my life in the pre internet world, I'm no longer sure I think it's net beneficial in all things. I didn't expect to be this unsure progress works. It's unscientific. Progress by definition is improving surely?
Since in (very small) ways I helped bring it into being, this message is displeasing in several ways.
Progress isn't as linear as you'd think. A lot of times one small improvement can make many more problems appear that people never had to deal with before. But compounded over many years it looks great. In fact, the longer a time period over which progress is assessed the better it looks.
Then you suddenly have a mismatch between what you thought you learnt from history, about how wonderful progress is, and how bad things can get from things that are said to be improvements in your lifetime.
If you look at some really terrible things like asbestos poisoning, that was only possible because of progress. But it took further progress to realize how dangerous a substance that is to human health, and then to take steps to correct the mistakes that were made.
It’s been a let-down to see the core of science (question everything, use the scientific method to learn step by step) get mocked and abused for politics.
It’s also been difficult to see “youth” become more of a priority over reason, capability, and wisdom. Especially as we have navigated the emptiness of the attention economy.
But then, I’ve also seen that these too have been patterns we’ve been repeating for millennia so maybe this is always what actual progress looks like “from the inside” (aka as you live through it’s present day)
I suspect the things built on the internet are a mixed bag more than the internet itself. On the one hand, the possibility to share information and learn more about the world is probably a huge positive, on the other hand stuff like social media is probably as damaging as tobacco or leaded petrol.
I believe it's essentially a major filter, as it requires a certain (relatively low) level of intelligence to develop the internet / mass communication, but requires a much higher level of intelligence to actually survive it without it ripping apart your civilizations.
In my late 20s something activated in my mind where I inverted my woes - that everyone else is fighting a far more exhausting personal war than I am. I don't have the energy to help everyone with their war, but I can respect that the people who are giving their energy to me might not even have it for themselves. I feel like since then my relationships have been deeper, more genuine, often more challenging. I also have to gauge which are worth holding on to - I cull my social garden now, instead of growing it.
Someone said every person is a private universe. You're listening to someone talk and you don't see that universe. Each pause, each sigh, a litany of experience, an era of mistakes.
Life is very short. You can make it to the end and be caught off guard because you were still waiting for it to begin. It can be worth the exhausting questions from time to time - a followup of 'really?' to asking how someone's weekend went can take you off a highway of nothings and onto a forest trail of adventure.
The ability of private citizens to make an impact on our politics. We like to talk about our legislatures or Congress in the abstract, but the reality is you as a citizen can get things moved in the direction you want, and you don’t have to be wealthy to make it happen. It’s not easy, it takes a ton of time, but if you get involved, good things can happen.
I want to believe in upward mobility; that someone born with limited opportunity in the US can get ahead. I shift my feelings on this almost weekly.
The importance of software. Thirty years ago I believed that technology would change our world in positive ways. Now, I’m less certain that software is in many cases necessarily, useful, or beneficial.
Personal responsibility. I’ll counter some of the posts in this thread. Yes, personal responsibility is critical, but there are so many systems working against the average person over which they have no control. You can work hard, get an education, stay off vice, save for a rainy day - and still end up penniless in a gutter, if the wrong hand gets dealt to you. And the system doesn’t give a shit, and your neighbors will spit on you and say you should have taken more personal responsibility for your actions.
> The importance of software. Thirty years ago I believed that technology would change our world in positive ways. Now, I’m less certain that software is in many cases necessarily, useful, or beneficial.
10-12 years ago, at the start of my career, I used to be very optimistic about tech, startups, etc. No I believe the impact of tech since then has been negative in a lot of way. I'm still not sure if there are enough positives to offset this.
IMO it’s capitalism that’s thrown a wrench in the whole thing.
As of 2024 (probly even as of 10 years ago) world-changing software can run for the fundamental cost of pennies a day but then that doesn’t justify cloud services, VC money, thousands of employees, the patent and copyright systems, vendor lock-in, subscriptions, or any of the hundreds of thousands of things that make money for various companies.
Let's ignore politics and religion for now. And only technology in the past ~30 years.
I dont know if change of mind is the right word. But may be proven wrong.
JVM. I was fist convinced JVM will be fast enough, and then it will never be fast enough for lots of things, and right now it is being used for even high frequency trading.
Excel is much much more important than most people are aware of it. When I was young I thought Excel / Spreadsheets or Access were toys. But working in the real world and some years passed I have a change of perspective. Since then I have been constantly calling it the most important software in computing. Far more so than even Windows or Linux.
Hardware Matters, a lot more than Software. This seems counterintuitive when most people would consider software is where the value lies. Especially when I started out as a Hardware Engineer but believed what Bill Gate said some 30 years ago, with Moore's Law all hardware cost will trend to zero. In reality Consumers dont understand software. And they are reluctant to buy software or features. While this works differently in Business, consumer tends to prefer something physical. Hence buying a new computer with free software update rather than paying for software. It is the whole software and hardware together as a "Product", and not one or the other.
Internet, or more specifically web pages. Are not what we envisioned with the Internet Super High Way. The actual network, where we can stream Netflix, or Spotify with 5G is great. But information on the web is, for vast majority of cases a net negative.
Mobile or Smartphone Gaming. Out of the 4B smartphone users, close to 2B are gamers. I never thought of a day that everyone is a gamer. In the old days Games were different. It could be an RPG with great novel and story telling. A simulation game like Sim City, Civ or Age of Empire that you could learn history or how the world works. Modern Mobile Games are a Casino, and the free ones are riddled with Ads. With both Smartphone platform owner have ZERO gaming DNA in them, but only a business person of how to squeeze every single penny out of it.
Everything you imagined with Mobile Gaming didn't happened. Instead we got a Mobile Casino.
Objective-C - What was once thought to be an ugly hacked on top of C Programming languages. Is actually beautiful.
Once I realize that I believe in the existence of laws of physics, and that these laws of physics can be found nowhere physically in the universe, I realized I believe in non-physical realms.
Interesting, it was the exact opposite for me. Once I realized that things only exist physically, many things became clear, especially the nature of souls and lack thereof, and of many elements of religious mythos around the world that were invented purely for pedagogical and eschatological reasons and don't literally exist in reality.
I also don't think you're correct about the laws being found nowhere physically, of course they're found physically, otherwise how would we have observed them? I believe you're falling into the fallacy of ignorance, saying that the laws don't exist because you believe they can't be found physically (even though this part is wrong).
It's a decision of axioms. You are free to believe any set of axioms, because they will per definition be unprovable (Gödel et al.), so the word ignorance doesn't quite apply (arguably).
Observing the behavior of fundamental particles following laws is different than touching the laws themselves. Analogous to observing this website is different than seeing the backend code.
Argument from ignorance [0], not ignorance per se. And as far as axioms, sure you can believe anything, but that doesn't not make them necessarily true in reality. I could believe that the earth is governed by an infallible, omnipotent Flying Spaghetti Monster but that doesn't mean His Noodliness exists.
The physical world follows laws that are arguably unknowable (but true, as in there), and it has a history that is arguably unknowable (but true, as in it happened).
My family was very house poor when I was growing up. We didn't live in poverty, but we were on the low end of lower middle class, living on the fringes of a very upper middle class area so growing up I always felt poorer than we maybe actually were.
It put me in that poverty mindset where I couldn't take breaks or vacations, I always had to work as hard as I could to earn as much as I could, then save every cent
I burned out hard just a few years after I started my career. I was a mess. I was on medical leave for a few months, then I was unemployed. I didn't have much savings because I wasn't actually earning that much and I was living in a very expensive city.
I had a lot of realizations then, about why I chose to live and stay in that city (proximity to my family), what was keeping me there (built in group of acquaintances), and my real career opportunities and trajectory if I stayed. So I left
I don't see my family as often anymore which does suck. I don't miss most of the acquaintances, few of them were real friends anyways, and the few that I do miss would have likely moved on eventually as they started having kids anyways.
I don't work nearly as hard or as many hours as I used to, I make 3x more money, and I have way more free time. I'm also a much more well rounded developer as a result I think
Taking time to yourself isn't optional, you cannot improve if you're constantly exhausted and focussed on just getting the next thing done. You need time to breathe and look at the bigger picture
There’s something I’m seeing here if you don’t mind me teasing it out: as you got older you saw acquaintances as replaceable. I think younger people see their friends as people who will be around for life (and certainly some will) and who can’t be replaced but the reality is that many of them will fade out and be replaced regardless.
In my particular case it was that in hindsight I don't think I was as close to a lot of those people as I thought I was at the time. When I moved away, many of them didn't even really say goodbye or goodluck or anything like that.
I kept in touch with a few of them for a couple of years after I left, visited a couple of times. Then they got married, had kids, and I hear from them much less. My understanding is that many childless people have a similar experience where their friends who marry and have kids move on from them fairly soon after, as their focus moves more onto their kids
Quite a few things actually, but the biggest one is that I believe that [almost] nobody is beyond rehabilitation. Even in cases where the person is beyond, it doesn’t mean we ought to make them suffer for their circumstances.
That isn’t to say we shouldn’t protect the rest of society, but neither punishment nor retribution — especially in the name of “justice” — are justifiable. If anything, such responses only [temporarily] satisfy one’s desire for bloodlust. They cannot undo the harm done and they cannot relieve us of the pain.
Punishment for crime will happen if the culture wants it to happen.
Even if you cannot morally justify that punishment being meted out by the government, the alternative is always individuals taking justice into their own hands — without the constraints of due process, usually with much more rage and cruelty.
I'm the same way, although I think society is going to find itself wrestling with a lot of ethical issues it's not prepared for when suddenly everything about human behavior is modifiable.
What happens when serial child predatory behavior is completely and verifiably modifiable with gene editing and pharmacology, for example? Should someone be punished for the random allotment of genes and circumstances that we can change as a society?
This is all on the horizon and we're not oriented to what's coming.
Sam Harris likes to point out that we tend to pity the UT tower shooter because he was found to have a tumor in his brain — and that just because child rapists don’t have a grossly visible defect in their skulls doesn’t mean that they aren’t suffering equally from bad anatomical luck to some extent.
All my life I considered myself on a particular side of the political spectrum in my country. My main values haven't changed, still, now I'm considered to be standing on the other side of the spectrum compared to where I was 10 years ago.
Idk, I used to consider myself a moderate conservative but over there last few administrations I have somehow become considered liberal because the right has embraced the bad crazy to the point I find more in common with the far left now than I do any politicians that call themselves conservative.
That's quite a swing; actually I sometimes think the far right and far left are closer in some ways (tendency towards authoritarianism) than anywhere closer to the center. If you went from center-right to far left that's as close to a full 180 on the political spectrum as I can think of.
All households run on the edicts of Communism. "From each according to their ability; to each according to their need".
Unfortunately, it doesn't scale.
How many Right-Wing beliefs could you hold 10 years ago that are remotely close to anything Left-wing today?
I cant think of anything
But there is definitely a trend of people who considered themselves
center-left leaning 10-20 years ago feeling politically homeless as the left has pushed away from them and embraced some more radical ideas
I hear this all the time, but I never see any support for it - what exactly are these radical leftist ideas that have taken hold of our politics? And, between the two parties, which one do you believe has shifted more in the last say, twenty years?
What we are actually seeing is center-right people feeling homeless and joining the Democrats, or at least no longer seeing themselves as Republicans. Bill Clinton shifted the Democrats a good distance to the right and in the time since he left office, it’s been more a very, very gradual retreat back to more traditional positions of the left. Don’t mistake campaigning or messaging for actual party policy.
Maybe you're right, probably this is really just a matter of perspective and personal opinion of what "left" and "right" mean
All I know is that for a lot of people that I've spoken to they used to vote for leftist parties, and now they think those parties don't represent what they want anymore
The reason you never see anyone offer support for this is because of cancel culture, by the way. People are not going to state publicly which of their beliefs or opinions disagree with the current cultural shifts because large groups of people have proven they will target you, try to get you fired, try to get SWAT called to your house, and other such stuff
There is no upside to sharing potentially volatile political beliefs and some pretty serious potential downside
And yes, a lot of that behavior is coming from people with very vocal leftist attitudes
>they used to vote for leftist parties, and now they think those parties don't represent what they want anymore
Ah! It could be we are talking about slightly different demographic groups here… Gen Z types are not happy with the Democrats because they don’t see them as progressive enough. That is a real problem, and I suspect what could happen over the next decade is a party split like what’s happening in the Republicans - something like has already happened in Germany between SPD and Greens. In Germany, progressives 40+ still mostly vote SPD; their kids vote green. I see the same thing happening with democrats- my generation will mostly remain with the Ds, the younger people are less partisan and don’t understand why parties exist and thus they are eager for something different.
> Don’t mistake campaigning or messaging for actual party policy.
Really? I've seen this my whole life from political rulers. They start campaigning for something outrageous that the people and their voters absolutely do not want. While at the same time saying that they don't really mean it and nothing is actually going to change. A few years later they have implemented the hated policy and say "Of course, we said we were going to do it from the beginning!".
Drives me nuts that people fall for it every time. When politicians say they're going to do something awful, they will! You might even see yourself or your children sent to war.
I went from a moderate fiscally conservative libertarian to a pretty far left liberal as I got older. Now I’m 57 and my conservative friends (the ones I still have), jokingly call me “Comrade”. It’s the opposite course from most of them, who got more conservative as they got older.
Maybe at the national level, but at the state level the two parties couldn’t be more different. And, I’d argue a major reason at the national level why their actions appear similar is an artifact of the system - our system is designed to be agonizingly slow and produce compromises that don’t make anyone happy. Thus we end up with the two radically different parties having to move a glacier up a hill trying to get anything close to what either wants.
Did, basically before you had no money, and thought people with money should share his with you and, now you have money and you don't want it to be taken away
This a bit controversial but once this clicked it really helped me in work and social situations.
Humans have varying degrees of intelligence and you cannot treat them exactly the same.
I used to strongly believe that all humans are intellectually 100% equal. If someone doesn’t not understand simple logic or flaws in their reasoning, then it is because they are being lazy or malicious. I always understood knowledge gaps and didn’t expected business side to understand tech side and vice versa. I am talking about simple concepts like if you give a child caffeine once in a while, the child will develop addiction eventually.
By treating everyone equally, I ran into a lot of conflicts.
It took me becoming parent and realizing I can’t use logic with my children. You can say that children helped me develop emotional intelligence.
Now I try to really focus on the person and their emotions. And use emotional language. If I don’t know the person that well I use their culture, racial, religious background to develop rapport. I will use logical arguments only with trusted friends.
Sometimes, this feels purely evil to me though. I hate it when I use generalizations, I hate it when people do that to me. Sometimes, some smarter people especially developers get annoyed by it, no one directly said it to me but this might fall under patronizing, mansplaining, manipulation etc.
But it avoids interpersonal conflicts more often than not.
> I used to strongly believe that all humans are intellectually 100% equal.
I'm curious as to how you ever arrived at that conclusion. It seems manifestly obvious to most people, even children, that some people are really smart, some people are quite stupid, and most lie somewhere in the middle.
Personal responsibility. When I was younger I used to put the blame on many things on others or my upbringing.
Now I came to conclusion of extreme responsibility. Everything that happens or ever happened in my life was purely on me; whatever things may happen I and only I I'm solely responsible for that.
I also learned about my place in hierarchy. I know I don't really have anything to show in terms of IQ, so I'm doing my best not to harm others by wasting their time by staying as low profile as I may.
This clicked for me when someone explained that fault != responsibility.
It unlocked the whole thing. I could take responsibility for getting the life I wanted, but that did not mean the bad things that came my way were my fault. Bad shit always comes, not always as a result of my actions, but it's always my responsibility to change the situation.
Your philosophy actually seems more crippling than freeing, in my understanding. What if there were some traumatic event where you thought you could've stopped it (but in reality there was nothing you could've done)? Your philosophy of extreme ownership means that you would assign blame to yourself, a textbook example of survivor's guilt. I understand what you're getting at but at the extreme, it seems hazardous. I'd take it in moderation.
I grew up during the "computer revolution" and saw the internet enter our lives. I was sure that digitizing information and all of the "zero-cost copies" was clearly the way to make information available to everyone, forever. Since then, I've seen much of this information become closely guarded (paywalls, etc.) and, in many cases, inaccessible. This is especially true for content born on the web that's now gone from the web, with only some busted links here or there to tell us it ever even existed.
Compare this to my local library. I can access a large collection of books, magazines, and newspapers instantly, for free. For something not local, I ask the librarian for help and that item appears a few days later through the magic of interlibrary loan. And for durability, I now feel that printed volumes in multiple locations can easily outlast much of our digital content.
Russia. I used to think that Russia was mostly the victim (I've been there several times and I speak the language; that's certainly how the regular people view geopolitical affairs).
Since the invasion to Ukraine I've been reading the history of the country, and I've changed my mind. In fact the country has a long history of invading its neighbors, and so a defensive alliance around it seems very rational. And the invasion of Ukraine was a modern day reminder for those too young to remember why NATO was created.
Problem with Russia isn't even primarily that they want to pull you into your sphere of influence - because, as a Russia's neighbour, to defend yourself, you have to subscribe to another sphere of influence (US).
The main problem is that, while being under US' thumb is a mixed bag, but can definitely be good for you (see eg: Poland, Israel), being ruled from Moscow pretty much guarantees stupidity and brutishness. In other words, Russian state is good at conquering and little else, and it sucks to be forced to join their world.
1) Throughout most of high school, college, and years after college I smoked weed. I thought it was great, it made me feel good. I'd emphasise with posts on Reddit and such about how the "evil man was keeping us down", "it's just a plant man", "it's not harming anyone", etc. etc. Now that I'm older and I look back at that time, and man what a waste. I wasted so many years just getting high and accomplishing nothing. Yeah it didn't hurt anyone else. Yeah I felt good at the time. But looking back at my life do I get any satisfaction that during those years I felt good getting high and watching a movie and eating food, rather than actually moving forwards in my life? No, no I do not. It didn't get me anything other than fleeting good feelings, it's just being a drug addict. I haven't smoked in well over a decade now and I don't miss it for a second.
2) Along the same line, and counter to multiple other posters in this thread, I spent years on the whole atheist train. I thought people who believed in religion were just morons. I saved (cringe worthy) images about how it was superior to be atheist and various logical arguments for atheism, etc. Looking back on it, it's just another social hate cult. In that cult the enemy is the religious and they spend their time and effort just pouring out hate towards them. Just another hate echo chamber. It accomplishes nothing good. The older I get the more I see that traditional religion at least (for the most part) instilled good morals in people. It built solid communities. It accomplished good things. I'm old enough to have first hand memories of what communities used to be like, before the complete obliteration of religion in the west in the last 20-30 years, and I want it back. I'd rather be around those type of people than card carrying hate-based atheists. (Of course not all atheists are hate filled, but the people that make it part of their identity usually are.)
Psy* specialists (Psychologists, Psychiatrists etc) aren't doctors, they are here to keep society of consumption running. They have effectively no invention with exception of Weber-Fechner law, no Noble prizes (Economics is not exactly Noble prize) and the most important - their working/practice/business is controlled by the Government more than by the scientific consensus. Probably introducing to Psy* some freedom from the Government will improve the situation because Psy* disciplines are not exactly from thin air. But anyway Psy* is an ugly brother of Neurophysiology.
Whether I want to keep my kids in my life. I recently got accepted to a Caribbean med school and didn't see a way to matriculate while raising two kids. Told my partner I wanted a divorce and signed over custody. He didn't like it, but my divorce attorney made sure it was done legally.
It's wonderful having all my time to myself again, and in four years I get to go back on the dating scene as an M.D. which will hopefully get me better prospects.
I’d wager this is a more common view than a lot of people admit. The mass murder, starvation, absolute disregard of international law, and basic human rights.
Apartheid has been a thing there for a long time but now with so many people in Israel, still a minority but a very active one, openly advocating for ethnic cleansing my opinion of Israel has gone to trash. I have lost all respect.
The irony of this is that the primary driver of the holocaust was lebensraum and it was surviving the holocaust which drove the founding of Israel. Now lebensraum is a wildly active movement within Israel with 6, as of now, illegal planned and funded settlements in Gaza with still more illegal settlements growing in the West Bank.
Growing up in a conservative area in the Bible Belt, I once allowed myself to be brainwashed into believing crap like "drug dealers are the scum of the Earth and basically pure evil and should get the death penalty."
Later I discovered libertarianism, realized that I was a libertarian, and came to believe in self-ownership and adopted the position that all laws restricting what substances we can ingest, imbibe, inhale, or inject into our bodies should be repealed, and that all prisoners in jail for solely drug (usage|possession|distribution) should be released. I am also now staunchly opposed to the death penalty.
Legalized, yes, although I might say "so long as all parties are consenting adults."
Normalized? Depends on exactly what you mean, but let me say that I'm not advocating the idea that consuming recreational drugs, or dealing in same, is a Good Idea or something that's desirable in any way. But I make a distinction between my personal subjective feelings about moral issues, and my standing to impose my views on others. That is, I hold that none of us have any standing to compel others to behave in the way that we believe is "proper" or "good" or "just"... so long as they aren't violating anyone else's rights in the process of doing whatever they're doing.
Once believed in god, healing, tongues, etc. Thankfully public schools and secular communities helped me to rethink all that. Now I believe what can be tested and proven. This also led to a big political shift from a moderate conservative to a democratic socialist, though the Republican shift to the party of Trump also helped make that happen.
(which includes a wide range of activities from things behind a computer screen, to stripping, to more explicit physical interactions. as opposed to an older lexicon that was just about physical interactions.)
but all of them, even the more salacious physical versions, have more analogies and similarities with fast food for both workers, consumers and productive public policy responses
workers overinflate its dignity just to get the little support they have achieved, but I’ve never seen a McDonalds worker brag about working at McDonalds while the universe of options for most of them are similar, the compensation is similar if you look really closely, and worker protections should be at parity
interest or avoidance as a worker or a loved one to a worker similarly follows the same interest or avoidance as them working in fast food, but the aversion to wanting that option for a loved one is used as a strawman argument to discredit any normalization of sex work or reduction in marginalization when its the same opinion theyd have about their loved one working in fast food
policy based on exclusion, conflating consensual work with sex trafficking, even treating sex trafficking differently from labor trafficking at all are policies that create the occupational and exclusionary hazards with various forms of sex work
I’ve changed my mind about what the public policy should be, alongside opinions about sex workers themselves.
I realized that many “women in tech” were doing the same thing to sex workers that they accuse men of doing to them - speaking over them, speaking for them without getting input from the people directly affected - ultimately with the goal of exclusion and control of sexuality. That the particular women I encountered in these tech organizations and fortune 500 companies were not adequate representation but were masquerading their opinions as such when it comes to excluding other women that choose other paths that men cater to. Recognizing SWERF talking points now as familiar, “sex work exclusionary radical feminism”, I don't see their exclusion as productive. I see it as a selfish way of trying to be taken seriously in corporate environments, privileging their comfort at the expense other women and everyone else, which is obvious for me not to agree with now and scrutinize. And when being “taken seriously” fails that should be a problem with the men/people that limit their corporate growth not the other women catering to carnal desires existing in the same or similar spaces.
I don't support any policy based on exclusion or “ending demand”. I’m skeptical of any policy that simply makes people feel good because of its ostensible point of curbing sex trafficking. The existing labor trafficking policies make sense and have their own room for improvement. So I can get behind the goals to normalize it at parity to other jobs. I don't see it as needing to be someone’s whole identity like activists seem to require. I don't see it as inconsequential. But definitely more akin to fast food workers.
> I realized that many “women in tech” were doing the same thing to sex workers that they accuse men of doing to them - speaking over them, speaking for them without getting input from the people directly affected - ultimately with the goal of exclusion and control of sexuality.
This isn't limited to just sex work or "women in tech"
In my observation there's a real problem with petit bourgeoisie people all over, talking over the people who are actually living through things.
People with no actual stake in outcomes are ignoring the people who do have a stake, sometimes a huge stake
yeah, at first I was mildly amused by the “inclusion by exclusion” that I saw in professional circles in the SF Bay Area,
specifically amused by how it was ironic, and how it was unquestioned because people would privilege the opinions of the token representation saying the idea
But now hearing from more of the affected populations, it is indefensible to me now
It becomes very obvious when you start to analyze along economic lines instead of intersectional ones
A white woman growing up poor in a trailer park and a black woman growing up poor in the inner city are more likely to have similar struggles than the poor black woman and an upper middle class black woman
The upper middle class black woman is the one who is the token representation in a professional setting. She imagines her struggles represent the struggles of the poor black woman, but they don't
She probably did struggle more than her upper class white female colleagues, but her struggles were almost certainly very different from poor black women's struggles
So we wind up chasing our tails with these DEI initiatives, when the problems they claim to solve aren't about race diversity really. They're about class. You can't solve class problems by treating them as race problems
Misdiagnosing these things just because of a disproportionate impact to a marginalized group has limited efficacy because it relies on indicting the hearts and minds of people that don’t feel or think in the imagined way to begin with. So yeah these initiatives wind up going in circles, and losing support of would be allies because it’s based on demonizing them hoping they continually atone for something ambiguous.
And even in your example, this is a good highlight, some upper middle class black people try to distance themselves from other black people based on dialect but specifically talking down on vernacular English.
if you know what you’re looking at the same occurs with some of our Indian population such that Seattle got that anti caste discrimination law passed specifically to point out that we’re not going to accept the rampant denial of India’s problems replicated in the US
the only reason this stuff flies is because the self proclaimed progressive people aren't listening or understanding the people they want to include. they're performing rituals for each other. they’re unwilling to see their own efforts as unproductive or even counterproductive as they're too busy distancing themselves from apathetic people and overtly exclusionary people.
just listen to the affected groups, heavily scrutinize if someone’s comfort is at the expense of someone else’s, such as “why are we privileging theirs” and if the reason is sexist or racial then you’ve found a flaw in the entire logic from the so called progressive, which you can use as leverage against them in their own performative circles
You get older, you get more tired(?), serene(?), you can see the progress towards death as a natural process in your own life.
Also you're around more death. I was with my mother when she died. I can't say it was a pleasant process, but it was very natural. She accepted hospice, and seemed to be at peace with death. The last few months with her a lot of positive memories were made that will stick with me.
I don't _want_ to die, but its clearly something I can feel will naturally come and should plan for.