Letters to the Editor
firefly82
Published Letters: 288 Editor's Choice: 30
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Brilliant, Cary
[Read the article: Are men spoiled rotten?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary, I vote that your altered circumstances are good for the column, at least today.
I can't stand being told anymore that "it'll happen when you're least expecting it," so I won't say it to you, LW, but here's the other side of that coin:
When optimism means to continue to hope for or seek something whose likelihood is not supported by all of your well-examined empirical evidence, it is either delusion or self-deceit.
Optimism is oversold as a marker of mental health and happiness. Work on building a life that will sustain you, and that the right person, if he stumbles along, would be happy to share.
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Infantilization of 25 year old brains
[Read the article: How can I help my friend get over losing his girlfriend?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cosmic Mojo and Czarina are completely right about the research and comprehensive in their citations...but I'd like to suggest a crucial caveat:
American culture, notoriously (and tragically in my opinion) doesn't really encourage critical thinking and long-range outlook skills in young people. I think the lack of maturity that's average to most people that age has A LOT to do with what's expected and required of them.
How do you expect neural connections to develop if the brain in question never has to er, develop them? It's like saying studies have shown that the neural connections required for water-skiing don't generally develop until...a person has at least some marginal experience with water-skiing.
There was a time, not really so long ago, when it was nothing so strange for 17-year-olds to be married with children and entirely self-supporting. Or running countries or armies. Already graduated from college. Taking over the family business. What young people are capable of has A LOT to do with what their culture expects of them and gives them opportunities to do.
I don't think one has to go around asking for MRI's of potential partners, but to be ever-conscious of whether a person's outlook and level of self-sufficiency are what you'd RESPECT in a partner.
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For all future acquaintances...
[Read the article: I was betrayed by people I trusted]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Lovingly cultivate your bullshit detector. I'm sorry you were taken in by those snotty scumbags--it's happened to me.
And let your Facebook account lapse. It's not often comforting to realize just how unimportant you are in the grand scheme, but it might be in this case: everybody in the world is NOT going to be looking you up on Facebook forever.
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"Come on, people, fight. Have you forgotten how?"
[Read the article: The collapse of Karl Rove]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think, Jim H, that the sad answer is "Yes."
"As I said previously, the trouble with this administration is that they make paranoia seem reasonable."
And I think that this observation from Rich Miles goes hand in hand with the above. Yes, there are so many people who really believe(d) that Saddam Hussein, bin Laden, and/or the Iraqi insurgents are such a threat to our way of life (isolated, ignorant of real danger, and materially comfortable) that ANY action is justifiable to accomplish whatever our president says is necessary to overcome them. We as a populace, I think, HAVE forgotten what the formerly self-evident truths and creator-endowed rights are that actually define(d) our way of life, and were once widely considered worth dying for.
It's just another form of fundamentalism to complement their theological one. A lot of real, otherwise rational citizens hold it very dear. Karl Rove is no greater danger than they are.
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Corporate culture
[Read the article: Delinquent dads]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cosmic Mojo said it.
It sounds to me like the author is presuming things about CEO's personal lives and families about which she has no particular real information. But I do really resent the extent to which being an attentive parent and having an upwardly mobile career are presented as mutually exclusive options in our culture generally.
No, of course we don't want corporate boards deciding what is or is not good parenting, but currently what they decide is that career "success" must take priority over family commitment. As it is, the sheer hours per week of devotion they demand IS mutually exclusive with attentive parenting, for CEO's of either sex. Men as well as women need to start pushing for workplace culture that doesn't punish the time needs of family life and co-equal parenting.
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I didn't say it'd be a campfire singalong
[Read the article: Delinquent dads]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, it wouldn't be easy; it would take a massive nation-wide rejection of corporate values and materialist culture. It would take huge numbers of people deciding that living on their own terms means working in a way that doesn't decimate family relationships. It would take great numbers of high-powered people repudiating the paradigm that accomplishment means the ability to buy more stuff. It means young workers refusing work, even at a financial hit, that insults their humanity while flattering our national addiction to ever more purposeless, luxurious junk. For a long time.
But all great social transitions and movements are composed of individuals standing up for what they really want from life, right?
Afterwards, we'll all sing kum-bay-ya. And toast marshmallows.
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Relevance?
[Read the article: Want to cross the border? Not without a note from Dad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think I'll speak for many people when I say, in response to Anonymous, "huh?"
Anonymous, yes, a lot of the rules regarding divorce and joint custody in this country are unfair. But the post is in regards to a nation/culture that does not allow competent, independent, ADULT women to travel internationally without the permission of a (male) relative.
You have joint responsibility for minor children. There is a history of international kidnapping by one divorced parent to keep children away from the other. We don't know much about your individual circumstances or why you've been kept from getting passports for your children--and yes, I agree totally that some of the ways fathers are viewed in America are insulting and unfair--but YOU are not being legally prevented from traveling simply because you're a male.
But surely that's not the same thing as fully one half of a country's adult population being forbidden independent travel ONLY because of their sex?
It's degrading, infantilizing, bigoted, and has no relation to your children whatsoever.