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Misc. comments 43
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Someone was thinking out loud about her values, and in between listing some things she values, said of "Health" that it was something she "ought to" value but doesn't, in that she doesn't really care. The rest of that paragraph was talking about health in terms of longevity, and the common ideas that if someone valued health they would exercise a lot and eat a boring, low-fat diet with lots of vegetables. I wrote:
Your entry on health suggests that you might want to think about what health means to you.That is, what aspects of being healthy do you care about? Longevity clearly isn't what you value, but do you care about mobility? About ability to continue doing certain ordinary activities comfortably, or at all? Do you daydream about hiking the Himalayas? Given that you've listed intelligence as a value, keeping an eye on your blood pressure, to reduce the risk of stroke, is probably more important than trying to prevent heart attack or cancer. (I have no idea what your baseline risks are on any of those, of course.) Conversely, what interventions do you find tolerable? For example, would the mere idea of having to take a pill twice a day forever deter you, regardless of side effects?
From a discussion in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm's journal, that included clueless-to-obnoxious behavior at Lunacon, including demands that people smile:
I'm thinking of saying "Fifty dollars, please" to the next stranger who tells me to smile. They're asking me for a personal service, I'm going to charge them for it. (And I would smile at having an extra fifty dollars.)
marykaykare was talking about being an outsider to communities, and feeling rejected by groups she had felt she was part of. johnpalmer said, I think, some good things about what being a valued member of a community does and doesn't mean. I wrote:
I think John is right that there are few or no people, in most communities, who cannot be rejected by enough participants that it will hurt them, or genuinely exclude them from something important. That is, just about anyone can be rejected for real, in ways ranging from an active "we don't want her" through "if we invite him, his ex won't show up, and we want him more" to simply forgetting about someone. Not that the other stuff, like an invitation sent to a no-longer-active address (electronic or physical) or someone making difficult choices because the space won't hold as many people as they'd like to see, doesn't hurt, but that the difference does matter.
[It appears John and I misunderstood Mary Kay's situation, but the above seems worth keeping.]
From a long comment thread onjames_nicoll's journal, which includes discussions of when, whether, and in what ways it's reasonable to treat strangers as potentially dangerous:
I think that you may also be projecting a bit--assuming that women are assuming you, or all men, or some large subset of men, to be guilty until proven innocent, when what's actually going on in many cases is that we don't care about most strange men, or strange women, or strange people of neither major gender, so long as they don't actively impinge on us. To a first approximation, two non-creepy strangers on a commuter bus or train are unlikely to interact unless something goes wrong. Likely a small something: "excuse me, you dropped your glove" or "doesn't this train go to Brooklyn?"
As it happens, I think I get a larger-than-average share of the "Doesn't this train go to Brooklyn?" sort of questions, and I'm happy to answer them. I suspect those are connected facts: I am often happy to answer that sort of impersonal question, so if I'm not actively reading or writing, I may well have an open expression. But that's me indulging my pleasure in sharing information, in a way that doesn't bother anyone and helps some: I'm not intruding to tell strangers about the wonders of my favorite novelist, or factoring quadratics, or my political opinions, or to talk about my health or other problems.
I also have a long-established confidence in my own safety on public transit, and that too is partly a positive feedback loop. Someone without that may be more alert or wary, not because s/he thinks most men are creeps until proven otherwise, but because it only takes one pickpocket to ruin your day, and a crowded transit system contains a lot of strangers who s/he cannot be absolutely certain are honest. (Neither can I, but I'm playing the odds in a different sense: even most of those who aren't honest are going to be embezzling from their bosses, or cheating the IRS or the people they sit down at a poker table with, rather than risking anything even as confrontational as slipping a hand in a stranger's bag. And most of the rest will be looking for someone who doesn't seem confident and situationally aware.)
And this is a comment toelisem:
If the other people are adults, they share the responsibility for remembering that they need to eat.
That is, if I tell someone two or three times "I need to get food now" and they keep putting it off, in a context where it's difficult or impossible for me to just get up and get a sandwich/apple/big plate of noodles/taxi to a restaurant, the other person bears responsibility. If I don't bother to mention that hey, I didn't have lunch today, it's not other people's job to be aware of that. (Yes, my partners keep an eye out for whether I've had breakfast: that's relationship-specific and a thing I am grateful for, not something that everyone in the world should do.)
Someone was thinking out loud about her values, and in between listing some things she values, said of "Health" that it was something she "ought to" value but doesn't, in that she doesn't really care. The rest of that paragraph was talking about health in terms of longevity, and the common ideas that if someone valued health they would exercise a lot and eat a boring, low-fat diet with lots of vegetables. I wrote:
Your entry on health suggests that you might want to think about what health means to you.That is, what aspects of being healthy do you care about? Longevity clearly isn't what you value, but do you care about mobility? About ability to continue doing certain ordinary activities comfortably, or at all? Do you daydream about hiking the Himalayas? Given that you've listed intelligence as a value, keeping an eye on your blood pressure, to reduce the risk of stroke, is probably more important than trying to prevent heart attack or cancer. (I have no idea what your baseline risks are on any of those, of course.) Conversely, what interventions do you find tolerable? For example, would the mere idea of having to take a pill twice a day forever deter you, regardless of side effects?
From a discussion in
rm's journal, that included clueless-to-obnoxious behavior at Lunacon, including demands that people smile:I'm thinking of saying "Fifty dollars, please" to the next stranger who tells me to smile. They're asking me for a personal service, I'm going to charge them for it. (And I would smile at having an extra fifty dollars.)
marykaykare was talking about being an outsider to communities, and feeling rejected by groups she had felt she was part of. johnpalmer said, I think, some good things about what being a valued member of a community does and doesn't mean. I wrote:I think John is right that there are few or no people, in most communities, who cannot be rejected by enough participants that it will hurt them, or genuinely exclude them from something important. That is, just about anyone can be rejected for real, in ways ranging from an active "we don't want her" through "if we invite him, his ex won't show up, and we want him more" to simply forgetting about someone. Not that the other stuff, like an invitation sent to a no-longer-active address (electronic or physical) or someone making difficult choices because the space won't hold as many people as they'd like to see, doesn't hurt, but that the difference does matter.
[It appears John and I misunderstood Mary Kay's situation, but the above seems worth keeping.]
From a long comment thread on
james_nicoll's journal, which includes discussions of when, whether, and in what ways it's reasonable to treat strangers as potentially dangerous:I think that you may also be projecting a bit--assuming that women are assuming you, or all men, or some large subset of men, to be guilty until proven innocent, when what's actually going on in many cases is that we don't care about most strange men, or strange women, or strange people of neither major gender, so long as they don't actively impinge on us. To a first approximation, two non-creepy strangers on a commuter bus or train are unlikely to interact unless something goes wrong. Likely a small something: "excuse me, you dropped your glove" or "doesn't this train go to Brooklyn?"
As it happens, I think I get a larger-than-average share of the "Doesn't this train go to Brooklyn?" sort of questions, and I'm happy to answer them. I suspect those are connected facts: I am often happy to answer that sort of impersonal question, so if I'm not actively reading or writing, I may well have an open expression. But that's me indulging my pleasure in sharing information, in a way that doesn't bother anyone and helps some: I'm not intruding to tell strangers about the wonders of my favorite novelist, or factoring quadratics, or my political opinions, or to talk about my health or other problems.
I also have a long-established confidence in my own safety on public transit, and that too is partly a positive feedback loop. Someone without that may be more alert or wary, not because s/he thinks most men are creeps until proven otherwise, but because it only takes one pickpocket to ruin your day, and a crowded transit system contains a lot of strangers who s/he cannot be absolutely certain are honest. (Neither can I, but I'm playing the odds in a different sense: even most of those who aren't honest are going to be embezzling from their bosses, or cheating the IRS or the people they sit down at a poker table with, rather than risking anything even as confrontational as slipping a hand in a stranger's bag. And most of the rest will be looking for someone who doesn't seem confident and situationally aware.)
And this is a comment to
elisem:If the other people are adults, they share the responsibility for remembering that they need to eat.
That is, if I tell someone two or three times "I need to get food now" and they keep putting it off, in a context where it's difficult or impossible for me to just get up and get a sandwich/apple/big plate of noodles/taxi to a restaurant, the other person bears responsibility. If I don't bother to mention that hey, I didn't have lunch today, it's not other people's job to be aware of that. (Yes, my partners keep an eye out for whether I've had breakfast: that's relationship-specific and a thing I am grateful for, not something that everyone in the world should do.)