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Started from the bottom now we're here

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Revengeofthenerds, Apr 19, 2017.

  1. Revengeofthenerds

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    Unless you've been living under a rock (or in jail), you know that today Aaron Hernandez killed himself in jail. I don't need to re-hash what all led to that point, because if you don't know it every media outlet everywhere it talking about it. What's interesting, though, is that some people are saying that because of the way he was raised and where he grew up, and no matter what success he had, this was basically the natural conclusion to his life.

    It's basically a free will debate. Do we really make choices to pull ourselves out of our situation, or are we defined by our environment and what society dictates of us? Is it a matter of extents?

    And regarding the dude killing himself, I say good riddance. He let us the taxpayers off the hook for the bill.

    Focus: Discuss Aaron Hernandez. The entire thing is interesting to me, and judging by the Dead Pool Thread a lot of other people find it interesting as well.

    Alt. Focus: How did you grow up? How has that impacted your life today?
     
  2. shegirl

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    As promised, a bump.
     
  3. Nettdata

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    Why? He's a piece of shit that fucked up his life. I couldn't care less about him, and personally don't think his story is tragic or in any way newsworthy.

    When I heard about it, I wasn't thinking "good" or "too bad"... I was thinking "meh, don't care".
     
  4. toytoy88

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    The whole thing is reaching Twilight Zone levels of bizarre:

    "Aaron Hernandez's lawyer is accusing Massachusetts' chief medical examiner of "illegally" holding the brain of the ex-NFL star who was found hanged in his prison cell."

    http://www.khq.com/story/35201720/hernandez-lawyer-wants-nfl-stars-brain-back

    Not to mention his forehead inscribed with John 3:16.

    And the fact that he's no longer a convicted murderer. Since he had an appeal to the conviction filed when he died, an obscure law will probably scrub the conviction which means....no suing his estate for the murder.
     
  5. downndirty

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    Hernandez is a weird one, but there's something to be said for athletes who get their heads constantly thumped, and then experience aggression, depression and wild fluctuations in personality and mood. CTE is a thing, kids and it may explain why a young millionaire decided he could get away with murder.

    Focus: I grew up in rural SC, the son of a brick mason and a nurse. The fact that I have a pair of master's degrees, no convictions and going on 8 years of sobriety is nothing short of a miracle. I grew up around biker gangs, partied hard and thanks to a galactic quantity of dumb luck and my parent's insane work ethic, I avoided the worst of violence, substance abuse, alcoholism that I'm familiar with, as well as a lot of the racism, misogyny and homophobia that was rampant down South.

    I look at kids whose parents were well-educated and rich and drip with envy at their advantages. I've fought to get at the same level from an education perspective, but I still have some signs of growing up poor. Also, I saw a good, lower-middle class life that is simply not going to exist in the next 2 decades, and it's scary. It's pushing me to higher education and working my balls off. It's incredibly frustrating to have to get this much education to make the same amount as my mom did with a community college certificate.
     
  6. Juice

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    But this wasnt exactly an sudden explosion of violence in an otherwise peaceful interaction. He was convicted of 1st degree murder, which means he had the intent to kill Odin Lloyd before he did so. Like I said in the other thread, he grew up in Bristol, which is a pretty shitty place to grow up. Odin Lloyd grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston, which is an even shittier place to grow up. This was a relationship that soured over a drug deal, and it wasnt his first interaction with violence either.
     
  7. toddamus

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    I have trouble with CTE claims. Yes we know it exists, but we are in the very early stages of describing it. We can't stay because someone played football they have it and it influences their behavior, thats just illogical. As our understanding of CTE is, its all retrospective case studies. Until we can diagnose someone as having active CTE we can't make conclusions about their behavior in regards to the influence of CTE. Our best diagnostic is based on individuals reporting symptoms, neurological disorders are kind of notoriously hard to diagnose based on patient symptom reporting, really any patient complaint is difficult to diagnose based on patient reporting of symptoms.

    Considering Hernandez criminal history, I'm inclined to think he was a sociopathic criminal. Junior Seau committed suicide, shot himself in the heart, and was found to have CTE, however, to the best of my knowledge, he never committed first degree murder or threatened people the way Hernandez did. When Hernandez was alive, there were plenty of people who claimed he was a sketchy guy and they have nothing to do with him. So Herandez was likely fucked in the head, but I'm guessing CTE was the least of his social problems.
     
  8. toytoy88

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    From Hernandez's NFL scouting report:

    "Self-esteem is quite low; not well-adjusted emotionally, not happy, moods unpredictable, not stable, doesn’t take much to set him off, but not an especially jumpy guy,” the scout said."

    I have a feeling that a few knocks to the melon didn't create the monster, although who knows if it exasperated his issues? I suppose it's possible, but the guy had been a fuck up since before he appeared on anyone's football radar and being super talented just led to folks overlooking that he was one fucked up unit.
     
  9. toddamus

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    Yea, just to throw an easy statement out there, CTE has not been connected with criminality.

    (enter extenuating circumstances like the prison population not being studied etc)
     
    #9 toddamus, Apr 20, 2017
    Last edited: Apr 20, 2017
  10. shimmered

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    Eh. I grew up poor. I didn't have things like at all. We fished or hunted for food. We built things ourselves. My mom and dad did the best they could with what they had and that wasn't always the most positive thing.

    I'm more resilient as an adult but I do have to say that being poor has affected how I view food and property. I'm VERY protective of both and do not share well.
     
  11. toddamus

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    Wait so you grew up disadvantaged and didn't start murdering people?
     
  12. dieformetal

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    Sheesh, that you know of. But we're not supposed to talk about that....

    (Please don't murder me for spilling the beans Shimmered!)
     
  13. shimmered

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    I'll remember this.
     
  14. shimmered

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    Honestly I grew up and had NO CLUE how the real world worked or what it meant to have healthy relationships with lots of things - people, myself, money...

    We were super rural waaaayyyyy out in the country people. I'm not sure I had shoes some summers...other summers I only got to wear them to town. Milk was a 40 mile round trip. Gas was never to get below a quarter tank.

    I can see how poverty in urban areas, particularly inner city urban areas where resources are vastly different from the ones available to us, could steer someone down a more violent path.

    We were poor but we could at least, the very least, grow a garden and harvest, my dad is a mechanic and performed work in trade for cows or pigs or chickens and we usually kept the chickens alive for eggs and ate the livestock. If we needed to there were ponds nearby where we could catch a few perch or a couple of bass (illegally bc no license) and have that for dinner. Flour was always cheap so we could make biscuits. Mom canned or froze vegetables for winter, and the meat would be frozen in a deep freeze dad found and repaired.

    (I know you were being sarcastic, but I wanted to address it in a more serious vein anyway...)
     
  15. GcDiaz

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    Unconfirmed childhood photo.

    Hey, red.
     

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  16. Frebis

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  17. xrayvision

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  18. Frebis

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    Someone change the title of this thread. "Put it in my bottom now I'm queer"
     
  19. JWags

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    Alt-Focus: I grew up a bit different than those who have spoken here, but my parents absolutely shaped me. My dad would have grown up fairly wealthy, but he was one of 7 kids of whom my grandfather paid for private college for all of them. My Mom was the oldest child of a degenerate alcoholic and a mother who had been abused in all 3 classic methods at various stages of her life. To say her upbringing was a bit wild and unstable is putting it mildly. My Dad was an engineer and did fairly well when I was little, upper middle class, but then got forced out of the 200 person company of which he was employee number 8 and bounced around with some unemployment and very unhappy jobs before starting his own company.

    Now people that have met me, or know my family now, call us "rich". My Dad is a brilliant guy with a crazy work ethic and built a multi million dollar company over the last 20 years. My parents are about to move and downsize, but my youngest 2 sisters spent a good chunk of their childhood in a 2MM house and my Dad has driven a BMW and bought used BMWs for the other household cars since he cleared a big financial hurdle about 12 years ago.

    All that being said, I never wanted but I certainly wasn't spoiled. I remember my Dad not paying himself for nearly 18 months when I was starting HS so he could pay his employees. I remember my Mom spending Sundays cutting coupons for HOURS. I remember hearing my Dad crying in his bedroom cause of the stress of it all. My sisters and I were blessed to not have to pay for college...however I'm old enough to know that there wasn't an education fairy and my Dad carries hefty loan balances and made us treat school like it was a job. There were no history of architecture majors or fucking around.

    I guess my childhood was a system of checks and balances. The best compliment I ever received was my friends in college and early 20s coming back to Milwaukee with me for whatever reason and being stunned that my parents were so well off. I work hard and have financial expectations for myself cause Id like my kids to have the opportunities and chances I had, but that appreciation and respect for it all is very much ingrained in me.
     
  20. audreymonroe

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    There are about a million ways being raised by a single dad with no siblings impacts my life today, but one of the things I really notice a stark contrast with over and over again is the level of independence/self-sufficiency and ability to be alone that I have compared with other people. I've more or less been taking care of myself and a house in varying levels since I was 11, and the amount of everyday life stuff that's been second nature to me all this time that so many people have no idea how to do, or had to struggle to teach themselves how to do, is nuts. It was a lot more noticeable while I was in college and just started out living on my own, but even still, the level of knowledge of how to do a lot of chores and errands and home repairs and life management stuff, or just the diligence in actually trying to do it when no one else is telling you to, is relatively low. Plus, we were solidly middle class in that I definitely didn't get everything I wanted but certainly wasn't really wanting for anything important, so I was always aware of the importance and know-how of managing money. I was also probably a lot more privy to the nuts and bolts of that than a lot of kids were because of my situation anyway, but my dad would talk me through a lot of that type of stuff and his decision-making processes. So I've carried that with me too. Like, just for one example that combines all of this, I never realized that effective grocery shopping was a skill until pretty recently. I'm a crazy person for planning my meals out for the week and working around sales and putting in a little time to figure out what the best deals are at the store, apparently. (This does not really come naturally to me either, I can't wait to make enough money to be a little reckless with it.)

    And since I spent a lot of time alone, I am still very comfortable hanging out with myself for a while. It blows my mind that people won't do what they want to do because they can't find someone to do it with them and can't fathom going to the movies or out to eat or to a museum or an event or whatever alone. Yeah there are certain social situations that I'll pass on if I can't find someone to go with, but you won't go to the movies? You're not even talking to the person you're with anyway. Or just how freaking antsy people get if they happen to have a day where they're just sitting by themselves at home. I'm sure at least part of this was going to be a part of my personality regardless of how I grew up, but I don't know, I've definitely noticed a correlation with how big a person's family is and how much they hate to be alone/how much attention they need. And I know that's supposed to be the stereotype about only children, that they need a lot of attention because they're used to it, and maybe that would've been the case with two parents, but for me it's definitely settled into more of an "I'm perfectly okay over here doing my own thing and you can be over there doing your own thing" situation.

    Also I have no idea who Aaron Hernandez is and only have gathered he's a football player who murdered people or something from this thread.