BS: How to be a better person

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 08 Mar 21 - 09:08 AM

How to be a better person. £10 on the horses maybe...

More seriously,

I don't think I've ever striven to be a better person but I've found life to be a succession of changing thoughts and ideas. I've not viewed all my own changes for the better and have reversed a couple but I hope that overall "could have don't that better", "should not be thinking that way", etc. might have led to an improved me...

...but I also think that even if I lived to 1000 and always trying to take the best revisions, I'd still be a flawed person...

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 05:51 PM

Onward and upward, Dave!

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 05:47 PM

DtG - don't be sorry..


Though maybe it would have been more appropriate for mudcat
if you'd started a thread titled..

'How to be a bitter person"...?????

Over the years we've had some great role models for that here..

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Mr Red
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 05:32 PM

if anyone has ever tried diving frontwards over the high jump bar?

Wasn't that called the Western Roll? The reason the Fosbury Flop works so well is that it keeps the centre of gravity below the bar. Simple ballistics, less force needed to gain height (of the CoG). The bend of the legs or something. Mind you, it is largely facilitated by the landing surface. 100 years ago it was sand and not that deep, jumps originally were from a standing position.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 05:02 PM

It'll work out, Dave. Have faith...

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 04:41 PM

I'm getting sorry I brought this up :-(

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: The Sandman
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 04:18 PM

hows it going, jeri,hope all of you are keeping well

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 02:57 PM

Tact, respect and charm are unknown gifts to Trump enthusiasts but not Trumpers alone. Good manners are like a lubricant in society. To denigrate manners is not a worthwhile endeaver Jeri. Nor have I had the ambition to display tact respect and charm, especially to my inlaws.
When done well, manners are invisible but in their absence the effect is obvious and evident to all. Long ago I did not wish to be one of the boys or go along to get along. I would rather be a minority of one than be a champion of idiocracy. I paid the price for individuality and the cost is steep but worth it. The herd is not always 'right'.
Naturally I find paragons of virtue a pain in the ass as well. At least I stayed on topic.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 11:38 AM

Don, Steve is not the only person here who is tired of your wannabe "Miss Manners" status on Mudcat. Nobody much cares for people who thinks, for some completely wrong reason, they're qualified to tell everyone else how to behave.

Let it go.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 10:42 AM

See, you were facillitated to put a finer point on teaching. I like the enthuser thing.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 10:32 AM

Keep arguing. I accept you are a perspicacious person who needs recognition in a narcisistic way. So what. You may never agree with me even once but we do advance thought in arguement good bad or indifferent.. We have different backgrounds and like a detective I know how important motivation can be. You prefer I be delicately obscure but forget it. As you say, I'm a yank* :^/ I'm glad to find you are at least a thinking person.

*different meanings-different shores and of course different genetics.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 09:39 AM

I am not "always reminding you" and do try for a pleasant change to stop trying to analyse other people here. I have no idea what an "average person" is and neither do you. If you can possibly manage to avoid this kind of self-indulgent stupidity, why, you might just become a better person. As for me, today's aim is to make my brisket pot roast taste even better than last time.

A good teacher is an enthuser and a facilitator. Anyone standing in front of a class preaching is no teacher.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 08:43 AM

Teachers are preachers too Steve. By tone and quantity of remarks I believe you still consider yourself a teacher. If credentials are the most important aspect of being a better person you win, as you are always reminding us. I also believe we are both average people who found themselves in different extraordinary circumstances without a PHD.
If you or I were as carefully taught as the Dali Lama we would still not be the Dali Lama. Extenuating circumstances (luck) is probably more important than how hard we try to be a better person. Besides, its not a contest. I'm saying its a self rewarding crap shoot.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 06:26 AM

Or in Cornish - Oi be what Oi be and We'b what We'b!!

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 06:00 AM

I yam what I yam an' tha's all I yam
I'm Popeye the sailor man

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 04:44 AM

I am what I am and we are what we are.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Mr Red
Date: 07 Mar 21 - 04:25 AM

Well, I am not a better person. And I could give you odds on that.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 10:21 PM

Dave the Gnome. Forked the lawn:

isn't there an indie film (that I have yet to see)
where one of the more colo[u]rful lines is:

"FORK HIM!"

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: keberoxu
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 10:20 PM

(All hail the Mudelves, great and small.
And everybody in between too.)

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 06:33 PM

Frankly, you preach to the rest of us yet you are very far from having proven your credentials to do so. You really need to consider that. If you don't, and if you continue to post in your current vein, don't be surprised if you get a negative reaction. To say the least.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 05:23 PM

If you are white, try and use your privilege to defend civil rights of those without white white privildge. If you are a man try....

In high school I learned that I/we are not as bad as 'they' say.
You are not as good as they say you are. Just stay in the middle whre you probably are. This is good advice when dealing with the media, reviews, infamy or fame.

When consumming drugs and alcohol take care to not make it a daily thing. Think of your liver. The exception is if you need it take it but know why you made your personal decision.

There is probably an instruction book for the operation and maintainance of the human being. I've noticed that guys don't alway read the instructions.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 01:45 PM

Well, Dave, my leg is finally improving and I've managed to work out how to level up our new wooden garden bench (we felt as if we were sliding off it). Nice walk by the sea too on this luvverly gin-clear day (we had to wrap up warm). So I'm celebrating with a glass of Mozzer's The Best Vintage Cava Rosado. We have Nero d'Avola as a backup...

I might not be a better person by bedtime but I'll be a bloody sight more mellow... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 12:53 PM

Well, maybe a little. :^/   How bout U?

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 12:48 PM

"I think this would be a better thread if people answered about themselves, not telling other people what to do."
Jeri
'I' is an unwelcome attention-seeking self-promotion, and doesn't do anything but annoy people who are trying to have a conversation.
more Jeri (paraphrased)

We is us and is inclusive. Jeri after a lifetime of stifling yourself you might be about to explode but you raise an interesting question. Are we an I or are we a we??   As an only child I had to figure things out by myself. I did not not find it odd to have silent conversations with myself. Nor does my wife who has 3 siblings, but she and one son do it out loud.

I use we when I want to express universality. I use I when I want to express individual action. If you get my drift we are both I and we and separate like a particle and a wave.
Duality is one of those never ending subjects...

Or maybe I just piss you off. I didn't intend to.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 12:35 PM

I just forked my lawn, Steve. I think it made me (and the lawn) much better so I am celebrating with a glass of Nero d'Avolo.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 12:01 PM

Gosh, just don't click on them. It's whether the body of the post is apposite. I don't have a clue as to whether the poetry is lame because I stopped looking yonks ago.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 11:22 AM

I think the constant links might begin to get deleted. It's unwelcome attention-seeking self-promotion, and doesn't do anything but annoy people who are trying to have a conversation.

---

Great mudelves think alike. And some have already disappeared.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 11:05 AM

Seriously, WAV, take a hint. Inserting links to lame "poetry" in threads other than the one you have been posting to for years is bad form.

I had a boss who was (still is!) a wonderfully generous individual and people would tell me that I had the "best boss." I agree. He stepped down to return to teaching and the woman they brought in is his exact opposite. This made things really horrible for people because we knew how it could be.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 10:48 AM

Husband is delighted with mask-wearing. In the car on the way to the supermarket, and while going round the shop, I couldn't really talk all that much (muffled). I swear I could imagine him grinning broadly behind his mask as relative peace reigned.
I had to sort out our electricity tariff on the telephone, and the poor lady was working from home with rather inadequate support from the company system. She couldn't access it after a long wait, and I was patient and told her not to worry, I could try again later. She was astonished, and said so many customers had shouted, sworn, got very angry and she'd spent the day being verbally abused. I was very sorry for her. How could people do that? It wasn't her fault was it?
One way of being a better person I think, is to try and imagine how the other person is feeling. Empathy.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 10:42 AM

No - a realist with distinctions in humanities, who loves our world/our United Nations being multicultural.

And do, Senoufou, you think of Gandhi as a "Backwoodsman"? A gentle reminder that when he repatriated from South Africa to South Asia he did NOT say English and other Europeans should stay in the name of diversity - rather, he used non-violent non-cooperation towards them ""Repatriating"

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Jeri
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 10:39 AM

The trick is not to know when I'm saying something stupid, but to know I'm about to. And shutting up. Of course, after a lifetime of stifling myself, I'm a bit more forgiving of being cranky.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 10:34 AM

Oh dear Backwoodsman! :)

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 08:31 AM

The BBCs relentless promotion of internal ethnic-diversity has reached the point where a continuity announcer just pronounced "Money for Nothing" "Money for Nuffin", as England slides ever further down the greasy pole.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 04:39 AM

I can hear you talking about me, Sen! ;-) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Senoufou
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 04:32 AM

Yes Dave, that's an excellent point. Self-awareness and an inner stability etc are important if one is to be a good person. Unhappy folk are often curmudgeonly and sour. Like people trying to save a drowning man, the instructions are 'first ensure you are safe before attempting the rescue'.
I've been thinking about this thread a lot, and have been considering the things which stand in the way of Goodness. Jealousy, bitterness, over-competitiveness, smugness, irascibility, reticence, meanness, obsession with appearances and so on. They are obstacles to being a good person I think.
And too much yap yap yapping! hee hee

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 03:27 AM

Just thought. You need to be kind to yourself too. May not make you better but it will make you happier. That in turn will reflect on your other actions.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 03:06 AM

Kindness seems to be a good objective but I have seen even that backfire! :-( Don't let that put anyone off trying though :-)

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: BobL
Date: 06 Mar 21 - 02:57 AM

I figured long ago that in order to be a better person, I would need skills I don't have and am unlikely to cultivate. So I'll just carry on being an old curmudgeon, do what good I can as and when I spot the opportunity, and settle for being like the planet Earth in Hitch-Hiker's Guide, "relatively harmless".

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 04:14 PM

Don, I think this would be a better thread if people answered about themselves, not telling other people what to do.

WAV, nobody wants to read that   stuff. It you have to nag people to read it, take a hint.

I figure I might be a better person if I just stopped caring about what goes on here. Maybe not.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 03:56 PM

I think we're better people by simply doing what we know how to do, not what we would like to do. I might like to invent the Higgs field shield that would allow us to go at the speed of light but I don't know how to begin.   Better to do things I have learned how to do and dream about the other stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 03:37 PM

These jokers = Trump 'Republicans'. The philosophy of these jokers is 'Corruption is Job 1'
These jokers see the world having their own greedy motives. They see science as a self aggrandizing cult.

Jos I try to write from the POV of a 'member' from the inside out and not a condemning judgmental arbiteur of what or who is right or wrong.
Someone else is in charge of that. Facts once discovered changes history that came before. That does not mean that those who held the views of a prior history are wrong or bad. Just out of date.

For example there is proof writing itself is pre Sumarian and pre Egyptian in a phonetic heiroglyphic fashion. It might even be pre Rebus by a huge amount of time. but I digress...

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 03:08 PM

Forget Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and spend a weekend with this - https://walkaboutsverse.blogspot.com/ ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Jos
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 03:05 PM

By 'these jokers', do you mean the rest of us?

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 03:02 PM

After the last 4 year experiment I clearly see these jokers do not have a cynical bone in their body - they are all in their heads - otherwise known as bone heads. I've noticed most boneheads know not what they do.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 02:04 PM

Eliza and Dave make good points, boiling it down to finding good role models. I have a couple of those people in my life, I just have to remember on occasion to ask myself what one of them might do in a particular situation.

In this time of COVID I find people are so desperate for conversation that even the grocery store checkout line is quite an animated place. With masks on the "Smize" of smiling with your eyes is something to cultivate and I've tried to express.

It's when you get to political speech and the personal tendency of not suffering fools gladly that things begin to fall apart. Most of that happens online these days, though, so it's possible to tell yourself "enough of this!" and walk away from it.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: G-Force
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 01:53 PM

My wife not only returns her cart (or 'trolley' in the UK), but always straightens up the ones already there. So she must be a very good person.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: MandolinPaul
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 12:19 PM

I recently learned about the Shopping Cart Principle of Goodness. This seems like a good measure. And to answer your question, yes, I always put my cart back.

"The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing, the post states. To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it."

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 12:08 PM

I doubt whether cynicism was invited in this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 10:57 AM

There are people whose entire career is based on their abilty to having learned how to fake sincerety effectivsly. For them, thats wisdom enough. Wisdom comes in countless flavors.

Subject: RE: BS: How to be a better person
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Mar 21 - 09:25 AM

Little things can change your mindset bigly and they won't strain you. Have a laugh with the Morrison's checkout lady or the old bloke collecting the trolleys. Stop to let the old bloke or the young woman with a pushchair cross the road (the cheery smile you get is worth its weight in gold). Post something stupid to the joke thread (as long as it's an actual joke...). Do one little job while she's out that the other 'alf usually does (a bit of hoovering up, for example). Don't make it look like you're always having to rush off if you stop for a natter. Say thanks to a key worker who's doing a job you wouldn't like to do.

Learn the ukelele...