What Do People Actually Want?

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Friday, May 2, 2025 23:09
VIEWED: 1377
PAGE 3 of 5

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think I understand now. Thanks for the explanation, BRENDA.


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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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No worries Sig.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Using trillions of dollars in debt to inorganically and intentionally change the demographic makeup of our nations is not ordinary, and it is no longer our reality.

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If you read the book Why Buddhism Is True, you would be impervious to silly talking points about the National Debt and all the other transitory concerns Trumptards worry about or crave with all their heart. From the book:

. . . when we see that doughnut sitting there, we immediately imagine how good it tastes, not how intensely we’ll want another doughnut only moments after eating it, or how we’ll feel a bit tired or agitated later, when the sugar rush subsides.

Why Pleasure Fades

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to explain why this sort of distortion would be built into human anticipation. It just takes an evolutionary biologist—or, for that matter, anyone willing to spend a little time thinking about how evolution works.

Here’s the basic logic. We were “designed” by natural selection to do certain things that helped our ancestors get their genes into the next generation—things like eating, having sex, earning the esteem of other people, and outdoing rivals. I put “designed” in quotation marks because, again, natural selection isn’t a conscious, intelligent designer but an unconscious process. Still, natural selection does create organisms that look as if they’re the product of a conscious designer, a designer who kept fiddling with them to make them effective gene propagators. So, as a kind of thought experiment, it’s legitimate to think of natural selection as a “designer” and put yourself in its shoes and ask: If you were designing organisms to be good at spreading their genes, how would you get them to pursue the goals that further this cause? In other words, granted that eating, having sex, impressing peers, and besting rivals helped our ancestors spread their genes, how exactly would you design their brains to get them to pursue these goals? I submit that at least three basic principles of design would make sense:

1. Achieving these goals should bring pleasure, since animals, including humans, tend to pursue things that bring pleasure.

2. The pleasure shouldn’t last forever. After all, if the pleasure didn’t subside, we’d never seek it again; our first meal would be our last, because hunger would never return. So too with sex: a single act of intercourse, and then a lifetime of lying there basking in the afterglow. That’s no way to get lots of genes into the next generation!

3. The animal’s brain should focus more on (1), the fact that pleasure will accompany the reaching of a goal, than on (2), the fact that the pleasure will dissipate shortly thereafter. After all, if you focus on (1), you’ll pursue things like food and sex and social status with unalloyed gusto, whereas if you focus on (2), you could start feeling ambivalence. You might, for example, start asking what the point is of so fiercely pursuing pleasure if the pleasure will wear off shortly after you get it and leave you hungering for more. Before you know it, you’ll be full of ennui and wishing you’d majored in philosophy.

If you put these three principles of design together, you get a pretty plausible explanation of the human predicament as diagnosed by the Buddha. Yes, as he said, pleasure is fleeting, and, yes, this leaves us recurrently dissatisfied. And the reason is that pleasure is designed by natural selection to evaporate so that the ensuing dissatisfaction will get us to pursue more pleasure. Natural selection doesn’t “want” us to be happy, after all; it just “wants” us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Shut up, idiot.

Your party is dead, and your mere existence reminds us every single day of why that is.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Originally posted by Brenda:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.

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What was mutually understood?


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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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That were both Indigenous.

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Ok, but what does that mean?
Shared bad history with white man?
Feeling a little unbelonging in the dominant culture?
That knowing one's tribe, and the other's tribe, is important?
For example, would it have made any difference to you if he had said Lakota? Cherokee? Navajo?
Just trying to figure out what you were thinking/ feeling.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Perfectly reasonable question Sig.


Identifying our tribes was about shared bad history with the white man and an acknowledgement that knowing who we are is important.

No, it wouldn't have mattered if he had said another American tribe after I had identified my people. There would have been the head nodding and the understanding.

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I was able to glean as much. Even decedents of smaller, lesser-known tribes I would imagine would share that sort of kinship with each other if they ever just happened to randomly bump into each other one day by chance.

Outside of family, which mine was never that great even at it's best, and that has pretty stretched thin all over the country at this point, I've never really had that feeling anywhere.

"White People", of which I very much am one of, as are most people of highly-mixed European descent by Generation X have no real ties to each other, although we're thought of in the media and culture as some sort of monolith. As I said, "White People" did have that several generations before genX, and that ended when the Boomers intermingled with people outside of their own heritage and in only 2 generations you had your "White People", may of whom were already mixed with up to 8 different genetic backgrounds, all the while their parents completely neglected to bother trying to instill any part of the "Old World" into their kids and the entire history and any sense of national pride for their roots was just lost in translation somewhere along the way. If I want to know what my families were like before they mixed, I have to go back and watch movies from the 70's to have any clue.

Come to think of it, I think that (and this entire concept and conversation) was probably the reason that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was such a phenomena when it came out in 2002. Pretty late for a family-centric movie surrounding the "Greek" heritage as the main plot point. Besides its sequels, I'm not really sure there's been many "White" movies that have touched on these feelings of hom

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I can get nostalgic for places I've lived to a degree. Some places mean more to me than others. Home also meant my dad, my Blair.

Think for my dad it meant family and maybe what he knew about his family's cultures.

And for me again in some ways it means as you said a sense of belonging. Roots and I have lost that on a personal level. I've meet it in connections with others who are full First Nations and people like me, mixed blood.

Met a gentleman at the local senior centre a while ago. He is a friend of a gentleman who plays mah jong with the main group. He was talking about his heritage and I said my grandmother was in Alberta for years. The other gentleman said, "I thought she was from here"
I said again that she was American and from Montana. His friend asked for her people and I said Shoshone. He nodded and then pointed at himself and said, "Cree." Then I nodded. We understood each other.

---

What was mutually understood?


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

---

That were both Indigenous.

---

Ok, but what does that mean?
Shared bad history with white man?
Feeling a little unbelonging in the dominant culture?
That knowing one's tribe, and the other's tribe, is important?
For example, would it have made any difference to you if he had said Lakota? Cherokee? Navajo?
Just trying to figure out what you were thinking/ feeling.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

---

Perfectly reasonable question Sig.


Identifying our tribes was about shared bad history with the white man and an acknowledgement that knowing who we are is important.

No, it wouldn't have mattered if he had said another American tribe after I had identified my people. There would have been the head nodding and the understanding.

---

I was able to glean as much. Even decedents of smaller, lesser-known tribes I would imagine would share that sort of kinship with each other if they ever just happened to randomly bump into each other one day by chance.

Outside of family, which mine was never that great even at it's best, and that has pretty stretched thin all over the country at this point, I've never really had that feeling anywhere.

"White People", of which I very much am one of, as are most people of highly-mixed European descent by Generation X have no real ties to each other, although we're thought of in the media and culture as some sort of monolith. As I said, "White People" did have that several generations before genX, and that ended when the Boomers intermingled with people outside of their own heritage and in only 2 generations you had your "White People", may of whom were already mixed with up to 8 different genetic backgrounds, all the while their parents completely neglected to bother trying to instill any part of the "Old World" into their kids and the entire history and any sense of national pride for their roots was just lost in translation somewhere along the way. If I want to know what my families were like before they mixed, I have to go back and watch movies from the 70's to have any clue.

Come to think of it, I think that (and this entire concept and conversation) was probably the reason that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was such a phenomena when it came out in 2002. Pretty late for a family-centric movie surrounding the "Greek" heritage as the main plot point. Besides its sequels, I'm not really sure there's been many "White" mo

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Well, did we ever have a national sense of belonging? Recent immigrants and their children probably feel isolated to some extent ... not that there's much "there" there when it comes to culture and community, or even family, here. It's not something the USA elites want valued. In fact, they've been working on atomizing our society (progressive atomization) for over 100 years.

Most ppl don't think even society exists, or should exist.

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How do you get people to feel like there is a good future on the horizon and make that something that people want to work towards?

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It would be hard to convince people who never experienced it IRL, but we COULD model it in the media. Like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Instead of stupid family comedies where dad is clueless and nobody talks to each other, how about TV shows where people actually enjoy each other's company? Instead of "vengeance" movies where "the victim" takes it and takes it until he/she finally explodes in righteous violence, what happens if people actually negotiate? People WORKING together, not detective movies or hospital movies, but people trying to build something together? Building a dam, building a team, teaching apprentices, being a friend, creating a neighborhood, holding together in the face of difficulty, HAVING FUN TOGETHER?

It may not be realistic, but look at what's shown. You'd think that the world was full of detectives and criminals, or doctors and patients. Try counting the number of married couples on TV shows ... zilch. According to TV, everyone's divorced, or gay, or trans or some kind of special entitled minority. Hardly realistc.

In reality, people are mechanics and barristas and truck drivers and waitresses and teachers, most are married, most have children, and we all depend on each other.

I read something interesting about one of those small tight knit religious communities/ cults that we, the larger society, would disapprove of. Some of the cult members left, and altho they didn't miss the belief system or practices, they did feel adrift. They missed, REALLY missed, the sense of belonging.

So maybe we could take lessons from the Amish or Mennonites. See what they do to keep their communities together?

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But the lost contact with family and in some ways the not wanting to shoulder the "responsibility" is not helping.

I got and I don't how to describe it but I got looked down on for caring for my mother both times she had cancer. This was by people who were around her. I told a cousin of mine about this and she said these people were wrong. I had done the right thing.

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I thought that's what families were supposed to do - look after each other.
We took care of my MIL as she was dying of cancer. It wasn't an easy process. I had a particularly bad early AM, I had been crying and showed up to work kind of haggard looking, and one of my co-workers, a guy from the Philippines looked at me and said "I guess there's hope for Americans yet". I guess he thought Americans were too individualistic, too selfish, to tend to family. Taking responsibility for your family, or a friend, is hard. OTOH, if we don't, we wind up where we are now: most people have one or two friends, real friends - people they can count on in a jam. That's it. And the poorer you are, the fewer friends you have.

I don't think money creates friends, I think isolation creates poverty.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Looking after family was what I was taught and it is hard. But those people around my mum just didn't get it. So basically I ignored them.

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Good for you.

The problem is everybody else.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Reading this thread for the past day or 2, I was thinking about Indigenous attitudes.

For legal immigrants, they would strive to integrate into the colonies, USA. They wanted to blend in, meld into the melting pot of USA.
Natives did not want to integrate with the invading white man - why would they? And they resisted.

These attitudes are opposite each other.
One group wanted to retain their culture, while the other wanted to start anew in a new land, and was more willing to leave their culture behind.

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Good for you.

The problem is everybody else.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

---

Yup and that type of thing was another bit of advice from my dad.

My mum one time was talking to a lady one time and as ladies do she mentioned my dad was part Indian. This lady drug as many stereotypes out that she could. Main ones being was he a drunk and was he abusive. My mum of course said no and when she got back to me. I had to talk her out of her upset. That her comments were her problem and not ours. WE knew what a good and caring man my dad was. He never harmed any of his family and nor did he drink to excess. "Date night" for them and he had maybe one beer.

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