That nobody is a “grown up” and that everyone is faking it.
We’re all just kids having kids.
You should try an initiation ceremony. It could help you feel like an adult.
Don’t apologize unless you actually mean it. Saying sorry when you didn’t really mean it, or you did the same thing again only devalues any future apology until it means nothing to the people you care about.
If you put in the work upfront it will make the back half easier. If you slack on the front end you’ll need to sprint to the finish.
Mainly came to this conclusion in school with academics, but started applying it to everything. It’s not perfect—you can absolutely work hard and still not get the results because of forces of nature (or oppressive systems). But in general I’ve found it’s a good rule to live by.
You don’t mess with a wild badger
, Honey
Negative numbers. I just asked if there were numbers below zero when I was like 4, and my mom about pissed herself. Not that it stopped her from homeschooling me into ignorance instead.
It’s alright, I asked why Santa would get me presents for Christmas and not my parents; was about 4… My dad still doesn’t like me today. Might be different reasons, but he has never said hahaha
The spawn is too dangerous. We must insulate it from too many sources of knowledge
If it gets too curious it may burrrrrn!
People hate what they fear and fear what they don’t understand. The path, then, to fight against hate is specifically understanding
I learned this by watching The Crocodile Hunter as a child. I remember very vaguely a point Steve Irwin made about how people are terrified and act to harm animals they know nothing about. Either he went on to further say, or I extrapolated it myself, that knowing how an animal will act informs YOU on how to approach the situation; No need for fear or hate if you understand the reality of the situation. I then further extrapolated this race relations. It’s a little general, but a white person may be racist against a black person because they think they’re dangerous, just as someone might see a snake they know nothing about and think it dangerous
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We’re all going to die some day, and he died doing what he loved and still wanted to protect the animal that killed him. He helped many more animals than he was hurt by, so I call that a win overall.
In school, I happened to notice exactly when some random topic went from “uh, I guess I kinda understand this” to having it actually “click”. That clued me off to the difference between e.g. knowing a bunch of shitty formulae, and actually understanding the topic to the point where you can actually use it for problem solving. Also, that all the teaching and books I received revolved 100% around the former.
I had that moment when learning to code. I had like 98% or what I needed to know. Then one day I came across some random SO post, learned something that I really should have learned a while ago (the difference between static classes and instantiated classes, yes really) and then everything just fell into place and I realised I could actually write proper code now. It was a fun moment :)
For me it was variables. I know it’s as basic as you can get here. But when I figured out that I could store data in a little box to get later I was like “oh, I can do anything with this”
Also, that all the teaching and books I received revolved 100% around the former.
This is true, because understanding comes from practice. The teacher and the books can never create that click of understanding. Only the student’s side of the effort can do that.
There’s a book series called The Hammer and the Cross about an English bastard child of a noblewoman that resulted from her being taken by a Viking raid and later escaping back to her home. Then the Vikings invade to avenge the death of Ragnar (his 4 sons are each powerful Viking Jarls).
The way it handled the two religions clashing, where each was powerful based on how many followers they had, along with it being the first time I’d seen where Christianity isn’t presented as the Underlying Truth but was just another thing. I realized that it was a metaphor for how religion actually worked. If enough people believe in something, it gains power. Christianity won through politics and warfare, not through truth. There wasn’t anything special separating Christianity from other former religions we largely now refer to as myth other than the one Empire that united most of Europe declared it to be the truth and people were slaughtered until they went along with it.
That’s when I stopped being a Catholic that just hated going to church and was an atheist at first, then later settled into agnosticism since who knows what’s going on beyond what we can directly detect with our senses and tools.
If enough people believe in something, it gains power. Christianity won through politics and warfare, not through truth.
These two sentences conflict with one another.
To make them match you’d either have to change the first sentence to:
If a thing gains enough power, people believe in it.
Or you’d have to change the second sentence to:
Christianity won politics and warfare, through being believable.
It’s circular with my version and yours of the first sentence both applying. It gains power from people believing which then leads to more people believing. Though it also depends on the aggressiveness of the religion’s followers.
I was about 11 or so and acting out, my teacher said my name. I just froze for a moment and it dawned on me that was the first time he had said my name all day. Completely invisible unless I was doing something wrong. Just a square shape in a square hole unless I choose otherwise and if I do it by making my life worse.
I guess it doesn’t sound profound. Every guy knows this on some level but it really knocked the wind out of me at the time.
Want to join my team of supervillains?
Looking forward to hitting the trails when it warms up :)
Something always happens.
There is no god and adults are assholes.
Actually as a kid I realized that what I was taught in the bible and church were metaphors and not things to be taken literally. I mean, a lot of it went against what we learned in school, and school actually made sense.
Only much later in my teens did I realize that many Christians do take the Bible literally. It was then that I decided to completely abandon my religion.
Same, as a little kid I had no idea the adults actually BELIEVED what they were telling us, it just seemed like stories. I was so confused when I found out they believed it was all real. Then again when as a pre-teen I found out they thought homosexuality was against the rules - love? They thought love was wrong? I had gone to church for so long and that idea had never crossed my mind.
I remember having my first same-sex crush when I was around 11 years old. Unfortunately around 10-11 was also when I started to learn that “gay” was a slur and a shameful thing, and a bit later that it was a sin too. I would fall into deep self hate and internalised homophobia for the following 10 years…
I’m straight as a board, and it was the earlyish 1980s so a more backwards time but I still found it utterly shocking. I remember it so clearly. It was a youth group evening and they were talking about sex, when they started talking about homosexuality I absolutely anticipated they were going to talk about the issue of hate towards gay people, so when they went in the other direction I was floored.
I have never understood the metaphor argument. When I was a believer I believed it all literally. If this stuff is a metaphor then what it is a metaphor for? Also if it is a metaphor how come (especially in the prophets) the Bible spends so much time listing metaphors and then explaining them? How come when the Bible self-references it treats itself literally?
Adam and Eve were the literal truth to Paul and he used it to create his theology of original sin.
This