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How far do you currently live from the town where you grew up?
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He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-- Mark Twain
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday December 15, @11:46AM (23 children)
Even if you come back later, say, to take care of an aging parent, the act of leaving your hometown (assuming you can afford it of course) will change the way you think about "normal". Because a lot of what you think of as "normal" isn't statistically normal at all, and the only reason you think it is is that you haven't seen anything else. Check out places different from where you grew up: If you lived in a city, try living out in the country at least for a few years. If you were a country kid, try out a major city and see what that's really like. If you grew up near one of the seacoasts, try the middle of the country, and vice versa.
As an added bonus, it will get you well away from your school mates whose ambitions are limited to doing a crappy job to pay the bills, staying out of prison, and getting drunk on the weekends for the next 45 years or so.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 15, @07:15PM (19 children)
If you really want to blow your perspective on reality, go back and visit your elementary school sometime. The building, the classes, and even the playground and surroundings simply don't scale with memory. Junior high and senior high schools scale much better than your elementary school does. That huge playground that you ran across in first grade shrinks to maybe half of a baseball or football throw! And, the classrooms are downright claustrophobic!
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday December 16, @08:06AM (4 children)
This is true: I have experienced it too.
I guess we have some kind of in-built scale that measures things relative to our current size. There's probably a Ph.D. dissertation in that observation somewhere, but it would be a long-term experiment.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, @08:36PM
> There's probably a Ph.D. dissertation in that observation somewhere
It could be big or small depending on which side Alice eats of the Amanita Muscaria.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, @10:01PM
And now you know the suspected origin of badly-scaled modern architecture, including McMansions. Ever notice how those buildings routinely have absurdly tall ceilings, more rooms than necessary, cavernously empty rooms, out-of-scale ornate decor, and other features that seem out of place? Not to mention the useless amenities strewn about the estates. Take note how most of that trend originally started in historically public areas of the house, most notably the giant "lawyer foyer." If you take the same house and shrink most of the proportions by a factor of two or three, it suddenly doesn't seem so bad. And what would have a perspective roughly two or three times smaller than the average adult? A child. So, in essence, you have all of these buildings designed for people remembering what the huge mansions of the rich were like when they were children. But the architects have to scale everything up to the size of an adult in order for those clients to be impressed compared to their memory.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday December 19, @02:33AM
Same. I remember the gravel road I lived on seemed a lot longer than it seems today. Last time I swung through, a couple of years ago, was a shock how quickly it seemed that each hill was topped and each valley crossed.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Friday January 02, @05:57AM
The Science Behind the Shrinking School
There actually is a significant amount of psychological research—if not a full dissertation—on exactly what you’re feeling. Here are a few reasons why your old playground feels like a postage stamp now:
The Eye-Level Perspective: When you were in first grade, your eyes were roughly 3 to 4 feet off the ground. Objects looked "taller" because your line of sight was lower. Returning as an adult, you are literally looking down on things you used to look up at, which flattens the perceived scale.
The "Action-Scaled" Perception: Psychologists like Dennis Proffitt have studied how we perceive distance based on the effort required to traverse it. To a first grader, crossing that playground took a lot of steps and energy, so the brain encoded it as "huge." To your adult legs, it’s a five-second walk, so your brain re-categorizes the space as "small."
Memory Anchoring: Your brain stores the memory of the school relative to your body at the time. Since your body was the "unit of measurement," and that unit has doubled or tripled in size, the "ruler" you use to measure the world has changed, but the old "measurement" remains static in your mind.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Friday December 19, @12:58AM
Can't anymore, as they tore it down a couple of years ago. Rural small town, they just don't have as many kids around anymore since family farms are on the way out, plus the district deliberately skimped on the building maintenance in favor of building a brand new big school in the neighboring town.
Oddly enough, after getting laid off a few months ago the job I'm thinking will come my way may result in my moving to that very small town.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19, @10:18PM
As a child I rode with my Dad past his elementary school. He had attended it in the 1930s, as the son of Polish immigrants. It had become an almost exclusively Black school in the inner city "hood", but it was still standing. What a change 40 years made (yes, I'm old and I had an old father).
I live 3000 miles away from the schools I attended. My public schools have also become more "diverse", but with Asians. Our local grocery store became Asian. The elementary school's original trees have mostly been cut down because they were a short lives species. The private school I attended for 3 years has transitioned from a middle-class evangelical school with modest buildings and programs, in to something more like an elite prep school. No need to go back, I found that out all online although I suspect there would be a different feel actually walking by it all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 21, @02:51PM (7 children)
I went back to my high school after 2 years away in college... what didn't scale there was the sense of importance. While you were there everything was so important, 2 years later it was all such an obvious farce. "Fixtures of the community" (teachers, administrators) come and go, and nobody really misses them when they're gone.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday December 21, @04:42PM (6 children)
And even more so, the kids who were allegedly popular. They're gone within a few years. The teachers and administrators know that. If you know a teen kid struggling with dealing with the stupid silly popularity olympics in school, remind them of that, and also point out that if high school was in fact the best years of your life you almost definitely lived a super-lame adulthood.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 21, @05:06PM (5 children)
> struggling with dealing with the stupid silly popularity olympics in school, remind them of that
Easy to say from "the other side" - hard to hear when you're in it and have never known anything else.
> if high school was in fact the best years of your life you almost definitely lived a super-lame adulthood.
Which was so very true for our homecoming kings, queens and their courts - and I think more than a few of them actually saw the writing on the wall which made them bitter and (more) cruel even while they "at the top of their game."
By summer 2 years after graduation I was interning in an electronics production factory and they "got it" a little more clearly than the high schoolers. The factory hired about half a dozen summer interns every year, it was supposed to be an inside deal for employees' kids but I walked in and filled out an app and they sort of shrugged their shoulders and said "why not? It's not like being an employee's kid is an actual requirement for the program, and we do have an unfilled opening..." Anyway, the line workers used to rib the managers telling them "be good to these summer kids, in a couple of years they could come back as your boss." And it was true, once in a while one did.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 22, @02:50AM (4 children)
Some of us just didn't participate. Only ever belonged to one "clique", if you can call it that. All of us were woodsmen, hunters, and outdoorsmen. We only cared about school because that was where we met a lot of girls, and we all had to get passing grades and graduate. Even as kids, none of us had time for silly drama or politics.
ICE is having a Pretti Good season.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 22, @04:45AM (2 children)
> Even as kids, none of us had time for silly drama or politics.
Silly drama and politics are part of real life - choosing to ignore it while you're "in the soup" is missing an educational opportunity.
Maybe y'all hunter dudes were "too cool for school" and could recognize that you have no taste for drama and politics before ever learning much about them, but even if you never participate in them later in life, knowing something about drama and politics is a "window to the world" that a lot of your fellow humans live in.
IMO the most successful education in drama and politics is learning how to play in ways that don't impact you on personal emotional levels - which is very different from ignoring the games altogether.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday December 22, @02:59PM (1 child)
I found it was very useful to observe the games, but not play them. That way, I could and did knew how to play but only had to bother with it when the stakes actually mattered.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 22, @06:55PM
> I could and did knew how to play
It's weird when this knowledge becomes valuable - getting a building permit was a shockingly petty / catty game.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday January 01, @04:53PM
How about this perspective: Some of us just didn't participate in school
I know for a fact there were some kids at my high school who did "high school nonsense" exclusively with their fellow students quite literally 24x7 doing school sports, school performing arts, only hanging out with cliques from school etc. I know there were people who exclusively spent their teen lives solely doing school sponsored activities and only hanging out with students from our school. Sounds really boring and its not what I did.
I mostly did scouts, church, family, part time jobs, eventually Army Reserves (joined at 17 while going to high school), ham radio, some summer internship type jobs where my parents worked or had connections, bbs era modem stuff... I mean, yeah, I went to school about 6 or 7 hours in the mornings on weekdays if it wasn't summer or a holiday, but aside from sitting there, I didn't have much to do with high school. I met people from school and hung out with a couple but it was not a major part of my life. I think in total I dated slightly more girls who didn't go to my school than did (mostly met at work). I never got much into DnD but I played some and liked visiting my FLGS, so I met people there, also. Oh and the gym; the one I went to in high school was not very social (it was a YMCA) but I did meet some people my age there.
From my own experiences and watching my kids, some scout troops are much more office politics style political than others. I suppose work also.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 25, @03:46AM (2 children)
Many US people would blow their perspective on reality if they actually visited China:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlR9k64RWTc&list=PLZFifwX1CbmRsRJynkOpYCf7NlEfjeTNO [youtube.com]
Sure, sure, they're all underpaid slaves... But do they really look worse off than lots of muricans?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aedKShR1rA [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y5CqAHxGX0 [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgCQE6EGeGk [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snHDjUBu4Fw [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Thexalon on Thursday December 25, @03:00PM (1 child)
Of course there are nice places in China. That doesn't mean there aren't also terrible conditions in China. Just like how the Burj Khalifa is a gorgeous building with lots of respectable looking happy people around, and most of the enslaved people who built it and maintain it (try to) live only a couple of miles away.
And in case you are wondering, a decent amount of what I know about the terrible conditions that exist in a lot of China are from Chinese people I've known over the years.
But enjoy your propaganda film, and I hope the weather in Shanghai is treating you well.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 26, @10:59AM
And in case you are wondering, a decent amount of what I know about the terrible conditions that exist in a lot of the US are from US people I've known over the years.
You can compare cities.
If you want to compare prisons maybe US would only do slightly better. The US also does prison slave labor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 21, @02:49PM
> the act of leaving your hometown (assuming you can afford it of course) will change the way you think about "normal".
A LOT of what is "different" about the USA is that a LOT of USAians don't leave their home town, ever. In the 1970s there was an alarming proportion of my hometown that never left the county (50km radius.) Most of this was justified to themselves because they didn't have a lot of money, but more than money it was a choice - often I think a choice based in fear, fear of people they don't understand. Not so subtle irony: they don't understand those people because they've never gotten out of their own little cocoon.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by mce on Thursday December 25, @12:53PM
You don't necessarily have to move far, however.
After a roughly 35 year gap, I now live just 21 km from my childhood home and only 18 km from where I lived aged 2-4, and I also regularly go shopping in the town where I was born. And yet a different language from a different main language group dominates in the village that I call home today. There are more cultural differences between those two places, than between where I was born and the all places where I lived during the intermediate 35 years.
I do agree that people should move around and see the world if they can afford it or their employer pays for it (I've been lucky enough to see 19 countries on 3 continents and still plan on adding a few more in retirement), but sometimes the cheap and easy solution is laying on one's doorstep.