sparky wrote:I just dont come from a world of idiots. I come from a world where people fix thier own cars, fix thier own houses, people who have spent thier lives getting thier hands dirty. People who are self realized and have nothing to prove.
I don't just fix my own log house, I designed it; I contracted it; I did a lot of the work building it: put the roof on myself, drove nails, poured and worked concrete, have spent thousands of hours over the last 25 years doing backbreaking work out in my 5 acres. A realtor valued my property at around $1M and most of that has come through the manual labor of my wife and me. With our own 4 hands we have created a lush 2 acre woodland garden/forest with hundreds of trees and thousands of shrubs and flowers, a 1k sq. ft. pool and 2 big waterfalls that looks like a Sierra lake in our own backyard. Nobody else takes care of it for us. I fix my own cars, drag my own implements to the 3 point hitch of my tractor, get covered in axle grease, and scrub it off with Go-Jo. I have carried packs over 100 lb. through snow, have gone as much as 26 miles in a day (16 of that in snow), and more than once have had to save the life of some unprepared person I found lost or injured in the back country.
I'm not trying to brag just for bragging's sake. I am telling you that this part of my world view is not as different from yours as you may think. I know what it is to work my behind off just as much as you do. Where we differ is our belief about self-discipline and responsibility toward society as a whole. The fact that someone is rugged and self made does not give him the innate right to go around acting like the rules and law of the land do not apply to him. When that boy, Jes, came on here, having never backpacked a day in his life, and asked about hiking the HST in March with a rickety little pack and an old rectangular bag, and not one other piece of equipment, some people here encouraged the boy to just go for it, told him he'd be fine, just depend on himself. That is not good advice. Had that boy gone out there he likely would have died. Those of us who are strong and know how to survive on our own in the wilderness have not always been that way. We once were children. Heck, my above post shows what a reckless wild child I was. But we grew and we had people to teach us skills and instill values of hard work and self reliance in us. And that took time, it also took a lot of patience by those who taught us. We learned a little at a time. Becoming the adults we are today took time and we all had a learning curve.
So here's more about my world view. I teach school. I do more parenting of my kids than their own parents do. Over half come from broken homes, have parents who drink and do drugs, who spoil their children. A lot have parents who are in jail. (And all of this is true for every race and ethnicity.) Just this Wednesday I was on a field trip to Coloma and a kid from another class was jumping around karate chopping and kicking other kids pretty hard. His mother was there, laughing at him because she thought it was downright "cute" the way he was "expressing himself." She was unhappy when I told him he needed to keep his hands and feet to himself. I have parents who don't think their kids need to use the bathroom at recess and should be allowed to leave class any time they desire to do so. Many parents just laugh when I ask them to help the kids practice math facts and to spend time reading with their children at home. On Thursday, one parent showed up outside the door at the end of school, distributing bags of cookies and cupcakes to every child as they left in honor of her daughter's birthday. She didn't ask if it was o.k., even though other parents have requested we not let this occur. It probably will not surprise you that this mother and her daughter are both morbidly obese. Half the children in my class do no homework and the parents do not care. One parent got angry when I took a drawing her son was making during math class and threw it away. The mother scheduled a meeting, yelled at me, said her precious son felt "bad" when that happened, that he should never have to feel bad about anything in his life, then threatened to have her husband come beat me up if the boy was ever made to feel bad or sad about anything again. In my classroom, I have to teach children how civilized people act, how to treat each other, and I have to make them learn. Having to be both parent as well as academic instructor at the same time is hard work. In spite of the fact that 60% of the children in our school are in poverty and qualify for free lunch and breakfast, my classes' standardized test scores are consistently high with the vast majority scoring proficient or advanced year after year. So this is where I am coming from, Sparky, a world of immature adults who are teaching their children to be even more immature. Truly, far to many parents today not only spoil their children, but it is actually their goal to do so. I also am deeply troubled by the ever increasing reports of psychopaths walking onto school campuses and mowing down innocent little children. The second amendment begins with a dependent clause that qualifies the meaning of the entire statement. When a member of this board like whrdafamI makes comments about guns, that view is contrary to everything I know and believe. I protect and guide the young and innocent every day. Innocents whose right to life and safety supersede the rights of others to inflict violence.
All of us are in the process of growing and maturing. My own adopted daughter knew that I expected her to be able to take care of herself by the time she was 18 or finished college. She knew I would never allow her to grow up and then mooch off of me or off of society as an adult. (She is now a computer science major at Cal Poly.) But she didn't get there on her own. I spent every day during 18 years of loving, nurturing, and teaching her how to get there. Sparky, I think you and I both have an expectation that people be able to take care of themselves. That is a good thing. The thing is, in today's pathetic world, far too many of them don't know how....because no one has ever taught them how. I, for one, cannot tell newbies,
Just go do it and depend upon yourself, when they are not capable of doing it. They likely will not be o.k. When they come here, it is an inbuilt part of my nature to teach them how they can get to that point. It is the parent in me, the teacher in me, the wilderness instructor in me that wants to get them from novice status to self-reliant status. Sometimes I can do that gently, and other times they don't listen unless some of us start acting like a strict parent. It doesn't help that attempt when AT and I get called arrogant and have vulgarities thrown at us. This is why I don't like to backpack with other people unless one of two things is true. Either they are rank amateurs whom I can teach and mold in the best way possible, or they are seasoned veterans who practice LNT and all other of the safety protocols I use, such as knowing every possible evac. route available from every point along the route. And this is why the guy whose actions instigated this thread is wrong about maps. You cannot memorize a map. You can memorize a minuscule amount of information from a map. But in an emergency, you need to be able to calculate elevation differences between several points on a map. You need to be able to estimate the steepness of a slope at any point on the map by examining the density of elevation/contour lines. You need to be able accurately to determine latitude and longitude at any point on the map to within several feet. Uninformed people assume they know so much, when in fact they frequently are utterly clueless. Let's agree to help keep them safe, not egg on their dangerous foolishness.