How to raise kids.. consider how to treat your parents

How to raise your kids:

Consider how you should treat your parents.

What do they know that you don't?

You disagree on many things.

Consider a particular disagreement.

You might be right. But they may still have a point worth learning. 

They may not be able to explain their point at this time, but it's still worth it for you to figure it out.

It's ultimately up to you for two reasons. 

First, it's your life. Your benefit. Your responsibility. Your choice.

Second, your parent is at a disadvantage. They don't know your perspective as well as you do. It's you who has to put in the creative work to figure it out, including fitting it into your worldview.

My best (short) advice to new parents

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” - Albert Einstein

Now let me bring this to your situation.

You, or rather, your mind, and specifically, your emotional makeup, your intuitions, your parenting skills, were created by a process of your thinking. It cannot be changed without changing your thinking.

So, to change ourselves, we must change our thinking.

How can we do that?

My general advice is that you expand your world far beyond what your parents and your society showed you.

As you expand your world, you will replace your old thinking patterns with new thinking patterns. With enough of this kind of work, you will have replaced ALL of your unwanted thinking patterns created in childhood with new thinking patterns created in adulthood.

If you don't do this, then you will be ruled by the ideas that you adopted as a child. And what do you think that means for your parenting? You will repeat the same bad things with your kids that your parents did to you.

THE GOLDEN RULE; What can we learn from it?

The golden rule says to treat others as you want to be treated. This principle is about teaching people to have integrity when interacting with others. It's trying to get us to imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes in an attempt to better understand their perspective. If you wouldn't like to be yelled at, then you shouldn't do that to others.

But the golden rule on it's own isn't enough. It's just a rule of thumb, and like all rules of thumb there are exceptions to the rule. The point is that you shouldn't try to follow this rule by the letter and instead you should follow it in spirit. The spirit of the rule is about avoiding being a hypocrite and learning how to think about things from other people's perspectives. More generally, what's needed in relationships is to find mutually-beneficial ways of interacting with each other - to treat others in ways that are compatible with your preferences and their preferences.

In many cases our preferences are in harmony. But sometimes there's a conflict of preferences. So what should be done in these cases? One option is to leave each other alone, and as long as all parties are ok with that, then the conflict is resolved and everybody is in harmony. The goal there is to avoid hurting each other. It’s a good option to always keep in mind as a last resort. Another option we have is to change our preferences so that we’re still interacting with each other but our preferences are in harmony instead of in conflict. These two options mean that we should maintain a degree of flexibility with our preferences. And this makes sense because we're not perfect; sometimes our preferences deserve improvement.

Our preferences are ideas, and like all ideas, we should apply the principles and methods of reason to them. That means recognizing that whatever our current preferences are now, we should always be aware that they might not be good enough. There’s some conflict that needs to be resolved. And that means there's opportunity to find better preferences to replace our current ones with the goal of finding preferences that result in harmony.

To properly understand reason we must properly understand freedom. They are inherently connected. People need the freedom to think and to act on their thinking, which of course means that one's actions must not infringe on the freedom of others to do the same. If someone forces or coerces you to act on their ideas which conflict with your own, that takes away from your opportunity to change your ideas. So force and coercion has two effects; firstly they deter people from applying the principles and methods of reason to their ideas, and secondly they impair people's ability to pursue happiness for themselves.

So many people get this wrong. Some atheists have discussions with theists where they mock and shame the theists for their beliefs. That's coercion. It’s hostile. And it doesn’t create an atmosphere that fosters critical thinking. So if the atheist's goal is to help the theist to change their mind, then their actions are counterproductive to their own goal. Further, why would a theist want to adopt the atheist’s views when the atheist is clearly being a jerk? They wouldn’t. Most people who believe in God do so because they care about morality, about living a good life, about being a good person, about treating others and ourselves well. 

Many people will misunderstand what I've said here in two ways. First they'll think I'm saying that I shouldn't say truthful things if somebody might get offended by my words. This is a mistake. If they get offended it could be due to their own bad ideas about the topic. It's not necessarily my fault that they get offended. If they don't want to get offended then they can stop reading my words. I should have the freedom to speak my ideas and I should give them the freedom to ignore me. 

The second way that people will misunderstand what I’ve said here is that they’ll think I'm saying that mocking and shaming is always wrong. That's a mistake too. Shame is like a gun, and sometimes using a gun is the right choice. Guns are good for defense. But like guns, shame should not be the main way that you engage with people. Your main method of engagement should be persuasion; in other words, non-coercive discussion.

Happy with some parts of your life but not others?

It’s common for people to be happy with some parts of their lives but not others. Imagine a scientist who is happy with his science work but unhappy with some interpersonal problems he has in his family. Why does this happen? Why is he succeeding in one part of his life while failing in another? And what should he do about it?

Below I provide answers that are not standard knowledge in our culture. And below that I explain some standard knowledge in our culture and some flaws with it.

For most people, their mind is very compartmentalized. It takes work to integrate one’s mind and they haven’t done much of that work.

Imagine the scientist does very good work in his profession. He approaches problems in his profession in a calm and rational way. He studies the work of the experts in his field resulting in learning the best practices in the field. He implements those best practices in his professional life, resulting in doing pretty well at discovering the truth of whatever science problems he’s working on.

Consider that that scientist, like everyone else, built up parts of his mind much earlier in his life. He created policies (habits) during childhood that he still uses today, which are not compatible with the newer policies that he applies in his professional life. For example, sometimes he gets angry upon learning about an interpersonal problem that happened at home, but he never gets angry about problems in his science work.

If the scientist figured out how to apply his rational thinking methods that he learned in his profession to all parts of his life, he’d do much better. He’d be integrating his mind so that he applies his best thinking methods in all parts of his life, instead of using his best thinking methods for only some parts of his life and his bad thinking methods in the rest of his life. If he integrated his mind enough, he’d no longer be using his bad thinking methods.

So how does one integrate his mind so that he uses his best thinking methods in all parts of his life instead of just in some parts?

One thing you can do is this. Make a concerted effort to: (1) Identify your best thinking methods and why they are useful. (2) Identify which parts of your life that you don’t use those best thinking methods in. (3) Identify why your bad thinking methods don’t work well as compared to your good thinking methods. (4) Keep a written log of these things and review them often. Note that writing down one’s thoughts is a tool that is included as part of expert scientists’ best thinking methods. Einstein said, “My pencil and I are more clever than I.”

Another thing you could do to integrate your mind is to study the field directly by learning the best ideas that experts in the field already figured out — similar to how you (the scientist) do that in your field. The field goes by the name “philosophy”. Note that most stuff labeled as philosophy is not good. Note also that it’s much harder to figure out what’s good in the field of philosophy than compared to the field of science. In science, it’s relatively easy to objectively know when you’re wrong because you can check your theories against empirical evidence. But with philosophy, you can’t check your theories against empirical evidence. This is because it’s not possible for a philosophical theory to be contradicted by empirical evidence. Only scientific theories can be contradicted by empirical evidence. In philosophy, the only way to contradict a theory is by philosophical criticism.

In our current culture, a standard way of dealing with personal and interpersonal problems that one wants help with is to seek help from a psychologist. While that could be helpful, psychologists are not very good at what they do. The standard psychologist does not learn from philosophers, despite the fact that the work they do is philosophy work — psychology is a subfield of philosophy. Psychologists primarily only learn from other psychologists. This prevents them from learning from philosophy experts who are not labeled as “psychologists”.

Most scientists do a similar thing. They try to learn from other scientists but they don’t try to learn from philosophers, despite the fact that science is a subfield of philosophy. There is good work in the field of philosophy that applies to scientific thinking. If a scientist learned that stuff, he’d be a more effective scientist.

7 LEVELS OF HONESTY/DISHONESTY

Creating and spreading lies contributes to destroying peoples' minds. Some of the people involved in spreading lies are more responsible than others. And some people are helping reveal the lies. I describe 7 levels of people involved in spreading lies and revealing lies.

Level 1

• leader who created the lies

• tries to get more people to spread the lies with him

Level 2

• follower who knows they are lies

• likes the idea of spreading the lies

• tries to get more people to spread the lies with him

Level 3

• follower who doesn’t know they are lies

• tries to get more people to spread the lies with him

Level 4

• follower who knows they are lies

• doesn’t like the idea of spreading the lies

• but spreads the lies anyway for fear of physical retaliation or social punishment

• inadvertently gets more people to spread the lies with him

Level 5

• ex-follower or never-follower

• but stays quiet about the lies for fear of social punishment

Level 6

• ex-follower or never-follower

• detractor spreading criticism about the lies

Level 7

• ex-follower or never-follower

• detractor trying to convert followers to ex-followers

• uniter of all the levels of people

Examples:

Mohammed, the prophet of Islam, was level 1 regarding Islam. His inner circle were level 2. I was a level 3. My parents were level 3. My granddad was level 4. There were many level 4s in history — imagine all the scientists and great thinkers of the Middle East who wanted to keep their heads.

People who were level 5 for Islamic lies are those who are afraid to lose their jobs, or cause fights with their spouses, or get cancelled by the leftist social media.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is level 6 regarding Islam. Maybe she wants to be level 7. Maybe she is a 7. I'm not sure what being a 7 would look like. For one thing, she's not involved in any online public discussion group where she and others are learning from each other. She does write books and articles (and now she has a podcast) and does interviews but that alone is not effective compared to also participating in critical discussion with others.

I think that approximately everybody believes, follows, and inadvertently spreads some lies. So even if they are level 6 (and trying to be level 7) for Islamic lies, they are level 3 for some other lies.

Many western parents are level 2 for the Santa Clause lie.

Planning for emergencies

I was prompted to answer questions about something I said in my last learning plan review about not having put much thought into my learning plan while dealing with a family emergency. (I added numbers in brackets so I can refer to the questions later.)

> [1] Are you taking adequate precautions to reduce the frequency and duration of emergencies? 
>
> [2a] Do emergencies effect you often? E.g. on average do you lose 1 day a month to them? 2 days a month? 3 days a month? [2b] How much do you think is fine, and how much would be worth trying to do something about?

The kind of emergencies I'm talking about are major life events. Like when I got divorced and moved out of my house and didn't know what was going to happen afterwards, like with my kids. What precautions did I take to reduce those kinds of emergencies? I chose to not have more kids and not get a new wife/gf. Basically I chose to do things that gave me more control over my life.

1: 

I do think I'm taking adequate precautions to reduce the frequency of emergencies.

On my second or third read of this reply I noticed something I missed before -- "and duration". How do I reduce the duration of emergencies?

• Improve my problem-solving explicit policies and habits, which could include mutually-agreed upon multi-person policies (family/employees/etc). 
• What else is there?
• I'm imagining having home owner insurance vs not having it, allowing for recovering from a burned down house faster.

2a: 

I don't think emergencies affect me often. On average I lose 0 days a month to them. 

2b: 

I'm not sure I understand the question. In my view, people should do lots to be prepared for emergencies, even if they never happen. I've never been in a car accident (26 years of driving) but I do lots of things to avoid car accidents. I've never accidentally let off the brakes in my (automatic-transmission) car while stopped and the transmission is in drive but I always put it in park when, for example, someone is getting in or out of the car. 

• what about life insurance? I have life insurance because I know that there's a possibility that I die (and can't make money anymore) while my kids still depend on me for money. This possibility is easy to understand partly because I know about other people who have died before their kids grew up.

So I think no amount of emergencies is fine (doesn't deserve effort put towards reducing frequency/duration of emergencies). And I think that each time an emergency happens, people should review their entire emergency-handling set of procedures. Why? Three reasons. (1) Maybe the new emergency is something that's never been seen before, and so maybe the emergency-handling procedures need to be updated to account for the new emergency type. (2) Maybe the new emergency has been seen before but the emergency-handling procedures weren't adequate to prevent (or quickly end) the emergency. (3) Maybe the procedures are fine but people failed to make them habit. So they need to refresh their memory on the procedures (make them habit).

"Family is my highest priority"

Many people say that family is their highest priority. Many of them are being dishonest about that claim. This is because they act in ways that contradict their claim that family is their highest priority, and they never did the work necessary to reach the conclusion that family is their highest priority. 

For example, many people do lots of work to solve problems at their job, but they don't do that same level of work regarding their family. Or they do lots of work regarding their diet, but not their family. 

So like with their job or their diet, they do things like document their work sessions. They document what they plan to do, how it went, and what they plan to do going forward. They document each session and they review past sessions to help them refresh their memory so they can find trends regarding their work. And they do none of this for their family. They have emotional yelling "discussions" while not documenting any of it. They don't write down their problems, their perspectives, the other person's problems or perspectives. They don't review past discussions (since they were never written down) to look for trends. 

So they don't actually prioritize their family over other stuff. Their actions tell you what their priorities are. Their words only tell you what they would like their priorities to be.

These ideas were inspired by Elliot Temple's ideas on lying, some of which can be found in his essay Lying.

Thoughts on a young adult child who doesn't like how she's being treated

Disclaimer: Following are my unorganized thoughts on a family situation. I expect there to be conceptual mistakes in my ideas that passed my filters but wouldn't pass the filters of smarter people.

-----

Jane is a young adult child of divorced parents. She doesn't like her interactions with one of her parents and her extended family. That parent and extended family doesn't let her do things by herself. She's not allowed to be home alone. She's not allowed to drive to somewhere to go out to eat. And she feels obligated to continue as is.

It's like being in a prison where all the doors are unlocked. There are guards who tell you to stay in your cell, but they have no physical power over you. They don't have guns or any other weapons. They are not big men who know how to fight. The only thing they have is words. So if you don't like being in the prison, and you don't like how you're being treated by the guards, why don't you leave? What's keeping you there?

Are you worried that the guards will gossip about you? If so, so what? Why do you care if they gossip about you? What do you think you would lose if they do? Do you think you'll lose your job? Will you lose relationships with people that you want to keep? Or are you just worried that you'll feel bad despite there not being an actual thing that you're worried about losing? If so, then what that means is that you feel bad about the possibility of leaving the prison for fear that you'll feel bad in the future, despite having no reason to feel bad in the future.

Imagine that in your job your supervisor and other coworkers treat you in ways you don't like. What should you do? Just settle? You could try to explain that you don't like how they treat you and request that they treat you another way, something specific, something you prefer. What if they refuse to participate in such a discussion? Ok, so why not switch departments or get a different job so that you don't have the same supervisor and coworkers? If nothing is stopping you except your feelings, then reconsider your feelings. Work to change your feelings so that they are compatible with reality.

A common response to this is that it's hard to change one's feelings. So what? I know that. I did not claim that it's not hard. But you can make it easier. You can learn how to change your feelings. This is part of philosophy. Improve your philosophy so that you can have control over your feelings. If you don't improve your philosophy, then you're letting your feelings control you.

To be clear, when I say "control your feelings", I don't mean what is commonly thought of by that phrase. The common view is that one ignores their feelings, favoring their intellectual side. This is bad. Your feelings are part of you, and you shouldn't ignore any part of you. That would be disrespectful to yourself. What's needed is for you to integrate your mind such that your intellectual side and your emotional side evolve towards each other such that they become compatible. 

What philosophy helps one learn how to integrate their mind? I recommend Fallible Ideas.

Parent punishes child for stealing by destroying his xbox

Check out this parent punishing his child for stealing. See my comments about it below.

Another day in my crib. If ya kids steal little shit now, fix it before it's too late.. I don't beat em no mo. That don't teach em shit...For licensing / usage, please contact licensing@viralhog.com
Posted by Showboat Hogg Life MC on Sunday, September 27, 2015

why does child think he should steal?

parent didn't ask

parent doesn't realize that it's his fault that child thinks stealing is his best option.

parent is acting as if he has no fault in why child chose to steal.maybe the child thinks stealing is his best option because he doesn't think parent will give him what he wants or listen to reason about it.

Parenthood - S1 episode “Perchance to Dream” @39:14

House wife is telling her husband that she just got a job offer. She looks like she loves the idea.

Husband was supportive. The emotional vibrations initially. Then he said “we’ll figure it out” with a tone consistent with having a lot of confidence that they could do it successfully. Then he explained some details of what would have to happen to get it done. He named a lot of things including getting extra helpers to do the stuff the wife currently does for the kids, like driving them to their appointments.

She basically on a dime changed her mind to not wanting to take the job.

Then he asked “are you sure?”

She replied “… I’m sure ...” with a tone consistent with having a lot of confidence that she made the right choice.

I have some problems with this.

• They both seem to be faking confidence. I think part of it is the idea that you should look the part of being confident because that somehow makes things more successful. It’s putting status in place of truth and thinking that the truth will follow status.

• I wonder what they mean by “are you sure?”

• They both seem to want a decision to be made on the spot. What’s the hurry? Why not wait 24 hours so you have some time to think? If there’s no deadline coming from your would be boss, what’s the point of putting a deadline on it yourself?

• By hurrying yourself in this kind of decision, you’re putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on yourself. It’s interesting because these people actively pressure themselves and others to make big decisions quickly. 

• I think the wife was suffering. During the “on a dime” mind-change, she looked sad. I don’t know what it was about exactly. Maybe sadness about the idea of leaving her children to be raised by other people besides her while she worked. Maybe also some sadness about the idea of not taking the job.

Disclaimer: this show talks about mental illness. I share Elliot Temple and Thomas Szasz's view on mental illness, which is that it's a myth, not science. See the book The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz or the iOS app Psychiatry by Elliot Temple. 

What would you do if this was your parent?

I saw a video on my fb feed with the caption "What would you do if this was your kid?"

What would you do if this was your kid?
Posted by WTF Magazine on Thursday, May 14, 2015

After watching the video I had a thought. A better question is "What would you do if this was your parent?"


Somebody said: 

> I have seen this video multiple times on my friends walls and it is so hard to watch as it is a behavior that we struggle with in our household. People watch and see bad parenting skills when there is actually a medical condition that lies deep within it. Sad that a majority of people jump to conclusions when they see things like this. We often get the stink eye from passer by-ers when this behavior happens in public.


I replied:

> the boy in the video is acting the way he's acting because he believes that he's being treated wrong. And he believes that his parents aren't listening to him about it.


The parent is completely wrong here. She isn't trying to figure out why the boy wants to go home. Maybe he doesn't want to go to the place the parent is taking him. Maybe there's something horribly wrong going on there. But the parent isn't going to figure that out by ignoring his kid. She's not going to figure it out by just threatening punishments.

This is so cruel. Please don't make your kids suffer. If you do, you'll be fueling the next generation of child abuse. Learn how to do better at the Fallible Ideas website.

Morality: how to help children learn moral reasoning

Take care of yourself first

---[while in a plane]---

Air hostess: ... put your own mask before helping others.

Lance: shouldn't you help me with my mask before doing your mask?

Dad: no. If I help you before I put on my own mask, I could die, or pass out, before I could help you. so then we both die. but if I do mine first, then I have the chance to do yours too, and then we could both live.

Lance: oh ya

Dad: if you have children, and if you don't take care of yourself first, then you can't take care of your children either. 

Lance: makes sense.

Dad: like if you don't get enough food/sleep/etc., then you can't do well helping your children and so you'll be failing at your responsibility to your children.

Lance: so the most important thing is to take care of yourself first.

Dad: yes. and one reason this is true is because that's the only life you have control over.

Lance: what do you mean?

Dad: let's consider an example. do you remember when you wanted to play chess with me and then you tried to control how i play? you told me not to make certain moves?

Lance: lol ya.

Dad: and then i didn't want to play chess with you anymore, not if you're going to try to control me.

Dad: and do you remember when you were playing with cash and you got upset?

Lance: i don't remember.

Dad: you asked him to play with you and then you got upset when he didn't play exactly like you wanted him to. and then he didn't want to play with you anymore because you were trying to control him. and then you screamed at him to try to get him to continue playing, and to do it your way, so you were not only trying to control how he plays but you were also trying to control whether or not he plays with you.

Lance: oh ya. that was bad. i should have left him alone.

Dad: the point is that you can't control people even if you wanted to.

Dad: and the more important point is that it's bad to want to control people.

Lance: ok i want to watch my shows now.

Dad: k

---[end scene]---



---[at dinner]---

Lance: hmm, but you said that I should care about if something is beneficial or harmful to me.

Dad: primarily yes. but you also don't want to hurt other people, right?

Lance: right.

Dad: so let's say that you thought of doing something with me, and then you found out that if you did it then i would be harmed, like maybe i die.

Lance: oh ya, i wouldn't want to do that.

Dad: so that's why when we are talking about doing something together, what we should do is find something that we all agree with. that means no one get's harmed. well, as long as no one is lying about their real intentions.

Lance: what do you mean by real intentions?

Dad: well, sometimes somebody will hide their real intentions for various reasons, and then that makes it impossible for other people to know their real intentions. so then when they find something that they all agree with, actually one of the people disagrees, but he's hiding his disagreement. so he's keeping the other people ignorant about his disagreement.

Lance: why do people do that? what's an example?

Dad: well, sometimes the person that is doing that thinks that the other people are trying to trick him. so he's trying to trick them back.

Lance: huh?

Dad: ya it's pretty dumb.

Lance: why are people like that?

Dad: well, i think for most people it's because they were raised in an environment where people tricked them a lot, and so they learned that that's what people do, and they think that everybody does it, when actually lots of people don't do that stuff. so when they interact with people, they are very suspicious of everything and everybody.

Lance: eww

Dad: ya I know. it sucks.

Lance: so it's not their fault.

Dad: well, that depends on the situation. but the more important matter is what they can do about it to change, to improve.

Lance: what can they do?

Dad: they can learn better philosophy.

Lance: what do you mean?

Dad: let's consider an example, and then let's talk about the ideas involved.

Lance: ok.



Benefit of the doubt

Dad: so let's say that you are walking down a crowded street and then somebody bumps you as they are walking by. what do you do?

Lance: um, i don't know. say sorry?

Dad: ah so you've already decided that he did it on accident?

Lance: well ya, why should I think he did it on purpose?

Dad: so you're giving that person the benefit of the doubt. he could have done it on purpose, say to try to hurt you, or he could have done it on accident, say because somebody else accidentally pushed him because it's really crowed. and what you did was give him the benefit of the doubt -- you chose to error on the side of the possibility that he has good intentions instead of evil intentions.

Lance: right.

Dad: so that's it. that's the better philosophy. if the person we were talking about learned what we just explained, then he wouldn't be suspicious of everything and everyone. 

Lance: hmm, why do I know this and that person doesn't?

Dad: well, one possible reason is that you lived in an environment where people aren't trying to trick you, but he didn't.

Lance: oh ya you said that before. what's another possible reason?

Dad: well just because he lived in a mostly bad environment, that's not enough to make him bad. it's possible that a person in that environment turns out very good. even one good experience with another person could help this person decide and figure out the better philosophy.

Lance: hmm. that's like what you told me about tv. just because i watch a tv show doesn't mean that i'm going to do what the tv show says. i make my own decisions about what i agree with. and for the stuff that i disagree with in the tv shows, that's the stuff i won't copy, and for the stuff i do agree with, i'm not copying it, i'm just doing what i think is good.

Dad: right, and btw, this tradition of giving people the benefit of the doubt, is a tradition i learned from watching tv i think.

Lance: which show?

Dad: oh I don't know. i'm just guessing. i've known this for as long as i can remember.

Lance: so maybe you learned it from grandma.

Dad: actually ya that's part of it too. my parents give people the benefit of the doubt too.

Lance: and maybe your parents learned it from their parents.

Dad: maybe. ya come to think of it, my grandfather on my mom's side was a thinker. he worked as an attorney, and he was a poet.

Lance: so if you're a thinker, then you're good?

Dad: it helps. how can you do good and avoid evil if you don't think about what things are beneficial what things are harmful?

Lance: ya you gotta think about it.

Dad: and it takes a lot of effort.

Lance: so, getting back to what you said about controlling people...

Dad: oh ya we got off track there.

Lance: you said that the most important thing is to take care of yourself because that's the only life you can control. but lots of parents control their kids.



Controlling people is violence

Dad: yes. and that's wrong. actually it's wrong for a more important reason than the one i already gave you. the more important reason is that controlling people means initiating violence on them when there is a disagreement. and that's evil.

Lance: controlling means violence?

Dad: usually.

Lance: but what if you're just tricking a person. that's trying to control them, but it's not violence.

Dad: well, you're right about some cases. but for others cases that's not right. sometimes people try to control by threatening violence. like sometimes a kidnapper will steal a kid from a rich family, and then they will tell the family that they want a million dollars or they'll kill the kid.

Lance: oh ya. i saw that in [forgot tv show name]

Dad: so that's a case of somebody trying to control somebody else by threatening violence. actually they already did violence by stealing the kid, and then they threatened more violence if the family doesn't pay.

Lance: wait, how did the kidnapper already do violence?

Dad: do you think the kid didn't try to get away when he found out he's being kidnapped?

Lance: i'm sure he did.

Dad: so why didn't he get away?

Lance: oh. because the kidnapper forced him, which is violence.

Dad: right.

Lance: but we were talking about parents controlling their kids. why is that violence?

Dad: well, if there is a little child who wants to play with his iPad, and if his parent doesn't want him to play with it right now, let's say because he's punishing him, then the parent might forcefully/violently strip the iPad out of his hands and put it on a high shelf that the child can't reach.

Lance: ya that's bad. why doesn't the parent talk with his kid to come to agreement?

Dad: mainly it's because he doesn't care to. i mean, he doesn't believe that the tradition of freedom should apply to children.



Tradition of freedom

Lance: why not?

Dad: probably because he never really thought about it. or he did think about it but he didn't realize the contradiction. or he did realize the contradiction but he rationalized it.

Lance: what contradiction?

Dad: if you believe in the tradition of freedom, that all individuals have the freedom to do whatever they want short of infringing on other individual's freedom to do the same, then why would you say that this tradition doesn't apply to children?

Lance: i don't know. why do they do that?

Dad: well, there's also a tradition that children are not fully human.

Lance: WHAT!?

Dad: ya, people who believe that, also believe the idea that children aren't rational. so they are making an exception for children. they are fooling themselves.

Lance: that's stupid!

Dad: ya. it's stupid because it ignores reality. if children were not rational, then how could they learn english?

Lance: ya!

Dad: learning english is a huge feat. you have to have a fully functioning mind -- a fully functioning faculty of reason -- in order to have the capacity to learn english, or to learn anything.

Dad: now some parents would deny that they think like this. they'll have other reasons for why they think they should control their kids, denying their freedom.

Lance: like what?

Dad: well, first what they do is pick a really extreme situation, like a kid is running into the street to get a ball, and then they ask: should the parent give the child the freedom to do that? and then they conclude that giving your children absolute freedom means letting him kill himself. and then they conclude that sometimes a parent must control his child because that's what's best for him because he doesn't know better.

Lance: eww.

Dad: ya it's dumb because surely the child wanted to be saved from being harmed from the oncoming car. so when the parent saves his child, he's not doing something against the child's will because the child wanted to be saved. So it's not against his freedom. these parents are fooling themselves.

Lance: so they are lying?

Dad: ya they are lying to themselves so they can feel better about controlling their kids. it helps them feel better about doing things against their child's will. they're thinking that it's best for their child.

Lance: that's sad.

Dad: yes. so many children don't have freedom. their parents control so much of their lives. it's like a government who wants to control it's citizens.

Lance: what do you mean? 

Dad: well, like how in new york city, the government doesn't allow restaurants to sell soda in bigger than 16 oz cups.

Lance: why!?

Dad: because they think that will help make people less fat, or something.

Lance: uh..

Dad: ya it's stupid. if people want to consume a lot of calories, this stupid law isn't going to stop them.

Lance: that's like how lots of parents stop their kids from eating too much candy.

Dad: right, and it's stupid.

Lance: lol, i remember when we got a bag of marshmallows and i ate too much of it and I threw up.

Dad: ya, and you asked me to not let you do that next time. you asked me to only give you a few marshmallows and to put the bag away so you can't reach it. so you were asking me to control you.

Lance: ya and you said no. you said that you don't want to be involved with that. you told me to control myself.

Dad: yep. and what did you do?

Lance: well i never ate so many marshmallows again.



Individual responsibility

Dad: see. you took responsibility for your actions. that's very important. you can't make other people responsible for you. it doesn't work. if i stop you from eating marshmallows you could go eat too much ice cream and throw up from that.

Lance: ya.

Dad: and lots of people think that kids can't make good decisions, but they don't realize that they are partly to blame for that. i mean, why aren't they explaining to their children that they should take responsibility for their own actions?

Lance: i guess it's because they think children can't be responsible.

Dad: ya and that's stupid. how can someone learn to be responsible if he's not given the freedom to make his own decisions?

Lance: hmm, that's backwards. so they blame their children for being irresponsible while forcing them to not take any responsibility.

Dad: it's circular logic. it's like saying i won't give you freedom until you're responsible, but you can't learn how to take responsibility for your actions until i give you the freedom to make your own decisions.





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the rest is disconnected...




then you won't even want to do something you think is bad, and you will try to do something you think is good.



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the rest is disconnected...

Lance: well. no. but why?

Dad: because I know that I could be wrong. so if I forced you to follow my opinion, and if I was actually wrong, then I'd be forcing you to do something wrong.

Lance: ya that's bad.

Dad: that's why forcing your opinions on other people is bad in general. because we could be wrong.

Dad: actually it's worse than that. the most important reason that it's wrong to force your opinion onto somebody else is that it means initiating violence in response to a dispute.

Lance: you mean force means violence?

Dad: ya. how else could i control you besides using my bigger size to make you do something you don't want to do?

Lance: well, you could trick me.

Dad: um, ya that's true. that's wrong too.

Lance: why is tricking wrong?

Dad: for the same reason I already said. if a person's goal is to trick another person to do something against his will, it's wrong because 

Lance: but you said that sometimes it's right to use force.

When is force ok?

Dad: yes, like if you need to meet force with force. like if someone attacks you, now you need to protect yourself from his harm. you could run away, but sometimes you can't run. so in those cases you should defend yourself with force.

Lance: ah that's what people mean when they say self-defense.

Dad: right. so, force in self-defense against force is ok.

Lance: so if somebody hit's you, it's ok to hit them back.

Dad: well that's vague. it depends on the situation. it depends on why you're hitting them back.

Lance: let's say it's self-defense.

Dad: but calling it self-defense doesn't really help explain the situation. i mean it doesn't help explain why you're hitting them back. 

Lance: it's because I want him to stop.

Dad: ok but are you thinking that he hit you on purpose or by accident?

Lance: uh, let's say it's on purpose.

Dad: well let's do the easy case first. if it's by accident, then there's no reason to hit him. hitting him is not going to help anything. if he did it by accident before, let's say because he doesn't know how to do something, then he might hit you again by accident because he hasn't learned anything different from last time.

Lance: that makes sense. so what about the on purpose case?

Dad: well first of all, before you make a choice about what to do, you have to figure out if he did it on purpose or on accident, and sometimes that's not easy to figure out. so you might have to make a choice about what to do right now even though you don't yet know whether he did it on purpose or on accident.

Lance: how do you do that?

Dad: well, in general, you should give him the benefit of the doubt.

Benefit of the doubt

Lance: what do you mean by benefit of the doubt?

Dad: so if he did it on purpose, let's say to hurt you, then his intention is bad. and if he did it on accident, let's say while he was trying to help you, then his intention is good. and since you don't yet know which one it is, you should err on the side that his intention is good.

Lance: ah, so the doubt is about not knowing whether his intention is good or bad. and you say benefit of the doubt to mean that you're siding with the good intention.

Dad: right.

Lance: ok so let's say you know his intention is bad. let's say he's saying mean things and giving mean looks or something like that.

Dad: well that's not enough information to rule out the possibility that his intention is good.

Lance: ok can you make an example like that so we can talk about it?

Dad: ok. let's say you're walking at night and somebody pushed you really hard to the floor and said "give me your wallet". unless you're an actor in a movie, then this guy has bad intentions.

Lance: lol, ok so then what?

Dad: you should make sure to protect yourself. maybe the best thing for you to do is to throw your wallet at him and run away. or maybe the best thing is to mace or shoot him and then run away.

insulted

innocent until proven guilty

revenge

---

friend situation and revenge

why not get rid of friend?





doing favors in return for favors

trading sacrifice 

sacrifice for me and i'll sacrifice for you later

(give and take)





owing things
forgiveness
guilt-tripping

making promises




What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode.

Dad: because there's other parts. one thing is that you don't know what other people's interests are -- and even if you tried to know, they can be manipulating you or otherwise lying to you for fear of being rude or breaking some other social rules.

Lance: hmm, but I don't do those things.

From a religious point of view, (at least this is a context that everyone, even non religious, could understand), forgiveness is a virtue. From my experience, it helped me moved on with my life. We may be talking under different frequencies with different life experiences, but for me, I become stronger when I willingly forfeit my right of retribution without any strings attached.

Rami Rustom you don't have any "right" to retribution. so that's the problem. you think that forgiveness means relinquishing one's right to retribution, and i'm saying that there is no such right. there shouldn't even be a *want* for retribution. retribution is fucking stupid. it's fucking evil.

stuff from win-win/win-lose notes