Do you come from a simple-minded family, user?

Do you come from a simple-minded family, user?

>tfw mother doesn't even know who Adolf Hitler is

I find that hard to believe.

i come from Alentejo, every fucking body is simple minded here.

I'm hispanic, if that helps.

Nah. I come from a southern aristocratic family, that immigrated here from Ireland early on, and my mother is familiar with most of the western canon. Must feel terrible to be a literal plebeian.

Upper middle class family with some serious upper class ancestors.

My father reads our native literary writers, but I do not. Other than that, my family has shit taste and I had to develop my own. My mother exclusively reads non-fiction, my sister reads shitty girl schlock.

Honestly, it feels like I missed a part of my upbringing. The arts were basically a dirty word at home, and my father didn't even know the name of the musical genre he has listened to for the better part of his life until I told him.

I don't, it is not in my hands to decide if I born rich or poor.

Knowledge differences can be a considerable barrier to friendships and familial relationships, especially if one is impatient and self centered. But those barriers can be overcome.

It's weird because my dad was always feeding me intellectually, but starting in my early 20s or so I surpassed him in knowledge. It's got an Oedipal kind of friction that is frustrating. He's happy for me and proud of me but at the same time he has nothing to tell me about politics or economics or history anymore, and I think that makes us both a little bit sad.

We used to spend hours breaking down the worlds problems, agreeing about the fundamentals, sharing insights etc.

Now if we go there it turns into bickering or tongue biting, and we have to ask each other "How has your week been?" instead.

No, but I'd enjoy if my parents were simpler. They are pretentious academics. Sometimes I feel contempt for their namedropping and civilized ideals.

Yes
My parents are broken beings who shouldnt had been allowed to reproduce
I try to not ressent them because I know they tried their best

My dad hasn't read a book since high school but can build a house on his own with almost no help, my mom left Jordan as one of the best students in the country and went to University in the states at 16 and graduated with a pharmacy degree, she barely ever reads anything.
My grandpa on my mom's side was one of the best professors in the ME teaching Physics and chemistry, he has tons of awards and most of his students went to their postgrad in places like MIT and Oxford. He only reads the Greeks. My grandpa on my father's side grew up in a one room, dirt floor shack in Ramallah and now owns a huge house on a hill with acres of private land in the Bay Area with multimillion dollar investments around the country, he never finished high school and only reads ME history books. We're Catholic Palestinians so I'm lucky to be exposed to all this from a young age as opposed to most arabs I know back in the ME

Like darkest Amazon hispanic?

i come from a single teenage mom

shes nice, and surprisingly well read (in low tier lit) but definitely emotion first, reason last. her relatives are all drug dependents with painfully fragile egos who even in their advanced ages act like children (50 yr old men rage quitting family board games after 2-3 rounds, for example)

My friend is from El Salvador and his mother doesn't know who Hitler is either.
I don't think he's OP though.

>and my father didn't even know the name of the musical genre he has listened to for the better part of his life until I told him.

What was it?

>ireland
sucks to be a potatonigger
literally no hope for you cause of fucked genome
>inb4 joyce
he was aryan you cucks

Upper middle classman here.
Sorry, you will have to serve me however I want.

Upper middle classman here.
My family hates the arts.

Chile, my mother is only into 80's pop culture.

Prog rock.

most of my family gives no fuck at all and the rest are pretentious pseuds, I don't know what's worse

I knew a Jamaican guy who had never heard of the Holocaust.

But he knew who Monica Lewinsky was

this is a lie

Is her father and her mother's brother the same person too?

Upper middle class family. Father does not read but did so in his youth and is a lefty. Mother comes from a Catholic lower middle class family.

I like to think I'm the smartest of our bunch, my siblings included. But nobody in my family is really simple-minded. Everybody knows who Hitler is. Then again, we're all German and it's pretty much impossible around here not to know.

My parents came from rather low class families, lived in a poor city on a poor country, who both got jobs in our local college (where they met, as employees), kept educating themselves (my mom's a PHD and y dad has a master's degree) and got better and better positions at the college, until they made our familiy into a upper-class one. They have always worked hard and their mindsets are very utilitarian, not caring much for the arts. My brothers have the same mindset, but not myself. I've always been much more interested in the arts than them, but since i don't have their mindset, i've failed miserably on my career, and it makes it much more depressing seeing how my family seem so succesful. I am the useless one.

My dad doesn't read beyond the newspaper and my mom used to read shitty best-sellers until she stopped because she was too busy with work. My brothers don't read anything either.

That's pretty damn coop user.

God damn I despise this. Same problem with my mother, except that the intersection occurred when I was about 15 and she has been unable to accept it ever since. During all of our conversations she's constantly on the prowl for me to make one mistake about anything, no matter how minute, so she can pounce and say something like, "WELL, I don't think it was TEN years ago, it was actually eight and a half!" It makes talking to her unbearable, so she has to initiate pretty much all of our conversations. She's actually fairly intelligent, but her incessant posturing kills any appreciation I have for it.

Cool*

Fug I ruined my chance

>He only reads the Greeks
is this what the final stage of patriciandom looks like?

Both of my parents had their educations cut short in their early teens for the sake of labour. Life in communist Albania was tough. I hear my father was a strikingly intelligent student while he was one though. We've never talked very much but I feel as if there is a raw vein of intelligence there somewhere. Anyhow he worked hard for us and encouraged my education (in the vaguest terms), so I can't complain.

Yea, a lot of my family members have some interesting stories, like my grandma was the prized daughter of a rich arms and drug dealing family in Jordan but she chose to marry my penniless grandpa for some reason, when I go over there all I need to do when encountering officials is give them my grandmas name and they'll leave me alone or give me some privileges

Other than books concerning science shit, it's the only literature he reads. I think it's because classical teaching was big in the ME among the Christians, like the old ways of teaching in the USA and Europe

No one in my family is "smart" but they're not ignorant either.

My mother reads a lot and has a pretty expansive vocabulary but she has no real intellectual interests outside of that and only a minor interest in politics.

My father doesn't read and has zero interest in anything artistic or intellectual, but he has the sense to know that he's not particularly smart or knowledgeable and he's open to correction and learning new things instead of doubling down on being wrong about something.

Yes, stereotypical family here. Father is a car mechanic (no formal education) and mother a nurse. Mom went through a phase were she bought all books from a collection of classics and decorated the walls. She never read them and always talked about her childhood Jules Verne nostalgia (Romanians will relate). We're all from a shithole called Botoşani, basically the place of fuckingnowhere, the local state library is packed with old publications from the communist era and the two bookstores we have don't even sell any books in English.

Literature wasn't imposed on me by upper-class parents like most of you, I searched literature on my own :)

>mother doesn't even know who Adolf Hitler is

You better come up with story behind this, and make sure it involves amazonia, tree houses, trailer parks, or shipwrecks, or I'm not buying it.

im the only one that reads in my entire family tree

Have you read Palestine from Joe Sacco? Do you think that's a good portrait?

Isn't he the guy who founded Veeky Forums?

I've read the book but I can't tell if it is that accurate, I've only been into Palestine once at a young age I only visit jordan, my mother's family fled to Jordan in the forties and most there have come to the states, my father's family has almost all left Ramallah and moved to California, only one of my great uncles are still there. I really loved the book though, one of the few examples of a really great graphic novel, I had my grandpa on my mom's side read it and he really enjoyed it, the only comic he's read

I'm from El Salvador and my mother doesn't know who Hitler is either.

My mom only reads the bible, and my father only reads the newspaper. My brothers don't read at all. I don't have that much in common with any of them.

>My mom only reads the bible, and my father only reads the newspaper.

That's a heavenly sentence for some reason. I like your folks. And keep that line handy for a novel.

I'm from a family of Irish Republicans, in our culture we have a deep respect for education and learning My parents are both big readers, I'm named after the lead character of the book my mother was reading while she was pregnant with me. The only one of the four of us who doesn't read for fun is my sister. She's not dumb either she'd just usually prefer to stick on a film or listen to some music rather than read a book and her tastes in music and cinema are mostly above pleb-tier (though she does watch a lot of shit TV).

I'm reading Footnotes in Gaza at the minute, both as a graphic novel and investigative journalism / oral history project its absolutely class. I really need to read more of his stuff.

Liberal smug scum detected.

>The problems of the world

I come from a cowardly family that doesn't have the integrity to be honest with my father, who is a valued member of the family. They lie to him and abuse his naivete for their own personal gain. He is so blinded by good memories that he has no idea how wrought with falsehoods his life is. My family is nauseatingly aristocratic, and they don't like me: they basically told me to kill myself, and my father has no idea.
If he knew, he would be furious. He would rage, he would storm, he would call all his family and row with them over the phone, he would launch a campaign to set things right, and they know this. So they keep him in the dark.
Myself? I may be nothing but a rebel, a one man army. My father? He stands behind me every step of the way and he certainly holds sway over my family, and although he has no idea they hate me, he is his own man and will certainly lead a long life--all I need to do is keep my grip. Which I can do, and my family knows this.

My family is fucking smart is my point, but I mostly hate them. I don't have anything against my younger cousins, but everyone able to comprehend money and power and 'the family name' are complete cunts that are currently eating their sorely deserved just desserts.

>mom has masters in communication
>grandfather had masters in environmental engineering
>grandmother graduated highschool from a bible belt state
>biological father who the fuck knows what that drugged out fuckface knows


So, about half?

Nah, just a common lower middle-class family, she just doesn't care about history or arts.

>Chile

How could your mother not know her next door neighbor

actually, it must be terrible to come from an aristocratic family. your life and history is the enemy and target of art, literature, and every great creator

Question - what is actually stopping you from telling your father about this? Do you consider it some form of snitching?

If they really told me to go kill myself I'd ruin their reputation in the eyes of the one they were trying to placate with joy and abandon. I'd ruin it all for them in a heartbeat.

He won't believe me. He has that much faith in the rest of his family versus his own son. Partially, I don't blame him. He's known them all his life. They have it out for me, not him, that's obvious. He's valuable to them, I am not. I happen to be his son. He trusts them and they abuse it, that's my whole point. As his son, I hate to see him used like this, but I can't constantly bring it to his attention, or even breach the topic with him: he'd be more likely to get angry with me.

I have no desire to tarnish my family name, I want only peace in my family, but they've gone and done this. So I am tarnishing the name, I will commit no violence but I will humiliate them, every day, as they humiliate my father without him having the slightest idea.

And yet, my dearest friend, here we all are.

Isn't the internet a beautiful equalizer? The deepest dagger during the democratic death and rebirth of the old world.

Identifying as 'Upper' middle class wreaks of insecurity. You grew up in a 3 bedroom ranch.

Grew up in middle class family. Both of my parents grew up poor though, my dad grew up in a tiny suburban house with four other siblings and alcoholic parents, my mom grew up in Brooklyn with an Irish father and Jewish mother but moved around a lot in her adolescence since my grandfather was in the military. My dad's a salesman and my mom is a grocery store manager. She never went to college either, because my grandfather believed that women didn't need to go to college. She used to read crime novels (not like mystery stuff, they were about actual crimes and serial killers) but she mostly just reads stuff about hauntings and exorcisms and such. My dad on the other hand is fairly Veeky Forums, he especially likes Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thompson. He writes prose and poetry himself but he's been too shy and focused on my family to try to get published.

I wouldn't say they're simple-minded, but rather an example of how rapidly things can go to shit.

It began with my original grandfather and grandmother. My granddad, I guess, was kind of a real prick. I never met him so it's tough to say much more than that. From what I understand he was the kind of guy who'd get furious about mundane things and scream at his family in public. He was also filthy-rich loaded so this enabled him to pretty much do and say whatever he pleased. He had 3 daughters with my grandmother and then left her, which acted as a grand spiral of cascading failure, in that all three daughters (one of which was, of course, my mother) grew up to be terrible people. I'll get back to that.

So, I never met my dad, either, but from what I understand he was a heroin dealer and consequent junkie that got locked up for a very long time. He, of course, made me and my eldest sister. My sister is a bartender now and also a general piece of shit. My mother had me in a rebellious fling with the 'bad-boy' type from her high school, and shortly after that had an episode which would reveal acute paranoid schizophrenia, the onset of which would lead into a heavy alcoholic nightmare that she hasn't recovered from today. My mother's sisters are basically worse in that they have latent mental problems and remain the combative, heartless bitches they have always been.

Sometime when I was a kid my grandmother remarried to my now step-grandfather, whom I actually respect and is the foundation for basically everything I am, including my love of literature. He introduced me to Vonnegut and that just sparked a sort of escapism in books - it kept me sane in the wake of a lot of family problems.

There's a lot more to it but I honestly have trouble going over it all and not feeling like a real stain on this earth so the nutshell version will do. But yeah, dumb as compared to horrid and unstable.

So what is "upper middle class'? Wealthy but not Ferrari wealthy? Before the 2008 crash that described my family well, $2,000,000 house, owned a business making around 400k a year, went to a expensive private school, vacations every year ect, but I didn't have those 'rich' benefits where you basically play by your own rules and your experiences is completely alien to the majority of the country.

>I have no desire to tarnish my family name, I want only peace in my family, but they've gone and done this. So I am tarnishing the name, I will commit no violence but I will humiliate them, every day, as they humiliate my father without him having the slightest idea.

Godspeed, black sheep.

Make it hurt.

Yes. Though it depends on how far back you go. Go back six or seven generations and all I've got is a bunch of hill-roaming Hebridean Scots and English sheep farmers. A little more recently I have a couple of gold rush explorers. I do have one ancestor who was governess to one of the Tsars, and another who made the outer casing for the very first locomotive, so there's that.

>Maternal grandmother: housewife
>Maternal grandfather: went to university, served in WWII as a Morse Code interpreter, after the war taught rural school children, used to memorise vast amounts of poetry and was able to recite it at will, still remember walking along the beach with him stepping on seashells to make them crunch while he recited the Rime of the Ancient Mariner
>Paternal grandfather: dairy farmer
>Paternal grandmother: housewife, trained as a nurse, weird ideas about what's healthy and what isn't, once gave me this green stuff that tasted like carob and told me it would make me well

>Mother: medical doctor, doesn't read much literature but only because she has 60 hour working weeks and ongoing medical education to keep up with
>Father: computer programmer for the national railway company for years before retirement, read most of the classics on the Veeky Forums lists when he was a teenager, doesn't read much anymore because he works around the house now he's retired

I have some surprisingly ignorant first cousins and aunts and uncles, so it's really only my immediate family that got lucky.

Whose parents read to them when they were kids? Can you remember what? I'm asking because I think its important for a good intellectual upbringing. I remember my Dad used to read me Children's classics that he grew up on, Treasure Island, The Wind In The Willows & Toad of Toad Hall. When I was in hospital my Mum used to read The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy to me, and did the voices and all.

Did you parents ever tell you stories that they made up themselves? My mum used to tell me the same stories that her older brother used to make up to keep her entertained when they were kids.

Can trace my lineage up to Mattew Flinders and Jane Seymour on my fathers side.
Mother is a family of convicts from ireland, though one of them was part of the police force that captured Ned Kelly.

My Grand uncle showed me a "family crest" the other day but I'm struggling to find more info on it.

Quite simple. I prefer it that way.

My father read to us. Roald Dahl, AA Milne, Tintin comics, Harry Potter 1-4 because they came out when we were still kids, The Wind in the Willows like you, and he made up stories too. Sometimes he told us "chaptered" stories that would last several nights that he made up off the top of his head. Sometimes he would tell us single-night stories that were usually brisk but thrilling adventures.

When we were smaller, it was the Little Golden Books and Noddy.

My mom doesn't read, besides People magazine, that is. She doesn't know too much outside of celebrities and thing related to her line of work, can't locate anything on a world map, etc. Otherwise, she collects teacups and goes to estate sales.

My Dad is more intellectual, but he's a close-minded, dogmatic ideologue, and will never in the foreseeable future renounce conservative politics or Roman Catholicism. He never reads things that challenge his worldview, reading mostly lowish to middlebrow conservative political writings and theological texts, as well as the Bible, of course. He has read Feser, including The Last Superstition, Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide), and Philosophy of Mind (A Beginner's Guide), the last of which he couldn't get through (I read it no problem after he told me this). Otherwise, he reads popular history.

I was talking to him once about Spinoza, and he decided to read my copy of Ethics (although, I don't think he processed any of the logical connections and just recited it to himself). He challenged Spinoza's view that the world is infinite, questioning what scientists would say about that today. I had to explain to him that you can't just refute a metaphysical statement like that with physical knowledge - that there's a separation between those areas of inquiry (but like with a lot of things I say to him in those sorts of exchanges, it seemed to bounce off his head and he didn't respond besides "Mmmm").

It didn't have to be like this, but what I'm doing is working, everyone involved is hurting. This is what happens when people like

mentioned, those who

> have those 'rich' benefits where you basically play by your own rules and your experiences is completely alien to the majority of the country.

think they are above common decency, above the law, above the 'common man' but they aren't. I will remind them of that every day until they set things right with my father, no matter the cost to my own well being. He deserves that at least. He's earned it from me, for trying to be a good father. In a way, its my gift to him. I'm fighting his fight and he doesn't even know about it.

>tfw neither of my parents have ever read a full book, dropped out of high school in their early teens

High five.

yeah just ask these guys
pic related

>are you hungry
>are you sure
>I thought you might want this
>are you sure
>how are you
>how are you
>how are you
>how are you
>how are you
>we need to talk
>it's about the lights
>AND FUCK YOU WITH THOSE WEIRD CREEPY LAUGHS YOU DO THAT FUCKING WEIRD LAUGH YOU DONT RESPECT ANYTHING I DO YOU PIECE OF SHIT WHO DO YOU THINK COOKS AND GODDAMN YOU LOOK AND SMELL LIKE SHIT
>i was the angry the other day
>do you want to go to your mum's some time
>how are you

My father mostly reads history books. He has more interes on facts as an entertainment.

My mother is a weird case though. She's very well read on latin american and spanish author (I'm mexican), knows french and has read from Verne, Sterne to Baudelaire. However, after a while she got into new age mystical stuff, the kind of books that almost fall into cultish hippy bullshitm, and now she only reads and does stupid holistic rituals from those books. Anyway, at least, in my family; she's the only one who I can talk about a novel or some poetry and get into some good conversation (I never talk about philosophy though, she always tries to relate it to her new age beliefs and me being in my masters degree of philosophy can't completely be tolerant when she does that).

t. butt hurt chav anglo

>>AND FUCK YOU WITH THOSE WEIRD CREEPY LAUGHS YOU DO THAT FUCKING WEIRD LAUGH YOU DONT RESPECT ANYTHING I DO YOU PIECE OF SHIT

If you actually do this weird edgekid shit irl you legitimately deserve a fist to the face.

I think my mom likes Murakami or something since she's Japanese. She reads shounen / shoujo manga though I think, like Case Closed, One Piece and shit. Ton of other detective novels too.
My dad reads Gaiman, Sanderson, King and other shit like that. He also hates Joyce, plain and simple due to his experiences in AP Literature, and thinks that Apocalypse Now is better than Heart of Darkness. Adding onto the shit pile, he thinks Absurdism is the best philosophy. He's the living definition of a pseud in my opinion, and prefer my mother's tastes by far.

>my mom left Jordan
blacks get out

>your father hates Joyce
I'd honestly just disown myself from that family.

All my grandparents have faculty degree. My grandmother studied German literature. My mother has university degree also, but my father doesn't. Still, he is pretty well informed, and he has probably read more books than my mom. My grandfather was reading a lot when he was alive. Especially history books. He read some of the Churchill's books about the war few times and analyzed them. His son (my uncle) also read a lot when he was younger, but he hasn't touched a book in years. My mother used to read more, but now she only reads some "interesting" novels which booksellers recommend to her. The only one that still reads actively is my father, and he reads classics, so I can exchange some books and opinions with him. We are the only art-oriented people in the family tree.

I can easly say that I'm the least educated member of the family, with the least general knowledge.

>Hates Joyce
>Loves Absurdism
It's funny that you think he's a pseud, you will never surpass him.

>your mom reads shounen manga

What. How old is she?

No.

what?

Hitler went to Argentina the whitest country in Latin America

This sounds like something DFW would bitch about

Truly, he was as God

ya me mum was a brainwashed, mentally ill abused woman.

i was friends with a girl who diddn't know where 9/11 happened

>be me
>have father whos written best sellers
>replaced wine seller in our house with a library
>any book, any genre, any year before 2000 he has it
Love having a Veeky Forums family

where are you from..

I don't even care nope not one bit.

My dad reads California gold rush primary sources almost exclusively. I gave him Gilead last year and he read that but has otherwise not read a novel in decades.
My mom reads the Bible, if that.
My brother doesn't read outside of syndicated conservatives' books like those by Mark Levin. The only fiction he has ever enjoyed is Joe Dever's Lone Wolf and he thinks everything else is garbage, his only criticism of everything read in high school being that it was "terrible."
My sister reads medical articles and books on altruism.
My other sister reads whatever strengthens her alternative "hippy" worldview and lifestyle, for lack of a better word.
My other brother is a linguistics and ESL instructor and primarily reads about linguistic or to teach himself new languages, but he will also read the same syndicated works as my first brother.
My other other sister reads the Bible daily.
My other other brother does nothing every day to the exclusion of playing videogames.

>wine seller
>best sellers

Is he writing picture books

Kind of? My mom is the sort that believes anything anyone ever tells her, and I constantly have to help her to understand politics; but my dad is pretty intelligent. But he puts no effort into actually learning anything, so he can have an in depth conversation on politics but when I recommend he read something on the Middle East he'll just shrug and say he prefers to watch reruns on tv since he doesn't like reading. Which I kind of respect, he makes no pretensions.

>wine seller
does he use his best seller money to send you to one of those $10,000 schools for dyslexic retards?

my mom is smart in some areas.

>mfw she studied literature and is fluent in greek and latin and as kids, whenever we came across a word we didn't understand, she would explain it to us using "that's derived from latin/greek and means yadda yadda". it became a running gag. when my mom didn't know some stupid teenager slang word we would explain to her that it is derived from greek/latin and then make up words that it's derived from

good times

on the other hand, she is fucking moronic when it comes to interpersonal relationships and that despite her masters degree in social pedagogy.

my dad was that guy with all the bad grades, which made for an explosive mixture given my mom's education level. he can't even get basic grammar right. but he has a lot of life experience and teached us a lot about humanity.

guess we were lucky and got the best from both worlds.

She's like 50, and just loves Oda and shit for some reason.

Given he's talking about "muh aryans" it's safe to say he's a filthy "muh German American mastterace"

I came from a family of Russian literature and history teachers on one part and lawyers on the other. Feels quiet shitty being the illiterate retard (I still read a lot of sci-fi back in a day, Bradbury, Heinlein, Haldeman etc). Imagine when everyone in the family reads Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy and all the other mandatory Russian canon reading in Russian and you are like that brain-dead retard that still can't handle these books in original language because he is actually fucking lazy to start with easier literature (I am from bilingual family and are tri-lingual myself, which does not make it any easier since each language got different character set)

Anyway, I am here on Veeky Forums looking for some recommendations for a meme way start in a non meme way, because I think it's time to read something outside the comfort zone. I was thinking about Marcus Aurelius to get a general idea of a Rome/Greece since I got accepted in law school.

My father is in touch with more known books. I like to talk with him about some ideas and theories. But, he doesn't know philosophy well, so that sucks.

My mother graduated art school. She read a lot of book with my father, but kinda rejected their impact on life. She became more simple-minded by choice.

My granddad was sent as some kind of chemical engineer to USSR (as they were opening up) and Saudi around the 70's. Apparently Saudi was the worst of the lot as they were almost imprisoned in a complex for foreign workers, at least in the USSR they could mix.

My dad was educated for a few years in Moscow and spoke decent Russian, too bad when he came back to the UK he flunked out of school and became a electrician with a coke habit.

other side of the family just worked cleaning jobs