Our Shared Responsibility for Due Diligence

[Fresh8686]

So many problems in this world arise from grabbing the first thing that comes or is offered to us without doing the due diligence to investigate if it is truly worth bringing into our life.

 

The first conclusion, belief, choice, or impulse that comes to us is not always the best one in the long term. Neither is the first shiny object, morsel, or person. Especially, if our palate is off from doing perpetually unhealthy ass ****, or our feel is off because life has us unbalanced or over-excited at the time.

 

All this conspiracy theory and fake news bull****. this follow what you feel, lead from the gut nonsense comes from people who have no real process for due diligence. We have to develop our inner senses and get them up to standard before we rely on them. We have to test our instincts and fine-tune them before we blindly follow them and that takes years of work and change with deep and wide-ranging experiences. If you don't do that your intuition and instincts are immature and unreliable, there are levels to this ****.

 

We have to have a process for due diligence or else we're just a leaf in the wind or the blind leading the blind and we can't follow or rely on people who go through life like that. This world is too complicated and too dangerous to be that un-evolved. We have to be stricter with our standards and what we accept around us.

 

We have to know our blind spots, biases, and predilections, especially if they lead to extreme or unsound choices. We have to build our process of due diligence so that it has answers for those flaws and baked in assumptions we have. So that means spending time reflecting on ourselves and taking in the pain and positive disintegration to our ego when we make mistakes and gracefully learning how to be better, while nurturing and validating the instincts we do have right. It also means exercising empathy deeply and often so our perceptions are impacted by the information of how others are feeling in the shared space around us, which should play a vital part in shaping what choices we make.

 

We have to also include time scales in our decision making and many other things that also include allowances for how we and others might change over those time scales, which brings in the need for foresight. It also means gaining an understanding for what changes are healthy and identifying them in others, because no one can do this alone, and an echo chamber should never be the first choice for one's sounding board. We have to have the foresight to choose good people, who give us good feedback and help us find our way and move on from those who don't.

 

Foresight, empathy, self-reflection, discernment, self-restraint, courage, intuition, instinct, connection, and humility. All of these are required to be a decent, functioning human being in the complicated times we live in today. This is the standard we have to meet everyday and this is why character matters. Character is the structural support for a society that exists underneath any laws or threats of violence and when it is no longer inside most of us, the society that character built will degrade and fall apart around us.

 

Let's get our **** together humanity and not let these dumb mother****ers drag the rest of us down.

[Mooka]

As I've said before....

 

The Golden Child of accountability died a long time ago.

 

You can add shared responsibility and due diligence too. 

 

Charles Dance and his goons took them all out.

[Fresh8686]

9 minutes ago, Mooka said:

As I've said before....

 

The Golden Child of accountability died a long time ago.

 

You can add shared responsibility and due diligence too. 

 

Charles Dance and his goons took them all out.

 

Each one of us makes an individual choice each an everyday, whether or not to nurture and grow character or neglect and let it die.

When we make statements like what you wrote, we are choosing to follow others in their failure and making the world a darker and harder place for those newly born to this world and those who are currently carrying the standard. 

 

When we don't follow in their failure, we make the world brighter and better for those immediately around us and while that might not seem to move the needle a whole hell of a lot in the larger sense, it makes all the difference in the individual world for those directly impacted by our choices. And truly, these tiny increments over time is the only way to change things in that larger sense.  

 

For example, because of the high standards of character my wife and I set for our relationship, we have people telling us that we are the reason they still believe in love and they see us as the model for the best version love can be. Do you know how sacred and wonderful a responsibility like that is? We all carry the opportunity to take up a responsibility like that, to set the standard and make real, new ways of living, thinking, and loving that are so much better than what was ever done before.

 

What if we were born in a world where no one could see color, but you and me and an ever growing number of kids as they were born into the world? No one would believe color exists, they would look at us like we were crazy or stupid or naively dreaming about something too fantastic to be real in this colorless world we've all accepted. It would be up to us to create a system around colors that contained all the different passions, hobbies, and even language about color so the kids coming in aren't swallowed up by this colorless world. It would be up to us to keep fidelity with the truth of color and to defend and shelter it's value from people who had established themselves by profiting off of continuing to keep the world colorless.

 

Do you know how hard that would be, but also how vitally important to humanity? We are living in that struggle right now if we take the time to connect to it. 

 

And the only way that struggle gets any easier is for more people to connect to it and to join in and share with protecting that color of character. Each one of us who says no and just chooses comfort and safety at the cost of disconnection from a better existence is turning out the light in a house we all live in. 

 

[LD0506]

While I might not share the depth of your insights here, I would agree there is a basic truth in it. Coordinated cooperative compassionate interaction is not just a strength, it is THE strength we share as a species, and it will be what leads us out of this dark time. People working together, not in hierarchies as much but as actual independent thinking human beings, sharing their effort and thoughts can do amazing things. So many have been made to feel worthless, disenfranchised and tossed aside that they believe in their own worthlessness. That's an ill and evil thing, but every cloud does have its silver lining. This entire kalabalik of misery is a challenge to us all, to choose who and what we are, aside from the influence or validation of others.

 

Misery's intent is to leave you discouraged- dis couraged, to sap your strength and leave you incapable of courage because courage is the root of hope, to dare to believe that better is possible even when all evidence screams otherwise. Courage can be hard to come by, not the courage in a firefight but the courage to stay hungry so your child might eat, the courage to reach out and speak to someone that shows no desire to speak to you, the courage to believe that we are capable and obligated to do better for ourselves, our families and our communities. 

 

Challenging times test us all, many to their breaking point,  but if I have a personal theology it is simply this- try to do better today. Let go of yesterday's failings, just try to do better now, not for gain or applause or even notice but rather for the sheer simple knowledge that you tried. If nothing else by trying today, you reduced the number of the lost by one. 

[bakedtater1]

What does this thread mean?..explain what this thread means in one or two sentences...please

[NickyJ]

28 minutes ago, bakedtater1 said:

What does this thread mean?..explain what this thread means in one or two sentences...please

 

[bakedtater1]

So this thread means we should be nice to one another?..you here that t.k?...when I continue to ask for you to throw a tater on the field for me before each game..just know its out of love man, pure 100% unadulterated love...now excuse me, I'm gonna go Google what unadulterated means.

Ok I was right..I used that word correctly..someone call my mom..

[bakedtater1]

22 hours ago, Fresh8686 said:

So many problems in this world arise from grabbing the first thing that comes or is offered to us without doing the due diligence to investigate if it is truly worth bringing into our life.

 

The first conclusion, belief, choice, or impulse that comes to us is not always the best one in the long term. Neither is the first shiny object, morsel, or person. Especially, if our palate is off from doing perpetually unhealthy ass ****, or our feel is off because life has us unbalanced or over-excited at the time.

 

All this conspiracy theory and fake news bull****. this follow what you feel, lead from the gut nonsense comes from people who have no real process for due diligence. We have to develop our inner senses and get them up to standard before we rely on them. We have to test our instincts and fine-tune them before we blindly follow them and that takes years of work and change with deep and wide-ranging experiences. If you don't do that your intuition and instincts are immature and unreliable, there are levels to this ****.

 

We have to have a process for due diligence or else we're just a leaf in the wind or the blind leading the blind and we can't follow or rely on people who go through life like that. This world is too complicated and too dangerous to be that un-evolved. We have to be stricter with our standards and what we accept around us.

 

We have to know our blind spots, biases, and predilections, especially if they lead to extreme or unsound choices. We have to build our process of due diligence so that it has answers for those flaws and baked in assumptions we have. So that means spending time reflecting on ourselves and taking in the pain and positive disintegration to our ego when we make mistakes and gracefully learning how to be better, while nurturing and validating the instincts we do have right. It also means exercising empathy deeply and often so our perceptions are impacted by the information of how others are feeling in the shared space around us, which should play a vital part in shaping what choices we make.

 

We have to also include time scales in our decision making and many other things that also include allowances for how we and others might change over those time scales, which brings in the need for foresight. It also means gaining an understanding for what changes are healthy and identifying them in others, because no one can do this alone, and an echo chamber should never be the first choice for one's sounding board. We have to have the foresight to choose good people, who give us good feedback and help us find our way and move on from those who don't.

 

Foresight, empathy, self-reflection, discernment, self-restraint, courage, intuition, instinct, connection, and humility. All of these are required to be a decent, functioning human being in the complicated times we live in today. This is the standard we have to meet everyday and this is why character matters. Character is the structural support for a society that exists underneath any laws or threats of violence and when it is no longer inside most of us, the society that character built will degrade and fall apart around us.

 

Let's get our **** together humanity and not let these dumb mother****ers drag the rest of us down.

I kid you not..if you want to attempt to live a more relaxing peaceful easy going not gonna let folks drag me down life..do two things...**** can face book and social media all together.. if you have to use it for employment then so be it then maybe you can't get around it.. if you do not use social media at all whatsoever for employment then you make sure your true friends and all your family members know where you live and have your current phone number...communicate through phone calls and written letters.

[Kosher Ham]

For the most part I agree.

I haven't written more than a card with a pen in years. Same with checks. Social media is a good and bad thing. 

Don't understand why you quoted that entire post though. 

[gbear]

22 hours ago, Fresh8686 said:

 

What if we were born in a world where no one could see color, but you and me and an ever growing number of kids as they were born into the world? No one would believe color exists, they would look at us like we were crazy or stupid or naively dreaming about something too fantastic to be real in this colorless world we've all accepted. It would be up to us to create a system around colors that contained all the different passions, hobbies, and even language about color so the kids coming in aren't swallowed up by this colorless world. It would be up to us to keep fidelity with the truth of color and to defend and shelter it's value from people who had established themselves by profiting off of continuing to keep the world colorless.

 

Do you know how hard that would be, but also how vitally important to humanity? We are living in that struggle right now if we take the time to connect to it. 

 

And the only way that struggle gets any easier is for more people to connect to it and to join in and share with protecting that color of character. Each one of us who says no and just chooses comfort and safety at the cost of disconnection from a better existence is turning out the light in a house we all live in. 

 

As a white guy who grew up middle class in the DC suburbs, I used to believe in the myth of a colorless society.  I did so not really understanding the colorless society I thought about was a very Caucasian like society.  Years ago, I ran an experiment with young kids who came into my office.  I had a picture of me, my wife, my oldest son (birth parents from South America) and my oldest daughter (Black).  I used to ask who in the picture was different.  All but one said my wife because she didn't have glasses on in the picture.  The other one said me because my shirt didn't have stripes.  I have taken that to mean the racism we see is not natural.  It is something we learn.

 

Years later, I am a dad of a multi-racial multi-ethnic family, now with 4 kids.  I think raising my kids as if their birth culture doesn't matter or is the same as mine does them a disservice.  While I am happy they have a better relationship with their extended families (mostly my wife's extended family) spread throughout the world than I ever had, I don't think that gives them a complete picture of who they are.  I think we are all a part of our cultures and how we react to others along with their reactions to us help define us.  I think failing to recognize the past and its impact on today does not help them.  I thought about this every time we took them somewhere like the museum for the underground railroad in Eastern MD.  I think the important part is teaching them the differences in past histories and the different cultures such that they can take pride and a sense of belonging to their own histories. 

 

Their race or ethnicity isn't something I would ever wish to whitewash or pretend is the same as mine.  I want them proud of who they are.  Our histories have merged going forward, and I am thankful for that.   Knowing what I know now, I would never trade the colors of my family for a colorless one. 

[Kosher Ham]

Why is race even important? Ethnicity is the same to me. 

 

 in the words of Rodney King, can't we all just get along?

[Fresh8686]

48 minutes ago, gbear said:

As a white guy who grew up middle class in the DC suburbs, I used to believe in the myth of a colorless society.  I did so not really understanding the colorless society I thought about was a very Caucasian like society.  Years ago, I ran an experiment with young kids who came into my office.  I had a picture of me, my wife, my oldest son (birth parents from South America) and my oldest daughter (Black).  I used to ask who in the picture was different.  All but one said my wife because she didn't have glasses on in the picture.  The other one said me because my shirt didn't have stripes.  I have taken that to mean the racism we see is not natural.  It is something we learn.

 

Years later, I am a dad of a multi-racial multi-ethnic family, now with 4 kids.  I think raising my kids as if their birth culture doesn't matter or is the same as mine does them a disservice.  While I am happy they have a better relationship with their extended families (mostly my wife's extended family) spread throughout the world than I ever had, I don't think that gives them a complete picture of who they are.  I think we are all a part of our cultures and how we react to others along with their reactions to us help define us.  I think failing to recognize the past and its impact on today does not help them.  I thought about this every time we took them somewhere like the museum for the underground railroad in Eastern MD.  I think the important part is teaching them the differences in past histories and the different cultures such that they can take pride and a sense of belonging to their own histories. 

 

Their race or ethnicity isn't something I would ever wish to whitewash or pretend is the same as mine.  I want them proud of who they are.  Our histories have merged going forward, and I am thankful for that.   Knowing what I know now, I would never trade the colors of my family for a colorless one. 

 

I appreciate you writing all that and I agree that the protection of diversity is precious, but I meant color as in the ability to see color in a general sense, like being able to see the color blue in the sky or the ocean or the green in the trees and how that has a positive emotional impact on life and the pursuit of enrichment. The whole point of that exercise was to try to get across that people are character blind right now and are acting much the same way towards people with character as those in a color-blind world would react to people suddenly being able to see color. Or to put another way, it is the way a world empty to love or trust would act towards those suddenly trying to live and behave in accordance with those energies.

 

Humans are creatures that are shaped and molded by feedback with each other and the world around them. We depend on each other to maintain the highest standards of due diligence, love, trust, and character because when we are born into this world we to look to the people already walking this earth as models and anchors for what is real and possible. However, when we are born into a world where no models of those higher standards are present, it becomes this insane level struggle to create or recover higher standards that were previously lost. It's like an extinction level event knocking out most of humanity and then having to rediscover and figure out algebra or the positive effects of penicillin. We are in a slow motion extinction level event for character and trust and many other things unfortunately and each one of us is making the choice to push that extinction forward or backwards, which has a big impact on the humans being born into this world right now.

 

But. for the record I agree that diversity is precious and access to that diversity is vital for giving people the opportunity to form their own identities. People who misguidedly attempt to engender a colorless society must first do their due diligence and investigate whether their idea of colorless is true or instead an attempt to unconsciously push their own cultural internalizations of reality onto another person. I am personally a mixture, of arab, white, black and who knows what else and I feel blessed to not be overly attached or identify with any of those races, however I do recognize their constituent parts in the mixture of me that has gone into the formation of my identity and would never blindly push this unique combination of myself onto others as this "universal" way of being. Personally, I'm all about the dynamic goldilocks zone and don't give credence to any paradigms rooted in static absolutism. 

[Fresh8686]

3 hours ago, bakedtater1 said:

What does this thread mean?..explain what this thread means in one or two sentences...please

 

Good question and thanks for asking.

 

This thread is about building a system for investigating the things we allow inside our brains, hearts, and bodies. Which means building a strong and coherent  process of self-check and self-reflection on the things that we take in and automatically believe in, give loyalty too, want to be, or want to chase after. This process over time then makes our instincts, intuitions, "gut-feel", and choices better which also makes us better and more reliable people.

[gbear]

Race and ethnicity are important because they speak to a past common to a group of people.  They are also a part of how the world sees us.  Before you say who cares how others see us, I would remind you not understanding how you are seen is a problem many people with autism experience.

 

Race and ethnicity speak to a collection of common experiences.  Now not everyone with that race or ethnicity will have all of those traits or experiences.  However, some experiences may be rarer or more common for those of a given race or ethnicity.  For example, I have been pulled over 9 times now without being given a ticket.  If I said that and followed it up with a "guess my race" question, how many people do you think would guess something other than white?  Should my kids be surprised if they have a different experience?  No, knowledge of who you are is critical, fair or not.  It is also a bond they will have with many who would blow me off as an outsider who will never understand them.

 

They would be correct too. 

[Destino]

1 hour ago, Kosher Ham said:

Why is race even important?

Race was forced on us long ago by the worst sorts of people and we just haven’t been able to break out of this ridiculous construct since then. The truth is the color of your skin is no more significant than the length of your toes.  It’s a arbitrary physical characteristic that says absolutely nothing about who anyone is as a person.  It is not a culture.  It is not your character.  

 

What others of similar skin pigment do also says as much about you as those of the same height, nothing at all.  Imagine how stupid you’d look if you noted crime statistics on height and than used it to imply people of short/tall/average height can’t be trusted.  People do exactly this sort of thing with race though, and it’s normal (or racist, depending on what’s being argued).
 

So long as race matters, race will matter, and racists are always working to keep it that way.  Those with good intentions feed into it to, but they’re not the one forcing everyone else to play along.

[Kosher Ham]

No. That's bull. Growth or stagnation created the silly thing that you and I see daily. 

 

When you start out with... because... Seems like an excuse waiting to happen.