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Mark Dominus
@dpiponi I remember reading an interview with Salman Rushdie in which he made this point. The interviewer asked him about his failed marriage to Padma Lakshmi. He said it wasn't a failed marriage, it was great, and after five great years the decided that was enough and went on to do something else. I was impressed. (On the other hand, I've also read that she thought it was _not_ great, which somewhat spoils the point.) 
Darwin Woodka
Mark Dominus
@darwinwoodka @dpiponi When my own reached 7 years, I realized that whatever happened after, and however it ended, I would always look back on it as having been a successful project.
TomKrajci 🇺🇦 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️
Therefore every total solar eclipse is a failure. Why bother going to experience that stuff?
ysobel.tbr
@saxnot Very much applies to our nightmare capitalist landscape. Businesses should be able to close, end, when they reach maturity, with a healthy way out for employees, instead of them getting effed over for as much forever-profits that can be squeezed out for shareholders, so they never feel the risk they actually took.
Hiker Geek 🌲💻🌲
I have a friend in his late 60's that owns a moving company with his and his late partner's name on it. He spent his adult life creating an awesome reputation but now he wants to retire. He doesn't want to sell it to someone who might ruin that reputation and he doesn't want to just shut it down because he cares for his employees. So instead of traveling with his wife he continues to work.
Jargoggles
@HikerGeek @ysobel_tbr @saxnot That would be an elegant way to solve both concerns with the same solution.
Hiker Geek 🌲💻🌲
@argv_minus_one @ysobel_tbr @saxnot He has tried over the years to cultivate someone to take over including an employee co-op. Turn over and disagreements have been an issue. He owns the property and building of his main warehouse. There are lifts and lots of other equipment that could also be sold off. He has grown kids and wants to make sure he has money for his retirement and to help them if needed. If there was a safety net for his workers he would sell now. 
Natasha Nox 🇺🇦🇵🇸
@HikerGeek @argv_minus_one @ysobel_tbr @saxnot It's unfortunate things like coops also need a certain culture to work. If that was never properly cultivated, especially in the US, those things often fail due to people not knowing how to handle it. Technically it would be the best for his employees I believe.
Stephanie Moore
@saxnot I feel like this connects to other aspects of 0 or 100 or perfection. Like if you’re not already in top form as a runner or biker, why bother (prompted by reading f another post about bikers saying g to an ebiker to get a “real bike”). Or not making workout clothes for overweight people (eg Lulemon). Anything short of some idealized version is t valuable or “worth it.”
Darwin Woodka
the Lulu girls chased me away from a really great Bar class and I hated them for it. Also got so sick of being told how good I should look in my bikini -- at 55. It just made me feel lesser for being older and less thin, and I ended up resenting them all for it.
Natasha Nox 🇺🇦🇵🇸
@darwinwoodka @StephanieMoore @saxnot I feel this so much. 😔 I'm currently living with a friend in a tiny apartment, both meddling with depression after a youth full of people telling us how useless and ugly we are. We currently try to better our skills in 3D artistry (to not give away specifics) to potentially build a financial future out of it, but fighting against the feeling of being 'not enough' is hard. Really hard…
Lynn Grant
@StephanieMoore @saxnot That is similar to something that always rankles me about the Olympics. The gold, silver, and bronze medalists are treated by the public as heroes, and the rest are treated as losers. Anybody who made it to the Olympics is a better athlete than the vast majority of us.  
Frances Larina
It's ironic that we think we believe "forever" to be the ultimate goal while our society instead celebrates things like private equity, the stock market as a measure of economic wellness, and change for the sake of change in everything from UIXs to politics to branding. Oh, and ignoring all the things that prevent long term stability. It feels like gaslighting on a societal scale? 
183231bcb
@saxnot@chaos.social I think about this whenever I hear transmisics insist we should just assume as an axiom that detransition is the worst possible thing in the world.
grepe
@saxnot the marriage is one example that stands out in that group for me... i totally agree with the concept and with all the other examples and i think it's totally fine if couples have a good run together and then part ways, but we usually call that "relationship". the whole point of marriage was to say that this relationshipis so special that we want to do that "until the death do us part".
183231bcb
@grepe@ieji.de @saxnot@chaos.social But people can think their relationship will last for the rest of their lives, get married, and then change as they age to the point where breaking up is better.
Elenna :verified_transgender:
Riley S. Faelan
@saxnot It's a predictable outcome of the patriarchal impulse to try to assess ourselves from a hypothetical deity's POV. Recent patriarchal religions insinuate that their patriarchal deities only care about the forever stuff. 
argv minus one
And yet, not only are humans not immortal, the universe itself isn't immortal, either. Heat death won't happen for a long time, but it will happen, and under the currently known laws of physics, there is no way to prevent or reverse it. If a god truly did create this place, then he very obviously does not expect or intend for anything here to last forever.
Lithium flower
@saxnot @cygnathreadbare this reminds me of the type of people that are never really attached to anyone in a deep manner, specially the friendship part, they only have superficial relationships, and when they are bored they dump those people and don't ever look back again. Don't compare friendships to a hobby, a book or a fandom, it's not the same, a real friendship implies a degree of mutual care, treating people like disposable objects is pretty far away from that, it's shallow and selfish.
Lithium flower
@saxnot @cygnathreadbare it's a completely legitimate way of living your life though as long as you are up front about it with people and don't go around leaving a trail of corpses. The thing is I suspect you will probably need to lie to a lot of people, because many people actually want real relationships, and they won't want to be with you if you are up front about those expectations.
Darwin Woodka
@lithiumflower_ @saxnot @cygnathreadbare but friendships do end, and trying to drag them on forever or not being honest with yourself about what someone is like "because of the friendship" is not helpful. They do end, and that is not a failure.
Bumble
@lithiumflower_ @saxnot @cygnathreadbare In order to think that way you must accept that an ended friendship is a failed one. You can cherish someone and their friendship and still not have that friendship last forever. 
Peace Out Art :noverify:
@saxnot 
Mikal with a k
This type of language says more about the person describing than the person being described. 
Mystery Babylon
@saxnot Agreed. I thought about something similar once. That if the success of a marriage is based on it lasting the entire lifetimes of its participants, then a marriage needs someone to die to be a success. And how outside-the-spirit-of-the-exercise that social framing was.
Marshall Stack
@saxnot
183231bcb
@saxnot@chaos.social I bought a bottle of orange juice from the store and when I finished drinking it I did not immediately buy more. Orange juice is a failure!
J.A. Pipes ✅
@saxnot 
Matt Palmer
J.A. Pipes ✅
Matt Palmer
FoolishOwl
@saxnot I thought something like this was part of the point of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 
Julie R
@saxnot I recently had this revelation, and I've started to call these times in my life "periods," like Picasso's Blue Period. No one considered him a failure when he moved on to Rose. I was an RN for 10 years before I got too sick to work. I spent a lot of time hating myself for failing--instead, I'm learning to recognize this was my "nurse" period, and I was a success. <3 
KatLS
@saxnot let us learn to allow endings. #capitalism for instance, is ending. Let that corpse go and don’t grieve it. We’ve got lots of healing to do.
Saxnot
wtf why has this >700 boosts because of the content or because of "oh yeah I support the use of image description"? uh… 
Jared Parkinson
@saxnot @olena there is a cafe in my hometown that I had wondered about as a child. They kept odd hours, they were never crazy busy, and they are almost invisible from the road. I learned that they were exactly as successful as they wanted to be. They made enough to live on, and still had time and energy to do the things they loved. I sometimes wish for a life like that
Jared Parkinson
@olena @saxnot I so so hate grind culture. I don’t think there is a single thing I would willingly accept as a grind culture job. Playing with kittens or Penguin comes very close, but there is a finite amount of kitten and Penguin playtime in the world, and I require time to think about them while apart from them. I am a “give me a deadline” culture. Tell me when you want it, and that is when you will get it. No sooner, no later 
not_leader
@saxnot i might be reading this in the wrong context but what happened to nix absolutely wasn’t a “win condition” lol 
Wolf480pl
@saxnot there's enough change in this crazy world already. Some things require stability. For example, having the same parents for all of your childhood is probably a good idea. Also, being able to visit places you grew up in, meet up with old friends, etc. - and even better, be able to share those things with someone you care about who wasn't there to experiemce it (new friend, spouse, child) - is IMO valuable.
Friedemann
@saxnot source: https://www.tumblr.com/brightwanderer/681806049845608448/i-think-a-lot-about-how-we-as-a-culture-have for those who want to read the discourse from back when this was posted (2022).
Eric's Edge
@saxnot I made an electric guitar during the height of Covid. My first and last major woodworking project. I can’t play and arthritis keeps me from wanting to learn. Why did I make it? I didn’t fail. I successfully made a playable musical instrument.
WolfStar76
@saxnot I think on this a LOT. Especially around relationships and the knee-jerk cultural phenomenon to go from "We're in love" to "I hate that jackass, what was I thinking?" seemingly overnight. Like, y'all were together for 5 years, and happy for 90% of it. Why does it have to turn to hate and "wasted time" instead of "Yeah, it was good while it lasted. I'll miss that."? 
nev
@saxnot actual fucking source: https://www.tumblr.com/brightwanderer/681806049845608448/i-think-a-lot-about-how-we-as-a-culture-have (i found this in 5 seconds by googling "tumblr brightwanderer forever success")
Thiemo Kreuz
@saxnot Pretty much the same happens when someone dies. Society reacts almost as if they expected the person to live forever. It just doesn't make sense.
David Mitchell :CApride:
Oddly enough, this is not the standard the 1% holds themselves to: their paths are littered with bankruptcies, broken relationships, and the battered, exploited people they walked over to get where they were going; and we are told to laud them as ‘successes’. Success? -> Take joy in today, love and be loved, find beauty in the rain, and if you can, do your small part to leave a world were all that is a little easier for the next generation. |
@saxnot
me: *dies at 80*
a bunch of very judgmental sequoia trees: he failed as an organism.