I simultaneously would have answered ‘no,’ would expect most people in my social circles to answer no, think it is clear that this being a near-universal is a very bad sign, and also that 25.6% is terrifying. It’s something like ‘there is a right amount of the thing this is a proxy for, and that very much is not it.’
At the risk of being too honest, I find passages written like this horribly confusing and never know what you mean when you write like this. (“this” being near universal—what is “this”? (“answering no” like you and your friends or “answering yes” like most of the survey respondents?) 25.6% is terrifying because you think it is high or low? What thing do you think “this” is a proxy for?)
For me, the survey question itself seems bad because it’s very close to two radically different ideas:
- I base my self-worth on my parent’s judgement of me.
- My parents are kind, intelligent people whose judgement making is generally of very high quality. Since they are also biased towards positive views of me, if they judged me poorly then I would take that as serious evidence that I am not living up to what I aspire of myself.
The first sounds unhealthy. The second sounds healthy—at least assuming that one’s parents are in fact kind, intelligent, and generally positively disposed to their children at default. I’m not confident which of the two a “yes” respondent is agreeing to or a “no” is disagreeing with.
Thank you. I agree that the phrasing here wasn’t as clear as it could be and I’ll watch out for similar things in the future (I won’t be fixing this instance because I don’t generally edit posts after the first few days unless they are intended to be linked to a lot in the future, given how traffic works these days.)
If it’s still confusing, I meant: I would not say that making my parents proud is one of my main goals in life. I would expect [people I know] to mostly also not see this as one of their main goals. I think that the percentage of people answering yes is a proxy that correlates to virtues that it is possible to have too much or too little of individually or as a society, a type of respect for family and tradition and accomplishment and other neat (but possible to overdo) stuff like that. A number like 25.6% indicates a terrifyingly low amount of such virtues, such that I would worry about the future of such a country, the same way 99% is terrifyingly high.
Or that you can’t actually fully get rid of your 1st thing without also getting rid of the 2nd thing, not in practice—you don’t want too many people basing too much of their self worth on (especially solely on) their parents judgment of them, but you also don’t want them disregarding such preferences either.
There’s a lot of room for cultural interpretation of “one of my main goals in life”. Some will take this as “one of my top-3 far-mode indicators of success”, some will take it as “this is at least somewhat important to me”. I’d be shocked if many US intellectuals said “yes” to this, as they’re likely to interpret it the first way, and it’s low-status compared to having an impact or making your own way. And I’d be shocked if many people (a majority, but nowhere near unanimity—many people are far more aware than in previous generations of the flaws of their elders) wouldn’t say “yes” if it were framed the second way.
The line is “One of my main goals in life is to make my parents proud”.
I am interested to know my parents’ opinion on my life, and consider their general advice as an input, but I think if anyone told me it was their primary goal, then I’d anticipate they were shortsighted and needed to get out of their bubble. The people I’ve met who are most likely to say that I think are people who will never move out of the town they were born in, and don’t have any truly ambitious goals.
For instance, if the question was a proxy for “Tick yes if you’ve not found many meanings or purposes that are worth devoting your life to beyond the immediate relationships you were born into, and may never leave your home town” then it would seem drastically too high to me, by around 10x.
In contrast the question I’d like to see be high is something more like “I have a loving relationship with my parents”. That seems healthy to me.
At the risk of being too honest, I find passages written like this horribly confusing and never know what you mean when you write like this. (“this” being near universal—what is “this”? (“answering no” like you and your friends or “answering yes” like most of the survey respondents?) 25.6% is terrifying because you think it is high or low? What thing do you think “this” is a proxy for?)
For me, the survey question itself seems bad because it’s very close to two radically different ideas:
- I base my self-worth on my parent’s judgement of me.
- My parents are kind, intelligent people whose judgement making is generally of very high quality. Since they are also biased towards positive views of me, if they judged me poorly then I would take that as serious evidence that I am not living up to what I aspire of myself.
The first sounds unhealthy. The second sounds healthy—at least assuming that one’s parents are in fact kind, intelligent, and generally positively disposed to their children at default. I’m not confident which of the two a “yes” respondent is agreeing to or a “no” is disagreeing with.
Thank you. I agree that the phrasing here wasn’t as clear as it could be and I’ll watch out for similar things in the future (I won’t be fixing this instance because I don’t generally edit posts after the first few days unless they are intended to be linked to a lot in the future, given how traffic works these days.)
If it’s still confusing, I meant: I would not say that making my parents proud is one of my main goals in life. I would expect [people I know] to mostly also not see this as one of their main goals. I think that the percentage of people answering yes is a proxy that correlates to virtues that it is possible to have too much or too little of individually or as a society, a type of respect for family and tradition and accomplishment and other neat (but possible to overdo) stuff like that. A number like 25.6% indicates a terrifyingly low amount of such virtues, such that I would worry about the future of such a country, the same way 99% is terrifyingly high.
Or that you can’t actually fully get rid of your 1st thing without also getting rid of the 2nd thing, not in practice—you don’t want too many people basing too much of their self worth on (especially solely on) their parents judgment of them, but you also don’t want them disregarding such preferences either.
Thanks for the clarification! In fact, that opinion wasn’t even one of the ones I had considered you might have.
There’s a lot of room for cultural interpretation of “one of my main goals in life”. Some will take this as “one of my top-3 far-mode indicators of success”, some will take it as “this is at least somewhat important to me”. I’d be shocked if many US intellectuals said “yes” to this, as they’re likely to interpret it the first way, and it’s low-status compared to having an impact or making your own way. And I’d be shocked if many people (a majority, but nowhere near unanimity—many people are far more aware than in previous generations of the flaws of their elders) wouldn’t say “yes” if it were framed the second way.
The line is “One of my main goals in life is to make my parents proud”.
I am interested to know my parents’ opinion on my life, and consider their general advice as an input, but I think if anyone told me it was their primary goal, then I’d anticipate they were shortsighted and needed to get out of their bubble. The people I’ve met who are most likely to say that I think are people who will never move out of the town they were born in, and don’t have any truly ambitious goals.
For instance, if the question was a proxy for “Tick yes if you’ve not found many meanings or purposes that are worth devoting your life to beyond the immediate relationships you were born into, and may never leave your home town” then it would seem drastically too high to me, by around 10x.
In contrast the question I’d like to see be high is something more like “I have a loving relationship with my parents”. That seems healthy to me.
(commenting just to say I upvoted for the “horribly confusing” line)