Each of us creates the world we live in. We choose what to include in it and we also decide what to leave out.
Interested in the latter, we dug around Reddit and found a few discussions where people have been sharing difficult-to-accept truths that they know are correct but actively try not to think about.
So we put together the most popular entries, and I gotta say, it's not the easiest list to go through, but it's definitely intriguing and thought-provoking. After all, even if we refuse to acknowledge a fact, that doesn't make it go away.
Continue scrolling to check out what things are bothering people the most and the talks we had with social science writer and researcher Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., MPP, and professor of psychology at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, Noam Shpancer, Ph.D.
This post may include affiliate links.
No-one wants to hear your shitty music in public, especially in class.
According to Shpancer, refusing to think about something we know is true is a form of avoidance. "It may provide short-term relief from discomfort, and can sometimes help us keep from becoming distracted, but in the long term, a habit of persistent avoidance—a refusal to face your known challenges—becomes a bigger problem than whatever issue you were avoiding in the first place," the author of The Good Psychologist told Bored Panda.
This, let's call it practice, sounds quite similar to denial, but, as Shpancer pointed out, the latter is a refusal to accept or acknowledge the truth altogether. "The benefit of denial is that it may, in the short term, buy you some time to summon and mobilize your coping resources," he explained.
"When we hear bad, surprising news, our first reaction is often 'No, it can't be,' even if we have every reason to trust the source of the bad news. This momentary denial may allow us to 'catch our breath' as it were, before delving into the hard work of coping. Relying on denial for the long term is, however, unhealthy. Such persistent refusal to acknowledge and face facts erodes interpersonal trust and communication and leads to bad decisions. If you're falling, there's no use telling yourself that you've learned how to fly."
Just because someone is related to you doesn't mean they are a good person.
My mother and sister are my abusers. I remember seeing a Tumblr post about how great it is to have a sibling as you’ll “always have a friend”. I almost choked laughing at the naivety.
Sherman, the author of Neither Ghost nor Machine: The Emergence and Nature of Selves, agreed, highlighting how human life is uniquely anxious compared to other organisms. "Just compare the range of worries a human could have compared to any other critter. No contest. To cope, we need denial, escapism, entertainment, but to survive we need all hands on deck in reality too," he explained to Bored Panda.
"I'm on a campaign I call 'optimal: see illusion, safe escapism or strategic gullibility', encouraging people to take their denialist flights of fancy but always with a return ticket to reality safe in your heart pocket. It's not how far out you go, but whether you remember to come back. The big difference between a death metal concert and an authoritarian political rally is what happens in the parking lot after. After the metal concert, people return to reality. After the rally, people think they've experienced something more real than reality. That's dangerous."
Voting Trump out of office won't magically fix everything. He is a symptom of a bigger disease here in the USA.
Yeah, but it sure made me FEEL better to help vote him out of office!
One study of 2,000 adults across the United States, which was commissioned by global tour operator G Adventures, suggests that the average American spends 12 hours and 56 minutes escaping their reality each week. (That's roughly four years over a lifetime.)
The most popular forms of disconnecting from work, responsibilities, and everything else that drives them crazy came in the form of reading books (1 hour 34 minutes), watching movies (2 hours 37 minutes), and dreaming of vacations (44 minutes).
However, as previously mentioned, this can't go on forever and we need to come to terms with the world around us. Jeremy Sherman thinks people can make it easier for themselves by focusing on what he calls ironic fallibilism.
"An ironic situation is one where you get the opposite of what you expected: you do the right thing and it comes out wrong or vice versa. An ironic attitude is recognition that despite your best effort, ironic situations are not entirely escapable. There is no sure-fire formula for living. Just when you discover the meaning of life, it changes."
"Ironism is not cynicism. It's the recognition that life is deeply tragic and deeply slapstick. Life is tragicomic," he explained.
We need to stop consuming animal products the way we currently are. It's absolutely unsustainable.
The amount of downvotes this post will receive proves the title of this post.
The key part of this is "the way we currently are", and this is very true. You don't have to be a vegan to not participate in the cruelty of intensive factory farming. It is possible to eat genuinely ethically raised animal products where the animal had a happy life - it's just really expensive. Killing is not inherently cruel - subjecting an animal to pain and terror before it's killed is.
"Fallibilism is a concept in philosophy and more than any other notion, fallibilism has given me peace of mind about dealing with reality," Sherman continued. "I think of the fallibilist mantra as 'no matter how confident I am in a bet, I remain still more confident that it is a bet. Life is iffy guesswork. Yoda is wrong. There's only try. One can make better bets. One can bet with high confidence. One can't escape betting."
Sherman sees ironic fallibilism as the antidote to two unworkable approaches that are often combined:
The first one is fundamentalist hypocrisy, or pretending you have the formula for living though you don't, can't, and shouldn't live by it. And the second one is cynical hypocrisy, or pretending there's no formula so you can do whatever you want.
"[Jerks] (I'm a psychoproctologist) employ both. Everyone should live by their supposed fundamentalist formula that they cynically don't think they have to live by. No deed is too dirty for saints like them."
Just because you've been doing something longer than other people doesn't mean you're better at it (driving, job role, sports etc)
Professor Noam Shpancer added that we should revise our expectation that life should be easy, and the attendant aversion to discomfort. "Hardship is not the end of the world," he said. "It is just the world. The default position for human beings is resilience. Normalizing the struggle is useful."
"Second, accepting reality tends to be easier when we take a long-term perspective, because the danger and damage associated with a failure to face reality are usually obscured in the short run and clarify only in the long run. When making decisions, it is, therefore, useful to consider not only your present self but the well-being of your future self as well. When you fail to deal with the facts of your circumstance, you in effect sell out your future self."
"You can achieve anything you put your mind to" is NOT true.
Not even close.
Genetics play a HUGE role in whether or not someone will be a good athlete, or a super successful scientist.
Can you be an "OK" athlete if you try really hard and practice really hard? Sure. Will you break world records or play for a professional team? No. You have to be especially gifted in the genetics department to do those sorts of things.
The same thing applies for mental pursuits. Not everyone is smart. Some people just don't... get it. You can try a million different ways of teaching a subject and some people just... won't... get it. Critical thinking (the ability to see a problem and visualize how to get a solution) comes MUCH MORE EASILY to some people than to others. Can you sit there and memorize things and get good grades and what not? Absolutely. Will you ever be a scientist who does extremely important research and solves the world's next huge problem? Probably not, unless you get hired because of nepotism are dragged along by someone who IS good at critical thinking.
Furthermore, much of what you CAN do is limited by who you know. If you're rich or your parents are rich and they know lots of people and have a large social network or a lot of people who want to please them for one reason or another, you'll likely find a job in whatever career you want to extremely easily provided you're not totally inept. If you're the first in your family to get a degree and aren't good at maintaining a social network you'll likely have an extremely hard time finding a job, even if you are the person best suited for the jobs you are applying for. Even if the job you're applying for is LITERALLY what you spent 5 years getting a PhD on, if you don't know somebody, you likely won't get that job.
Finally, we must constantly work on educating ourselves and seeking knowledge that can provide answers to questions we sometimes can't even articulate. Shpancer believes that history is the subject to start with, as it "shows what happens to those who deny the facts, and about the scientific method, which shows that in refereeing competing truth claims, following the evidence is our best bet.
"'Facts,' said John Adams, 'are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.' The evidence wins out in the end. Don’t you want to be on the winning side?"
All children are innocent, but they’re not all good. Some people will grow up to be f*****g assholes regardless of what they’re exposed to.
Oh yeah, there are some shockingly evil kids out there. I've met a few.
Money can actually make your life happier.
Up to a certain point. If you have 100 million or 500 million, then it might not make much difference.
You need to have your views challenged.
Being around and positively engaging with people who disagree with you is one of the healthiest intellectual practices we can do.
Having an opinion doesn't make you right.
The more children you have, the more you contribute to environmental decline. Literally nobody likes hearing this because HUMANS MUST REPRODUCE YADA YADA.
Most true for Americans, and to a lesser extent the other "western" countries. There were 1 billion people on the planet in 1800. In 1950, there were 2.53 billion, 1980 4.43 billion, 1999 6 billion, 2011, 7 billion, today we sit at 7.95 billion, and will reach 8 billion people by next year. We can't effectively sustain the human population now, 1/3rd of food production ends up wasted, while 1/4 of the global population doesn't have enough to eat because getting it everywhere is a logistical nightmare, and yet a large portion of the population continues to think the only way to solve the big problems of the world is to stay the course, continue unchecked expansion and hope that solutions will be born along with the rising population. We've been playing this game for 40 years with the climate, and we're almost out of time. Yet the mindset seems unchanged.
Just because you love someone it doesn't mean they will love you back. No matter how hard you try to get them to, they just won't.
I guess to counter some people in here:
Not every "real talk", "tough to swallow pill", or "harsh truth" that you have to offer someone is going to be accurate to them, or their situation.
Sometimes you're actually a f*****g d**k that is incapable of considering their perspective or feeling empathy towards them.
¯ _(ツ) _ / ¯
Exactly. Just let people be. Maybe things will work out for them. Maybe it won't. At least they tried. This is a huge problem with long distance relationship communities. You could have one minor question, seeking a boost of optimism. Then people want more information about the relationship. They use that information against the op and base dooming "opinions", some irrelevant to the op's main issue, on their own past experiences that could have been much, much different of a situation. I don't even bring it up anymore. Don't need to.
There's going to be a day where you are totally forgotten by everyone.
Things are going to keep getting worse on our planet and we are in for some serious human tragedy.
Here's the thing, the planet is going to be fine, it's been around 4.5 billion years. It's the people who are F***ed
Your spouse/child/home/job/vacation, etc. is not nearly as important to anyone else as it is to you.
You can't control what happens to you, only how you react to it.
You can also hold anyone who causes those things accountable for it.
That there are people who won’t like you or agree with you and you won’t be able to change their mind so you just have to deal with it
That all gods are man made, start taking responsibility for your own actions and stop thinking that some magical being is going to come and help you out.
Your skin color / sexual orientation is the least interesting thing about you.
Are you telling me my neon purple skin is the least interesting thing about me?? Oh well then.
Capitalism as it’s currently implemented doesn’t work and only increases the wealth of the wealthy at the cost of the poor, the oppressed, and the world. We are literally destroying our ability to live on this planet, and we’ll need drastic societal change to barely survive the coming era.
Fun fact: social capitulation, a rare system used in some insignificant island nations and small Asian countries (tu mi au, xibi San ma) in which the basic necessities of survival are provided but to live comfortably you need to work. It’s an interesting system that seems to work well and I’d be willing to give it a try. An interesting blend of capitalism and socialism
So many of these are negative... So how about the truth that one of the best ways to be happy in life is by helping other people. People don't want to do it, because helping other people feels like you're losing out, but it's true
This is part of my mail .sig: "You're not a sucker to have integrity and treat people with respect." - Barack Obama
No matter how nice you are, people will still just be assholes to you just cuz.
I've dealt with people at work who tried so hard to get me upset. Like really reaching. There are people who will just try to get a reaction out of you, make you feel bad for doing your job, or even just being somewhere. What they really hate is calmness and positivity in their presence of negativity.
Your friends and family likely talk tons of s**t about you behind your back
Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes good things happen to bad people.
You can’t love someone into loving you
SO many people need to understand this! For others' sake and for themselves as well.
That people need to stop putting their trust in god to do things and do it themselves
Everyone you love will die. Everyone you hate will die. Everything ends.
Corona may never go away and be in our lives forever in some capacity.
Or some other vaccine / antibiotic-resistant pandemic. I think COVID has definitely demonstrated rather graphically what I've feared has happened to people over the course of the last 30 year though - people have become more selfish and more prone to f*cking each other over, even for something as simple as a toilet roll - and far more opinionated and entitled when presented with something relatively simple that they could do to prevent getting infected or spreading an infection (like wearing a mask)
No matter what you do you polluted the planet
The only person responsible for -you- is -you-.
So parents should just leave their newborns in the woods or something?
Americans don't want to hear that Columbus murdered and enslaved people.
It's not that they don't want to hear it. It's that they were taught a GROSSLY different version of the story. Though some probably would prefer to keep believing that old lie.
No one really gives a s**t what your eyebrows look like.
But if being and looking groomed and neat makes you feel good and happy, go for it. Not everything is about others´ opinions.
You are always replaceable.
Oh, thank god. I’m starting to wear out. They’d better replace me soon before one of my internal components breaks.
You aren't special.
As long as we fail to protect and provide for all children in our society, we will continue to suffer the crimes of the damaged adults we produce. We have no right to expect any different, and we deserve everything that we get.
👏 yes! We punish, judge and blame harshly those who fail, mistake and go astray in life. But WE made them. It was us (parents, family, friends, neighbours, coworkers, society) who conditioned them and shaped them into what they were or are or will be. We all fail when everyone else fails. We are all accountable. My humble way of seeing this. If it wasn't us, then we were somehow lucky to be born in good surroundings. But that doesn't make us better or in the condition to push down those who weren't lucky. The world needs more empathy and understanding. My naive opinion. Feel free to downvote.
Racism is universal, as in anybody can be racist.
The recent attempt to redefine it is laughable.
If you assume things or judge anyone based on skin color, good or bad things, you’re a racist.
When you die, it could very well be nothing. Just blackness, like before you were born.
The downfall of many celebrity and quasi-celebrity males over the past few years, as a result of sexual assault, is just the tip of the iceburg. Sexual assault is real, it has been going on for centuries, and the news shedding light on the matter is a good thing.
China is always expanding their influence and the Chinese communist party treats people terribly.
You can’t make everyone happy
the fact that the two presidential candidates are old men who should be in nursing homes is depressing
No one is at the wheel. There is no one leading the planet, just powerful people, companies, and countries all struggling together against everyone else for power, money, and control.
Just because you’ve been with someone since high school doesn’t mean they’re right for you. Don’t base your future on childish dreams
Both of the world's current super powers (China and USA) are committing genocide on undesirables near their borders. Nobody can do a damn thing to stop them. The future of the world is bleak.
Oh yeah, Climate Change is happening, and the evidence points to us going down the *worst case scenario* path, which means a nightmarish world for the next thousand years.
* Some people will never find a long term partner and that's okay...
* ... because even if you live your life surrounded by people and love, you will die alone. Being married or with a LT partner, having children, having lots of relatives... All in all, it's no guarantee / insurance against ending up alone.
* People fall out of love for no reason and sometimes there's nothing you can / should do about it.
* Not everyone wants children, even the ones who will have them anyway.
Good things don't come to those who wait. They come to those who take them. Be patient in your efforts, don't wait apathetically for the things you want to come to you.
The people who bother you the most in your life probably do so because you’re the most similar to them.
I’m not sure about this one. Sometimes the things that drive you the most crazy are the opposite to yourself.
The eradication of the most devastating diseases that we fight today (i.e. cancer) will have potentially devastating unintended consequences. Humans weren't meant to live forever, and a "cure for cancer" will have interesting effects in the economy and society as a whole with a world already overcrowded with people.
Before I get killed on this, I don't mean for this to sound cruel or heartless.
The democratic and republican parties are the same party. They want the same things. Any differences you may find in them is only to keep you distracted from taking the power away from the already powerful.
That you need to uplift others to improve society and the world
but everyone is more focused on crushing those around them to ensure their current, or potential, position in the world.
The world does not owe you anything and government is not going to take care of you.
Then they need to stop taking my money and expecting taxes when they don't do a thing for me.
Just because you don't agree with someone on a personal level doesn't mean you can't be friends.
I personally don't agree with a lot of the things my boss says, but he's an awesome boss and a mentor for me.
We learn by listening to others' perspectives, not by villifying them.
Healthy relationships require a lot of work. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But in total – a whole f*****g lot.
That most people probably don't hate you just because you're black/gay/etc.
They hate you because you're really an a*****e.
"You're going to die and you have no idea when" Stop pretending that you're invincible. Acknowledge the fact of your own mortality, and then start structuring your life in a more meaningful way.
Costco has tubs of 7lb Nacho cheese for sale at $6.50 a piece. 7lbs of Nacho Cheese works out to about 2,800cm^3 . A typical bathtub has a volume of 160,000cm^3 . Here are your volumes based on weights (approximately) and how many bottles you would need to fill up the tub:
1. 120lbs = 50,000cm^3 means you need 40 tubs for 255 dollars
2. 150lbs = 70,000cm^3 means you need 32 tubs for 208 dollars
3. 200lbs = 90,000cm^3 means you need 25 tubs for 162.5 dollars
4. 250lbs = 110,000cm^3 means you need 18 tubs for 116 dollars
See the trend? The fatter you get, the more cost effective it becomes to bathe in cheese.
Prophets had no excuse. If you claim to have a connection to god and hear his voice, then the time period in which you live doesn't excuse what you do or prescribe for society. Otherwise, it means your god was limited by the spirit of the era, meaning he isn't omnipotent. Or that god was just wrong.
People respect prophets too much.
People crave answers and understanding, religion gave people those answers and understanding, now that we have figured out evolution and genetics etc to a level where it shows that religion is probably wrong (no magic beardy guy on a cloud starting the human race with 2 people) religions need to step back and say yeah at the time (thousands of years ago) religion made sense and gave answers but over the thousands of years since we have grown and learned and religion is probably mostly wrong, obviously feel free to keep all the thou shall not murder etc ideas but all the seven days 2 people etc, just grow a pair and admit you were wrong
Your employer steals from you more than the government does
And I steal right back by not working for hours and getting paid. Ha.
Either you will have to deal with someone else dying or, someone else will have to go through you dying.
You are as insignificant to most people on earth as a stranger you pass on the street is to you.
There are a LOT of violent people out there and we aren't really doing much to change that.
There are a lot of people hurting each other through sexual violence. And no one is ultimately making any effort to change that.
Despite the fact that Reddit doesn't want to hear it, there are a LOT of people who are attracted to young people. Throughout history, and today. And until we actually acknowledge that, we are never going to stop people from being abused.
The best solution for gun violence in the US that everyone could agree on is targeting the causes of violence. Now there will be issues on specific methods which people will debate, but you would be 10 times more effective in getting movement in that area than by trying to fight the brick wall of gun control vs gun rights. And politicians are never going to do this unless citizens tell them to change focus.
Educated people have beliefs too, education alone is not a magic solution to issues.
Lengthy program/class that's mandatory to own a fire arm. You'll have to prove to professionals you can mechanically operate it. Prove to professionals you're mentally capable of making rational choices while possessing a gun, make it tedious. We treat lethal firearms the same way we treat a freaking dirtbike any more.
Not everything revolves around you
Edit: I don’t give a f**k what planet you are or what space object you identify as stfu lmao
Having a culture that is so focused on getting high or drunk squanders much of the time in our youth that we need to develop into thoughtful, pragmatic, and mature adults.
It's our fault the world is not the way it's supposed to be.
We didn't start it, it's just the people that came before us didn't fix it, and now it's our responsibility.
Expecting politicians, athletes, and celebrities to influence positive change is b******t when so many of us don't take extra steps to contribute positively in the world.
It's our responsibility to fix it. While they obstinately stand in our way trying to keep us from fixing it. Show both sides, c'mon.
- Mental illness is not an excuse for shitty behavior
- Your problems are generally the consequence of your own action
- If you live in the Western developed world, you are a lot more shallow and materialistic than you'd like to admit
- In terms of looking for a partner, your looks and money are huge factors. Possibly even more important than personality
True that mental illness is not an excuse for shitty behavior, but in reality childhood trauma and the effect it has on the brain's development is very real.
No matter how much time, energy, love, etc. you put into someone, the only way to ensure you get results from that effort is to put it into yourself. Everyone else is a calculated gamble.
Your (our) mother(s) will put us down one day. And never pick us up again.
Being computer illiterate is not something to be proud of and should not be accommodated. Especially with the boomer crowd that literally demands to be hand held through copying and pasting. You cant ask them to think or learn because 'I just don't understand computers'.
Well you're just fine with your iPhone and Facebook and surfing the net. You can learn this new system YOU requested instead of demanding IT do it for you simply because it runs on a computer.
Also, USE BIRTH CONTROL. This is the worst possible time to be bringing babies into the world. We're already overpopulated and strained for resources. Itll only get worse as time goes on. No, having a baby wont fix all your problems. Itll just amplify them and bring in an another innocent sufferer.
If you want kids that badly, think about the 400,000 in foster care instead of demanding that only your genes are good enough.
I agree about being computer illiterate; however, I am a boomer and am not computer illiterate. Please stop stereotyping an entire age group. I have worked at more than 30 places in my life, each of which required that I learn a new program or use a different platform. Don't forget: Boomers invented Microsoft, Apple and the internet. We used tech before many of you were born.
Your dog will probably die before you
we have no chance of mitigating climate change to a point where billions of people will have died by 2050
You might not ever find the love of your life.
Yes, you may marry. But it might not work out. You might end up divorced, lonely, and unfulfilled at 60 years old. It is technically a possibility, it is not impossible.
Don't worry, I'm not talking about myself.
Or worse, you might. I was lucky enough to find the love of my life. She was my everything. Then last September, after 22 years of happy marriage, she died. I've never been so lonely or depressed and I wonder if it would have been better if I'd never met her. (I'm 50, she was 60 if that matters.)
Anything about someone's dream.
The MLM will never make you money, Britney.
Although your parents say so, you cannot sing, Amy.
You are not the smartest person in the world, Brandon.
(Names random)
there are no absolute truths
That world peace is impossible
Yep ...and opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one....
Load More Replies...
Who needs this kind of negativity in their life? Most of this stuff everyone knows, but we don't talk about, because it's better to focus on the good things in life.
Yep ...and opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one....
Load More Replies... Who needs this kind of negativity in their life? Most of this stuff everyone knows, but we don't talk about, because it's better to focus on the good things in life.
