Only permanent success is allowed
SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like... if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you're a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success... I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
Agree with most of these I guess, but marriage specifically is the one thing that's intended to be forever. Til death do us part and all that jazz.
There’s nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldn’t be some sort of “standard” we hold everything to.
The "death do us part" thing is a tradition, but marriage is a legal status. Not everyone is going to follow that tradition, and surely you wouldn't argue this ought to bar them from the legal status
I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.
A person isn't a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That's not failure. It's wanting the person you love to be happy.
Marriage is not just another relationship. It's literally defined by people deciding, and vowing to stay together forever.
But realistically, we all know you can get divorced. While we might hope it'll be forever, we also know we're still not gonna stick around if things get too bad (nor should we). Nobody has the shocked pikachu face when marriage isn't forever after all. No matter what the vows say, in practice we pretty well accept that it's a big commitment, but not a permanent one.
How about this: things are allowed to fail and that's OK.
If you marry someone with the intent of staying together for the rest of your lives but you don't, the marriage failed. It doesn't have to define you.
It's also okay to fail. I agree with that as well. I just won't see a relationship - marriage or not - as a failure if it brought two people happiness for a while until they amicably decide to end it. It's only a failure when it makes them miserable or when they end it by needlessly hurting the other person. But... that's still okay if they can at least see what they did wrong and learn from it. We all make mistakes.
It just depends on your definition of failure. Did the marriage fail to make people happy? Not necessarily. Did the marriage fail in its stated aim to bind two people forever? Yes definitely.
I personally think a divorce is usually a failed marriage (unless the marriage was specifically intended to be limited time) but I don't think that failure is always a bad thing.
For me it comes down to how you use language. Mental health is important to me and I recognize the power of words, so I care more about the impact of language use. No matter how much you reassure people that it's okay to fail, failing still feels bad. It makes people feel like ... a failure. That seems counterproductive and unnecessary to me. Why make people feel bad when they did nothing wrong?
You can specify exactly how and why it's a failure if you want, and you're not technically wrong. I'm just not principally concerned with being technically correct in the first place. I'm reframing the standard narrative because I hate to see it go unchallenged. So for anyone who's hurting and reads this and feels like shit, this time I'll be the one to say something.
Then I guess you, like me, dislike the concept of marriage. Because the whole point is forever. The forever part is not even what I hold against it though. Some people can and want to be together forever. Feeling forced to be by culture is a bad thing though.
I see it mostly as a legal contract and legal status, but with a lot of extra baggage heaped on top. It's an overloaded concept that tries to cover too many things at once, making them all suffer. Separate out the legal business and you'd lose the need for an explicit declaration that this union is to exist in perpetuity until cancelled by either party. Sure sounds full of romance when stated that way, doesn't it?
And regardless of how you look at it, the idea is that it's for life, from the ground up. I could go into how it's rooted in other horrible things but yeah, the romance is retrofitted to get people to accept it. And it's worked.
As you get older, you may realize "forever" isn't actually forever. Its just for the few decades you have left on this planet in this existence. If you find someone that you like being around, they like being around you, and you're both willing to put up with each other's faults and shortcomings, then marriage can be a really good path forward.
When we age, our looks go, our health, and many times our minds too. Having someone that cares about you and has your back through all of that, is a wonderful thing as you will have their back too. You still see them as beautiful as you did when they were younger, and they see you the same way. You look past each other's graying (or missing) hair, to lack of physique, the lines in your faces, the extra weight you carry in strange places, and eventually the loss of mobility you'll have and they still want to be around you. You still want to be around them.
Old age frequently brings loneliness too. When you're not forced to work a job with people anymore, it takes effort to maintain social relationships with other people. When you have your mate, you always have that company irrespective of other social connections (or lack of).
Finally if your partner dies before you, I think it will give you something to look forward to in your own eventual death. You know you'll be at the same place as your mate, wherever or whatever that is. If there is something after, they'll be there waiting for you. If there is nothing, you get to be nothing together. Life is really tough if you're going it alone. A mate can shave off those sharp corners and make even the most unpleasant times bearable.
If you find someone like this, I encourage you to grab on and hold them tight. If you don't, life will move them along and you'll be left with just yourself against a cold and uncaring world.
That's all well and good, but you absolutely don't need marriage to stay together forever.
The point was that the concept shames you into it. Another option is just to stay together because you want to. Seems more meaningful to me that way anyhow.
That's what I strive for in any relationship: staying together purely because we choose to. I don't want someone to stay with me for any other reason, and I want my partner to know that I choose them. Not out of obligation or necessity, but because I truly want them close to me. It's simple but meaningful.
My wife just moved out after 30 years of marriage, and it sure feels like a failure to me. Maybe some people get to the point where it's not working, and they aren't invested in the marriage so much that walking away is painful. I think most people would say they shouldn't have been married if they weren't that invested in making it work though.
A lot of people have suggested that we should have marriage contracts that have a renewable time limit. Like, "Hey, let's get married for ten years and see how that goes." I could see that being a good thing, but I also think it's fundamentally a different mindset than the traditional expectation of forever.
Thanks for sharing your story. Similarly, I've been with my partner for 10 years. We planned on having kids, never materialized because of reasons. Now... We are distancing. It certainly feel like failure. I just moved to a new apartment last week.
So far, I haven't 'duel' the loss, except for some occasional irruption of either sadness (~95%) or rage (~5%). We keep talking daily, trying to part ways softly, we are both migrants in a new country, medium sized city, which adds some peculiarities.
I think we try to avoid the sentiment of failure by keeping an open mind, and a friendship. I even fantasize this is only temporary. But honestly, we have been on this for a while. Like after the pandemic.
Anyway, some comments in this thread really help me. I do want her to be happy. We both deserve the best, and frankly we may not be the best fit today. But we were powerful. We went through a lot, and we did good.
PS. Feel free to write privately of you wanted to share more.
Sorry you're going through that. I'm going to make the assumption that, with it being a ten year relationship, you're not super young, but much younger than me (I'm 62). I hope you and your partner are both able to move on in a way you can be at peace with it, and once you've grieved the relationship are able to find someone who works better.
Goes both ways, I'm happy to chat if you'd like.
I'm sorry to hear about your circumstances.
Me and most of my friend/family group have married in the last few years and I don't know if anyone would have bothered if there wasn't a promise of forever. There's often the desire for a home and kids and it's (in my opinion) hard to do that if you don't have a commitment from your partner. I don't want to raise kids alone or have to do custody arrangements if I can avoid it.
If housing and child rearing were more communal it would maybe be different but I think the commitment is kind of the point.
If you'd be willing to share your experience please feel free to. I didn't have the experience of married parents or even watching them interact/divorce so I'm always on edge regarding the kind of issues I'm possibly missing in my own relationship.
I'm an open guy and didn't mind sharing whatever, but I'm not sure which aspect you're interested in. I had great role models - my parents were happily married for 50 years until my dad died. My wife and I had problems off and on for years, and we've been more roommates than romantic partners for quite some time. We had an argument and she confessed that she hasn't been in love with me for some time. She's not with anyone else or anything like that, but she doesn't want to be with me.
Thank you for sharing. Sorry to hear about your father but it seems like he had a child and wife who loved him.
That falling out of love concept is really my big fear. I think I know what a healthy loving relationship is, but only because I think I'm in one. The thought I might wake up one day to my partner saying that no actually, we were not in one of those is my big concern. I don't know what it should look like and having nothing to compare to so it feels like the biggest obstacle we could have.
I'm sorry to hear you're going through that but glad to see that people can and do make it out relatively ok. I truly wish you the best.
Thanks a lot. No worries about my dad -he was pushing 80 when he died, and he lived a life most people would be proud of. It was also 24 years ago. Sadly, my mom lived ten years longer, and I think the only reason she didn't die of a broken heart is because she got Alzheimer's and kind of forgot about my dad's dying.
I don't think there's one kind of healthy relationship. Every person has strengths and weaknesses. The key is finding a person whose strengths and weaknesses meshes with your own. I've seen people with significant issues have happy marriages with spouses who just love them and balance with them.
Ultimately, all we can do is try to work with our partners, understand that every relationship has rough times, and hope we can weather those times. Sadly, there's no guarantees, as I can attest to.
Don't overthink it. If you are aware that this could happen, you will be able to see it at its earliest ;)
Did you communicate about it with your partner? That's probably a great starting point. Go for a chill afternoon of opening. Sometimes, we go through so much together that we take the other for granted, or just forget to open-up and share our innermost feelings with enough room of both space and time.
Thanks for the reassurance.
We're generally pretty good and I think that's the issue. It feels so weird to have a normal loving relationship it feels like that itself is cause for concern lol. Will definitely find some extra time today to tell them how special they are though.
The game Outer Worlds touches upon this concept a bit, although it’s set in a space-capitalist dystopia.
Like a more administrative declaration of vow renewal, in a sense. Can feel a bit cold and could cause a lot of bureaucratic headache however.
I’m sorry for your loss/pain though, on a more serious note.
Thank you
I would agree if we stopped making marriage the end goal of relationships.
I tend to agree with you there. There are a lot of things intended to be temporary, and a lot of things intended to be permanent.
Wasn't there a study about that Man instinctively looks for other partners after while, this being the natural behavior?
Given that, christianity sets unrealistic expectations.
Don't know the study but any anthropologist can tell that's a generalization on a certain time, place, and society. It's (mostly) true, only under certain conditions.
Now did they study any other gender? Perhaps by Man they refer to all humans??
No, male humans.
Look, can we please not mix politics/ideology with science? You're mistaken if you think human is 100% conscious decisions. In economy, it's long known already that homo economicus is a fantasy. We are mammals too.
The way hypothesis are drawn, which programs are promoted, where budgets are cut, etc. are all political decisions that shape science. But I understand your point, although I wasn't talking about free will. Somehow, this talk reminded me of a book, 'the naked ape'.. it was written by a zoologist. Probably had many things just plain wrong, and it's more speculative-observations than actual rigorous studies. But I enjoyed reading it when I was an life sciences undergraduate. Btw, why are we writing Man with a capital letter? This is what prompted my previous question.
Please, mother, stop slutshaming yourself..
Only if you think humans are slaves to instinct and are defined by them.
Man also instinctively eats lots of sugars and fats because they are high in energy, so is restraining oneself to a healthy lifestyle unrealistic?
You think all your decisions are conscious too, hm?
A large part of modern world is obese. Going against your instincts is a informed struggle. In case of high sugar and fat meals, whilst circumnavigating the instincts with a healthy diet.
Yes many are obese, and it can definitely be a struggle, but that doesn't make being healthy an unrealistic expectation. It's highly realistic, and many people are healthy.
Yeah, but you have to know how and have to motivation to do it.
99% percent of the times a study calls some 'natural behaviors' on humans, it's just propaganda looking for legitimacy.
Reminds me of last week when everyone was talking about how Bluesky is worthless because it's just going to go the way of Twitter. And I'm like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
If Bluesky follows that same pattern, great.
I feel an adjacent thing about Lemmy — The conversations I most value are ones I used to have on Reddit, but dwindled over the years, as Reddit discourse degraded. Something that's notable is that, on Reddit, the last bastions of meaningful discussion were the little niche subs, indicating that quality of discussion may be inversely correlated with the size of a community.
The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit's fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last. (Speaking as an aging punk), it reminds me of what happened to Punk: it went mainstream, and thus less punk. Some people have the instinct of gatekeeping a thing to preserve it, but everything needs fresh blood, and some of the people who discover punk via the mainstream are have a heart as punk as anyone I've met — we can't exclude the masses of "normies" without excluding these people too. In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the "true punk spirit" is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream. Similarly, I expect that I'll always be able to find online clusters of cool nerds to have meaningful conversations with, because even if Lemmy dies a slow death, they will find (or build) a new space.
Ultimately, the inevitable temporariness of Lemmy (and other platforms like Bluesky) is quite a beautiful thing for me, because it forces me to be more mindful of the moment I'm in, and how, despite the world being shit in many ways, here is something that I am really glad I get to be a part of
Leave it to the Internet to be the best (and worst) of all.
I'm at best a poser punk but the diy ethos always rung true. That said one of my favourite places online is a local old school punk forum. It's niche enough that with its own problems there's still a community.
In my experience that's kind of what an online community needs to be. Not exclusive, but niche enough. I too used to be on Reddit, got there when the great Digg migration happened. Those days it was small enough to have have a community on some subreddits. Gradually it got the point that when I'd read the article or had a reasonable thought about the question there were 11000 replies and anything worthwhile was already said.
These days Lemmy feels kinda similar to the old Reddit. Maybe things stay the same or maybe they change and there'll be another place I log on.
All that said, what OP posted is profound. What you posted is too.
Eh. I don't think it's actually as easy to be a "poser" as old purity obsession tropes (I admittedly was a bit skewed that way when younger). What is it isn't "punk" is purely subjective. Basically, requiring willful appropriation of subcultural signs and aesthetics for profit without any desire to engage or contemplate the community or philosophies (Good Charlotte, looking at you). To me, it's about love and anarchism (the no gods, no kings, no masters mindset of equality) not having a mohawk, a pair of Docs, and chucking molotovs at riot cops (to be fair, it takes all kinds).
Hell, the drama right now about the devs running out of funds and people refusing to donate because of their association with .ml might accelerate lemmy's demise before it can even get big.
One of the reasons reactionary content tends to endure and progressive content fails (in Western countries, anyway) stems from the far-right having deeper pockets and a far more pliant creative base.
You don't see Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens ever really going away, because they've got these sugar daddies that always pony up. The fucking Adelsons will keep shoveling naked antisemites money, just so long as they toe the economic orthodoxy.
Meanwhile, Lemmy admins associating with Lemmy developers is unforgivable, because the OG developers won't let you say "I hope someone murders Xi Jinping with a rusty spoon" on their bespoke instance without getting banned.
That's beautiful.
Punk in the form that existed in the early 80s hardcore scene died around 84 (before I was even born). It came back in other, different forms, in different places over the decades. I'd argue that punk really isn't the first incarnation of the "true punk spirit", just the one that we associate with the anarchic and rebellious, possibly in part due to the concerted effort to demonize it in mainstream media in the 80s and 90s (couldn't have any of that peace and love shit being seen positively, especially with greater acceptance of direct action).
Amazing, thank you for your comment
I feel like the concern with Bluesky is that Bluesky could enshitify much faster than Twitter, in part because market conditions push for a faster path to profitablity.
Yeah, I won't claim Twitter was great, but it was widely considered too good (to its users) to be profitable. That was possible during that early investor optimism when the internet was still new, but I also don't see that happening now anymore.
A social media platform needs to decouple from the typical company structure and democratize its improvement, otherwise investors will necessarily make it as bad as they can without immediately losing all users.
See, I was going to say that Twitter was a bad thing for 15 years.
But then it was just stupid, it wasn't a Nazi bar like today.
Peter Thiel, the Adelsons, the Mercers, and the rest of the Trump crowd were sponsoring reactionary fascist content on the site long before Elon bought it.
Twitter was equal opportunity - willing to take money from all the highest bidders to promote any kind of commercialized content - prior to the buyout. But plenty of that content was fascist af.
Twitter was never a good thing, AND I was never a Twitter user so i can actually say that.
like it actually did permanent damage to our culture
I don't like the pattern of having to pay a search cost, then finally getting everything set up, and then they gradually enshittify until the process repeats. I'd rather just have stable infrastructure, like email.
This reminds me of a friend who opened a bakery. The business was successful, and the food was good, but she decided to give it up after a few years when she and her husband started a family.
I don’t consider that a “failure” by any definition. For her, it was a great experience that had run its course.
But she didn't make infinity+1 dollars so what was even the point
Yeah. I would usually see a business as failed only if it is going through bankruptcy.
If you "close" it, it's because it failed. Successful business are transferred or sold, because a loyal customer base and a successful business model have a lot of value.
Same for 90% of the other things mentioned. If you do a hobby for a while and you abandon it, it's by definition a phase. Etc.
Not really true. Plenty of mom and pop shops close because no one wants to run it and they don't want to ruin the reputation of their family business by selling it to someone who might not run it well. I worked for a few places where this happened.
Who are these people that decline tens of thousands of dollars/euros/pounds for their image? Must be nice being that rich...
Plenty of otherwise successful businesses could not be sold for tens of thousands of dollars just for the name. Several are in business solely because of personal connections with other small businesses. Once that element is gone people go elsewhere. At least in my community/experience.
That's freelancing then, not really a business, isn't it?
There was a dessert business I used to do work for that catered a lot of local businesses events. She got plenty of work there and then had a loyal customer base because of the introduction to her desserts at these events. That seems like a valid business to me. She retired and moved to be closer to her kids and that was it. No one to take her place. I don't know what you consider freelancing but she put her kids through school off of it so I don't know why it wouldn't count as business even if she technically never had long term contracts. She had her stuff in stores in the area because she made a name for herself and her products. People liked her and her story as much as the food so I don't think people would've kept buying it if they found out she didn't own it anymore.
I think you might not be aware of how many people have small businesses. 10% of American workers are self employed. I have done a lot of work for small businesses and it's very different than what a lot of people who had a teacher and a factory worker as parents think.
What happened to the bakery? Did she sell it or transfer ownership to someone else?
She didn’t own the building. Last I saw, there was an ice cream shop in the space. It was a good one, too. I think that location is lucky.
Isn't this more about things falling apart when the person wanted to continue doing it? If I want to run a shop but it doesn't work financially, then my plan has failed.
Yeah, I think you're right here: it's all about intent. If someone starts a business, it does well, but then they end it because they want to do something else, is not a failure. If they wanted the business to keep going, but people weren't buying enough of their product to keep the doors open, that's a failure.
You could do the same with any of the examples. It's not a failure if the people are happy to stop or it lasted as long as could reasonably be expected, but if it ends before the people wanted it to, that's a failure. The rocket that lifts its payload to orbit, then shuts off and falls back to earth is a success. But no one says "Well, the rocket ran great halfway to the planned orbit, so even though it and the payload fell back to earth, it was successful."
Yeah, the OOP is a serious cope. They are basically saying "nothing is ever a failure in the world of unicorn sprinkles, weeeeee!" They are invalidating people's negative emotions about failure by trying to reframe it - but this is the behavior of narcissists who never want to admit they have failed at anything.
It's okay to fail. It sucks. It hurts. It happens. That's life. Accept it, learn from it, and move on.
It's a failure if it's your experience and you think you failed. You don't get to say others failed if they feel otherwise about their own experience.
You have no idea what narcissism means even if you're using it in the colloquial form with is almost meaningless at this point. A narcissist wouldn't put the question up for debate.
You pretending you get to decide how others should feel about anything is fucking ridiculous.
If someone says "I really wanted to keep my bakery open but the books didn't balance" it's a failed business. If someone says "I had a goal to get a book published but I could never get it accepted" they're a failed writer.
Yes, they could have just gotten bored or stressed or retired or life happened, but that's not the same thing. When someone set out to do something with their best effort but couldn't, they failed.
Failing to do something isn't shameful and it doesn't devalue you. It doesn't even mean you'll never be able to do it (go start a new business, write another book, have a happy second marriage). You're only a failure if you let yourself be one, nobody can tell you to feel anything.
OOPs post isn't healthy because it validates the fear of failure with mental gymnastics. Sometimes you fail and you just gotta work through it, you can't put your all into something and shrug it off at the same time.
Yeah, most of his examples really don't work. As long as you make more money than you put in, any business is successful, and if you terminate it without going bankrupt or accruing debt, it's not failed, it's just closed. Same for a writer, you write a couple of books, they sell enough to cover the costs, then stop because you don't care anymore, nobody's gonna call you failed.
Yes, that. And also the point of marriage is to be forever. Like that's the idea of it to begin with.
If they end up starting again the same business, then I guess it could be seen that way. But if they just decide to move on without feeling like it was wasted time and try new things, "how long it lasted" shouldn't be the only metric of whether it was a success
I feel like with the business example, you could sell it and move on. No matter what happens to the business afterwards, you are fine.
That said I’d agree it depends on the circumstances. Want to keep going but can’t because = failed. Could keep going but decide not to, not failed.
I'm not sure what you're asking here...
Working in medicine, especially emergency medicine, I have to hold on to this kind of mindset very tightly. I see death frequently. I have had infants die in my care, and there is nothing I could have done to save them. I have had frail, miserable, elderly people in my care that have been kept alive through titanic and terrible measures, and their lives would have been so much better overall if they had been allowed to pass peacefully a few years earlier.
I saw another post yesterday about the old and infirm lying in nursing homes, staring at the ceiling, coding, then being dragged back to life by the heroic efforts of the staff and the ER....just to go back to staring at the ceiling for another year.
It seems counterintuitive as a physician (in training), particularly in emergency medicine where our whole job is to steal from the reaper, to advocate for sooner, more peaceful, more autonomous deaths. I have always been a proponent of physician-assisted suicide because I have seen too many people whose lives would have been better if they had been shorter.
That explains a lot about the state of software these days.
I believe you are making a joke, but I realize that I should explain the terminology.
Someone "coding" means that their heart or breathing stopped and "calling a code" means getting all the relevant equipment and personnel to do CPR to make them not dead anymore. (CPR is quite literally necromancy and you cannot convince me otherwise.)
What feels weird is just how much of fictional media fights in favor of this concept. A hundred evil rich people wanting to live forever, not realizing the terrible consequences behind their immortality elixirs.
The immortality elixirs usually come with some amount of eternal youth or prevention of illness. If someone is healthy and able to interact with the world, that's one thing. But someone with lung metastases or emphysema who is just lying there, drowning in their own lungs for however long....that is a life not worth living. If you could stay healthy forever, then being alive forever would just be a test of your tolerance for loss.
Yup. And god forbid you start a small business that's successful and decide to pay your employees a good wage and set aside a fair amount of profit for yourself. That's loser talk. You need to go public or sell the business for a giant payout at the expense of your employees, and then you have to keep making more money every year for shareholders, or else they'll consider you a failure and jump ship
We are surrounded by capitalistic thinking. It’s hard to avoid, or even notice.
I really don't agree with the premise, and would encourage others to reject that worldview if it starts creeping into how they think about things.
In the sports world, everything is always changing, and careers are very short. But what people do will be recorded forever, so those snapshots in time are part of one's legacy after they're done with their careers. We can look back fondly at certain athletes or coaches or specific games or plays, even if (or especially if) that was just a particular moment in time that the sport has since moved on from. Longevity is regarded as valuable, and maybe relevant to greatness in the sport, but it is by no means necessary or even expected. Michael Jordan isn't a failed basketball player just because he wasn't able to stay in the league, or even that his last few years in the league weren't as legendary as his prime years. Barry Sanders isn't a failed American football player just because he retired young, either.
Same with entertainment. Nobody really treats past stars as "failed" artists.
That is a foreign concept to me, and I question the extent to which this happens. I don't know anyone who treats these authors (or actors or directors or musicians) as failures, just because they've moved onto something else. Take, for example, young actors who just don't continue in the career. Jack Gleeson, famous for playing Joffrey in the Game of Thrones series, is an actor who took a hiatus, might not come back to full time acting. And that's fine, and it doesn't take away from his amazing performance in that role.
The circumstances of how things end matter. Sometimes the ending actually does indicate failure. But ending, in itself, doesn't change the value of that thing's run when it was going on.
Exactly. I would think that most people agree, and question the extent to which people feel that the culture values permanence. If anything, I'd argue that modern culture values the opposite, that we tend to want new things always changing, with new fresh faces and trends taking over for the old guard.
That's just the same with extra steps. Rather, you should ask "But was it fun?".
All I'm saying is that continuing effort is not necessary. Permanence/longevity can be achieved through other means, in situations where permanence is important. The lack of need for continuing effort is even more obvious in situations in which permanence isn't even a desired or intended outcome.
you raise an interesting discussion, but isn't being remembered as a legend just another form of permanence? every example you provided is of someone viewed as a "success" in their field, someone remembered.
I would discourage you from discouraging others from examining the way our culture relates to mortality, because that's what all of this is about: death anxiety.
I'm basically saying two things.
Taken together, success doesn't require permanence, and permanence doesn't require continued effort. The screenshot text is wrong to presume that our culture only values permanence, and is wrong in its implicit argument that permanence requires continued effort.
Idk, being sad about and grappling with the impermanent nature of things is kinda a fundamental part of being human.
Maybe it’s not fundamental and it’s just a phase that doesn’t last forever :P
Pity
Reminds me of the line in Willy Wonka “The suspense is terrible! I hope it’ll last.”
When I was young I used to like sculpting in modeling clay. After I had made whatever it was and shown it to my friends, I'd smush it up and make something else. I had a constant stream of people trying to get me to change my medium so that stuff could be made permanent, but I didn't like the feel and I was fine with the pieces being temporary.
There are a lot of things like that. People make ice sculptures or do performance art. People enjoy an experience, sometimes as simple as a sunset. Yes, some of those people will try to capture the moment, say with a photograph, but lots of people are okay with the ephemeral.
This is exactly why I love baking.
It’s temporary, it’s an experience, it leaves space for me to try new things without “waste” or clutter, and it feeds the people I love.
More permanent media leaves me stressed about perfectionism, and I don’t enjoy the process as much.
Reusing modeling clay is a lovely idea.
Saying "I love you" with food is a wonderful thing. My mom did that and I for sure learned that from her. I think the transient aspect of it is great too.
It's funny, one of the people who really wanted me to find a way to make my sculptures permanent was my high school art teacher, who I stayed friends with for a long time after graduating. Who left that school the year I graduated and went on to be a pretty well known imagineer at Disney. Not looking after he started there, he hit me up and said I have to buy some sculpy, which they used at Disney a lot. Turns out it feels just like modeling clay but you can bake it in the oven and it ends up like a hard plastic. So ironically, I still have a few pieces I made from back in the day.
Happily Ever After only exists if you happen to die at the happiest moment of your life.
Seems to me a logical extension from our capitalist (line must go up) and Christian (stay in line or go to hell) cultural shit pile of a country.
Nah that's wrong, this is pervasive in every culture and throughout history. Every generation complains about the next because they don't do the same things the same way as the previous one. Entire countries did this, a kingdom that was less prosperous or lost territory was failing and in decline.
I think the root cause is an innate human fear of change and loss.
It's the essence of ego. Religion and society develop more and more into the direction of full ego expression. One person owning everything means that they can demand whatever comes to their mind. The ego thinks of itself as eternal.
This is why I will enthusiastically embrace our generous and merciful AI overlords.
The best definition of success I heard was from Earl Nightingale -
Success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal.
Doing something because you want to do it--and it betters yourself, your family, or your community--makes you successful.
About marriage: the whole concept reside in the mutual promise of a "forever after". If that's not your thing, totally fine. But then you wouldn't engage in it in the first place? In that sense, the marriage would indeed have failed (to deliver on its core premise).
Putting aside an afterlife, common wedding vows have "for better, for worse, ... in sickness and in health, until death do us part." So at least for people using those vows, they are committing to stay together until one of them dies. A divorce would mean a failure to follow through with that commitment.
Plenty of people get married and don't believe in an afterlife.
what you're saying is only true for some religions that don't allow divorce. most do. there's no forever after promise in most cases, just living together and caring for each other.
Then you shouldn't use that phrase in the marriage vows, that's the issue. If you don't promise the forever, you are not failing the promise
it's not a requirement in vows; I'd be surprised if most people did it. your perception is colored by TV and movies which generally uses Catholic traditions because it's more suitable for visual representation.
I grew up in a Swedish pentecostal church so my experience in vows are more coloured by experience from that denomination rather than catholic tv
fair but still there's a lot of religions and countries out there. where i live people usually just promise to take each other as spouses.
I've watched people who got married in high school go through divorce in their twenties and thirties and forties. It's more than religion. You come out of the situation angry and insecure. You plunge into a dating pool that's anxiety ridden and full of other jaded people. You carry your own insecurities with you. Often, the divorce is necessary, but it's rarely fun.
Feeling as though you have someone who wants to be near you and care for you, then waking up to discover that person is gone is extremely difficult.
There's no forever. Everything ends. But the end of a relationship means assuming a great deal of emotional and financial and physical baggage. A home built for two people is radically changed when one is gone.
It isn't something to trivialize or make light of.
To clarify: I meant this purely at an interpersonal level, i.e. if you enter a marriage, you should at least honestly intend it to endure.
I'm all for ridding our society of marriage and transitioning to civil unions instead. It's a dumb-ass concept to promise to love someone for your entire life when both of you are bound to change a lot, sometimes becoming unrecognizable. The only reason it "worked" in the past is because the primary concern wasn't actually love or happiness but rather performing the duties assigned to genders by patriarchy.
On a more philosophical note, did the marriage really "fail" if the person you promised to love changed so much so as to become a different person in the same body?
The "ship" of Theseus
A core Buddhist concept is impermanence, the idea of constant change in our world, and letting go of fixed ideas and outcomes.
Impermanence of the individual, but the cyclic endures. Navigating the currents of history, learning from your elders, and handing your children a better world is part of the philosophy.
In the end, the goal is to escape the karmic cyclic by transcending it. You're letting go of terrestrial craving in pursuit of something grander and more spiritually fulfilling. And part of the journey is in conveying the accumulated wisdom to your juniors, with the expectation that one life is not long enough to achieve this higher existence.
I see you are holding on to that one
that's just the world lol
I know, it's such a basic idea right? And yet we spend so much mental energy opposing the inevitable. And, to OP's point, punishing ourselves for not being unwavering and flawless in a wavering and flawed existence.
This reminds me of Sand Mandala
Don't be afraid to enter the water knowing that you are not going to swim forever.
I think the fear isn't simply exiting the pool, its drowning.
The "coffee shop" analogy breaks down when you look at the before - assuming debt, developing skills, building business relationships - and after - owing more than you earn, filling for bankruptcy, hemorrhaging staff, going back to being a wage earner rather than an owner-operator.
Same with marriage. You get older and slower and tireder, you have this shared history that doesn't exist between anyone else, you have shared assets that can't easily be divided up, you have a shared family.
These aren't just whims, they're economic events and deeply psychological ones, too. Bad ones. They are describing a material decline in your quality of life.
Yeah, the fixation on nostalgia and fandoms is bad for us as a society. No, you shouldn't feel leashed to your hobbies... or your job or your relationships. But there's also feelings of stability and reliability and security that comes with an enduring institution in your life. Knowing you can substitute experience for raw energy and you don't have to relearn a trade or another person or rules to a new game from scratch has value. It pays dividends.
You don't want to get into the water and find out you need to relearn how to swim. Especially when you've so far from shore.
This translates to tv shows too to prove the point.
Tv shows that only have a few seasons that are high quality start to finish are so much better than tv shows that go on and on and on and on.
For example, the simpsons, whilst an excellent show, should have ended many seasons ago. It's 30 odd seasons in, and it's stale. It's a little funnier recently, but i dont think it will ever be as big as it was.
I would consider it a failed show now but a successful show back when it was popular.
So it's pretty much proof of the point that forever is not the definition of success.
Open ended and no another season planned? Fuck em.
Great TV show that ended well? Sign me up.
This post wasn't sponsored by Good Place (seriously, go watch it, and watch The Selection right after).
The good place is such a motherforking good show
Whats The Selection about? The Good Place was amazing and it was a shame they cancelled it. Could have done with just 1 more season.
The hell do you mean cancelled? It's a complete show, from start to finish
Wow! I must have dreamt that. I felt sure it was cut short so it all got wrapped up quick in season 4. But googling it now is giving mixed messages, some showing michael schur intended to or decided to make the 4th season the last and others saying people were mad it was cancelled.
It is a spinoff about the Bad Place
I think in some cases it's driven by capitalism. Your business didn't make you money forever? Failed. Your books stopped selling and you didn't make millions from what you published? Failed. Your show was good for a couple of seasons, but outlived it's hype? Failed
There are other scenarios line you mentioned, marriage or hobbies, that AREN'T about money. But the ones that involve profit follow that.
Very good perspective and this is actually similar to some of the ideas of Buddhism. Everything in this life is temporary, enjoy it while it lasts.
Dan Savage (of the sex and relationship advice podcast "Savage Lovecast") says this frequently.
A short term relationship can also be successful. It doesn't have to end with one of the partners dying in order to be considered good and worthwhile.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of The Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, last paragraph of Chapter VI: Lothlórien. I bolded the last 8 words.
Aragorn knows to let go, while deeply, profoundly, cherishing what was. Be like Aragorn.
On Wikipedia, an article for a deceased person reads, “[The deceased] was,” while an article for a TV show that has ended reads, “The Office is”
Feels kinda related in some way
I mean that does make sense.
The office is still a show that exists and is watchable and all that. It's not gone. It's more like it went into retirement.
Devil's advocate: would you use the present tense for the original Batman, or the original Star Trek?
Take it into the realm of literature, you wouldn't say The Greats Gatsby was a book (unless you were saying it was a book before it was a movie or something like that), because it continues to be a book even when out of print.
If you want media where you might actually use past tense, consider lost media (like old episodes of Doctor Who), live streams (especially where the person stopped streaming), long-term ongoing series that keep up to date with current events (vlogs, blogs, maybe reality TV?)
Yes, I would. Nothing wrong with expecting someone might watch them.
That seems to me more just a linguistic quirk of how English works.
I think you are looking into things in a non healthy way.
You are right that success and failure are not binary. Furthermore, every system, be it physical, living, or social, fails sooner or later.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to not fail for as long as possible, for if something brings joy or safety it's continued success is important. It follows that if something that's important to someone fails it's healthy to morn it and to try to learn from it to not repeat the same failure.
Agreed, the flip side is allowing something ending to be sad too. Not everything needs a positive spin.
This just reads to me like a classic step of linguistic evolution, where people can't be bothered to caveat the normal word with a deeper meaning (eg "my business ultimately ended, but it was the right call and it was always be a great time in my life..." etc) and so think a new word is necessary, until inevitably the same thing happens, ad naseum.
why do you call it "fail" when you mean "end"?
Because I mean fail and trying to frame everything as positive, or at worst, neutral is not healthy and will lead to people not acknowledging their feelings?
There are failures and there are endings. Not being able to cope with a failure is not healthy. Calling everything that ends automatically a failure is not healthy either.
you claim to challenge a paradigm but you merely inverted it. you are still operating under the illusion of good and bad. things end. other things begin. is one thing good if it leads to bad things? is it bad if it leads to good things? or are we just adding our own transient perspective to it? by passing judgment, we're creating good and bad.
this has nothing to do with acknowledging feelings or not. feelings are things too. feelings end. feelings create other things, and those too can lead to other things that we might call good or bad. just because we feel a certain way does not mean the events that led us there are good or bad.
so those "failures" have nothing to do with being real with yourself. it's quite the opposite: you are taking your feelings and attributing them to things in the world.you neglect to recognize them for what they are: transient sensations, that end.
This is nice ways of saying you can change perspective on things by using more appropriate words. At no point do your viewpoints clash with op. But success and failure can certainly be binary if you want. They are words and mean different things for different people, and we hope to sometimes communicate a specific point and sometimes a philosophical one. It can be used for much. Failure as a word is useful but also touchy for a lot of modern achievers, or sofa enjoyers. It can be oh so binary for some people. Like, did you vote and try to prevent the faschist uprising that will ruin your life? It's a yes or no and one of those are very much a failure. If you don't want to see your failures you will become like the wounded manchildren that has need to use power and assert dominance to exist. At that point there's not much left of the reflection you wrote about. It's an antithesis for the practice.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think this post is about giving up all the time. It's about accepting when something doesn't work anymore, or isn't fun anymore.
If you started doing something for fun, but the fun is gone, continuing to do it may actually be detrimental.
Nowhere does the post say that we should just give up, merely that we shouldn't stigmatize endings.
I do think it betrays society's lack of present-focused mindfulness. I've had a handful of friendships that I thought would go on to be quite strong and longlasting, but they fizzled out after a while. That's not to say they were bad or failed friendships. I'm grateful for the time I experienced with them.
"If you're not growing. You're dying "
This is actually rather poignant.
By this standard, "successful" companies simply haven't failed yet.
It's standard that in human experience, we will fail at things. It happens, it happens often, and it will continue to happen. Failing at something is the first step. Without failure, how would we ever know how to "succeed"?
This doesn't, and shouldn't, imply that we are bad at a thing, or that we can't become good at it, or that we should give up and stop trying. It also doesn't and shouldn't imply that we should continue to try. "Failure" is just an outcome, whether that is good or bad is entirely up to the viewer to decide.
I would argue that failure is simply a mental/social concept. Things simply happen. "Success" or "failure" is entirely dependent on those who had some interest in what specifically happened. Even if you're trying to achieve a specific outcome, whether you do or not is entirely inconsequential. You tried to achieve an outcome by doing x, y, or z, and then a, b, and c occurred. Whether a, b, and c are the outcome that was desired or not is not a consequence that the universe cares about.
So much of this is simply social constructs.
I agree with you that failure can be viewed as something natural and even positive in many cases. But the text was more about branding anything that doesn't last as a failure. It suggests that the fact that something has an ending doesn't necessarily mean it was a failure, even though it is often labled as such.
Yeah, I kinda went off on a tangent there....
My brain is weird
Yeah, brains do that.
"Something isn's beautiful because it lasts forever." - some robot
Such a good way to put it. And I have focused on something similar for myself. Literally everything is temporary.
I tend to be a planner, a saver, the person who never uses consumable items in games, and the person who will avoid using an item they like so that it will last longer.
It’s helped me allow myself to enjoy today more, and spend more of my time doing things I want to be doing.
Depends on the situation, marriage is something I would see as for life so that absolutely is a failure. The business it would depend, if you are bankrupt that is a failure but if you choose to sell it as you are not enjoying it any more than that is more comparable to retirement.
I would say rather it depends on the mode of "failure".
Nah, people can change a lot even within a couple of years, let alone their entire lives. Sometimes it just so happens that people are no longer compatible, or grow bored of each other, whatever. What I would consider a failed marriage is if it was abusive from the start or otherwise made one of the spouses unhappy, or if it ended because of some gross misconduct (cheating, domestic violence, etc). If a marriage was fun for a while and ends amicably I'd say it's a success overall. Consider the alternative: the marriage becomes a chore, spouses start to hate each other and be miserable, but continue living together just because "marriage is for life"? That's exactly what I call a failed marriage, not one which ended on good terms.
If you are bankrupt because you did some stupid/illegal shit, then yeah. If the circumstances changed to the point that the business couldn't continue being profitable, it's totally fine to downsize or even close the business. If you performed some services or sold some goods that made people happy for a while it is a success. Once again, consider the alternative: the business is no longer profitable but you continue running it, paying out of pocket?
I don’t think it’s personal failure if it entails people/places/things you cannot control. You cannot control the economy, so if it goes belly up and you file for bankruptcy it isn’t your personal failure. You cannot control your partner, so if they start being abusive, it’s not your personal failure to leave them. I think success is being able to adapt to what you can’t control, and failure is not living in reality and trying to make fetch happen.
The idea that two people can be compatible and never change for their entire lives is flawed in the first place.
This.
I would rather have things to end and turn into good memories, rather than having it turn to shit.
This reminds me of The relationship Escalator
We also don't need to see failure as a wholly bad thing. If your hypothetical business closes down because you couldn't afford to keep it open, it DID fail, but if it ended up making your mental health better to not have all that stress, then it lead to a good thing.
Maybe I'm too realist and literal.
Some things do celebrate the ephemeral, so perhaps there's a cultural need to wrangle these into joy. We beat illness, graduate from school, solve problems, and complete tasks. Adopting such language might help? They've finshed their dream of owning a bakery, lived their goal of being a writer, proudly escaped the clutches of their successful career etc..
You can blame George Lucas and Star Wars for this.
Yoda
that's not really what this is about...
While this is true, it stands in contrast to the similar message co-opted to justify or cope with planned obsolescence in gaming. Chess and Odysseus can be good for centuries, so can some mechanical or story based video games.
Some things I think we want to aim at for our entire lives, and those things are good in and of themselves even if we don't achieve them.
I think getting good nutrition, staying in a healthy state/sustaining or increasing our health span so we aren't sick, exercising so we can still get out of bed every day, seeking novelty and variety in the things we do, exploring new places, learning about the world around us and ourselves, sharing all of these things meaningfully with others on a similar journey, and even defending things that mean a lot to us are some examples of this.
The idea that these experiences must last eternally was something Nietzsche talked about this in his works. He rejected Plato's notion of the Forms as well as many religions' concepts of a life after death - this "other world". To Nietzsche, the good life in this world is defined by how far life can stray from its best moments, and that working through hardships and recognizing that they aren't permanent gives us the power of freedom.
Good times must be accompanied by bad or even mediocre times. Good times lasting forever are no different than bad or mediocre times lasting forever. So yeah, writing that book or making that friendship/relationship can be a good thing. And if those things aren't perfect, we have more reason than enough to make them better. Whether that's work shopping the book until it gets better or starting over with fresh new ideas. Whether that's meeting new people and developing those friendships over time, or leaving them for new friendships when other people don't want to reciprocate. I like to think of so many people wishing for good times to last forever are lazy and just don't want to put in the effort to change, which in my view is the whole point.
does anyone already have a better screenshot of the post? i wanna save one but not a jpeg thats this crispy
Here you go - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
tyty
Many people live a successful life until they fail and die.
Forever is a very long time
Misses the point of marriage, but other than that it's an awesome glimpse into a more sane future
I'm a successful painter. I just only paint once every few years.
Basically yeah, scrolling culture is all about what you've done today.
I need a thousand more accounts just to upvote this
I woild have recommended !lemmysilver , but thats over. Maybe you can wait one year and hope that another event happens so you can give this post lemmy silver?
I sure can. Thank you for suggestion, it did not even occur to me there may exist something like that :)
Lemmy silver has ended, but there may be another event next year
Seinfeld
INFINITE GROWTH, BABYYYY WOOOOO WOOOO!!!
Sounds like it was written by someone with shitty parents.
In what way?
This feels like moving the goalposts.
Yes, it's moving them from 'I have to keep doing this forever or I have failed' to 'Wow I really enjoyed myself doing that!' so the goal can be completed successfully.