People do not want to leave Hattiesburg. It is completely foreign to them. They want to marry young, have children, and stay within a few blocks of their family.

Move to California? You're going to fall into the ocean. Move to New York? Too much city. Move to Texas? Too hot. Each of those arguments is easily debunked. The humidity makes it hotter in MS.

My life changing moment was taking a Greyhound to Wisconsin with $1,000 and starting my life over. Afterwards, I moved from place to place knowing I could make it where ever I ventured to.

I have female friends in MS who got Masters/Ph.Ds and married the same year they got the piece of paper. Never used it once. It saddens me. Some of those people are brilliant beyond my abilities. Yet, they chose to follow the culture of the community.

People are so miserable there, but it all by choice. My mother had cerebral palsy and received a check for $500/month. We lived in a trailer, and I made it out when I was ~21-23. I had no car, fallback, or family to depend on. I just had to take a risk and go with the flow. It pays off well now.

I have offered people from MS jobs here or connections to jobs here. They would never take that bus.

Their priority is indeed far from mine. Many times, I find it hard to empathize and easier to just point the finger at the obvious choices they have made.

Yet, there is a community type punishment and resentment for people who fall into these traps of life. Prioritize reproduction over stability. OK! Community rules: 1) Don't come to 'us' for handouts. 2) Don't get on welfare/medicaid because you dug yourself into a hole. 3) Don't fall into the great apathy device of drugs to help you forget.

If you break the rules, you will be shamed and feel guilty.

The glorious church folk at the Southern Baptist Church in Oak Grove began the silent treatment on my family due to my great grandmother utilizing the meals on wheels services in the area.

Poorness is not acceptable, in some of the poorest communities of the US. It is absolutely glorious.

There is just so much more than I could hope to explain in a comment. The racism, classism, politics, and circular ideologies that are passed down in those areas is a novel on its own.

You are correct. I pity their choice, and often feel my choices are superior. Yet, more often than not, they also pity their choices, and envy my choices.

But there are certainly choices that are qualitatively worse. Such as building, or letting yourself be dragged down by communities that destroy you with shame, racism, classism, politics, etc. Or, as you pointed out, the choice to ignore the imperative to create a foundation for one's family, to have some way to provide, if family is your priority. Because that is actually a failure of their own priorities as well.

We've just got to not muddle those types of choices too much. Our preferences vs. other's preferences vs. truly damaging choices.

It is much akin to building a home without a foundation. Reproducing without a security blanket for when times are harsh is an equation for depression. I agree, they have different priorities, but there is not one group (out of my 7) that is happy with their choice. They are riddled with embarrassment and guilt. You get to the gas pump with $1.50 to put in the tank... and have a clean consciousness that you were correct in prioritizing a large family over creating a foundation. Don't worry though, the doctors still write prescriptions of Oxycotin, Valiums, and a myriad of antidepressants to reinforce that they made the right choice! I judge them not, I relay their silent cries that they hide from the community, because they fear communal judgment. A far greater damnation than my single judgement in that type of atmosphere.

I knew people who turned down full tuition scholarships to the flagship state university because they wanted to follow God and marry a nice boy from their church

Uuuggghh... "follow God"... uggh. Makes me want to puke. I've come to the conclusion that Christianity is just a cult, no better than any of the others, just bigger. And due to its prevalence and ubiquity, more damaging.

The only reason I'm not still there today is that for some reason, as a nerd and social outcast, I rejected that path from an early age and my top priority out of high school was to get the hell out.

Same here. This is why I have mixed feelings about a lot of the commentary on poverty and education and what-not, however. On the one hand, a lot of my county does live in poverty and maybe that argues for some of the social intervention stuff that the Socialist / Progressive camps tend to push for. OTOH, I know from experience that, even growing up somewhere like that, if you want to get out and go build a better life, it is possible. Yeah, it means moving away, but I don't see why that should be considered such a big deal... in the course of human history, people have always moved to new areas to look for better opportunities. Not all will, but those who are motivated to do so, do.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Swamp_(North_Carolina)

Those kinds of comments belong on /r/athiesm not here.

It's one thing to disagree with the choice of the person, the teachings of a particular branch, or even the idea of a God.

But statements like yours are equivalent to Christians walking around claiming that all gays are evil and will burn in hell.

They are stereotypical hate statements that lead to emotional responses instead of intellectual discussions.

He's providing colorful detail, a small part of a larger story, and offering a bit of emotional support for the earlier commenter's attitude. (He's not proselytizing, or inviting anti-/pro-religion as a main topic, though there's always a risk someone else will take it that way.)

I would suggest that in such a thread, there should be more space for heartfelt honesty, rather than self-censorship-for-the-sake-of-decorum-and-equanimity. There's a time and place for all styles and topics of communication... and it can shift in just a single screen or replying under a different parent comment.

I don't hate Christians, and - being from the "Bible Belt" - many of my family and friends are Christians. But I still consider it (and most - if not all - other religions) to be a scourge on society.

Hate doesn't enter into it, unless you take a pretty damn expansive view of what "hate" means. I think Christianity is damaging to society, but I don't hate anybody.

that lead to emotional responses instead of intellectual discussions.

So? Not every discussion is some deep intellectual debate which needs to be held to rigorous academic standards. Sometimes people are just talking and sharing observations.

But statements like yours are equivalent to Christians walking around claiming that all gays are evil and will burn in hell.

Not really.

Thing is, my success is not your success is not their success. If they lead happy and fulfilled lives in that way, is it wrong?

I'm sure it broke a lot of teachers' hearts to see intelligent, gifted pupils throw away a better life to stay in a small town and get by on a HS diploma.

My real concern isn't with the take home pay of the local college educated elite, but rather the tremendous gulf between what professionals make and what "regular people" make. By national standards the community doesn't have many truly wealthy, but the disparity is still there. For example, an acquaintance of mine who is a kindergarten teacher had to cancel a class field trip because her principal wasn't comfortable asking parents for $3/child to cover the busing cost. To me, that suggests a big problem with poverty.

That's amazing, considering that in many places, this is the exact opposite...

I remember in high school my peers would lament about getting out of here as soon as possible, but I never had the same affliction. I always felt I could bring the perks of the world to me, and feel like for the most part I have succeeded with that. I've maintained "big city" programming jobs for more than a decade now, and I get to do a little farming on the side for the enjoyment of it, which brings in it's own not-insignificant income.

I feel like I might lose a little bit on the entertainment side of life, especially as I get older, but frequent trips to the city does mitigate that problem somewhat. On the flip side, if anything, access to technology might be better here. For instance, the farm has a fibre optic connection to the internet and top notch cell service. I don't even find that when I visit the neighbouring cities. I think that is pretty important for someone with an interest in technology, like myself.

I guess I just don't see why teachers hearts would be broken. The rural life is pretty great, and really not all that limiting, in my opinion. Maybe once upon a time, but technology has bridged most of those gaps.

The people we paid $35,000 were quite well off in that in that town. Hell, I rented one of the largest houses in the area when I moved, and only paid $800/mo (for 4,000 sqft). Nice two bedrooms ran $400-450, with three bedrooms running a hundred or so more.

The single wide culture fell into three main camps, as far as I could see:

1) Those who bought land and put a single wide on it, so they could own their place. Usually the intention was to some day build a house. Not a horrible decision.

2) Those who were renting, and opted to have a smaller trailer on a lot of property (to be able to have horses, etc), instead of going for a real house in town. I can respect that decision too.

3) Those trapped in the "pay weekly" rent treadmill. I feel bad for this group, because they're paying as much or more overall for their trailer rent as a decent rental house ran. But it's almost as bad as the payday loan treadmill .. once you get on, it's hard to get off.

I don't think that living in a rental and saving $700 a month is "solidly middle class" in the USA. Perhaps it is now, though, in a world of permanently diminished expectations.

50% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 in an emergency (citation: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/news/economy/americans_lack_...). Only 25% were "certain" they could come up with the funds.

To me, referring to a "middle" when the distribution looks like this is not very useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_Annual_Ho...

Is the median $55k household in the US reasonably comfortable, able to have a family and buy a home without frequent financial stress over expenses like buying groceries, filling up the tank, or paying the water bill? If it's true that most Americans could not quickly produce $2000 in an emergency, I find that hard to believe. $55k DINKs are doing okay, but add a couple babies to the mix (not unreasonable for a "solidly middle class" family), and I think you're in for a rough time if you're saving for college and retirement like you ought.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_22490345/kline-americas...

At one point in college I wrote an editorial for my hometown paper and the minibio was something along the lines of "ABC High School Valedictorian, Class of 200X, and current MIT student"; as a result the comments were all incredibly nasty and irrelevant to the content of the article, along the lines of "Who does this liberal/atheist bitch think she is?" The only positive comments were from old people saying "Wow, I've never seen anybody under 30 submit a piece to the paper."

Truthfully, in person people are usually a lot more gentle (southern hospitality and all), but there's definitely an undercurrent of resentment after initial pleasantries. Sometimes it can be really awkward when I reciprocate their "It's so good to see you, and how are you doing?" and get a really depressing story back. (Got knocked up, laid off, foreclosed, etc.)

Even people in my own family can be hostile. It feels like I can never give anybody any advice, ever, because "they can't all live perfect lives" like me. It sucks.