Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, he's 4 and, although he knows every bad word except "cunt," he knows better than to say them, at least in front of grown-ups. But cursing is not ruined for him - he still thinks cursing is hilarious and he frequently asks me to say a bad word. I would say it's working out. He doesn't offend the tribal elders and I don't have to lie by simulating outrage - I've told him the real reason why he can't curse.
Why not cunt?
Lies We Tell Kids
271–280 of 433 posts
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about civility? That's kind of like respect. Do I "deserve" any civility? If it's a myth and a self-serving lie to think that you should show respect for other people's beliefs, count me as one of the self-serving liars.
If I were having a conversation with a friend I would prefer Prrometheus' comments to yours. If I were told in response to something I said: "Belief qua belief does not deserve respect", first of all I would think "Alright! Half-baked Latin! That justifies the price we paid for these coffees!" but also I would be happy to be given the chance to advance the conversation. I would have been given a choice either to expl…
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#273The entire concept of erasing ("unthinking"?) brings to mind the dialogue between Gandalf and Saruman in Book 3, Chapter 10. Specifically: "Gandalf stirred, and looked up. "What have you to say that you did not say at our last meeting?" he asked. "Or, perhaps, you have things to unsay?" Saruman paused. "Unsay?" he mused, as if puzzled."
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#274I remember the fear from my childhood. Fear that something would happen to the family. Fear that I would be alone. That lightning would strike the building.
Thank God my parents told me lies. It allowed my childhood to be happy.
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
check out Steven Pinker's "Why We Curse", http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=246c0071-a9cd-46e2...
That was a great article. It also touched on a commonly-told lie which pg's essay didn't mention: Eternal true love and monogamy in marriage.
The poem True Love by Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska replies better than I can:
True love. Is it normal / is it serious, is it practical? / What does the world get from two people / who exist in a world of their own?
Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason, / drawn randomly from millions but convinced / it had to happen this way - in reward for what? / For nothing. / The light descends from nowhere. / Why on these two and not on others? / Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does. / Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles, / and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.
Look at the happy couple. / Couldn't they at least try to hide it, / fake a little depression for their friends' sake? / Listen to them laughing - its an insult. / The language they use - deceptively clear. / And their little celebrations, rituals, / the elaborate mutual routines - / it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back!
It's hard even to guess how far things might go / if people start to follow their example. / What could religion and poetry count on? / What would be remembered? What renounced? / Who'd want to stay within bounds?
True love. Is it really necessary? / Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence, / like a scandal in Life's highest circles. / Perfectly good children are born without its help. / It couldn't populate the planet in a million years, / it comes along so rarely.
Let the people who never find true love / keep saying that there's no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Edit: I can't figure out how to get CRLFs in the right places, so here's the link for the properly formatted version: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/694.html
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I interpreted "almost no one reading this knows..." as referring to the users of this board.
Your original interpretation was right. Perhaps I underestimated the number of physicists hanging out here. (I hope so! It would be cool to think people here know who these guys are.) In any case, the original point remains: even on Hacker News, Marie Curie is far better-known than Lev Landau, and it's not because she was the greater scientist.
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#277Besides being a woman, Marie Curie was the first and ONLY person to ever recieve a Nobel Prize in different sciences. Something her male counterparts have yet to do, so maybe there's something there besides her sex.
Let N be the number of great scientists. It would be sensible for the curriculum to include the n greatest scientists, where n N . Since Marie Curie always gets included in the textbooks, we can conclude either that she ranks as one of the n greatest scientists, even for very small n , or that the reasons for her inclusion go beyond her scientific accomplishments. Considering how few history textbooks mention (for ex…
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#278>Don't all 18 year olds think they know how to run the world? Actually this seems to be a recent innovation, no more than about 100 years old. In preindustrial times teenage kids were junior members of the adult world and comparatively well aware of their shortcomings. This idea is fleshed out in the writing of John Taylor Gatto, a former Teacher of the Year who disagrees with near everything about modern education.…
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know that I've ever read a really good account of the hows and whys of swearing. It seems to me the idea that we're mistaken that swear words are taboo completely misses the fact that we defined these words as taboo to start with. I think restricting children from swearing is in part to give more power to swear words, because as adults we find it useful to have these powerful words. Teaching children that swe…
This is basically right. The words are taboo because it's useful to have taboo words, so the culture deliberately makes them so. Taboo words are useful because they transcend politeness. If a normally civil person comes into your dinner party and tells you that the fucking ceiling is about to fall down , you get moving . You don't waste time looking around for the ironic smile. You don't reproach the person for speak…
So whenever I cut my finger or anything like that, I would make sure to swear as much as could. :)
Re: Lies We Tell Kids
#280The average 18 year old would have done much better than George W Bush. It seems very unlikely that the average 18 year old would be considered the worst president ever by a majority of historians. Pretty much impossible, in fact.