“If a person can’t get out of bed, something is making them exhausted. If a student isn’t writing papers, there’s some aspect of the assignment that they can’t do without help. If an employee misses deadlines constantly, something is making organization and deadline-meeting difficult. Even if a person is actively choosing to self-sabotage, there’s a reason for it — some fear they’re working through, some need not being met, a lack of self-esteem being expressed. People do not choose to fail or disappoint. No one wants to feel incapable, apathetic, or ineffective. If you look at a person’s action (or inaction) and see only laziness, you are missing key details. There is always an explanation. There are always barriers. Just because you can’t see them, or don’t view them as legitimate, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Look harder. Maybe you weren’t always able to look at human behavior this way. That’s okay. Now you are. Give it a try.”
(And a footnote I didn’t see explicitly covered in the article: laziness still doesn’t exist when it is you yourself making no progress and not knowing why. You deserve that respect and consideration, too, even from yourself.)
I see a lot of people angrily scoffing at these ideas. Of course there are people who do act in bad faith, and more who are thoughtless, and some who simply aren’t willing or able to engage enough for whatever reason. But fewer than you think. So assume the best, not the worst. Work with them as much as you can, and if necessary you can conclude together that maybe they’re not ready at this time for this class/job/whatever. “Not ready” doesn’t mean “bad person who should be shamed”. Nobody deserves the contempt some of the commenters are expressing unless they’re actively stealing or harming others.
And this doesn’t cover “I’m feeling lazy today so I’m not going to do anything” ;).
On using EOs (more informative, less aggravated screeching) [x]
Another, which contains links, because I really do shout about this a lot. [x]
Sadly, in my experience, no matter how much you tell these morons they’re all completely brainwashed by the “I’m so enlightened with crunchy granola superpowers that nothing mother earth provides can hurt me” nonsense that there is little reasoning with them.
I swear if you put hemlock in front of these people they’d take it out of spite.
3) They don’t owe it to you to tell you what their assigned gender was. (You might find out, like if you’re literally sleeping with them, but seriously, unless you’re literally doing naked things with them, which isn’t even a guarantee that you’ll see the “original plumbing,” it’s rude to ask.)
it’s frustrating that every time someone famous dies the inevitable discourse of whether or not you’re allowed to miss them comes out with receipts on how good or bad they were
how about this: every time someone famous dies, there is someone out there who admired them, who looked up to them, who will miss them
there is someone out there who feels all of these things and has no idea about the good or bad things this person has done
this doesn’t mean the fan is good or bad. it doesn’t mean they’re wilfully ignorant or tragically sheltered. sometimes, someone admires a celebrity because of what they happened to have seen and connected with, and nothing else
no matter what horrible or incredible things the celebrity has done in their lifetime, no matter how justifiable or not their actions were, not matter how fucking woke or bigoted their media interviews and appearances were, someone, somewhere, is feeling their loss, because of no other reason than they liked this person, they looked up to this person, this person, in some way, affected their lives and they are feeling the loss of that person in their world. maybe not your world, but in theirs. and you have no idea how small or personal or delicate that world is.
so, how about, when a famous person dies and people start mourning, don’t go hunting for the stories and the quotes. don’t start competing to see who can be the most up to date and contemporary about how problematic the deceased was. unless they’re on such levels as Hitler or Trump, unless they are such unapologetic, irredeemable assholes that no one should relate to them on even a minimal level, please just give everyone a chance to mourn. Just let fans mourn.
They are hurting. They are trying to move on, because they’re already being told by people around them that it’s not a big deal, that it doesn’t make a big difference, but they are hurting and they need to be able to grieve somewhere. And maybe their favourite celebrity said something, or did something, that was wrong, that was perhaps unforgivable, but that doesn’t automatically guarantee that all of their fans knew about it, or understood it. Just give everyone some freaking time, please, before you go at them, because some people need to adjust, and if you don’t allow them that, you are hurting them.
The only acceptable reason to have kids is that you want to nurture and care for another being.
That’s it. That’s all of the good reasons.
Not because you want someone to take care of you on your old age, not because you want them to take on a certain career. None of that. To have such expectations of a child makes it unethical to have one imo, it lays the foundation for emotional blackmail; as in, ‘I brought you into this world and raised you, had you for this reason so give me that happiness’. No one owes you anything for the things you do out of your own will for your own sake, not even your children
I mean having kids to fulfill a bargain with a witch you met at IKEA is also a valid reason
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.