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Originally Posted by Sanity Panda  My problem seems to be that this thread seems to advocate...
"Oh, my interests have changed. Therefore I should to get new friends and completely forget about my old friends." |
I think your real problem is an excessive interest in implications and undercurrents. This forum generally consists of threads in two entirely different classes: debate and advice. We overlap the boundary flippantly, and this thread is moving from advice into debate.
In advice, it is more effective to dismiss the subtle insinuations for the better goal of actually helping people. In debate, those half-spoken words are as significant as you make them.
You seem to be treating an advice thread as if it were a debate thread. And while I am happy to converse with you on the nature of friendships and relationships in general, it's unnecessary to lambast a group of people who gave advice to someone a year and a half ago.
If you want to disagree with someone's values, then you should ask them to respond directly.
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Originally Posted by Sanity Panda It appears to downplay the value of friendship, as nothing more than people we flicker through to share ourselves with |
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness.
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another.
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
Tales of a Wayside Inn, The Theolgian's Tale: Elizabeth, sec. IV. Quote:
Originally Posted by Sanity Panda but ultimately the focus is on us. |
The focus of what? Others? Ourselves? Where should this focus be, and why?
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Originally Posted by Sanity Panda Not to mention... what is this idea of having common interests? Family members can stick together despite being completely different due to these abstract ideas of family bonds, history and such. |
You're correct. People do stick together for reasons other than common interests. However, would you say that such people consider each other friends, or obligatory necessities? If your family is a cross to bear, why do you carry it? If you had the option between ending world hunger or staying with a friend, which would you choose? Are there things more important than friendship? The right to one's own dignity? The right to choose one's own destiny?
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Originally Posted by Sanity Panda Perhaps I'm old but I feel there is value in time, as time usually implies trust for me. |
You put a lot of value in implications.
An old man can be as deceitful as an adolescent. They are more likely to be deceptive: they're more likely to be bored and in search of pleasure.
And what is there to trust, in a friendship?
I would be more willing to trust a
person (not a friendship) with my life who I met an hour ago, but who I met because he just took a bullet for me, than a friend of 10, 20 years.
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Originally Posted by Sanity Panda It's feels dismissive of the idea that strong mutual friendships can be dependent on the other person's existance, regardless of their activities and such. |
No, such friendships do exist. It is a different question whether or not they should, but they do exist.