I have just left a comment on Hacker News that I will no doubt regret. I'm from The Deep South and I've read up on some of the history and some of what I have read was very well-documented but disagrees with "general wisdom" on the topic, so I leave latitude at times for other people disagreeing with me.
This often goes bad places. There are people in the world who are convinced that means I'm simply wrong and crazy or something and not allowing for "We've read different sources and different authors have different takes and I don't see any reason to fight with you about it."
Anyway, the topic is self determination.
I was once on the phone with a relative and said "It doesn't look like X is happening, but I will see how things look in the morning and decide that tomorrow morning." This relative reacted really negatively to that and began ranting about how "You CANNOT DO X. Doing X is ABUSIVE behavior. You are a TERRIBLE MOTHER."
Um, yeah. At no point did I say "I am DOING X." I repeated that I probably wasn't going to do X but it was my decision and I would make that decision the following morning based on conditions on the ground where I was and some relative who lived a thousand miles away wasn't going to micromanage my life via phone.
So I get this person off the phone and a few minutes later the phone rings and it's a different relative. The first relative had called them and told them what an evil abusive mother I was and my abusive plans to DEFINITELY DO X tomorrow and my second relative was trying to more nicely convince me this was a bad idea.
When I was finally able to get a word in edgewise I was like "Yeah, that's NOT what happened AT ALL. What happened is I told them I am probably NOT doing X. X looks HIGHLY unlikely to happen, BUT it's MY decision and I will decide TOMORROW because that's the apppropriate time to decide it."
So they laughed and got off the phone. And, no, I did not do X. But I did decide that the following morning based on conditions on the ground -- which was the correct way to handle that.
So that's about self determination and not letting someone else run your life. Sometimes people have the best of intentions or they have baggage or whatever, but if you quietly go along with letting them dictate decisions to you it will soon become a deal with the devil that's hard to get out of.
Now, in some cases outside interference is warranted and we have some standards and protocols for that, such as an intervention by family and friends for someone who is an addict and doesn't want to admit it or in some cases medical personnel or law enforcement or other authorities have either the right or a legal obligation to intercede because you are unconscious, you are threatening to hurt yourself or others, etc.
People on the receiving end of such intervention tend to not like it and will typically resist -- which is why, for example, medical personnel sometimes have to wait until you pass out and can no longer protest, because until then it is YOUR decision. You can kind of think of what happened with the American Civil War as being like an intervention -- the rest of the country decided it was warranted to interfere with what the Southern states were doing, the South didn't want to be interfered with and tried to secede.
I'm absolutely not pro slavery by any stretch of the imagination but I grew up in The Deep South and it is a distinctive region with a lot of differences that set it apart from the rest of the nation. Currently, one of the most obvious is that it is much more religious than most other places in the US.
There are other parts of the US where people sometimes talk about seceding but so far none of them have acted on it. Alaska sometimes talks about it. The Pacific Northwest ("Cascadia") sometimes talks about it. California sometimes talks about it.
I meant what I said that secession was about more than just slavery and that from the perspective of The South, it's really NOT unreasonable to view it as The War of Northern Aggression. No doubt this will just get me more hatred and disrespect, but there is always some excuse why no one can respect me. So whatever.
While I am talking about The South, a bit of history that I read that is the reason WHY I try to be all "You and I have read different sources, no big" about Southern history is about the passage of the Federal minimum wage law. Unfortunately, I don't recall the title or author of the extremely well-documented book but it apparently strongly disagrees with the narrative some people believe about the minimum wage.
What I read is that the Federal minimum wage was passed as a means to force post-Civil War southern states to stop paying Blacks half as much as Whites. It was a failing policy initially. Southerners simply began firing Black people rather than pay them "a White man's wage" but then World War II started and that somehow helped get the Federal minimum wage enforced more consistently, though I no longer remember the details.
I don't recall what someone told me about their understanding of the apparently NEFARIOUS goals of the Federal minimum wage law, but that's my understanding. The South was not in line with the rest of the nation in myriad ways, including wages, and there was a strong racial component to that. Wages in the South were generally less than elsewhere but especially for Blacks.
The Deep South remains a region somewhat out of step with the rest of the nation. I miss the generally more polite atmosphere there fostered by how religious the area is, though I'm not religious. There are other things I don't miss.
Anyway, I'm getting old and curmudgeonly and less inclined to shut up so other people can comfortably voice THEIR opinions. You are entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled to MINE and me understanding WHY the South would feel it was The War of Northern Aggression doesn't make me a fool or pro slavery or any of the other nonsense some people might wish to project onto me.
It just means I've seen various "underdogs" of myriad sorts get dismissed and told their point of view doesn't count at all.
This often goes bad places. There are people in the world who are convinced that means I'm simply wrong and crazy or something and not allowing for "We've read different sources and different authors have different takes and I don't see any reason to fight with you about it."
Anyway, the topic is self determination.
I was once on the phone with a relative and said "It doesn't look like X is happening, but I will see how things look in the morning and decide that tomorrow morning." This relative reacted really negatively to that and began ranting about how "You CANNOT DO X. Doing X is ABUSIVE behavior. You are a TERRIBLE MOTHER."
Um, yeah. At no point did I say "I am DOING X." I repeated that I probably wasn't going to do X but it was my decision and I would make that decision the following morning based on conditions on the ground where I was and some relative who lived a thousand miles away wasn't going to micromanage my life via phone.
So I get this person off the phone and a few minutes later the phone rings and it's a different relative. The first relative had called them and told them what an evil abusive mother I was and my abusive plans to DEFINITELY DO X tomorrow and my second relative was trying to more nicely convince me this was a bad idea.
When I was finally able to get a word in edgewise I was like "Yeah, that's NOT what happened AT ALL. What happened is I told them I am probably NOT doing X. X looks HIGHLY unlikely to happen, BUT it's MY decision and I will decide TOMORROW because that's the apppropriate time to decide it."
So they laughed and got off the phone. And, no, I did not do X. But I did decide that the following morning based on conditions on the ground -- which was the correct way to handle that.
So that's about self determination and not letting someone else run your life. Sometimes people have the best of intentions or they have baggage or whatever, but if you quietly go along with letting them dictate decisions to you it will soon become a deal with the devil that's hard to get out of.
Now, in some cases outside interference is warranted and we have some standards and protocols for that, such as an intervention by family and friends for someone who is an addict and doesn't want to admit it or in some cases medical personnel or law enforcement or other authorities have either the right or a legal obligation to intercede because you are unconscious, you are threatening to hurt yourself or others, etc.
People on the receiving end of such intervention tend to not like it and will typically resist -- which is why, for example, medical personnel sometimes have to wait until you pass out and can no longer protest, because until then it is YOUR decision. You can kind of think of what happened with the American Civil War as being like an intervention -- the rest of the country decided it was warranted to interfere with what the Southern states were doing, the South didn't want to be interfered with and tried to secede.
I'm absolutely not pro slavery by any stretch of the imagination but I grew up in The Deep South and it is a distinctive region with a lot of differences that set it apart from the rest of the nation. Currently, one of the most obvious is that it is much more religious than most other places in the US.
There are other parts of the US where people sometimes talk about seceding but so far none of them have acted on it. Alaska sometimes talks about it. The Pacific Northwest ("Cascadia") sometimes talks about it. California sometimes talks about it.
I meant what I said that secession was about more than just slavery and that from the perspective of The South, it's really NOT unreasonable to view it as The War of Northern Aggression. No doubt this will just get me more hatred and disrespect, but there is always some excuse why no one can respect me. So whatever.
While I am talking about The South, a bit of history that I read that is the reason WHY I try to be all "You and I have read different sources, no big" about Southern history is about the passage of the Federal minimum wage law. Unfortunately, I don't recall the title or author of the extremely well-documented book but it apparently strongly disagrees with the narrative some people believe about the minimum wage.
What I read is that the Federal minimum wage was passed as a means to force post-Civil War southern states to stop paying Blacks half as much as Whites. It was a failing policy initially. Southerners simply began firing Black people rather than pay them "a White man's wage" but then World War II started and that somehow helped get the Federal minimum wage enforced more consistently, though I no longer remember the details.
I don't recall what someone told me about their understanding of the apparently NEFARIOUS goals of the Federal minimum wage law, but that's my understanding. The South was not in line with the rest of the nation in myriad ways, including wages, and there was a strong racial component to that. Wages in the South were generally less than elsewhere but especially for Blacks.
The Deep South remains a region somewhat out of step with the rest of the nation. I miss the generally more polite atmosphere there fostered by how religious the area is, though I'm not religious. There are other things I don't miss.
Anyway, I'm getting old and curmudgeonly and less inclined to shut up so other people can comfortably voice THEIR opinions. You are entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled to MINE and me understanding WHY the South would feel it was The War of Northern Aggression doesn't make me a fool or pro slavery or any of the other nonsense some people might wish to project onto me.
It just means I've seen various "underdogs" of myriad sorts get dismissed and told their point of view doesn't count at all.