Thursday, 29 December 2016 05:05 PM
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#25924 The person complaining about every millennial needing to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" sounds like the typical white male who doesn't know what actual oppression feels like. Younger generations are more educated and more emotionally sensitive to the issues you like to pretend don't exist. When you get to be a good boy and only need to worry about you honest day's work without having to worry about discrimination and institutional racism or homophobia or sexism, that's your reality. But it is not mine. From the sound of it, you also mainly care about your circle and don't give much thought to what other people with life experiences that are not yours go through. As a black gay guy I can't help but be sensitive to issues that effect me every day, and don't effect you. They weigh on me and make my life more difficult, especially since I had little help working my way out of poverty. If I were hired at your place of work (you sound like one of these "I'm diggin' my dick in the dirt for uncle sam" type whiteboys, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) and you invalidated my pain like that, it would be hurtful and would cause me to think that you don't care about my life. Because only someone with no heart, maybe a bigot, maybe an ignorant privileged jerk, would invalidate someone's struggle with dealing with the oppression that the other person benefits from. You and anyone who shares your perspective have little heart for those who feel more pain than you do.
Thursday, 29 December 2016 01:00 AM
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#25920 Hello, Purdue Confessions! 2016 isn't killing the people you love. As Dr. Tyson would say, a year is simply an arbitrary measurement of the passage of the phenomena we recognize as time based on the rotation of our personal rock around our star. It is a concept which is wholly and completely arbitrary and the product of social construct through the minds of the Catholic Church back when they were deciding what western calendars should look like.
It is, simply put, to say 2016 as a concept cannot, nor should be, the focal point of our disappointment in at last realizing human mortality. If posting "Fuck 2016" helps to underscore your frustration at the loss of someone you care about, please do so- I understand everyone has different ways of coping with stress and grieving loss. However, it stands to reason there are likely some who say this with the notion that 2017 will be better in this regard.
So, for them, I have unfortunate news. It is not that celebrities, artists, scientists, creators, inventors, athletes, astronauts, innovators, or any other type of person we label for whatever reason are suddenly starting to die- it is merely that those who are relevant to you are only now just starting die.
Now consider who you admire in your life. In terms of psychology, it is likely that person is older than you because that admiration stems from your childhood or younger self idolizing someone who has had more time to make an impact on the world or pursue their dreams.
As is the case of all older people in your life, they have a statistically higher chance of dying before you. The human lifespan is hardly set in stone and can fluctuate wildly for any number of circumstances, but we can generally suppose that the actors, celebrities, athletes, etc that you really cherish are probably all a couple decades or so older than you. If you happen to be of the college age, that means those people (and often even your parents) are now reaching the age where people start to die from natural causes.
Maybe you argue, the average age here in the United States is well higher of that! True, but when you consider the distribution is skewed toward the lower end of the standard deviation you will of course realize the college age person now is entering a very unfortunate time of life.
Earnestly and honestly, what all this is getting at, you should not have high hopes in 2017 that less of your favorite people will die. Or for 2018. Or the 2020s. Or even those after.
In fact, one could go so far as to say it's all rather downhill from here on out, because eventually those people you idolized as children will all die and you can't even take solace that at least they're all dead, because all that means is that it's simply your peers' turn to die (though I regret to say some are likely to not wait for the older generation to go first) before your own demise or, in an unfortunate case, those younger than you that you care about.
Such is the simple order of nature. One could argue that it is merely a byproduct of that arbitrary measure of time, that we put so much weight and admiration into those who are older than us. We should indeed be sad when we lose a valuable person to our society, even if that definition of value varies wildly between who you ask.
Just as we now consider the loss of our heroes- Our Princess Leia, our Ziggy Stardust, our Professor Snape, our better half of Wham!, and so on, consider what the older generations have went through. Who are the ones who have suffered this time before us?
Our Bob Hope? Our Blue Eyed Frankie? Our Jackie O? Our Marlon Brando? The great long parade of death and loss has been marching onward for millennia before us and will do so for millennia after. It is relentless. It is tireless. It is the only truth of nature.
How is it that we don't already implicitly understand this? Surely we've heard our older relatives lamenting some obscure singer or actor from yesteryear? Some great athlete who once had a record? Some pioneer of a different time than ours? Yet that may just be it, we weren't familiar with them. Their records fell before we cared for them. They discovered or invented things that are so commonplace to us now we can't imagine life before them. They simply weren't of any note to us, just like we won't likely be of any note to some future generation far enough down the arbitrary passage of solar rotations.
Nihilism aside, is it perhaps that we do this for our own sake? To somehow comfort ourselves that death in a given period of time is an aberration? Something that isn't normal or common? That, surely next year no one we care about will die? How can we possible deal with the pressure and stress of understanding that at any given moment someone is dying somewhere in the world? Someone with a life, a family, a history, a dream. Someone who meant something to someone else- and maybe that someone was you.
Children are often told when an older relative or friend dies that they are merely sleeping. It is a simplification of a rather terrible concept that spares them the realization that their loved one is lost. Even people who come from religious homes, who firmly believe in things like Heaven or an afterlife, will use this in order to soften a blow. There is an implicit promise in those words that the person may wake up eventually and from that children can take heart.
Emulating this, we tell ourselves we are angry at the year for being so unreasonable to take our heroes from us. I think this practice of scorning and deriding a year so unfortunate as 2016 is to be located in our lifetime takes place. It is simply our way or giving ourselves hope for something that is not likely to change.
Now with all that said I hope that the next time you consider blaming the current or the past or some future year for the misfortunes that befall you or your loved ones, you will take a moment to consider the fact you are likely still going through the easiest of years for such losses. Because they will only get worse until it is your own time to at last be free of the tyranny that is the march of death.
And now go back and read the first letter of each paragraph.