Some people are so inconsiderate.
We were meant to have a tradesman come here today to continue on where he left off. He is working on the second toilet and yesterday put in the sealing treatment for moisture. He said he would be here, but he never showed up.
Look at this mess.
And now we are going to have to wait even longer for him to show up again, just because his wife gave birth today...
No work ethic.
He is having his first daughter after four boys, so while happy for him, I also feel a bit sorry for him, as I don't think he really knows what he is in for. A client and I were talking about parenting for an hour today and how things are seemingly very different in the lives of children from when we were kids ourselves. We were talking about the growing social problems in Finland, the increase in hard drug usage that isn't recreational, homelessness, social disconnection and various other things that have fundamentally changed the culture of being a kid, and I only see it getting worse.
I think that a lot of the social problems stem from social disenfranchisement where community has been eroded away, even though people are more "connected" than ever before in history. A lot of the younger people are depressed and on medication, struggling to find a place to fit in and unable to build lasting relationships - and still people wonder why antisocial behavior is on the increase.
As a father to a daughter, these things worry me, because when I was a kid and in my culture, women were protected, but it seems that is no longer the case. Perhaps it is part of the new "equality" that has been driven for so long - they are now open targets to the violence that many boys have had for years. I can teach my daughter how to protect herself and make smart decisions, but at the end of the day, she will be a teen with limited experience, a lot of bravado and the belief that she can look after herself - and will at times likely put herself in harms way. Kids are kids. When social networks are no longer as personal, everyone ends up more on their own and a few poor choices can lead to being completely unprotected.
But, this same erosion makes people act in different ways too, makes them feel less accountable for their actions, more entitled, less connected to consequence of behavior. We are surrounded by the stories of violence and have become accustomed to the reports of gangs rapes and murders, people getting shot and stabbed in the streets, instable people killing their partners - as if it is normal, as if it has to be this way.
Of course, we are seeing more stories on these kinds of topics because of the way the media works, but when real life experience starts to look like a news report, there are issues. In the last couple years, I know from within my extended circle of a couple rape cases and one murder case where a husband killed his wife. This is Finland, one of the richest and most highly educated countries in the world - yet is far from immune to social issues.
It isn't normal, it is only going to get worse as more pressure is put on society through continued social breakdown and economic hardship. I can teach my daughter all I can and she can learn it all - but she still has to interact with thousands upon thousands of people who have learned very different lessons in life. We can learn to control ourselves, but we can't control everything in our environment. We also can't live locked away and fearful of the world, so we are trapped having to face the dangers the best we can, hoping we get lucky in the encounters we have.
The world worries me as a parent, because while there is so much potential, so much of it depends on people collaborating and finding common ground from which to build upon, yet we keep polarizing and fragmenting from each other, diving ever-deeper into self-isolation in its many forms. The more it happens, the more it will and while we keep advancing technologically, the things that are truly important to us as a species seem to be getting pushed into the background, in favor of useless replacements to fill the widening voids. Tools that mimic the feelings and rewards of living in a healthy society, while offering nothing of the sort.
While I am hopeful the challenges can be overcome, I also understand that society is always in a state of flux, but it is the environment that evolves it, that guides it into the future. For a very long time we have been progressively getting better in so many ways, but once we start to take our skills and nature as a species for granted, we can start to turn and shift in another direction, one we might not want to go.
We can see the battle now, where there are a lot of people searching for and creating meaning and purpose in what is ultimately harmful to our progression, a devolution of society, a degradation of our potential. but, the complexity is high, the nuance and variations uncountable, so it is easier to focus on a narrow point and polarize it for clarity, jumping from one to the next without ever considering how they are connected or whether they are in conflict with each other.
Society is made up of relationships, yet we can't even see how our own actions relate to our world and each other, let alone the dynamics of all that lies outside of our knowledge and ability to understand. There are milestone markers on the road, but the journey is never finished until the end.
I hope and work toward a world where my daughter can have her place in a healthy world. But at times, it feels like an uphill battle against the inevitable. It would be easier to bury my thoughts and entertain my mind with something else, but I believe that is how we got here in the first place and it isn't the way out.
The worry of a parent is never complete.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
