Why some stay in one place for decades; and, the importance of alternative paths

[Jason]

MMW>MMM

[7Wannabe5]

[steveo73]

This is a good thread. A couple of points that stood out for me.

I'm going nowhere fast.

I am someone who can stay in one place for decades and in fact intend to stay where I currently live for a long time.

I think what a lot of people are missing is that raising your kids to be independent thinkers is a good thing but can run the risk of making them an outsider in their peer group.

I see a huge part of my job as a parent as trying to help my kids fit in. I'm completely fine with my kids being independent but they have to be able to support themselves and I think thrive in society.

Most doctors spend 30 years being the same kind of doctor, often working in the same practice or hospital, but no one would criticize them for that.

This is an interesting point. At some level it appears it's okay to coast and take it easy.

It is about the riskiest life decision one can make. I don't blame people for staying put.

For what benefit ? This is something that I don't really get. I have friends who have travelled whereas I really haven't. Some of my friends want me to travel with them. I don't really see a benefit that is worth the cost.

[steveo73]

This assumes that other people need less to live a full life, hence there is judgement on your part. My point was that their lives could be equally complex, because the surface representation hides the layers underneath. Campitor made this point concisely.

This is a great point. I see the idea that you have to do lots of stuff as this societal glorification of extroversion. I've always liked reading books. My drugs of choice are a coffee and a vape when I wake up and then play a game of chess or something similar.

My friends who go our drinking all the time and go on overseas holidays and do all the normal societal stuff to me aren't any more evolved than myself.

I actually think the idea of being less outgoing is the alternative path but that might be just confirmation bias on my part. In stating that my lifestyle is definitely an alternative lifestyle compared to the vast majority of people I know IRL.

[unemployable]

For what benefit ? This is something that I don't really get. I have friends who have travelled whereas I really haven't. Some of my friends want me to travel with them. I don't really see a benefit that is worth the cost.

Well nine years ago I felt I had gotten out of Chicago all I was going to get and wanted to climb mountains full-time for a few months, so moved to Colorado. And now I feel like I've hit a point of diminishing returns here so am looking for other places to live, and other ways of living.

Travel opens you up to new opportunities. Eventually I was doing so many weekend ORD-DEN runs that I decided to cut that middleman out.

My one long-term relationship was with a girl a two-hour flight away (not Denver). We basically alternated flying to each other's cities every other weekend. The distance may have been part of the allure; I would basically operate in a different "mode" out of town and for awhile, she was part of it.

[steveo73]

Travel opens you up to new opportunities.

So does reading books or watching good TV shows or taking drugs or grinding it out at work or bringing kids up or learning philosophy or making art or playing a musical instrument as well as so many other things. Travel isn't special unless you subjectively think it's special. I'm cool with travel being special to you but there are many different paths in life.

[Peanut]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/smar ... ences.html

Thought that this pertained somewhat to the discussion. Sorry if not everyone can access it.
The most interesting part to me was about fighting hedonic adaptation by being more mindful of what you're doing and what's happening around you.

[Peanut]

Random thought came to me that there may be many ways of staying put that don't necessarily look like stasis from the outside, but rather just the opposite. Like, a friend of mine once observed to me that he kept dating essentially the same woman over and over again. Or people who live on military bases all around the world but have the same experience living within them.

[ZAFCorrection]

Ya, it has also been my experience that the upper middle class is turning into a global monoculture. The fun bit is everyone brings in some cultural peculiarities from previous generations and uses those as talismans to justify the supposed multiculturalism of the whole thing. Basically, if you find a situation fundamentally comfortable, then you probably aren't participating in a new situation, no matter how hard the cultural experience button is being mashed.

[7Wannabe5]

@ZAFCorrection:

Would eating lambs quarter found growing in a vacant lot in Detroit, entering into an Islamic "Contract for Sexual Relations" and/or riding a mini-bike down a narrow dirt path where the right-wing militia is rumored to practice target shooting fall into upper-middle-class-global-monoculture activities?

[Toska2]

The peer pressure to drive those who like routines into traveling is narrowing the alternative path. Therefore, the greatest change occurs with a mindset.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325 ... rification

[enigmaT120]

@ZAFCorrection:

Would eating lambs quarter found growing in a vacant lot in Detroit, entering into an Islamic "Contract for Sexual Relations" and/or riding a mini-bike down a narrow dirt path where the right-wing militia is rumored to practice target shooting fall into upper-middle-class-global-monoculture activities?

Do you really need us to say "No."?

I didn't think so....

[ZAFCorrection]

@7w5

It's the funhouse version. All anti-brand name-dropping. You could have been eating a salad, marrying some religious dude (of which there are many), and riding your bike around town, but that isn't much of a signal. You are the queen of grunge DGAF.

[7Wannabe5]

@ZAFcorrection:

I won’t speak for general population, or even sub-population of G2 cusp of Gen-X females, but I believe that what you are implying as motivation is at best small secondary positive effect for poorly represented minority ENTP females (less than 2% general population) or the particular case of me.

First note would be that there is some more represented type that usually wants more of the same as hedonic adapts. If one beer is good then 24 would be great! That is not the ENTP. The ENTP would be more like “I like beer and I like olives. I have observed that other humans sometimes put olives in other alcoholic beverages, I wonder if beer would taste good with an olive in it?” Then she would HAVE to try it, EVEN though she knows it is likely that some conservative police bully type human will overhear her ordering a beer with olives and say something like “You are a f*cktard weirdo who is wasting beer and olives.”

Second note would be that although there is likely some other more common type of human who idolized cool mean girls in junior high, and is still first order obsessed with impressing adult version, this is also not the ENTP. The much rarer female ENTP and the Cool Mean Girls are like members of a species that is splitting into two different species and rarely inhabit the same turf. So, although the female ENTP may very much feel compelled to share results of beer with olives experiment with members of her social circle and/or any other human within earshot, the core social emotional motivation is more the exhibitionism of a cheerful toddler wishing to share a chubby handful of cookie she found under couch cushion (Eureka!) than the anxious peer consciousness of an unhappy tween.