Where did our resolve go?

Well thats all about context isnt it?

If the worst thing to happen in your life so far is dropping your phone in the toilet, you will be working on a different acale to someone who had their parents gassed in Syria.

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That’s exactly my point. I think. :laughing:

Survivor Bias.

There’s also much less Alcoholism, domestic violence, suicide, and other ways of “coping” with adversity. Basically I don’t accept your hypothesis that resillience has changed, even if the “coping” method of talking about it on social media has.

I think your point is that everyone should have the same context, but mine is that they can’t…

Millenials might view my low points as beyond the pale, you might view them a reasonably bad, but the Syrian orphan would still think you and I are Prima donnas.

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You are free to accept it or not, the same way I’m free to express it.

No. My point is that everyone has SOME context that lives in between the two ends of your example spectrum.

I think people have different levels of resilience at different times in their life. Being kind is more likely to help them than judging. Maybe someone is ranting about something seemingly minor as other parts of their life feel like their falling apart. So the response to a minor setback is looks like out of proportion because you don’t know what else is going on.

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FatPom

I am going to answer this in two parts.

  1. Like you I have also had a challenging life on many fronts. I as a child walked my way out of it, through university and PW(nowC). Then things got real poopy again, and I have struggled to walk myself out of a second time. But along the way I have achieved some quite unexpected things and helped people globally in unexpected ways. So it’s not all failure.

Now, with my mathematical 3.5 years left, I reflect that I have done enough, made a bit of a difference to myself, some of my family, and some strangers who at times have bewildered me when thanking me for helping them in ways I hadn’t realised. So when Mother Nature decides that’s it, that’s fine with me.

I may have failed on the obesity front, but beyond that my willpower to do stuff has been noted by others, including through very difficult decades. In my 55 years I probably only had literally a couple of good years, the rest were immensely difficult.

My point, whether educating myself, triathlon, language learning, caring for people with mental issues, being so skint there was little food etc etc,I just plodded on. In a bumbling and stumbling way I give you, but I just plodded on.

It’s an internal drive.

I still have it, but short of getting very rich fast (to enable), I have had enough and am happy to let Mother Nature and Father Time do their inevitable thing. After all not long ago it was 5 years, now it’s 3.5. And being in the extremely vulnerable group due to a blood cancer, it could be next week, 3.5 years, or if I am lucky longer.

  1. Not everyone has that internal drive. You can debate the reasons for it, education, parenting, whatever, but the simple reality is that we are all different. Add to that the unbalancing from jobs for life to zero hour contacts in my own lifetime; the relative ease of younger generations re exam standards and money and technology, etc, etc, and it’s not hard to see how many don’t have that inner drive.

Now add to that the double standards between politicians words and actions; people being mentally fried by eg having to take work phone to the beach; the crumbling of institutions that once aided resolve, eg faith or freemasonry; etc etc and it makes a bit more sense.

A very pertinent example is Cummings, after his ‘sight test’ et all, how many felt what’s the point one rule for them and one for us? This stuff matters. People have lost faith in institutions, whether their employer, their church, the government etc. It’s terribly sad.

I could get all esoteric and say, people’s energies are drained and they need to recharge. Perhaps the current mess will help enable this, but not on the current universal credit with heavy sanctions/homelessness/food banks etc. And the sad reality is that, like in all recessions, many will never work again. Not because they are lazy but because life moves on around them.

For resolve to strengthen we need to cultivate a supportive enabling society again. We have dismantled that over the last decade(s). And that will take wise leadership from the top all the way down through civil institutions and employers. That will create the necessary space for healing and enablement. From that resolve should blossom.

But until we lose our addiction to money, power, etc it ain’t going to happen.

But again what the heck do I know.

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the last generation or so grew up in the most prosperous time the planet has ever experienced…they were told from day one how good they are and taught that life was about happiness not achievement…when they realise that life is actually a struggle, they have to both comprehend how to deal with that with poorly developed coping strategies as well as come to terms with the fact that they have failed if they are unhappy…

I don’t think social media helps things either and seeing these influencers etc. on Insta and the likes living their best life!

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This happens a lot.

And Im afraid the “kids these days dont theyre born” refrain has been going on longer than anyone here has been alive.

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FFS, where did I fucking say that?

Well FWIW in Sapiens (I can’t remember which of the three, they are all outstanding,) after lengthy discussions on the state of the world and how it might change, Harari suggests the one thing you can teach your children is resilience.

Essentially the world is changing too fast and in unknown ways, so skills and knowledge could quite easily be redundant - perhaps several times over in a lifetime - so the only constant is change and being able to deal with it and adapt.

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