Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Please, Just Let Me Die Already
iamiam:
i'm thinking way too much about this but here are some more brief thoughts you can all feel free to skip over
you already have a control group for measuring how people turn out based on whether they are lied to. all children are lied to: some grow up to be horrible, some grow up to be wonderful. it's the types of lies that they are told and their life experiences that truly shape them.
raising a child from infancy who knows nothing but the truth about everything might make an interesting freak show, but i think it would teach us very little about human nature. the only way for the experiment to be carried out is for them to be raised within a society that was entirely truthful about everything. that sounds like something from a storybook or fable, or maybe a utopian (dystopian?) novel.
some wacky hijinks would definitely occur, but i the most i could imagine that shaping someone is to make them particularly honest (mimicking society's behavior) or dishonest (realizing they can take advantage of others who are honest). any other effects would simply be caused by their specific life experiences that would be shaped by the people and culture around them, which in this case would be entirely bizarre and unnatural.
studying children who are raised in households and societies with varying levels of honesty (which is actually doable) could be a fascinating study. but i really doubt that it would reveal any sort of key to understanding human nature.
tania:
the other thing about telling things to children that are not necessarily true is that the brains and thinking patterns of children are nowhere near as complex as adults, and don't get there until the child is in their teens. there are certain principles and ideas that children literally cannot process at all (ideas about morality, for example) until they reach a certain age. so not only can it be argued that "lying" to children doesn't do much permanent damage in the first place as they will simply figure it out as they age and develop the neurons necessary to process more complicated ideas, but it goes the opposite way too where trying to explain complicated life truths to a child would do little good at such a young age since they are physically incapable of making sense of most of them anyway.
there's also probably a massive study that could be done based on the idea of whether or not "lying" to children actually boosts their creativity and therefore intelligence, as it certainly requires more imagination and creativity and intelligence are pretty strongly related. who knows! isn't this thread supposed to be about relationships or something?
Hat:
--- Quote from: calenlass on 12 Sep 2009, 07:06 ---So basically what I am saying is that yeah it is a shitty thing, but you know it is a shitty thing, and you know you do it. And who knows? Maybe you think that is what you do and actually that is just your [mis]perception. Anyway, you are already doing better than the rest of the fuckers out there.
--- End quote ---
Oh yeah, I'm not particularly neurotic about it or anything and it only really seems to pop up in a relationships nowadays (and it has been so long since I've been in one of those that I don't even know if I do it anymore) so it's not a massive concern for me thankfully.
--- Quote from: Jimmy the Squid on 12 Sep 2009, 03:54 ---I plan to lie to my future children as little as possible. In fact I'm pretty sure the only thing my folks lied to me was the whole God thing and even then I can't really say whether or not I really believed it or whether I was just going along with what I was told. I mean my parents did do the whole Santa thing (well actually we had "angels" that put the presents under the tree) but I don't remember thinking a red-suited fat dude broke into my house to leave presents that were labelled as having come from my dad or aunties or whatever.
--- End quote ---
Yeah my parents were the same. I have no specific memory of actually believing in Santa. They told me he existed but they didn't go to a huge amount of trouble to maintain the illusion so I figured it out pretty quickly
pwhodges:
Children should be encouraged to show imagination, and to learn critical thought; and then, crucially, shown how to decide which is applicable in a given situation.
Masterbainter:
edit: fuck you, fuck you and you can stay!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version