SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
Alt-text:
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
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Agree with most of these I guess, but marriage specifically is the one thing that’s intended to be forever. Til death do us part and all that jazz.
My wife just moved out after 30 years of marriage, and it sure feels like a failure to me. Maybe some people get to the point where it’s not working, and they aren’t invested in the marriage so much that walking away is painful. I think most people would say they shouldn’t have been married if they weren’t that invested in making it work though.
A lot of people have suggested that we should have marriage contracts that have a renewable time limit. Like, “Hey, let’s get married for ten years and see how that goes.” I could see that being a good thing, but I also think it’s fundamentally a different mindset than the traditional expectation of forever.
I’m sorry to hear about your circumstances.
Me and most of my friend/family group have married in the last few years and I don’t know if anyone would have bothered if there wasn’t a promise of forever. There’s often the desire for a home and kids and it’s (in my opinion) hard to do that if you don’t have a commitment from your partner. I don’t want to raise kids alone or have to do custody arrangements if I can avoid it.
If housing and child rearing were more communal it would maybe be different but I think the commitment is kind of the point.
If you’d be willing to share your experience please feel free to. I didn’t have the experience of married parents or even watching them interact/divorce so I’m always on edge regarding the kind of issues I’m possibly missing in my own relationship.
I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.
A person isn’t a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That’s not failure. It’s wanting the person you love to be happy.
Then I guess you, like me, dislike the concept of marriage. Because the whole point is forever. The forever part is not even what I hold against it though. Some people can and want to be together forever. Feeling forced to be by culture is a bad thing though.
Marriage is not just another relationship. It’s literally defined by people deciding, and vowing to stay together forever.
But realistically, we all know you can get divorced. While we might hope it’ll be forever, we also know we’re still not gonna stick around if things get too bad (nor should we). Nobody has the shocked pikachu face when marriage isn’t forever after all. No matter what the vows say, in practice we pretty well accept that it’s a big commitment, but not a permanent one.
How about this: things are allowed to fail and that’s OK.
If you marry someone with the intent of staying together for the rest of your lives but you don’t, the marriage failed. It doesn’t have to define you.
The “death do us part” thing is a tradition, but marriage is a legal status. Not everyone is going to follow that tradition, and surely you wouldn’t argue this ought to bar them from the legal status
There’s nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldn’t be some sort of “standard” we hold everything to.
Wasn’t there a study about that Man instinctively looks for other partners after while, this being the natural behavior?
Given that, christianity sets unrealistic expectations.
99% percent of the times a study calls some ‘natural behaviors’ on humans, it’s just propaganda looking for legitimacy.
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Don’t know the study but any anthropologist can tell that’s a generalization on a certain time, place, and society. It’s (mostly) true, only under certain conditions.
Now did they study any other gender? Perhaps by Man they refer to all humans??
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Please, mother, stop slutshaming yourself…
Reminds me of last week when everyone was talking about how Bluesky is worthless because it’s just going to go the way of Twitter. And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
If Bluesky follows that same pattern, great.
And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
See, I was going to say that Twitter was a bad thing for 15 years.
But then it was just stupid, it wasn’t a Nazi bar like today.
Peter Thiel, the Adelsons, the Mercers, and the rest of the Trump crowd were sponsoring reactionary fascist content on the site long before Elon bought it.
Twitter was equal opportunity - willing to take money from all the highest bidders to promote any kind of commercialized content - prior to the buyout. But plenty of that content was fascist af.
I feel an adjacent thing about Lemmy — The conversations I most value are ones I used to have on Reddit, but dwindled over the years, as Reddit discourse degraded. Something that’s notable is that, on Reddit, the last bastions of meaningful discussion were the little niche subs, indicating that quality of discussion may be inversely correlated with the size of a community.
The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit’s fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last. (Speaking as an aging punk), it reminds me of what happened to Punk: it went mainstream, and thus less punk. Some people have the instinct of gatekeeping a thing to preserve it, but everything needs fresh blood, and some of the people who discover punk via the mainstream are have a heart as punk as anyone I’ve met — we can’t exclude the masses of “normies” without excluding these people too. In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the “true punk spirit” is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream. Similarly, I expect that I’ll always be able to find online clusters of cool nerds to have meaningful conversations with, because even if Lemmy dies a slow death, they will find (or build) a new space.
Ultimately, the inevitable temporariness of Lemmy (and other platforms like Bluesky) is quite a beautiful thing for me, because it forces me to be more mindful of the moment I’m in, and how, despite the world being shit in many ways, here is something that I am really glad I get to be a part of
In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the “true punk spirit” is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream.
Punk in the form that existed in the early 80s hardcore scene died around 84 (before I was even born). It came back in other, different forms, in different places over the decades. I’d argue that punk really isn’t the first incarnation of the “true punk spirit”, just the one that we associate with the anarchic and rebellious, possibly in part due to the concerted effort to demonize it in mainstream media in the 80s and 90s (couldn’t have any of that peace and love shit being seen positively, especially with greater acceptance of direct action).
Leave it to the Internet to be the best (and worst) of all.
I’m at best a poser punk but the diy ethos always rung true. That said one of my favourite places online is a local old school punk forum. It’s niche enough that with its own problems there’s still a community.
In my experience that’s kind of what an online community needs to be. Not exclusive, but niche enough. I too used to be on Reddit, got there when the great Digg migration happened. Those days it was small enough to have have a community on some subreddits. Gradually it got the point that when I’d read the article or had a reasonable thought about the question there were 11000 replies and anything worthwhile was already said.
These days Lemmy feels kinda similar to the old Reddit. Maybe things stay the same or maybe they change and there’ll be another place I log on.
All that said, what OP posted is profound. What you posted is too.
This reminds me of a friend who opened a bakery. The business was successful, and the food was good, but she decided to give it up after a few years when she and her husband started a family.
I don’t consider that a “failure” by any definition. For her, it was a great experience that had run its course.
Yeah. I would usually see a business as failed only if it is going through bankruptcy.
If you “close” it, it’s because it failed. Successful business are transferred or sold, because a loyal customer base and a successful business model have a lot of value.
Same for 90% of the other things mentioned. If you do a hobby for a while and you abandon it, it’s by definition a phase. Etc.
Not really true. Plenty of mom and pop shops close because no one wants to run it and they don’t want to ruin the reputation of their family business by selling it to someone who might not run it well. I worked for a few places where this happened.
Who are these people that decline tens of thousands of dollars/euros/pounds for their image? Must be nice being that rich…
Plenty of otherwise successful businesses could not be sold for tens of thousands of dollars just for the name. Several are in business solely because of personal connections with other small businesses. Once that element is gone people go elsewhere. At least in my community/experience.
That’s freelancing then, not really a business, isn’t it?
- Freelancing is a valid business. I don’t know why there’d be a distinction in this case.
- I don’t think people would be considered freelancers just because they have personal relationships with other small businesses.
There was a dessert business I used to do work for that catered a lot of local businesses events. She got plenty of work there and then had a loyal customer base because of the introduction to her desserts at these events. That seems like a valid business to me. She retired and moved to be closer to her kids and that was it. No one to take her place. I don’t know what you consider freelancing but she put her kids through school off of it so I don’t know why it wouldn’t count as business even if she technically never had long term contracts. She had her stuff in stores in the area because she made a name for herself and her products. People liked her and her story as much as the food so I don’t think people would’ve kept buying it if they found out she didn’t own it anymore.
I think you might not be aware of how many people have small businesses. 10% of American workers are self employed. I have done a lot of work for small businesses and it’s very different than what a lot of people who had a teacher and a factory worker as parents think.
Isn’t this more about things falling apart when the person wanted to continue doing it? If I want to run a shop but it doesn’t work financially, then my plan has failed.
Yes, that. And also the point of marriage is to be forever. Like that’s the idea of it to begin with.
Yeah, the OOP is a serious cope. They are basically saying “nothing is ever a failure in the world of unicorn sprinkles, weeeeee!” They are invalidating people’s negative emotions about failure by trying to reframe it - but this is the behavior of narcissists who never want to admit they have failed at anything.
It’s okay to fail. It sucks. It hurts. It happens. That’s life. Accept it, learn from it, and move on.
It’s a failure if it’s your experience and you think you failed. You don’t get to say others failed if they feel otherwise about their own experience.
You have no idea what narcissism means even if you’re using it in the colloquial form with is almost meaningless at this point. A narcissist wouldn’t put the question up for debate.
You pretending you get to decide how others should feel about anything is fucking ridiculous.
If someone says “I really wanted to keep my bakery open but the books didn’t balance” it’s a failed business. If someone says “I had a goal to get a book published but I could never get it accepted” they’re a failed writer.
Yes, they could have just gotten bored or stressed or retired or life happened, but that’s not the same thing. When someone set out to do something with their best effort but couldn’t, they failed.
Failing to do something isn’t shameful and it doesn’t devalue you. It doesn’t even mean you’ll never be able to do it (go start a new business, write another book, have a happy second marriage). You’re only a failure if you let yourself be one, nobody can tell you to feel anything.
OOPs post isn’t healthy because it validates the fear of failure with mental gymnastics. Sometimes you fail and you just gotta work through it, you can’t put your all into something and shrug it off at the same time.
INFINITE GROWTH, BABYYYY WOOOOO WOOOO!!!
Working in medicine, especially emergency medicine, I have to hold on to this kind of mindset very tightly. I see death frequently. I have had infants die in my care, and there is nothing I could have done to save them. I have had frail, miserable, elderly people in my care that have been kept alive through titanic and terrible measures, and their lives would have been so much better overall if they had been allowed to pass peacefully a few years earlier.
I saw another post yesterday about the old and infirm lying in nursing homes, staring at the ceiling, coding, then being dragged back to life by the heroic efforts of the staff and the ER…just to go back to staring at the ceiling for another year.
It seems counterintuitive as a physician (in training), particularly in emergency medicine where our whole job is to steal from the reaper, to advocate for sooner, more peaceful, more autonomous deaths. I have always been a proponent of physician-assisted suicide because I have seen too many people whose lives would have been better if they had been shorter.
we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
I really don’t agree with the premise, and would encourage others to reject that worldview if it starts creeping into how they think about things.
In the sports world, everything is always changing, and careers are very short. But what people do will be recorded forever, so those snapshots in time are part of one’s legacy after they’re done with their careers. We can look back fondly at certain athletes or coaches or specific games or plays, even if (or especially if) that was just a particular moment in time that the sport has since moved on from. Longevity is regarded as valuable, and maybe relevant to greatness in the sport, but it is by no means necessary or even expected. Michael Jordan isn’t a failed basketball player just because he wasn’t able to stay in the league, or even that his last few years in the league weren’t as legendary as his prime years. Barry Sanders isn’t a failed American football player just because he retired young, either.
Same with entertainment. Nobody really treats past stars as “failed” artists.
If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer.
That is a foreign concept to me, and I question the extent to which this happens. I don’t know anyone who treats these authors (or actors or directors or musicians) as failures, just because they’ve moved onto something else. Take, for example, young actors who just don’t continue in the career. Jack Gleeson, famous for playing Joffrey in the Game of Thrones series, is an actor who took a hiatus, might not come back to full time acting. And that’s fine, and it doesn’t take away from his amazing performance in that role.
The circumstances of how things end matter. Sometimes the ending actually does indicate failure. But ending, in itself, doesn’t change the value of that thing’s run when it was going on.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good.
Exactly. I would think that most people agree, and question the extent to which people feel that the culture values permanence. If anything, I’d argue that modern culture values the opposite, that we tend to want new things always changing, with new fresh faces and trends taking over for the old guard.
you raise an interesting discussion, but isn’t being remembered as a legend just another form of permanence? every example you provided is of someone viewed as a “success” in their field, someone remembered.
I would discourage you from discouraging others from examining the way our culture relates to mortality, because that’s what all of this is about: death anxiety.
I’m basically saying two things.
- Permanence isn’t required or expected, although in some instances permanence is valued, in defining success.
- Permanence itself does not require continuing effort. One can leave a permanent mark on something without active maintenance.
Taken together, success doesn’t require permanence, and permanence doesn’t require continued effort. The screenshot text is wrong to presume that our culture only values permanence, and is wrong in its implicit argument that permanence requires continued effort.
About marriage: the whole concept reside in the mutual promise of a “forever after”. If that’s not your thing, totally fine. But then you wouldn’t engage in it in the first place? In that sense, the marriage would indeed have failed (to deliver on its core premise).
I’m all for ridding our society of marriage and transitioning to civil unions instead. It’s a dumb-ass concept to promise to love someone for your entire life when both of you are bound to change a lot, sometimes becoming unrecognizable. The only reason it “worked” in the past is because the primary concern wasn’t actually love or happiness but rather performing the duties assigned to genders by patriarchy.
On a more philosophical note, did the marriage really “fail” if the person you promised to love changed so much so as to become a different person in the same body?
The “ship” of Theseus
Seems to me a logical extension from our capitalist (line must go up) and Christian (stay in line or go to hell) cultural shit pile of a country.
Nah that’s wrong, this is pervasive in every culture and throughout history. Every generation complains about the next because they don’t do the same things the same way as the previous one. Entire countries did this, a kingdom that was less prosperous or lost territory was failing and in decline.
I think the root cause is an innate human fear of change and loss.
It’s the essence of ego. Religion and society develop more and more into the direction of full ego expression. One person owning everything means that they can demand whatever comes to their mind. The ego thinks of itself as eternal.
This is why I will enthusiastically embrace our generous and merciful AI overlords.
On Wikipedia, an article for a deceased person reads, “[The deceased] was,” while an article for a TV show that has ended reads, “The Office is”
Feels kinda related in some way
That seems to me more just a linguistic quirk of how English works.
This is actually rather poignant.
By this standard, “successful” companies simply haven’t failed yet.
It’s standard that in human experience, we will fail at things. It happens, it happens often, and it will continue to happen. Failing at something is the first step. Without failure, how would we ever know how to “succeed”?
This doesn’t, and shouldn’t, imply that we are bad at a thing, or that we can’t become good at it, or that we should give up and stop trying. It also doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that we should continue to try. “Failure” is just an outcome, whether that is good or bad is entirely up to the viewer to decide.
I would argue that failure is simply a mental/social concept. Things simply happen. “Success” or “failure” is entirely dependent on those who had some interest in what specifically happened. Even if you’re trying to achieve a specific outcome, whether you do or not is entirely inconsequential. You tried to achieve an outcome by doing x, y, or z, and then a, b, and c occurred. Whether a, b, and c are the outcome that was desired or not is not a consequence that the universe cares about.
So much of this is simply social constructs.
I agree with you that failure can be viewed as something natural and even positive in many cases. But the text was more about branding anything that doesn’t last as a failure. It suggests that the fact that something has an ending doesn’t necessarily mean it was a failure, even though it is often labled as such.
Yeah, I kinda went off on a tangent there…
My brain is weird
Yeah, brains do that.
I think you are looking into things in a non healthy way.
You are right that success and failure are not binary. Furthermore, every system, be it physical, living, or social, fails sooner or later.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to not fail for as long as possible, for if something brings joy or safety it’s continued success is important. It follows that if something that’s important to someone fails it’s healthy to morn it and to try to learn from it to not repeat the same failure.
why do you call it “fail” when you mean “end”?
Because I mean fail and trying to frame everything as positive, or at worst, neutral is not healthy and will lead to people not acknowledging their feelings?
There are failures and there are endings. Not being able to cope with a failure is not healthy. Calling everything that ends automatically a failure is not healthy either.
you claim to challenge a paradigm but you merely inverted it. you are still operating under the illusion of good and bad. things end. other things begin. is one thing good if it leads to bad things? is it bad if it leads to good things? or are we just adding our own transient perspective to it? by passing judgment, we’re creating good and bad.
this has nothing to do with acknowledging feelings or not. feelings are things too. feelings end. feelings create other things, and those too can lead to other things that we might call good or bad. just because we feel a certain way does not mean the events that led us there are good or bad.
so those “failures” have nothing to do with being real with yourself. it’s quite the opposite: you are taking your feelings and attributing them to things in the world.you neglect to recognize them for what they are: transient sensations, that end.
