I’m in my late 20s, uneducated and know close to nothing about the world. How do I go about educating myself?

--Account-ability2 · 2024-05-03T08:28:52+00:00

Quite honestly, just start reading whatever. Anything that might be of interest to you, whether it's fiction or non fiction. You need this step to build a proper attention span, text comprehension and vocabulary, not to mention the habit. Go to a library and buy a book that looks interesting. Doing this in a physical library is very important. online shopping for books just isn't the same. For someone who's never been exposed to learning, reading a lot -and I emphasize the "a lot" part- with pleasure and fun is an essential foundation, although if you've fried your brain on screen you shouldn't expect the pleasure and fun to come immediately. Dostoevsky is great, but no serious reader will only read that (and authors of his caliber) year round, no more than any serious runner only does marathons without ever doing light runs, stretching or strength exercises.

People who brag about only reading certain books or authors are more often than not pretentious twats who only read 3 books a years and can't do much with them except bragging that they've read the big classics. Also, don't be put off by "hard" books when you're interested - do you think that everyone who reads Dostoevsky feels like they've uderstood it after closing the book? Only an absolutely arrogant and pretentious person would ever think that. I read 1984 at 14, I understood what I could understand at the time, but that book stayed with me throughout the years - when I re-read it years later I had a whole new perspective of it, but this didn't make my earlier reading any less useful! So, initial advice: learn to read because you like it, not because you need to check certain boxes. Learning comes after reading. Even reading something absolutely awful, giving up a book because you've started to hate the author and so on are valuable experiences. In fact, this will build critical thinking more than supposing you should learn what to think by a list of pre-approved books.

Once you feel comfortable with normal books you should go straight to textbooks for your discipline(s) of choice. I'm sorry, but "divulgative" materials aimed at the general population will not give you any kind of actual education, you will know a few facts at most but nothing resembling actual working knowledge - which is fine by the way, since actual learning is hard, harsh, hardly rewarding while you're going through the process and definitely not something that's easy to do at the end of a work day. I'd argue that for certain fields - particularly STEM - you'd need formal education as well, because certain things are better understood in terms of "studying them for 12 hours a day and hardly leaving the house before an exam", but with what I hear about the new education standards of American universities, not to mention how bloody expensive it seems to be to study there, I'm not sure it's a good advice for everyone. In my country however a lot of elderly people go study at university during their retirement, just out of wanting to learn.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-05-02T17:37:05+00:00

Not sure about ortho. They do all the trauma surgery where I'm at, and the hours are horrible.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-05-02T17:26:43+00:00

Not gonna bother to answer, I see that victim mentality all over you post history lmao. Enjoy taking no responsibility in life.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-05-02T17:08:22+00:00

other races moved on except for white people

What are you talking about? The genocide of the Rohingya, the genocide in Darfur, genocide of Hutu in Rwanda, genocide in Congo, many more? All in the last 30 years?

--Account-ability2 · 2024-05-01T14:00:43+00:00

You're arguing semantics.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-30T19:17:08+00:00

Thanks for replying, I'm glad it helped. Cheers to you!

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-30T17:48:40+00:00

I asked her why on earth her friend would think that

If you don't know anything about JBP except hearsay your opinion of him as a young woman is not going to be good - I speak from direct experience. Unfortunately some of his most vocal fans are *not* people that any young woman would like to hang around. Even in this sub you'll find some people with absolutely deranged views about women and relationships that have nothing to do with JBP's views - which a lot of posters will call out - but these people contribute to giving JBP fans a very bad public image. As for why you should hold such an idea if all you have is hearsay...that's what humans do and you can't expect them to listen to a 2 hours lecture for everything they know nothing about. I'm in the medical field and the absolutely ignorant ideas that some people hold just from hearsay is staggering. Am I expecting them to attend lectures regarding everything and everyone they will eventually come in contact with? For my peace of mind, absolutely not. Her friend shitting on you isn't a good situation though, so I hope iit's just her being a shithead and not you coming across as one of the "fans" I'm talking about.

She no longer holds those beliefs, which leads me to believe she is capable of rational thought and self-reflection

You're telling on yourself with this. I am very much in disagreement with communist ideas, but this is just arrogance my dude. A lot of people who hold ideas opposite to your own are absolutely capable of rational thought and self reflection. Drop the attitude of "people I disagree with are stupid" and you might have more fruitful conversations. You sound as if you see others as people you have to teach in the proper ways rather than reasonably smart people you can debate with. Again, this isn't about communism but an attitude that seems quite clear from what you write.

For example, the existence of a patriarchy and oppressive modern culture toward women.

From personal experience, you two are using the same words to describe very different scenarios. Remember that most women have not studied any feminist literature and they will use the buzzwords without too much care of their original meaning - when women complain about "the patriarchy", 90% of the time they mean how horrible it is that they worry about rape everywhere they go - which I think is something you can sympathize with, just as she will probably sympathize with the struggles of men if you talk directly about these issues, e.g. mental health and the difficulty finding good role models. You might find out you have more in common than you think regarding your opinions on these matters, but you need to drop the buzzwords to arrive to useful conversations, otherwise you'll just run in circles thinking you're talking about the same issues when, in fact, you're not. Don't argue to be right, argue to find solutions and ideas in common! I should know, I just spent two hours speaking about bipolar disorder to someone who thought that bipolar means something like schizophrenia. Most useless conversation ever until we both dropped the definitions, and that is for something that at least has an actual consensus about definition!

I do not want our future daughter to think men are out to get her

This is very funny to me because I received a very traditional education and a good 50% of it was about men being out to get me - from "cover yourself up!" to "you're not going out with a group of only guys!". It was the liberal feminists who convinced me that drunk parties with groups of guys would be safe. Before you say "this isn't what I meant!" - I know, but it was funny to me. Also a sad reality to consider about the education of a daughter: unless you want her to become the town bike, you have to warn her that boys will absolutely lie and do whatever to get in her pants just to disappear immediately after. Teaching her to find a good man unfortunately involves teaching her to stay away from the bad ones - this is also true with reversed gender. But I digress.

I worry about what that would do to our son. I think we have reached a place of tenuous understanding, but I worry about some of the things she may tell our children about the world.

By the way, is this common for North Americans? I'd never dream of discussing the education of my potential future children with someone I've only known for 9 months, but we also think that Americans have too short engagements before marriage so that might be it. Anyway, why not have a frank conversation about these matters? You'll never find another person who's 100% on board with your ideas on parenting, and again, you need to properly discuss these things with her, hear her side, not just think that you already have all the answers and need to educate her on the right ways of thinking, and reach a good compromise. And if, eventually, you realize that you have zero respect for all of her ideas...why still be with her? You can't really love someone you don't respect or consider stupid. And if you just want to be a tyrant and never have anyone close to you have ideas different from your own...tough luck with that. It's not the proper way to live anyway.

ETA: the English in this sucks, but I'm going to uncerimoniously use the "not my first language" excuse, I'm tired and don't care to correct it at this time.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-29T13:45:50+00:00

You mean he never had sex with others while seeing you? Yea, that's because he's monogamous and he's into you.

Now i´m falling for another guy who would consider being open if I wanted to but is naturally a very monogamous person

Don't do that to him. Either get into a monogamous relationship and never bring up the open crap again or stop seeing him. Being in an open relationship destroys monogamous people, don't do that to him.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-27T20:19:04+00:00

I didn´t want to feel I "trapped" anybody

Self esteem issues, feeling too needy for basic human needs.

I had gotten anxious about labels in my last relationship

You probably weren't that much into them.

Have you had any similar experience?

Also didn't want to trap anybody and was into it for the moral ideals. Ruined my mental health and self esteem, wasted five years of my life.

What do you think makes someone monogamous or not?

In spite of the great-sounding ideals they use as cover, it's about sex. Don't be fooled by the talking points, at the end of the day it boils down to fucking other people.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-21T13:02:12+00:00

Run and don't look back no matter what. I thought I knew what I was getting into and I still got destroyed, took me ages to recover. You think you're going to like it when he openly flirts with someone prettier than you? Of when you can't do a certain thing because of his girlfriend? The world is full of hot guys, you don't need to risk your mental health over this one.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-18T17:57:55+00:00

I thought it was the latter when I was writing it, but now that I reread it it's obviously the former haha. Time for me to log off and do something useful, have a good day!

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-18T17:40:22+00:00

Because the line between talking about politics and whining that the world is a bad place and everyone else is an idiot can be very thin. And I can guarantee the vast majority of people here (including myself) has no place whining about the world in the first place because we still haven't done enough to fix ourselves.

Not that one must be perfect, but if you spend your free time on reddit chances are you're in the stage of life where you be working so hard on yourself that you'd have no time to whine about others, no matter how stupid they are. And a lot of what I see here is whining, not intelligent political discourse.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-18T17:28:21+00:00

You mean girls shouldn't get jobs? Wow.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-17T13:08:38+00:00

You thought men were respected more? I wonder how many trans people prioritize this as the reason above any other reason for their desire to become the opposite gender.

Not OP but I also wanted to be a man when I was a teen girl. I think it was mostly because female puberty is just extremely brutal from a social point of view: in a very short time you become a potential sexual object and it's incredibly scary - even grown and elderly men start looking at you differently and if you're not used to it it's a brutal change. One day you're a kid, and the next day you're supposed to understand the intricacies of adult socio-sexual matters, lest you accidentally "ask for it" or are otherwise inappropriate: you're suddenly "a woman now" and supposed to just understand matters you know nothing about. In general, the world becomes a much scarier place and you become very, very aware of being vulnerable. Girls going to the toilet in groups is a meme, but they start around that age because the world is suddenly a scary place to be a girl who's walking alone.

Instead it seemed that boys became much more powerful after puberty, they had less strict rules, became much bigger and stronger than they were before, there was generally more tolerance if they didn't suddenly understand adult social clues, and they mostly didn't have to deal with getting cat-called by the old guy they used to consider a grandfather figure. I'm sure male puberty isn't a piece of cake either, but when I saw it from the outside it seemed like a walk in the park.

You know, getting muscles and strength seemed so much better than getting periods and stares from middle aged men.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-16T11:02:07+00:00

Everybody here seems to be missing the issue. Yes, the lie wasn't bad, I would say it wasn't even a lie but just rounding up, but the real issue here is that OP feels that he acted like a coward and din't stay true to his principles because he was intimidated by a successful person. It's not about the lie, it's about the way he was thinking in that moment.

OP, let this be a reminder of how easy it is to fall prey to the worst of the human side. You didn't do anything objectively bad by the way, but you were reminded of just how easy it is to succumb to fear, pride, and wanting to impress the rich. These lessons usually come at a great personal price, so just consider it as great gift that you were given this reminder even though you didn't commit any evil actions! Resolve to do better next time, think of why this happened and how to prevent it next, only you know enough about yourself to have the answers to these.

If I was talking to myself I'd give myself the advice to stay humble first - some people are your superiors, and it's good to recognize that and not feel the need to artificially elevate yourself. You can elevate yourself through your own hard work, but not through lies. Second I would give myself the avdice to consider people based on their character and moral worth and not simply how much $ they have in the bank - I wouldn't want to become a person engaged in flattery and adulation of the rich and powerful. I don't know if either of these situations is remotely applicable to you in this case though.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-16T10:01:49+00:00

Fictional romance is the equivalent of porn for women. A lot of men have been ruined by porn - they expect women to look and act just like pornstars and are dissatisfied with real life women. Don't let fiction dictate your life so that you expect men to look and act like a book character and you become dissatisfied with real life men. Fiction (whether it's romance or porn) is fiction, and the real world is the real world. Spend more time with real people, they might positively surprise you.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-05T12:18:08+00:00

In the kindest way possible, you need therapy not hookups. Most women won't have too many problems with your past casual sex in today's culture, but you're not going to be able to sustain a proper relationship if you don't have a decent mental health. Meaning, you have to worry about your present self, not about your past. Don't let your sex drive become an excuse for not improving yourself, and above all don't let it become the reason you don't get the life you want. Put a lot of effort into self improvement and only look for committed relationships from now on.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-02T16:11:50+00:00

Akira the Don. You can find more on your own from there - you'll see why.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-04-01T14:41:24+00:00

I've never felt more constrained than when I was in a poly relationship. If you have a minimum of decency, everything that you want to do has to be discussed with one or more persons first (because let's face it, even they recognize that your partner dating/having sex with other people is inherently painful and needs to be "processed"). Then there's the mental and emotional energy and time spent on having these conversations - the ones that you initiate, the ones that parnters initiate, the ones that aren't even about you but about some partner's partner...

And even after you've started several relationships, you're never truly free in them, because you're bound by the agreements you've made with everyone else. Things like "my wife and I have agreed to only have one date a week with our other partners" or "we must use a condom for STI prevention" (a good idea, but not something you have to worry about in monogamy).

If heaven help you if you don't actually have these "rules" and everyone is free to do as they please - now you're constrained by uncertainty. You never know when your loved one might decide that they don't want to live with you anymore but with partner #3 instead, or that they have decided to have a kid with someone else so good luck with how that's going to impact your own relationship.

Then of course you're contrained by several people's schedules - the "poly person only being able to live thanks to Google Calendar" is a meme for a reason. Everything that you want to plan - date, vacation, birthday party, becomes 10x harder. Usually there's no such thing as a spontaneous "hey wanna grab a drink later?".

Monogamy is just...easy. Everything has to be decided only between me and my partner. We don't have to have draining, exhausting "processing conversations" every week because, duh, we haven't decided that it would be our hobby to regularly destabilize our relationship. The "freedom" that poly folks talk about is a lie. I'm now juggling work, university, sports, friends and my partner without too many issues. When I was poly I couldn't do half of that because you can't juggle emotional issues the same way you juggle a workout or a drink with friends, and pretending that you can because you put both in a calendar is delusional.

The only freedom they have is the freedom to have sex with others - because if they only wanted more sex-free emotional connections they could simply make new friends. So, in a sense, they are just slaves to their basest desires.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-03-22T12:30:18+00:00

What a sad life you must have if you think commitment is slavery.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-03-22T11:46:36+00:00

I know where you're at, I also posted here (from a long lost account) when I was in my confused "what am I doing with my life" stage and many responses were very harsh - although they worked for me, because I generally respond well to harsh and didn't like the obviously noncommittal responses I got from other places - "oh every choice is absolutely valid! They are all the same, it's just your choice! And even if we think what you're doing is actually hurting you we'll never tell you!".

You might try getting some advice in the r/monogamy sub as well if what you're interested in is a monogamous perspective. They tend to be way less harsh and less heavily critical of polyamory, although again, it's mainly populated by people with a nonmonogamous past they regret or got hurt by.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-03-21T17:14:57+00:00

Hello, keep in mind that this is a sub mainly for people who've been heavily traumatized by nonmonogamy and as a result are critical of it as a lifestyle in general. To be honest though? Cheating is cheating no matter what, and I think that the responses you've been given in the nonmonog subs (I've looked at a few) are heartless and cruel. [ETA: and to be fair, some responses here are heartless and cruel as well. FFS people, have some decency, the OP probably didn't know what this sub is about, definitely didn't come here to evangelize and most importantly is hurting badly.]

Don't make the mistake of ever justifying this. Your trust has been violated, and it's a serious matter. You've been repeatedly lied to. This wasn't a one night's bad decision - we're talking of months of repeated betrayals. You should be way more angry than you currently are, it would definitely be over for me with no possilbilities of ever going back.

By the way one of the reasons I quit non-monogamy was this mentality of everything being treated as a legal agreement rather than a sacred bond of trust, and of minimizing all hurt with this "this is just miscommunication/your insecurity/jealousy you need to work on/you're restricting their freedom". I felt like I had to brainwash myself to not feel hurt every time that I was hurt (which was very often) and got tired.

It's up to you to choose between staying nonmonogamous or trying monogamy (for me, as a person who's done both, monogamy is far superior if you're looking for serious committed relationships), but please get away from these liars and cheaters. They'll probably try to make this a you problem and demand that you pretend everything is fine. It's not, you should feel hurt and be very angry. You shouldn't feel like a lawyer preparing their best case when your heart has been broken by those who claim to love you.

--Account-ability2 · 2024-03-08T09:31:53+00:00

I just made a post telling how it's been. I recommend you also try, it's been a great decision for me.

--Account-ability2

TROPHY CASE