Maybe not “zoo animals” but often times people from different classes find it difficult to relate to each other. They often find each other’s mannarisms and behaviors uncouth, bizarre or pretentious.
Well… I guess that would depend on the kind of lady a man likes.
If you are a very free minded, independant, adventurous man that plays by your own rules and values things like a good laugh, a great book and a cool song and a sweet glass of wine over things like a manicured lawn, a big house and a two car garage; you may attract the kind of woman on a similar path.
Also…I often hear people saying ‘when you get older, you’ll regret partying your youth away’, but I always figure you got two halves of life… the youth and the post-youth. Some folks want to pad their post youth, so they sacrifice a lot in their youth…great.
Some folks prefer to make their sacrifices later, and use their youth to ‘live it up’…is that wrong?
As someone that has chosen to make some…unconventional life choices, I can tell you, it doesn’t mean that the person hasn’t thought deeply about the ‘consequences’ of their choices. I know that my old age may very well be a rough ride…I have made some choices to protect me at a minimum, but if worst comes to worst, I could very well find myself in a seedy-ass nursing home.
That’s a pretty immature and short-sighted attitude. People sacrifice in their youth (and even still, many manage to find time to party) so by the time they reach “post youth” or what we call “adulthood”, they can live a self sustaining and fullfilling life. What are you really sacrificing anyway? Drinking cases of Naty Light and doing bong hits with a bunch of half-wit retards? Is that what you want to be doing when you’re 30? 40? 50? How much partying can you do with no money? Who are you going to party with once everyone has grown up and moved on?
It isn’t a question of right or wrong.
The problem here is that working at a crappy joe-job so one can smoke pot every day and do the same past-times over and over again looks, as time goes by, less and less like “partying” and less and less “adventurous” and more and more like ‘becomming stuck in a rut’, ‘clinging hopelessly to the past’, ‘lonely, isolated stagnation’ and ‘afraid to do anything new’.
I have no qualms about someone who decides that a life of creative poverty is more worthy than a life of middle-class domesticity. I emphasize here the word “creative”. Or taking adventurous risks, or devoting their lives to social work. All cases in which someone has a goal they find more worthy, and more fulfilling.
The folks whom I am thinking of are not easily described by such words. Words like “stagnant” and “repetitive” better describe their activities.
I myself used to smoke lotsa pot, and I never thought it was particularly harmful or addictive - however, looking around at what became of some of my friends, I now realize it can have an insidious effect: its use appears to make stagnation all the more likely. An eternal round of pot-smoking, crappy jobs (that one can do while sorta high), listening over and over again to the same old music, playing the same old games … while less and less friends are willing to take the time to do the same.
I certainly don’t think my friends, the ones whom I have seen in this mode, are morally inferior: what I am, is sorry for them. It is like they decided at some point to stop growing and stop experiencing new things. They have sacrificed everything for the pleasure of living as they do, and the older they get the more even this is denied to them.
What is missing from the story is that, at the end of the day, the fisherman goes home to his tar-paper shack without any fish dinner for his kids, who are illiterate and riddled with disease. Soon, even the doubtful comfort of the shack will be denied them, when the Businessman’s hired goons engage in “slum clearance” to make way for a new five-star resort, to be called “Ye Olde Fisherman’s Relaxing Inn and Spa”.
It will have a great view of the beach. 
Malthus, I take your points above. I know quite a few stoner types that have fallen into the kind of thing you describe. I know a few non-stoner types that have, also. But I think they are quite different than the kind of guy fluiddruid describes.
One guy I know lives in rented rooms here and there as he survives off sketches he makes of people on the street. He considers himself a philosopher and an artist, he smokes weed every day, and he really does appear to me at least, to be one of the smartest and happiest people I know. He’s gotta be pushing 40 by now.
I dunno. Fluiddruid was talking about a guy who works crappy jobs to smoke pot, eat junk food, play computer games, and collect Magic: the Gathering cards. That sounds like ‘stagnation’ to me, and very similar to some of my friends, but of course, all I have to go by is the description.
Is he actually an artist and philosopher, or does he just consider himself one? To my mind, for a goal to be meaningful, it ought to have at least some objective substance to it. People playing WoW can consider themselves as having great adventures, but that isn’t the same as a person who actually goes on real-life adventures. Selling sketches on the street is more of a craft than an art, really no different than (and considerably less rewarding than) selling handmade purses or the like. Not that there is anything wrong with that of course, but then, I don’t think there is anything “wrong” with (say) selling insurance.
I myself used to work in the family sculpture business, and I had my own studeo for awhile, but I left it when I realized that to make it pay you had to design stuff that would sell and not take too long to make - in short, that it was no different from selling any other sort of widget. The real artistry cost too much time, no-one was willing to pay the sort of prices necessary - until you built up a reputation through years of work widget-making, or unless you had skill in self-promotion (again, no different from any other form of advertising).
Smoking weed is neither here nor there, though doing so every day isn’t a good thing; engaging in any substance too repetitively isn’t good, being high (or drunk) just becomes the new normal.
:eek: I think I bought a sketch from him once!
Dread locks? Dirty backpack? No shirt on in the summertime, body like a god? That’s him!
It was winter, but he did have dreadlocks and was carrying around a dirty backpack.
I wonder what I did with that sketch…
Yeah, it sounds like he’s really pushing the boundaries of his intellect.
I don’t know if I would say that, but maybe my idea of smart is very different than your’s. Some people have spent a lot of time seeking truth and understanding, reading and learning maths and science…and just knowing and understanding a lot of things that I could never hope to grasp (especially the math part)…so to me, yeah, he was pretty smart. On your scale, where all smart people push the boundaries of their intellect, he may be just a simple moron.
Was it this guy?
Cat Fight, the funniest part of that video is how accurate it is. Seriously, he hits so much of the Rastafarian language and culture and ideas on the nose. To hear him say it in such a white boy voice is cracking me up.
Newsflash: Different people value different things.
You guys sound like my good Chinese friend, who grills me every day on why I would choose my lifestyle. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I see myself as living a life of adventure, learning and giving. She just sees that I don’t have a husband or much money and feels like I have wasted my entire youth. And of course from my point of view, I think she has wasted her young years chasing men based on their bank accounts and getting herself stuck in a boring job in a small town.
Neither one of us are wrong. I’m sure she is joyful when she wakes up in her nice apartment next to her husband knowing she has a secure future. And I’m joyful when I wake up full of ideas and ready to set off into the unknown. Furthermore, I’m sure both of us looks wistfully at the other side now and then. But, different strokes for different folks and all that.
I don’t think anywone would deny that different folks have different values, and that different choices may be equally good. Certainly, I can see living a life of “adventure, learning and giving” as being fully the equal, or even better than, of establishing a working life and a household.
But that’s not what we were talking about.
The question is whether a life of pot smoking, eating junk food, and playing computer games is the equal of either “living a life of adventure, learning and giving” or “establishing a household/hard work”.
The fact that there are different choices which may be equally good does not mean that all choices are equally good. To my mind, the reason a life of pot smoking etc. is not equally good is that it appears wholly stagnant, lacking exactly the sort of adventure, purpose, self-respect and fulfilment of duties towards self and others that other lifestyle choices offer.
I tend to go with the traditional definition of smart - bright, witty, good cognitive and reasoning skills. That sort of stuff.
I wouldn’t say everyone in my world is necessarily pushing the boundaries of their intellect. This ain’t no NASA spacewalk shit we’re doing here. Some are smart, but actually many of them seem almost dimwitted. I would say that most of them are “smart enough” and seem to put the bulk of their intellect and energies into conforming to the status quo and doing what they are told.
It’s sort of like one of the HR people calling me at 3 in the afternoon and telling me that I might be on an urgent project in a city an hour flight away but providing me no details or even confirming that I am, in fact, working on the project. I don’t know how “smart” this person is. But she apparently has an aptitude for mindlessing following the directions of his higher-ups (presumably a Partner) and parroting the commands given to her.
Then again, that’s why I’m paid a ton of money to fly into a company and fix whatever their problem is while she is paid less to essentially act as a dispatcher.
This part sounds like a Dilbert comic.
I think we’ve fallen into conflating a couple of different things in this thread.
Rich people like to go slumming, (except the movie kind), because it’s easy to find themselves surrounded by people who think they’re ‘all that’ because they are rich, successful or powerful. Think, for a moment, how wearing that would be. Who wouldn’t want to escape to a place where people spoke truthfully to you, and could care about your ‘accomplishments’, whatever they may be? Especially in America where success brings a certain amount of celebrity. Wouldn’t you want to slip away from yes men and suckups, eventually? I think it would be refreshing to mix with real people, willing to bump into you and tell you when you suck.
Underachieving offspring of overachieving parents are a whole different kettle of fish. I went to school with a fair number of these types. The parents were wealthy, dynasty builders, driven achievers. That meant that the children, who lacked for nothing material, growing up, largely felt displaced and of lesser importance than the dynasty building. That brought them to a world view that disdained pursuit of material possessions over relationships. This left their parents totally baffled. But, in fact, they were willing to live in poverty rather than work 14 hrs a day away from their families. The parents simply didn’t make the work/benefit ratio seem all that attractive, to the kids. Yes, they had every material thing, but not the thing they wanted the most, contact to feel like they were more important that the dynasty, whatever it’s shape.
There was a time when my husband and myself we seen as poster children for never growing up. We worked low level jobs, which we frequently quit to go off and see the world for months at a time. We were more interested in collecting experiences that things. We had no children, no credit cards, no mortgage. We were happy with our choices, and often more ‘successful’ persons confided in us that they wished they could do what we were doing. People chose to see us as being incapable of anything else. Obviously we couldn’t commit, we couldn’t handle structure, and were just a couple of immature adults. And you might have gotten us to grudgingly agree with some of that assessment.
Turns out everyone was wrong. When his Mom had a stroke, that left her entirely bedridden and paralyzed, we bought a house and took on caregiving and a far more structured life. Yeah, it was a departure, and a hard transition, but we did it, for 6 yrs. Our friends were astounded, truly awed, by the shift in our circumstances, which said a lot about how they saw us, prior to this. They still comment on how odd they find it that we ended up with a house and a mortgage, etc.
Motivation can change everything.