Me neither, just commenting on the general disparity between other western countries and the US in most of issues that concern some sort of a moral choice. I have to assume at some point they were equally leaning towards (at least a decoy of a semblance of) common good, as it (as fragile and grayscale as it is) has generally been in the developed west outside of US. Not saying it’s perfect anywhere, but I think we do have to concede that things are, and have been, way more weird and concerning in the US in the past 30 years. Maybe more, but that’s what I have experience with and insight into.

But I believe people can have empathy outside of own experiences. All it takes is some tendency towards curiosity and enough imagination to actually be able to make sense of something as abstract as assuming someone else’s point of view. And empathy besides, which is a little bit of a harder concept and probably requires some inherent traits acquired at birth(?), compassion certainly should be possible for anyone. You can rationally realize others’ troubles without understanding it completely. That just requires caring past one’s own self.

It would of course benefit them if they had the experience. I’ve often, when speaking of such hard and heavy topics, gone on a similar tangent. Perspective, at the end of the day, is the thing everyone ought to have. Experiencing the things yourself is one way, but I think just reading about others struggles and thoughts is a great way to gain that as well. If someone lacks any and all traits required to care about others, then I suppose the perspective evades them until they experience it themselves (this is so common in right-wing politics (doesn’t even have to be far right, even very liberal right falls for this constantly!) even in extremely progressive countries such as mine), but I have to believe there are other ways.

This often comes up with depression and anxiety and outside of the more serious things, just general bad mindsets. A lot of people are having a hard time adjusting to the world as it is today, and that’s so understandable. But when people wonder why Im seemingly able to find light, joy and happiness, hope even, while being generally aware of all this, I don’t really know what else to say, other than tell them I spent several years on the edge of suicide, fighting against these things that were driving me down the ledge. Without going to the specifics, I just always try to give them the understanding that the perspective gained from that, surviving it, finding the way forward, it just helps navigating the struggles to find a little bit of light in everything. But was I somehow less empathetic to the people going through clinical depression before I did myself? No. I was fully aware how horrifying and desperate it can get, I just didn’t really know how it felt, but I was able to imagine a lot of it. And a lot of people, I’ve found, are the same. Most of them, even, though that’s just anecdotal. Maybe people like that tend to herd towards others like that, dunno.

But as sad as it is, it’s so common to see the less empathetic or compassionate people drive hard for certain policies, until the policy kicks them in their own knees via their family or friends or whatever, and suddenly they drive against it. It didn’t matter that someone was suffering from it. It had to be someone they knew, before that suffering mattered. As with e.g the depression, a public figure can be a strong opponent of mental health and just promoting the most awkward stuff like not being stressed by eating an apple and going for a jog or whatever. While those too have merits in general, thats just not even close to answering a lot of the cases where that simply isn’t enough, or even possible, or even good at all. Calling everyone soft and losers with no spine. Then when their own child gets diagnosed after a long while of publicly calling even them, their own blood, losers in need of strong leaders and happy thoughts, suddenly it’s a real thing and mental health is an actual concept that isn’t just hippies feeling down or whatever.

Anyway, don’t know where I’m going with this. I agree with you, but I guess I had some words wanting to get out of my head along similar lines.

You’d like to think some sort of empathy, compassion and solidarity at the very least.

But I guess those are traits the US has very effectively diminished from generation to generation.

It’s surprisingly easy and comfortable. Steam controller was a revolution on this regard, at least for me. It sounds wrong but feels just right.

And one with average hours played per player

That is actually a very good question. I think she simply has faith that things will work out for us, irregardless of how we might view the world in this precise moment. I’m not very knowledgeable about religion, so I had to look that term up, and I don’t honestly know. Somehow this has never come up. I can ask her later, but my initial thinking is she probably simply believes in some plan that god has, and that her god is good. She is Evangelical-Lutheran, if that matters; I simply don’t know enough if the different flavors of Christianity view these things in specific, different ways. She doesn’t force any of this on me, which shows, I now realize…

I think the main thing I might have problems conveying is I don’t see it as a binary. Neither is she. It’s not that they either get a religious upbringing or one without religion. There’s plenty of scale between the two ends and I don’t really feel any reason to try and go either way too deeply. Or restrict it to any one religion or philosophy. There can be many religions and different flavors of void of religions. Kids have a lot of questions and it’s fairly fun to describe the world to them, and that is never going to work just from one point of view. The world is vast and filled with many cultures and ways of perceiving the world and humanity, and it’d be a disservice to them if we tried to do black and white there; on or off. I think we can only so our best to give as honest a view of the world we can, with all it’s colors and shades of gray, and hope that some of it gives heureka moments or some illumination at least. It’s never possible to give an objective account or be detailed with all the different aspects and layers and whatnot, since at least me myself; I’m really not that smart honestly. All I can offer is my very best and hope it gives tools to process and understand this world. It probably won’t, as none of it did for me, probably not for anyone, but it’d be worse if we didn’t even attempt and just went with the current norms and limited, culturally claustrophobic takes that’d only serve to unknowingly shoving them down a singular pipeline that’ll only lead to identity problems later down the line.

Right, so I’m not the biological father and as such have to consider the father’s side as well, but we are not really doing anything highly religious and defer education on different religions (and atheism, agnosticism) to the school system, which is neutral and goes education and variety first as a baseline. When they are older, they can find their own path. I suppose they might want to participate in the main religion’s confirmation stuff because most kids do, even if not in the (or any) church, since it’s something of a tradition, but that’s their decision; they’ll be old enough at that point.

We’ve talked about how we’d get married (or something alternative with similar purpose) and how we’d raise our biological kid if or when we have them, and it’s practically the same as how our school-age kid has been brought up. In regards to marriage, despite them being a priest and a theologian with master’s degree, the current idea is to do a secular gathering for the actual social side of things, no priests, no holy word of any variety, but we’ll get a blessing in private with only the very closest ones, no church. I suppose this is what most do anyway. Personally I am not going to participate in any prayers or do any holy vows, but I’ll of course be present there for her and take the blessing together and whatever they’d want in addition, as long as I don’t have to swear to any books or gods. This is hard to put into words without me sounding arrogant or dismissive of the religion, but it’s a compromise that we’ve ended up with. The blessing is important for her, and for me, I just want to dance in the woods and eat well, share the bounty and happiness with friends. So we do both.

With a kid it’d be the same. There’s already plenty of good education coming from our school system, and we’ve of course agreed not to make any decision for the kid before they are of age and capable of making their mind properly. And even then well not force anything on them. But on the other hand if they want to do some before-bed prayers, we’ll of course deliver. It’s something of a habit for the school-aged kid, and I always respectfully participate without binding my fingers or doing the actual amens or the like, but I find it cute and commendable that they wish so much good on everyone and want to make a point to form them into words, speak them out loud, even though I might question the medium.

But it’s all just compromises and honestly, this never seemed like something that’d bring friction. For us, at least. Maybe it’s different to others, but we just try to stay open and available to them, and each other, and avoid forcing anything on them, or each other. I really don’t know how to put it into words, but it just seems natural and comes itself.

Just to add a view from someone living in a progressive-ish country:

Religion and differences of religion have never played a big part in my relations with anyone, nor am I aware it has affected anyone else towards me. There are very few fundamentalists here, so nobody seems to care all that much what you believe or don’t believe.

It’s strange that someone would worry about this. I’m agnostic rather than atheist, but most of my family are very deeply into religion. And my partner is priest by profession. Never has that played a role in our relations, and we do very openly talk about all this occasionally too. They are not trying to convert me, and I’m not trying to convert them. And if nobody wants to convert anyone, there’s very little friction. All it takes is some understanding and empathy, and probably the humility to accept that any of us might be wrong, even one themselves. So nobody’s preaching to anyone, yet we can talk about these things very smoothly and openly if need be, like in regards to children and upbringing etc.

Disagreeing is healthy. Talking is healthy. Getting offended is not. Neither is trying to force anyone into anything, or even worse, unwarrantedly expecting something from someone.

So religion has played exactly zero part in this or anything else at least in my personal relations, or those who I know. I don’t think religion has anything to do with children either. Upbringing can be colorful and include everyone’s opinions and views, and the unique stuff just requires some open conversation and compromises from all parties, which is true for everything in life anyway.

This is my exact experience too. The deck sort of forces the tumbsticks on me, though I’d much prefer the touchpads from original controller. The square ones just aren’t placed well for my hands, and don’t feel natural to me. But then again I’ve had the controller from launch, gotten used to it.

Just wanted to recommend Luanti (formerly Minetest). Got the whole family playing at the same time eventually, and so I spun a server we can always join individually or together. It’s been really fun, didn’t think I’d like the genre, but it’s pretty zen when it needs to be, yet can have action and exploration too. Especially when trying to watch over and guard the little ones that get a little panicky at times and don’t have the best eye-hand coordination with a keyboard and a touchpad.

As far as I’m aware, most of the “dangerous” lua api (io/network etc) is blocked and only available to mods during the startup phase, and not otherwise during runtime.

But I’m sure there are workarounds. For one, I’ve written mods with rust for it, and you can require and then call any dynamic library through lua, with all of the io and networking you’d want, as long as it is brought in during the init phase. And the mods that do access the “dangerous” api, have to be explicitly given rights to do so (but again, by the server, not the clients) in the config before it works.

It’s not that bad for the most cases, as long as you trust the server. If playing single player, you personally control which mods get the secure environment access, so at that point it’s entirely your own fault, if you get exploited.

I can’t see the benefit, what am I missing?

I would assume that since this whole thing is more or less a result of left-ish policy, and the opponent in the scenario is the far-right platform formerly known as Twitter, lead by the aspiring far-right icon Musk, the right-wingers would more likely opt to complain, cry several rivers and eventually turn to alternatives catered specifically for them (not even sure which ones are still alive after former tweetyplace took the crown) instead.

Haven’t done a vibe check on bluesky, but I assume it almost has to be more tolerant and potentially more progressive-ish than the old nazibirdhouse. If you lean towards the far right, why choose that, if alternatives exist?

And even if not, that seems just inflammatory and way more easily harnessed for huge propaganda wins for Putin & co, as opposed to suffocating like hitting refineries, airfields or other similarly painful and impactful but also further-from-the-everyday-people’s-minds-and-eyes targets.

I’m boosting this and the screenshots too, but just thought I’d point out for quick scrollers that it does not seem as dramatic as this comment initially lets you believe.

I mean it’s awkward, but just seems more like your usual social awkwardness/incompetence than malicious behavior as such.

Sure. But it might be useful for someone to know this before dedicating time responding genuinely. If it’s still irrelevant, great. If it might change someone’s mind about spending their time, then also great.

Only giving context here. Might be relevant to some.

My reading comprehension is just fine, your lack of capability to understand context and tendency to deal in absolutes and binaries in a world made of wide spectrums, shades of gray and unpredictability, on the other hand, does not seem to pass the smell test.

Either you argue in bad faith, are intentionally a shifting contrarian or just not competent enough to either understand the world or at the very least discuss it with others in a way that makes sense.

Just to throw my two cents in: This user isn’t a genuinely curious ponderer, rather they are a Russian troll trying to fish for arguments they could further use in bad faith to lick Putin’s boot.

Just read through their comment history and make your own mind. This is not genuine and most everyone is just feeding the troll.

The question itself is worth asking though. A lot of good points here, but they’d be better given in good faith for someone genuine.

Yours is a somewhat more cynical way of writing it down, but the underlying mindset is one I share.

I prefer to see it as not expecting anything from anyone, rather than expecting them to disappoint you. It’s basically the same, but doesn’t feel as cynical.

It truly changes your life though, no matter how you see it. I can’t remember myself having been, in real life, angry or disappointed in people in great many years. Life is just so much better without those feelings, which seems obvious, but you can’t really emphasis that enough still.

It took me years of self-reflecting and “finding myself” in the process of overcoming a years-long bout of clinical depression. It’s not easy, but I do believe everyone can find that mindset, given enough effort and perseverance. Sisu.

Really feel like they’ve employed a PR firm with real touch to the grass. Lately it’s been just a lot of really sensible stuff they signal outwards, that I think not many would oppose, other than predatory capitalistic structures and institutions. It’s really refreshing. Big thumbs up!