Brooders.net

Found this over at Schneier’s blog titled “Kids and Lying“.

Worth the read.

The original article is called “Learning to lie“.

A couple of interesting excerpts:

It starts very young. Indeed, bright kids—those who do better on other academic indicators—are able to start lying at 2 or 3. “Lying is related to intelligence,”
….
Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require.

I’d never seen this perspective before. Manipulating perception of reality is an act of intelligence and persuasion. That does make sense.

he most disturbing reason children lie is that parents teach them to. According to Talwar, they learn it from us. “We don’t explicitly tell them to lie, but they see us do it.
….
Consider how we expect a child to act when he opens a gift he doesn’t like. We instruct him to swallow all his honest reactions and put on a polite smile.

This one is pretty common, from an early age lie to protect the feelings of adults. Schooled from a very early age to be polite through telling white lies. Also, the concept of lying to adults instead of tattling/telling on your mates seems to be a factor.

So, paradoxically, it seems lying is an integral part of a society which values honest.

I didn’t finish this book.

I liked some of the concepts, but the author, Richard Dawkins, struck me as bitter and twisted throughout the first few chapters. And probably continued to complain throughout the rest of the book. Unfortunately, I also watched a documentary of his on TV, which kind of reinforced his belligerent intolerance to religion. That being said, he does have a few good points.

“There is no such thing as a Christian child, there is only a child of Christian parents.”

Insert whatever religion you like in that phrase.

Interesting point because can a child really ponder religion when their main source of “truth” (i.e. Their Parents) is telling them what to think, what to believe and how the world works? Is it Conditioning through reciting prayers and creeds? I guess it provides an easy answer to questions. Why is that mummy? “God works in mysterious ways”, or “God is teaching us a lesson”. It stops deeper questioning which doesn’t help understanding the world or situations. So his point, that children are conditioned by their parents to believe (kinda like santa claus, but with more serious restrictions on lifestyle).

It did make me reflect on my own religious upbringing. I can still recite various creeds and prayers, even though I have not attended church in 15 years. It took a while for me to throw off the concept of god. Or perhaps more accurately, recognise it only as a concept and not an actual “thing”. I am 30 now, but only in the last year or so come around to this “revelation” for want of a better word. I also wonder whether this has to do with physical proximity to my parents, as I moved interstate from them nearly 8 years ago.

So back to the book, here’s what Amazon has to say:

Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins “Darwin’s Rottweiler” for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky).

Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. He critiques God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being.

He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. In so doing, he makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just irrational, but potentially deadly. Dawkins has fashioned an impassioned, rigorous rebuttal to religion, to be embraced by anyone who sputters at the inconsistencies and cruelties that riddle the Bible, bristles at the inanity of “intelligent design,” or agonizes over fundamentalism in the Middle Eastor Middle America.

Here’s a snippet from my childhood .. I am not sure why do small children in primary school (ages 6-12) need to sing songs with lyrics like:
“what did Judas do?,
he hung himself upon an alder”.
Why? I just think it’s weird, perhaps it a story with a righteous ending where the guilty or betrayer gets punished, so it’s all ok .. and there’s a happy ending.

So here’s an interesting concept (in my mind at least), just say we have all these religions who think they are correct. So we have:

• Religion J - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion C - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion I - We’re Right, the only god, every other is false
• Religion B - We’re Right, enlightenment is the way
• Religion H - We’re Right, the only gods, every other is false

If everyone thinks they’re right, someone must be wrong. In fact if there is only one religion is correct, then 80% of religions are wrong. So more than likely, they are all wrong. At least that’s my current over simplistic proof that they are all wrong.

So, is my rant above equal his? The irony is not lost on me.

It probably made me think about the issue quite seriously, I just didn’t like the messenger.

Rating: Unrated (Need to probably finish it .. maybe when the pile of other books diminishes).

This is a bizarre contradiction to the “Fight Global warming : Become a Vegetarian” argument.

Apparently, Greenpeace urges kangaroo consumption to fight global warming.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas from flatulent cattle and sheep.

So, we tried it out (Well .. I found it and convinced Kath that buying this was a good idea).

and on the plate

The Good things about eating Kangaroo:

• Tastes Good
• Apparently, is better for the environment
• Lean meat - About 2% Fat
• Reasonably cheap - $13 Kg, compared to Rump steak at $19 (Supermarket prices)

I found this originally via sentient developments (who happens to be a vegetarian!) but also caught the eye of writer Warren Ellis in “Death to Skippy“.

I’ve had it in restaurants before, but this is my first time cooking it. All in all, it was good. I’ll do it again .. and feel good that I am eating healthier and saving the environment (Rampant justification?).

My wife and I attended our Neighbours Wake today.

What do you bring to a wake?
Especially when it’s at someones house (in this case, our Neighbours house).

Steve was a quirky guy. I mentioned before that he’d told me he was dying, and I didn’t know how to respond, other than “that sucks”.

He was a keen musician (drums), played in a band, so I figured taking beer was probably an ok way of turning up.

Let me tell you, it’s weird turning up to a wake .. not knowing any people, other than his brother (who lived with him), and another lady we’d only met once. 50 or so people .. it was just unusual. What do you have in common, a guy who’s just died.

Back to him being quirky .. we met a girl who’d flown in from Canberra for the wake and she also knew no-one. Aparrently, he rang her up a few months ago and said “I’m dying, what would you like?”

To throw me into a state of cognitive dissonance (i.e. Confusion) this is also the first non-religious someone’s died event I’ve gone to. It was drinks at someones house, with photos and discussions about him or whatever. There are no patterns I was used to. Just a whole lot of people who are know missing someone they knew.

So .. I am not sure I really understand what the protocol is now, but it seems a lot less formal than the whole church thing. People remember the person as they want to, with no reglious baggage other than your own.

Farewell Steve.