If you had "Bezos Money"????

[MikeKardec]

I, being in the front end of the Boomers lead the wave into university. Sucking at STEM subjects I enrolled in the Arts. I had zero ambition of pursuing a career out of university. I went to university with the lofty goals of studying the big ideas at the feet of PhD's.....the Masters! It took me about half way through my first semester to be disabused of that silly notion. But I stayed on for 4 more years as I loved drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and solving the world's problems......at least in my head. I worked from 12 til 23 in the carnival making great money so I had no need for a career out of university. I had a good paying job already graduating from uni with money in the bank and bought a house. Never was part of any solution but for much of my adult life I avoided, as best I could, making the situation worse.

No Kidding? Like a carnival, carnival? What did you do? My Dad was a carny briefly.

I too studied the arts, at an Art School that specialized in Avant Garde art, lots of big ideas but also an emphesis on actually doing things. It was a pretty good education in learning to think, problem solving, and the like. We were not 'art history' or 'studies studies' types.

For the record, I'm not advocating that everyone go into STEM, but if you a kid who majors in complaining, and yet you want others to fix the world for you, you're part of the problem you're complaining about. I see so many who demand action, yet their idea of participation gets no closer than being willing to study the problems, not the solutions. Through out our childhoods there was a lot of scientific progress. It didn't all better the world, but now that it came to a screeching halt in the early 1970s it feels like we're in trouble. The only way forward is forward. If we have to go back to fix our problems we'd better start thinking in terms of mid 19th century lifestyles ... if we're that lucky!

if I had Bezos money I might spend it on designing a social media communication platform that was open source, anyone can look under the hood and see what's affecting what you send and recieve. I'd try to create something the opens up the distribution bottlenecks like the internet did in it's early days but with modern bandwidth and reasonable conditions if you want to broadcast something as high density as a movie. Amazon was working on stuff like this back when the atmosphere on the web went from the old wide open mentality to today's era of control. As soon as the pioneers of the web realized the extent of their power, that they were no longer scrappy revolutionaries, they began to act like the powers that be ... and it's no longer nearly as fun as it once was!

 

[Worf]

I know this thread wound up way afield of my original intent BUT, if conversations are REASONED, informed and civil... let it go where it goes... But please mind the mods! I don't want to get struck by an errant "Ban Hammer" aimed at one of you lot!

Worf

 

[MikeKardec]

You are right! I'll choose to remain both open and un-argumentative.

 

[Zombie_61]

I consider myself blessed to have been raised by parents that went through the Depression era as young adults. They endured, learned the lessons and passed them on to me, saving me the pain of direct experience. They taught me how to work, how to save, how to make things by my own hand, how to appreciate that which I owned. I think from those lessons learned I have handled well the blessings of abundance. My wife grew up much the same and her Prairie mother taught her all those homestead skills so in a pinch we have the knowledge to get us through pretty much anything.

I had a similar experience, having parents who were teenagers/young adults throughout the Great Depression. Like yours, they passed lessons learned and values down to my older brother, older sister, and I, and those lessons and values have mostly served me well. When I met my late wife in the late-1970s and learned more about her family, I discovered her parents were of the same generation as mine, which was a rarity in those days, so she and I shared many of the same values.

 

[belfastboy]

I had a similar experience, having parents who were teenagers/young adults throughout the Great Depression. Like yours, they passed lessons learned and values down to my older brother, older sister, and I, and those lessons and values have mostly served me well. When I met my late wife in the late-1970s and learned more about her family, I discovered her parents were of the same generation as mine, which was a rarity in those days, so she and I shared many of the same values.

My parents, by the time I came along, had risen above poverty to a solid middle class life. My wife, born on the prairies was legit poor. Saturday night was bath night, she being the youngest got the water first, then the 3 older boys, then mom and finally dad. Her mother cooked for the 6 of them on a wood fired stove and no running water. Truly, homestead living in the late 1950's. Then her mom left the father and they got poorer.
My father died and the family were plunged back into almost poverty. So for the two of us the lessons learned were real....not as real as the more direct experience of our parents of Depression era poverty but close enough.

When my wife and first married she would mend her pantyhose to gain a few more days/weeks of wear from them. I suspect that is a lost art. All the lessons have served us well. And I to this day remind myself that my worst day was all likely still better than many of my parent's best days.