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I'm committing a major faux-pas by posting a second consecutive top-level comment, but it's been 12 hours and people need to post more. (Seriously, post a top level comment. Do it now.)
What's something that you were wrong about?
I'll start. I was wrong about marijuana legalization. It was a bad idea and we never should have done it. Marijuana is, contra urban legend, actually pretty addictive. And it makes productive people into unproductive people. The benefits, such as they are, are best enjoyed in moderation. But legalization has resulted in a whole new class of junkies that wouldn't have existed otherwise. Also, weed culture is gross.
Scott, as always, says it best:
In any case, what were you wrong about?
-- Gambling. I thought when my state legalized gambling, what's the big deal? It's legal in Atlantic City and Vegas, plenty of people travel there to gamble, and everyone knows someone with a poker game or buddies who keep a pool of NFL bets going. Why not keep that revenue in the state? I miss the old equilibrium. When one had to take, at least, a two hour trip to Atlantic City to gamble, there was at least a certain occasion to it, now there are guys gambling away their paychecks to a video poker machine in the back of a truck stop. And don't even get me started on phone gambling. The idea of people losing huge sums of money without ever leaving their house or talking to anyone is horrifying to me. All the old forms of gambling that lead me to view it as harmless had strong social elements: your local poker night was really everyone hanging out together, the office super bowl pool was a bonding experience, even the casino in Atlantic City had the advantage of travel and adventure and glamour. Legalizing it in every state removes the glamour of the destination gambling trip, and turns it into just a straight suck of money from the foolish to the pockets of casinos. If we're going to have sports gambling, we should just make it a state monopoly like the lottery, and shuffle all the profits into the education system.
-- Aging. When I was a teenager I bought into the Sex and the City-era framing for how the first half of your life path was supposed to go: a series of romantic adventures, serial "serious" monogamous relationships, and then at 30-35 getting "serious" about settling down. Plenty of time! People getting married later was treated as an unalloyed good in the media, and I should note that my own parents married late and had me late. Now, a few days from 33, great Odin's raven how did no one tell us how fast we were going to get old? The number of single friends I have who got unbelievably fat or have aged out of their looks! I talk to my friends, and especially my wife's friends, and they have these romantic problems, and the sad grainy truth is that they should have made hay while the sun shined and hooked someone ten years ago when they were still hot. There are girls we went to college with, and they were reasonably in the same league as my wife at the time, and now they're completely unfuckable, to the point where effort will never get you back where you were.
And it's blackpilling, because there's no advice to give them on their relationship strategies that doesn't run back up against that cold hard fact: you're fat now and there's nothing you can do that will deliver what I would consider good results for them at this point. And I knew that there would be some point where that would be true, but I thought it was 40 or 50 or after the third kid. Not 32. It hits women harder, but hits men too, the curves that online dating sites show men getting more attractive only in relative terms. The media told us at 32 we'd just be hitting the peak of our hotness, not that better than half would have fallen off.
Somebody needs to warn the youth, we need to be sending our freshmen to college this fall with a copy of Princeton Mom as required reading. In media I felt like the point at which one really aged, in the sense of looks, was at least 40. Certainly, though I wouldn't watch the show until after I was married it was just in the air at the time culturally, Sex and the City's girls dealt with the idea of aging in their 30s and 40s, but they didn't even have friends or side characters who got fat, or were completely aged out of attractiveness in dating. There's a huge number of women, and a decent number of men, in my social circle where I look at them and I'm like wow you've already missed the window. It's not "over" for them, after all they might find each other, but their championship window has closed and that's indescribably sad for me. I can't imagine not being hot at your own wedding, that should be near the hottest you've ever been, and some of the weddings I've been to lately it's a joke. And these people are only in their early 30s! You have a narrow window to really maximize your talents in looks, narrower if you don't take care of yourself. Pick ye rosebuds while ye may!
-- Donald Trump (on foreign policy). I voted for him in the 2016 primary after he got up at the debate and said that Iraq was a big fat mistake. While I'm a bit more of an internationalist, I bought into his America First isolationism as at least reasonably peaceful. In office he mostly got captured or railroaded by neocons in his administration, or turned out to lack the temperament for peace. Continued most of the bad policies of his predecessors, while adding a few new ones of his own, and reducing the reliability of the USA as a global partner around the world.
-- Dress shoes are dead, and my decade of resistance has been pointless. No one wears them anymore.
-- Church. I sort of thought church would always be there. That I could wander in and out of religion as I chose, and there would always be other people who kept the place going while I figured my shit out. Now we're seeing churches die out in my town and it's dawned on me that I, me, personally, I'm responsible for maintaining these things. That if I don't do it no one will. I'm back at my church, but even then it makes me sad seeing the parking lot at the historic lutheran church near my house and knowing that they're dying. And it's not like I can do anything for two churches at once. There's got to be a German word for the sadness at seeing things that you didn't like die out? These assumed bedrocks of our lives just aren't as secure as we thought they were.
-- Marijuana, from the opposite direction. I didn't use weed until I was married, and I didn't get it, I was a straight edge teen. Legalized marijuana has been a Good Thing. Notwithstanding my immense dorkiness, when I was a teenager, I could get pot more easily than I could get alcohol. I knew guys who dealt pot from the Boy Scouts or from basketball or from debate club, it was normal to know someone who sold pot. Because the marijuana distribution system was already illegal and underground, so they weren't exactly checking IDs, and a teenage could go buy a half pound and chop it up and sell it, where alcohol had to be stolen from an adult or a store. Now, marijuana is mostly distributed through legal channels, so you equally need a 21 year old willing to get you weed or beer, and fewer teenagers can swing that. And we've seen that decline in youth drug use. See attached image. Youth drug and alcohol use has continued to drop during the process of marijuana legalization. The kids are, by that standard, alright. Further, traffic deaths have not correlated with weed legalization driving high is probably bad, but it's not as bad as driving drunk so we see a replacement effect.
In general, Marijuana is and was normalized already, even before legalization. And I'm of the opinion that there is a deleterious impact on civic fabric from ordinary, law abiding citizens being anti-cop, in the sense of breaking the law and hoping not to get caught by the police. The policeman should never be the enemy of the citizen, the citizen should always see the policeman's presence as a positive. That's why I'm also in favor of more reasonable drinking age laws. There should only be laws against things that the average person would find morally blameworthy. Laws that over-reach and criminalize the conduct of ordinary citizens set up a conflict between the state and the citizen.
And, for that matter, I use thc these days, and I think done right it is the conservative family drug. The effects are, in context, ideal for relaxing after a hard day with people you love. Alcohol leads people to get into fights with their family, to sleep with people they shouldn't. Marijuana leads to hanging out with people who annoy you and just laughing it off, it makes sex with your spouse better but sex with anyone else unthinkable.
/images/17262286826661794.webp
Great, deep post. AAQC'd.
Some thoughts I have:
Regarding churches: I have certainly felt the same thing about sadness at them dying off. And I am myself part of a relatively small cohort of under-40s at the church I attend now. However, I do think this is creating some healthy pressure on them to adapt. I have spoken to pastors at some declining churches and asked them what they are doing to try and recruit new members - I have never gotten a response that indicated they even think about it seriously. That is not good enough. Sincerely, I believe that churches with that attitude deserve to die out. Meanwhile, I am indeed aware of some churches in my area that have retrenched, come up with some new ideas, and are expanding. I think my church "makes a great product," for lack of a better way to put it; we have something good to offer, and we should capitalize on that. I may look to start a committee about that in the new year where we members can work on that.
Regarding aging: this is just really true, and I commend you for pointing it out. In particular, it makes me think about "bubbles." I have been awash in "self-improvement culture" for many years now; I don't know if I started seeking it out, or if the algorithm presented it to me, or if my involvement developed from my own ideas, or what, but - I have internalized the idea that, to be a desirable partner, you have to improve and maintain yourself. You must meet standards of physical wellbeing and style; cultivate yourself into a person that others would like to talk to and be around; achieve adult levels of life stability.
To me, that is so clear that I can't imagine not doing those things. Conversely, as you mention, there are some people for whom these ideas make up no part of their thinking. I genuinely do not know what they are thinking about instead. I am not entirely judging them; perhaps they like their way of life better. But the outcome is that there are a surprising amount of young-ish people in my extended circle, who are not legitimate romantic prospects for anyone. And these may be people in their age-based "prime;" it only gets worse from here if they don't shape up. Or they may, as you say, be people who spent their entire prime in a totally unviable state, and are now declining even from there. As you say, it makes me really sad. Personally, if I died relatively soon, I have a couple of decades that I can look back on very positively. I made the most of what I was given, more or less. It's very, very painful to think about someone looking back on having failed to do that.
That's pretty much where I'm at unless I'm in court or similar. I went through a strong thrift-store #menswear phase in my 20s, and I put together a pretty great collection of Allen Edmonds and Alden etc dress shoes. But more and more, I found that there wasn't really anywhere one could wear them without being overdressed. A casual leather shoe is more than good enough in the vast majority of situations these days, anything more feels costumey.
Probably they deserve it, but it still makes me sad in a way. The Lutheran church was supposed to be there! I didn't want to go there, but if I wanted to go there, I expected them to be there to welcome me, and somehow it's sad to know that they aren't.
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From my own personal experience as someone who has never been able to bring myself to give two shits about "self-improvement culture," object-level stuff, mostly. Work and whether I should apply to a new job or try for advancement at my current employer; the Napoleonic Wars or whatever other period of history has grabbed my interest recently; the podcast I am listening to; whether my favorite baseball team would be better or worse if they traded for someone or called up the hot prospect du jour; how to reply to the latest interesting post here; whether my car needs an oil change, etc.
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As someone who mostly wears retired running shoes (Altra, not New Balance, and generally more muted colors), do you have any recommendations for finding durable, comfortable, and good-looking shoes?
I have two pairs of Thursdays and once they are broken in they are comfortable and will last for a long time. They have a line of leather sneakers with sheepskin interior lining: https://thursdayboots.com/collections/mens-sneakers-low-top
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SAS shoes.
One pair will likely last you a decade, if not longer.
These mostly appear to be hideous.
Shrug. I like them. Don't know what more to say than that.
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My honest-to-God answer to this is that for daily use, I just buy simple, conservatively-styled Rockports, and replace them when they wear out. Like this. Yes, it's just a basic-ass black shoe; but it feels and performs very well, and it looks okay.
Real shoe connoisseurs will not be impressed by this, but the man on the street or the lady from Inside Sales might. And after all, I live in Ohio. People's expectations are easy to exceed here.
I do believe that durable, comfortable, good-looking true dress shoes exist, and I also think there are some Mottizens who will be happy to chime in with recommendations. I feel like I've seen them talking about it before.
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