When a person or place screws you over, not getting what you pay for like bad food at a supermarket. Then they offer you a refund....
Here's the thing...
You stole my money, you stole my time, you stole my energy. When you offer me a refund you've still stolen my time and energy.
Denying a reality you don't like doesn't change the consequences of that reality.
Phelps
If your kindness doesn't give the person receiving kindness any agency, voice or respect... It's not kindness.
kindness fails when it's disrespectful.
Sometimes we're using kindness for only selfish reasons... maybe to prop up our own image in the eyes of ourselves or of the people around us. Maybe it's control, maybe to make people feel the way you want them to feel.
Like most things, it's the honest motives that help determine, but unfortunately this is one of the easiest categories to deny because no one can really call you out... it's super ambiguous.
Our 'animal' actions and reactions are shaped by our conscious and subconscious thoughts and cultural environments by either our design or by accident.
Perhaps before you interact with others over a controversial topic, establish... Is this a curious discussion? A heated discussion? Or a metaphorical burn at stake?
When someone attacks the process instead of the substance of an argument, you know you are in the right, or at least more right than the attacker.
Next level - when someone attacks instead of holds their position, it means you're probably on the correct path.
Next level again - when the attacker asks all the questions, difficult questions which may or may not be related. Questions are powerful, they control the situation. The more words the defender has to say against these kind of attacking questions, the more guilty the defender seem.
What's the point?
The point is the point.
How often do we just do, always ask yourself, what is the actual point of this? What's this things objective? Why do this? What's that outcome which got this going?
What's the point?
Don't forget the point of something.
I've noticed that big things get big because they act like they are small, and then proceed to get 'small' because they got big pretending to be small.
'White' is short hand for 'had a better past'.
Racism by definition is to classify or negatively assign traits from the collective regardless of if it applies to the individual.
When you talk about any privilege, you're saying 'because of your race, class you are where you are' that's not correct, because of your past you are in part where you are. And statistically men, and white have occupied what the western world would call 'success'.
The problem with this game everyone seems to be playing looking and gender and skin is it's a game no one can win...
Women need more rights to make up for man's dominance... ok, but if that's the game, then black people need more rights against the white woman...
Then trans people need more rights against black women
Then a disabled trans black woman needs more rights
And we haven't even touched on income, home life, personal history... you just can't do this and win, it's a 'race' to see who has it worse...
What if you're a white man (image in your head) but is an eastern European person coming from communist torturer crimes where his whole family was killed verses say Serena Williams?
If the argument, it's the collective and collateral damage to individuals is the price of over equality... That is actually exactly what communism is built on!
So what do we do then? Let white men rule and everyone suffer? God no, treat everyone the individuals they are, and if it's in your nature to try the equality path, go for it, but don't attach it to gender or skin colour for goodness sake, there are so many more measurable things which matter so much... we can start with our childhood where we were all once at the mercy of people much more powerful and made choices we had no say over.
Read this... it's a start to a fairer, equal and happy society by empathising with each other's burdens.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/driven-distraction/201802/how-people-beat-the-odds-after-rough-childhood?
Philosophers believe the pendulum must swing both directions for a time before finding it's equilibrium.
In short, we need someone to be angry about injustices to counterbalance the inappropriate actions, which unfortunately come at high personal costs to an individual for the sake of the cause.
If you made a past choice which didn't work out - if you made the choice with all your knowledge at your disposal, it wasn't a foolish choice.
Maybe I've been looking at education all wrong... I think it's a waste of time in a traditional sense, high fees, slow, old, rope learning, regurgitation... but maybe it's strength is it's structure, routine and accountability, thus freeing up our mind to take in more? If our will power is a finite resource drained by thought and choice, maybe it's good most choices are taken away so early on to free up space for an experienced teacher to fill it. Maybe!
By trying to avoid something going wrong will you also be stopping something that is already right?
Phelps
We default to handling old problems in old ways.
Phelps
Take a breath and acknowledge that 95% of what someone else does has absolutely nothing to do with you. Yes--even if you feel that they've talked about you, misused you or done you other wrongs, still their main concern isnot you. It's them. Trust this: realizing that other people with no "investment" in you also have no "interest" in you--and that their activity probably has nothing to do with you--is a big part of forgiving and being less paranoid. So spend extra time with this one idea:"Convince yourself that the other person is pretty ignorant when it comes to you and your feelings--and so, you need not worry about them!"
Once upon a time- a single income family working a 40 hour week could afford a home. Then one day Joe Bloggs thought- hey if I do overtime I'll get ahead! And he did! Then everyone thought- hey look at Joe. So everyone got on the band wagon. So now everyone need to work overtime to keep up. So Joes wife Jane thinks- hey if I work too then we get ahead! And they did! Surprise! Everyone thinks- look at Joe and Jane and jump in the band wagon. Then Jane starts working overtime and so on..
So now every house hold has to had 2 people working full time jobs and overtime just to buy that same home that a single 40 hour week income could buy.
We price ourselves out of the market because we do not value our own time enough, it is not sustainable and something has to give!
Just a comment I read tonight
People love to have an opinion or the power to make a call which is why being a boss seems so appealing... Free will right? Not really... Because as a boss you need to have opinions on things which you don't care about, aren't interested in, and have to make calls which are big in nature when you don't feel like it.
There's no more or less free will having power, it's just what you do and don't have power over shifts.
