Future Regrets?

[Peregrinator]

Well, let's just say Turkic languages are widespread. I wouldn't say that your Modern Turkish would solve all your communication qualms in Uzbekistan. I'm not so sure how it "spread," so to speak. It's definitely an area with a long history of trade, as well as nomadism.

Hajja would be used for the feminine. And as far as I know a hajji/hajja refers specifically to someone who makes the pilgrimage to Mecca. It's actually used as a honorific--so, if I did the pilgrimage to Mecca, I'd be known as Hajja Olivianna.

There's probably a more general term for 'pilgrim' (it might just be 'haj'), and I'd look it up if I knew where my dictionary was.

Life's cool. About to go watch _Big Trouble in Little China_.

Thanks. Fun flick. Watch the bottle!

 

[bad kitty]

You learned the lesson faster than a lot of people do. Why did you pass it up? What can hte rest of us learn from your experience?

Here are the excerts from the other thread:

I regret not sleeping with my first love. He shoulda been the one. Or at very least one of the ones. 7 years.. and nadda. Make out sessions and oral were awesome though!

I fell in love with him when i was 12 and we dated off and on til I was 19. I simply gave up, moved on and married someone else.

I didn't sleep with him because in the early years he respected me too much and said I was too young (he was only 3-4 years older). After that, the cards never fell right adn the one time that it did, I turned him down cause io was involved with someone else. Even though this someone else was a psycho and was engaged to someone else. I was stupid, and I regret that.

There ya have it. My second deepest regret was not facing him for closure and letting him know point blank if he didn't commit that I was moving on.

Since that time I've learned to never let a good thing pass you by. You have everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

 

[Peregrinator]

Here are the excerts from the other thread:

Interesting. I wonder how your life might be different if you had bedded him or at least had some closure. I have a few of these, and I'm not sure if it's better the way it worked out or not.

 

[Travelintheways]

Jumping a guy here I want to jump. But it's not just about the jumping.... it would be a big step for me, being assertive and confident and sexy. I still have the chance, but there have been opportunities I've missed and felt so stupid.

 

[Peregrinator]

Jumping a guy here I want to jump. But it's not just about the jumping.... it would be a big step for me, being assertive and confident and sexy. I still have the chance, but there have been opportunities I've missed and felt so stupid.

I say go for it, and with gusto. The worst thing that can happen is he rejects you and you feel hurt for a while, then get over it. I'd so much rather live with that than regret. Good luck, and welcome to Lit!

 

[Travelintheways]

That's what I keep telling myself... and thank you for the welcome. I'm going on a brutal killing spree of my internal no's, and hope springs eternal. And I know I would regret it longer than I would be hurt. Yes, I am determined, thanks Literotica!

 

[Peregrinator]

That's what I keep telling myself... and thank you for the welcome. I'm going on a brutal killing spree of my internal no's, and hope springs eternal. And I know I would regret it longer than I would be hurt. Yes, I am determined, thanks Literotica!

That's the spirit. You're young and resilient. I don't even remember the rejections I suffered at your age. I do remember the bold strokes that paid off, though.

 

[Peregrinator]

Any takers in the midday crowd?

 

[Peregrinator]

I'm bumping this ancient thread for two reasons:

1) Because the concept came up again recently, and there are new voices to weigh in, as well as old ones who ignored it the first time around. What will you regret, and why aren't you taking care of it now?

2) because I was listening to something on the radio..."Radiolab," maybe? Something on NPR anyway, and they were talking to I think it was David Brooks, who grabbed my interest with a statement about assumptions. He said something like, "You can, and should, admire Ben Franklin, but he was doing stuff that people then assumed was okay, took for granted, that we know now wasn't so great." That could possibly be a radically inaccurate paraphrase as well as attribution; I failed to stop the car on the bridge and write it down.

What are the things that we humans, today, these days, early 21st century, are doing or thinking or saying that, 150 or 200 years from now, people will look back on the same way we look back on, say, slavery or the flat earth or the Hamitic hypothesis? Stuff that in retrospect is obviously wrong or just silly? National boundaries? Surgery? Television? Hydropower? Home printers? What are those common things, based on assumptions we rarely if ever question? And what are the underlying assumptions?

 

[TheOldWidow]

But there is a basic premise here that is sometimes forgotten.

There will always be regrets in your life, because to live, you have to make choices.

 

[adrina]

Single use plastic and styrofoam containers.

Was your dinner or soda worth a container that never breaks down or takes over 500 to 1000 years to break down? No it was not.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Good. Then the new golf course on top of the landfill will not develop sink holes.



Use MOAH! styrofoam!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Better yet, don't let your future regret be that you ate all that fucking unhealthy fast food...

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm bumping this ancient thread for two reasons:

1) Because the concept came up again recently, and there are new voices to weigh in, as well as old ones who ignored it the first time around. What will you regret, and why aren't you taking care of it now?

2) because I was listening to something on the radio..."Radiolab," maybe? Something on NPR anyway, and they were talking to I think it was David Brooks, who grabbed my interest with a statement about assumptions. He said something like, "You can, and should, admire Ben Franklin, but he was doing stuff that people then assumed was okay, took for granted, that we know now wasn't so great." That could possibly be a radically inaccurate paraphrase as well as attribution; I failed to stop the car on the bridge and write it down.

What are the things that we humans, today, these days, early 21st century, are doing or thinking or saying that, 150 or 200 years from now, people will look back on the same way we look back on, say, slavery or the flat earth or the Hamitic hypothesis? Stuff that in retrospect is obviously wrong or just silly? National boundaries? Surgery? Television? Hydropower? Home printers? What are those common things, based on assumptions we rarely if ever question? And what are the underlying assumptions?

1) I started to reply to your first post before I realized that it was not current. I am glad I read through the thread.

My reflex response to the common thought that we will regret what we didn't do more than we will the things we did was, "people who think that never went to prison". But that was a glib response not worthy of the question.

I have a great deal of serious regret over things I have done, but behind each of those things is the shadow of something I did not do. My regret that I got heavily involved with drugs is paired with the regret that I did not focus on schooling over partying. Each bad relationship I've had was made possible by a potential good one passed by. So, despite my cynical first reaction,in the end I come down in agreement with your original thought.Thanks for provoking me into giving the idea consideration.

2) I think some things are obvious: the idea that healthcare should be dependent on the marketplace, militarism, religious extremism of all types. But, there's a saying along the line that "the fish don't seethe water". Because we live within our assumptions, it is almost impossible to see that they are only assumptions. The current shifting view of what gender mean would be a good example of this.One area in which I think there will be a major shift in assumptions is in our attitudes about basic economics. What will change as we enter a world in which human labor is basically non-essential in most regards. What happens to all those people who are basically of no use to society? Will the idea of "earning a living" disappear all together,and , if it does, will we decide we need to take care of all those surplus people,or that we'd be better off without them?

Thanks for giving my brain some stimulation so early in the morning.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Go back and reread some of the predictive books from the 70s.

They all failed because they held technology constant and Science as irrelevant.

Then try reading some Mises and understand that every machine frees up human labor for more productive effort and enriches the economy with efficiencies that drive down prices and in this regard create more spending which has the side effects of demand and opportunity.

The gender stuff is the absolute rejection of Science for mysticism. As I recently pointed out to one of our more hateful Leftists (from the nation of Peace, Canada) there are zero instances of a brain changing its body's chromosomes and ample evidence of brains that malfunction. Mainstreaming and normalizing a mental disorder is simply not the right approach because lay people think it is politically and culturally really cool that Johnny identifies as Suzy. Let professionals interact with Johnny while he is a child instead of sending him down a road of lifelong insecurity about his/her self-esteem and forcing all of society to adapt to his/her delusions.

 

[Peregrinator]

But there is a basic premise here that is sometimes forgotten.

There will always be regrets in your life, because to live, you have to make choices.

I agree, that's often forgotten. I think it's a truism that we have to choose which regrets we're willing to live with. I guess if I were going to advocate anything, it would be taking a proactive role in that process.

 

[Peregrinator]

Single use plastic and styrofoam containers.

Was your dinner or soda worth a container that never breaks down or takes over 500 to 1000 years to break down? No it was not.

That's a good one. And an easy one! I don't think I've ever felt like the decision to use plastic or styrofoam over reusable was one that enriched my life and enhanced the experience.

 

[Peregrinator]

Better yet, don't let your future regret be that you ate all that fucking unhealthy fast food...

Also a great one. There's fast food, and then there's food that doesn't take very long and is reasonably nutritious. Hell, most grocery stores these days have salad bars. It's easy enough to get a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, and some fruit for lunch.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

When I saw a three-year old Princess swinging across the monkey bars and I rushed over to be her security net. She then assumed that it was a dangerous act and never tried it again.

I'll never get that moment back.

Or when five-year old Princess announced that she was going to class to teach. I should have just smiled, but I told her you can't teach, but you can be in class. She refused to go. Years later I discovered her misusing the word teach as "participation." In retrospect, I realize that whenever I left to go to class, I was going to "teach." It's no wonder she made the association.

You never get that second chance.

But it might be better that I did not turn her into Karate Kid III and that she carved her own path.

You never know. Life is, after all, a coin flip...

 

[RobDownSouth]

Good. Then the new golf course on top of the landfill will not develop sink holes.



Use MOAH! styrofoam!

The increase in fracking increases your chances of golf hole sinkholes.

 

[Peregrinator]

1) I started to reply to your first post before I realized that it was not current. I am glad I read through the thread.

My reflex response to the common thought that we will regret what we didn't do more than we will the things we did was, "people who think that never went to prison". But that was a glib response not worthy of the question.

I have a great deal of serious regret over things I have done, but behind each of those things is the shadow of something I did not do. My regret that I got heavily involved with drugs is paired with the regret that I did not focus on schooling over partying. Each bad relationship I've had was made possible by a potential good one passed by. So, despite my cynical first reaction,in the end I come down in agreement with your original thought.Thanks for provoking me into giving the idea consideration.

2) I think some things are obvious: the idea that healthcare should be dependent on the marketplace, militarism, religious extremism of all types. But, there's a saying along the line that "the fish don't seethe water". Because we live within our assumptions, it is almost impossible to see that they are only assumptions. The current shifting view of what gender mean would be a good example of this.One area in which I think there will be a major shift in assumptions is in our attitudes about basic economics. What will change as we enter a world in which human labor is basically non-essential in most regards. What happens to all those people who are basically of no use to society? Will the idea of "earning a living" disappear all together,and , if it does, will we decide we need to take care of all those surplus people,or that we'd be better off without them?

Thanks for giving my brain some stimulation so early in the morning.

I was going to adopt you in the n00b thread, but I wasn't sure I could handle you. I see now that was an accurate assessment.

Feel free to respond to the OP! This is a Perg thread, a notoriously anarchistic place historically. But even if that weren't true, in this case I'm interested in people's thoughts on both topics.

I love your idea of paired regrets. I'm testing it in my head by trying to come up with a counter example, but not finding much. It resonates with what Widow said, too.

Healthcare is an interesting one. I've been saying for quite some time that a healthy, educated populace is essential for a republic to prosper. We tend to get so involved with the means of achieving these things that we let them wither.

One place we can look to is science fiction. William Gibson has written of people able to move their consciousness into different bodies; at one point a character who was formerly a man and is now in a woman's body is described as not having changed his preference for female sexual partners, just his means of expressing it. I wonder, in that potential future, if we won't realize that procreating is just one more thing that we can manage intentionally, choosing the body and time...and that procreation is just one very small piece of gender as a concept. Right now, we have a situation we've seen before, where people who are non-binary are seen as anomalies, freaks, mentally ill, etc. Typically, there's a group of folks who insist on those characterizations because they are slow to examine their own assumptions.

I have, for some time, rejected the system of spending the vast majority of one's waking hours doing something horrid and inconsequential in order to have stuff. I also wonder what will happen as we replace human workers.

A pleasure! Thanks for meeting me eye to eye, brain to brain!

 

[Peregrinator]

^ When busybody was capable of higher thought.

He used to seem like a human being with some bad ideas. Now he seems like a bad idea with some human moments.

 

[Peregrinator]

Go back and reread some of the predictive books from the 70s.

They all failed because they held technology constant and Science as irrelevant.

Then try reading some Mises and understand that every machine frees up human labor for more productive effort and enriches the economy with efficiencies that drive down prices and in this regard create more spending which has the side effects of demand and opportunity.

The gender stuff is the absolute rejection of Science for mysticism. As I recently pointed out to one of our more hateful Leftists (from the nation of Peace, Canada) there are zero instances of a brain changing its body's chromosomes and ample evidence of brains that malfunction. Mainstreaming and normalizing a mental disorder is simply not the right approach because lay people think it is politically and culturally really cool that Johnny identifies as Suzy. Let professionals interact with Johnny while he is a child instead of sending him down a road of lifelong insecurity about his/her self-esteem and forcing all of society to adapt to his/her delusions.

You broad brush a bit here, but I think serious predictive books are often wrong. I think sci fi is really the place to look for actual predictions rather than the sort of nonsense one often finds in those pop-y "the future of X" type things. William Gibson predicted the internet.

What did Mises have to say about the Industrial Revolution creating a miserable, poor underclass and slave labor? I genuinely don't know the answer to that.

I disagree with you about gender, primarily because I've read a lot of the science on it over the past couple years. A female brain in a body with a penis is which gender? Chromosomal anomalies...and defining gender as "penis/vagina" is an ascientific usage. And why cling to the binary in the presence of evidence that it's an outdated model? I think a time will come when the idea that people are boys or girls will be seen in the same light that we now see the idea that homosexuals are dangerous, mentally ill pedophiles.

 

[Peregrinator]

The increase in fracking increases your chances of golf hole sinkholes.

Not to mention that golf courses are, themselves, pretty evil.

 

[Peregrinator]

When I saw a three-year old Princess swinging across the monkey bars and I rushed over to be her security net. She then assumed that it was a dangerous act and never tried it again.

I'll never get that moment back.

Or when five-year old Princess announced that she was going to class to teach. I should have just smiled, but I told her you can't teach, but you can be in class. She refused to go. Years later I discovered her misusing the word teach as "participation." In retrospect, I realize that whenever I left to go to class, I was going to "teach." It's no wonder she made the association.

You never get that second chance.

But it might be better that I did not turn her into Karate Kid III and that she carved her own path.

You never know. Life is, after all, a coin flip...

Kids! Yes, for sure. There's always these moments. I remember being really upset at missing a chance to take a pic of my niece. Like, it felt like a major tragedy. Silly, in retrospect; I remember the moment like it just happened this morning.