The skills you learn when taking care of yourself are often worth the time and energy put in. When you put in the work to repair your home while under stress, you bond with it. You begin to know your home very intimately. You learn not just how your own home works, but how every building works. You get a better appreciation for the world around you, and the work that others put in to maintaining it.

It can be time consuming, but whether you bond with a car, home, or computer, it's worth doing it with something once. The more things you understand on this level, the more diverse your skillset becomes and the better you become at problem solving.

And the more aware you become of the world around you. Blue collar intuition and awareness. It's a trip.

I bought a house when I was 18. Got it for 20k right after the housing crash. Paid for it with student loans since the bank wouldn't give me a mortgage. In hindsight this was probably a risky move but it worked out since I was able to sell it for 85k after graduating. They'll let you take out as much money as you want with student loans. I think they were disappointed that I was able to pay everything back right away, kept trying to tell me that it was a bad decision financially. Strictly speaking, it was. Maybe you can make more money if you let yourself float some debt, but money ain't worth your freedom (in my opinion).

Anyway, I spent the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college fixing the place up a bit. Sank another 15k of loan money into it there. Neighbor was a roofer, and I helped him replace the rotten rafters and reshingle at a discount. I got some concrete and patched the foundation where it needed it. Kitchen walls were basically mush thanks to leaky pipes, but my uncle's a plumber so we redid all the pipes and put in a second bathroom. Then it was just new cabinets and appliances for the kitchen after some drywall/spackle/paint where needed. When the summer ended I rented out the other rooms (3bed/2bath) to some friends to help with future expenses.

But the problems seemed to never end. One of my friend/tenants wanted to run an ethernet cable to his room a few months in. Prissy liberal northerner who don't think wifi is good enough. So we climb up into the attic with a drill to thread one through the wall. While crawling around, I get the fucking shit shocked out of me and ended up putting a dent in the drywall of the ceiling. There was a live wire just hanging out up there. At which point it became prudent to try and trace down any other electrical issues. Fortunately, we left enough access points in the walls where we were too lazy to drywall (behind the bathroom mirror, in the bedroom closets, basically the whole room with the air handler). It's way easier to just get some access plates and screw them into place instead of doing the full 9 yards of drywall repair. Also makes your life easier for future efforts.

One of the windows ended up getting a bit of a leak, too. Went to plug in my phone one night and my hand just went right through the wall to the outside. While repairing that, I found the beginnings of a termite infestation. Fortunately only the beginnings. Had to get the whole place treated. Thank god we made those access points in the walls.

Place also had a crawl space at one point, but a former owner buried the access point. Apparently the place flooded, and rather than pump out the water they just buried it and sealed the water down there. Concrete foundation was above the crawl space, and post-burial expansion is probably what had caused the original problems with that. House must've been moved at one point, foundation and all, and just put down on top of that hole. Found out about it when a gator dug out the old entrance and moved in. It just saw a nice, secluded pond across the street from the main waterway with a driveway right outside to sunbathe on. I never knew how loud a gator was until I had one living under my bed. Things fucking stink too. Tasted pretty good.

I could go on. I had that place for three years. Sometimes, it wouldn't need much work beyond mowing the lawn and cleaning and shit. But once or twice a year, that place ate up a few weeks to a month of my life. Was sad to hear the whole neighborhood pretty much came down during Irma. Old Florida neighborhood of wooden houses: only lasted that long by luck.

Crazy shit happens all the time in the world. If you own and are responsible for a part of it, it can take you on a fun and crazy ride. Make sure you're ready before claiming responsibility. If you want to own something, you've gotta make it a part of you and give it the care it needs. Don't just treat it as a way to make or save money, and don't leave shit as someone else's problems. Insurance companies are just there to let you pass the buck and not feel guilty or repair it yourself good and proper. Dive in and make that house and land a part of your being and it will be worth it. Otherwise, when the shit hits the fan you'll just see yourself as a victim and try to duck out.

If you don't want responsibility: rent. If you want to make a part of the world an extension of yourself: own. If you don't think you're ready to truly meld with a piece of the Earth, you have no business leading it on or playing make believe. Taking care of your place on this planet is a sacred duty that deserves no compromise. If y'all'r the kind of fucker that'll be fine with just letting others take care of your life for y'all, you ain't the kind of person that deserves to take care of this planet.

tl;dr: the Earth is a tender lover. This is a wonderful thing with the proper care and attention, but also easy to abuse and take advantage of. Be aware of this if you want join with a piece of her.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

What about the internet, too? People use the internet and speak freely: there are no governments to "pull" language back to a standard, just human interaction with other humans and their memes. English is usually the starting point.

Language has already started splitting based on the interests of a person. In the past, great unifying languages came, spread, and split along geographic and cultural boundaries. Now more than ever are these boundaries interwoven and complicated.

I have a feeling that the development of our languages will have a different flavour in the post-internet era, just as it changed post-printing-press, post-paper, and surely post-writing as well.

The memes of today are laying the foundations of the communications backbone of tomorrow. First attempts, and sometimes crude, but certainly showcasing the power of this new energy level.

The last generation of media, desperate for power, is clinging to good thoughts, and leaving the new generation to pick from its scraps, then fears new media only because of the composition they gave it.

Let's be aware of how we are shaping this latest layer of our brain and contribute sensibly to its development.

No hard feelings! Sometimes tone is hard to transmit via text, and comment sections seem to gear people towards being on the defensive. I also started my post with an opinion that conflicted with yours, so it was not unreasonable for you to think that I was attacking your ideas.

Regarding Hillbilly Elegy: perhaps I will reach a similar conclusion. I am only three chapters in and have only read about his early life and childhood. Checking the table of contents, it would be more accurate to say that I am 1/5 of the way through rather than 1/3. My apologies for the misestimate while commuting home. My opinion of the book may drastically change by the end.

However, much of the purpose of my post was only tangentially related to my opinions on the book in question. I was just kind of using it as a jumping-off point to ramble about whatever I was thinking. I like doing that. The middle digression, in my opinion, was the more thetic part; the intro and conclusion merely glue so that I could squeeze the expression of my opinion into the conversation. What I'm trying to say is that moreso than whether a particular book was a good or bad example of anything, I was trying to describe an idea that the rest of the post/conversation/discussion made me think of.

I tend to do that more than I try to have debates/arguments. People often don't understand that I'm more interested in trying to illustrate my opinions and understand the opinions of others than try to change anyone's minds or have a coherent argument. From my experience it's a bit unusual, but I prefer it to the traditional argumentative discourse. Let's just say what we think, try to understand each other, and maybe grow from the experience.

My philosophy is: don't forget to understand so you can keep on loving, and don't forget to communicate so that people who are interested can understand you.

Not at all.

I passed no judgment on the book that you love. I'm only asking that you not dismiss the book that you hate.

The characters are not the data, neither are the facts presented. The way that the facts are presented, the information flow, and the setting, circumstances, and personality are far more important to understanding the author.

I'm not surprised in the least that most of what he's writing is bullshit, but that doesn't mean it isn't full of information.

EDIT: Ultimately, I guess I'm saying that how you say something is more important than what you're saying. And he gives a pretty clear picture of who he is and where he came from even if the details got warped.

For me, garbage is preferred. Trash is the ultimate expression of reality. It is the data spewed forth from our existence. From that data, you can back out facts about said existence.

I'm about a third of the way through Hillbilly Elegy, and yes it is a steamer, but that's exactly what makes it so enlightening.

It's a raw, unfiltered spew of verbal diarrhea chock full of the corn, emotions, contradictions, and mindset of the author. It hasn't been polished down into a coherent, rational, deductive set of reasoning. There's more entropy, more information, more substance than just a simple argument or streamlined story being told. It's a raw, rugged, and jagged slice of the author's mind that hasn't been commercialized so that "anyone" can understand it.

And memoirs like that are exactly what are needed to piece together a complicated tale. It's data, not just a model.

Data will arrive filtered through a range of systematic biases and random errors. It will be twisted by the instrument's (author's) personal mental structure. And that means that it tells you a lot about that structure.

Models are idealizations of the real world. They are not actual measurements or observations. They have been backtracked to try to figure out the reality that created those measurements. All models are wrong, but some are useful. They are generalizations used to describe what happens in the real world. They are a description of reality. Some can be very useful, because they can be very descriptive.

But data, perception, whether it's your perception or the perception of a scientific instrument, has been filtered into reality. From that data, you can build up a model. But the data is what is actually being perceived, and it is the record of what has actually happened.

When you learn from models, you build your understanding of how the world "really" is from a theoretical, rational, realistic viewpoint. When you learn from data, you build your understanding of the things that you see happening around you and how to deal with those events. If you only look at the data, you won't understand the hows and whys. If you only look at the models, you won't see obvious problems that are staring you in the face and you become disconnected from the reality of your perceptions. Indeed, your own perceptions become warped if you do not fully understand how to deal with data, and your understanding of reality becomes warped if you do not fully understand how to relate data to reality.

A major problem with our world today is that people are too dogmatic with their pursuit of either data or model, while rejecting the opposite side of the science of interpreting reality.

I love data. I was raised in a conservative, data-oriented world. I love taking data and trying to create some model of reality from that data. However, some people don't take the step of trying to connect data to some model of reality that their brain can comprehend and describe. Some people become too concerned with JUST the data at the expense of theory. They stop caring about what's really going on in the world. They only care about pursuing the data that makes them feel good and demonizing the data that does not. This, I feel, is the root of the cancer within the conservative movement. Conservatives feel, and forget to think about why they feel what they do.

My sister went the other way. An avid reader and active on social media, she fell into the trap of creating fantasies and conspiracies - the fun way of describing data and perception. Someone who is overly concerned with their theories will only accept the data that supports their theories, and will reject all others. They are more concerned with maintaining their world view and filtering their perceptions and the actions of themselves and others to impress their models of how the world should work onto reality. This, I think, is the root of the cancer within the liberal movement. Liberals think, and forget to check the world around them and if their theories are still connected to observable fact that can be sensed (felt).

But I digress. Hillbilly Elegy is garbage. It is a thrown together, unmottled collection of data about growing up as a conservative hillbilly. It is raw data from which you can construct and test any model you wish about the mindset of the author, and from there extrapolate to people like him. Although I have not read White Trash, from your analysis it sounds more like someone else's refined model. Without being able to compare that model to true data (in this case, data from the mind of an actual hillbilly, or interactions with hillbillies), you cannot test that model. I would rather build up a model from data and then use that model to predict future data and modify it as needed. I would rather not be served a neat, cleaned up model and be told "this is how the world works". All models are at least slightly wrong, and a more organically grown model that has arisen from the data will always fit the data and produce better predictions than one that has been constructed.

While getting my two BSes in Physics and Math, I learned that constructed models are good guesses when venturing into unknown territory, but you will always find surprises. This has been the history of all of physics, and science in general. Constructed theories are good bases to build from, but the data is reality and you must adjust your mental models to fit the data.

Human culture and psychology is so incredibly complex that data is even more valuable. Models that our brains can put into words are overly simple by comparison. For a model of something so complex to be remotely accurate it must be built up by organic means rather than constructed by simple rules. There are simply too many rules to keep track of, and each are more or less important depending on context. To truly understand these nuances, you MUST collect data. A lot of it. As the complexity of a model increases, the more data you need to constrain your understanding reality. This is a simple mathematical fact: to fit a more complicated model you need more data. A Hillbilly Elegy is nothing but data about poor whites, a group that is largely misunderstood and oversimplified by our society, and as such I feel that it is hugely important to the communication of their condition.

Either that, or I'm just a hillbilly conservative who loves data and that's why I prefer it to a more model-based approach. But I do believe that having your ideas be grounded in the truth (data) is the easiest way to stay grounded to reality. This explains the focus of most scientists on comparing theories to empirical reality and the focus of most historians of reconstructing history from primary sources rather than just tales, myths, and official reconstructions.

Or whatever, who really knows anything, yanno?

Eh, I think that a lot of this is being blown quite a bit out of proportion, and I think that the original "manifesto" and this article actually compliment each other's points better than they contradict. Before we get started, I recommend that you read the manifesto, if you haven't already.

I should also perhaps include a caveat that I'm a white man born in the Appalachians and raised in Florida. I can be quite conservative in some of my views. I can also be quite liberal in others. I voted for Bernie and see myself as a Progressive/Socialist on most economic issues, but for social issues I am a conservative who thinks that both parties and our media have corrupted the modern interpretation of conservative social policies into making things far too "black and white". I'm new here after lurking a bit. I hope that we can get along and have a productive discussion.

This particular manifesto may not be the best-written or best-argued illustration of the problems, but it's the one that has sparked the discussion. From my reading of the document in question, the most significant point made is the one illustrated in this figure: .

Yes, the author then goes on to focus only on the differences in the averages of male and female personalities. He does this to claim that certain resources within google that are only provided to women to help manage stress should be provided to both men and women. He also argues that similar resources to help minority ethnicities should be available to white people. As the author of the linked article asserts, one of the most important aspects of engineering are figuring out the complex social structure behind the project being developed. When some ethnicities are provided extra tools to understanding these structures, that gives them an unfair advantage. Rather than having programs for certain minorities in gender or ethnicity, there should be programs introducing the structure of the company to all new hires.

The author of this "manifesto" does not always make his points very clearly, and he does make some points counterproductive to (what I see as) his primary thesis. Everyone needs to learn that saying something inflammatory might feel good, but rarely does good. He feels ostracized and angry, and that predisposed him to say (and believe) some of these things. But as someone with more conservative social views, I still agree with the major point: if you provide a service to help new people adjust to the culture of a company, you have to provide it to everyone. Some women might not need advice in handling stress, and some men might: why restrict this resource to women only?

Whether you're a black woman from an inner city, or a white man from Appalachia, you are likely to feel a culture shock when trying to interact with the peoples and culture of Silicon Valley. Both of these archetypes, and indeed everyone, should have access to tools that aid in understanding the culture and social structures that exist at such a massive "planet-scale" company (or society!). The white man from Appalachia shouldn't be disadvantaged just because "most" white people that go to work there didn't have a culture shock to deal with.

I may not know much about the author of the original document in question, but I understand how he feels to be ignored, and to have everyone assume that he must be able to fit in just fine with the current world order just because he's a white male. Rather than take his complaints seriously, he was fired and is being called a sexist. If such an attitude continues then the heartland of our country will continue to struggle to adapt to this changing, global world, and it will turn to anyone who pays them any attention (see Trump).

Our current culture of political correctness is broken because it tries to help mushy, ill-defined groups of people that don't have solid boundaries rather than just anyone who needs help. It is inherently racist. To make true progress we must replace it. Right now, many of my friends and neighbors would like that replacement to act as a sort of revenge that returns to them undue advantage, because that's the only type of replacement that's being offered to them. We must come together and understand each other to fix our social ills. We must do this in a way that does not focus on race, but instead on the basis of the needs of individuals.

P.S. The author also makes some claims that do not fit in with his major thesis, but instead dance around a similar theme (e.g. de-emphasize empathy, prioritize intention, etc). I have neglected to tackle them in this already-long answer. If you would like me to follow-up, feel free to ask about any of the points that I neglected here. I am also interested in hearing how any of you might disagree with any of my analysis.