People forget

This morning I was rudely awakened by an alarm clock before the sun had cleared the horizon, [set by my honey so she could arise to help her son study.. she had woken up earlier than it was set for and forgotten to shut it off.. but that's not what the title of this piece is referring too].

In the ensuing moments as the forebrain came online I was in close proximity to the boy.. who has the survival instincts of.. something with an extremely short life.

And here's the thing is people forget: We are Primates first, humans by specialization and civilized last.

What's this got to do with anything you wonder. It's simply this: in the 'real world' an adult male primate at best tolerates the offspring of other males. But usually they usually don't tolerate them well at all.

Enter civilization, and the human race developes socialization patterns which depart radically from that of our close cousins.

There are many good reasons for those patterns, for one it allows groups of unrelated males to actually cooperate with one and other and share resources instead of attempting to drive off the other males and seize the best resources for his 'family group'. It allows them to better defend themselves from outside threats to their survival.. like lions and tigers.. and bears.

But people forget about the primate that lurks just below the surface of our civilized society. And what's worse is the methods by which the young in the U.S. learned that an adult male was something you didn't triffle with without unpleasant results have been deemed wrong and 'harmful' to the developement of the young.

Since this point of view has come to dominate society and laws have been enacted to protect children from any form of physical discipline courtesy and respect have become bygone mores in the last three generations.

We now live amongst the 'Entitled Generations', i.e., people who believe at least unconsciously that life owes them whatever their hearts desire, that they have they right to the last slice of cake.

If you'd like to see this demonstrated to you in the real world in the US go to any parking lot at a shopping center and watch people manuever their cars in one when it's particularly busy. Or go shopping in a Costco on a Sunday afternoon.

There's a point to this apparently rambling statement and this is it: If the boy, who is the son of an interloper* had grown up in the same type of society as I did and my father and his father etc, etc. he would have had an instinctual understanding of the fact that if he twits an adult male, (before the adult has had coffee), that he runs the risk of getting backhanded.

(I restrained my instinct, but it got me to thinking about how kids relate to adults these days as opposed to how my and prior generations related to adults, hence this post.)

It's that simple, we're civilized now though so the boy is blithely unaware of his lack social skills and though you can tell someone about their lack they just won't understand it until it smacks them in the face.

Now here's the really cute part: in most of the rest of the world the 'old school' rules still apply.

What does this mean for American males under the age of 50?

Just one word: Conflict.

If you consider that the most 'polite' societies that humans race 'enjoyed' were those where dueling was extant, (i.e. if you insulted someone they could demand an apology or call you out to a duel for reparations to their honor depending on their sensibilities), or were societies where the adult males were all defacto warriors then you can extrapolate why American males are most likely to eventually end up in conflict with males raised in almost any other country.

The American male approaches all societies as if their mores are in synch with those of the US which is seldom the case.

It's only after prolonged exposure to outside cultures that this point of view changes and for some their point of view remains unshakeable even in the face of reality.

I say eventually because initially most people raised to respect others will give you the benefit of a doubt before engaging in conflict unless you cross a cultural taboo. Generally they have a better understanding of conflict and it's consequences having grown up with examples of it in their own lives.

I know there are probably people that will argue that sports like football or soccer or hockey teach children about conflict but I will have to disagree.

Simply put those sports have specific rules which the participants usually know before they engage in them, and for the most part they know that these sports aren't meant to be life threatening.

You knew when your mom disciplined you she might inflict pain.. but there was a line, you knew it instinctively. But if you annoyed her enough she'd utter the dreaded line: "Just wait till your father gets home". Then you knuckled down, then you tried to appease her, hoping she wouldn't tell dad because you really really didn't want the adult male's attention in a disciplinary action.

And you knew this because of personal experience, you didn't just know a thing, you understood it.

When an adult male used physical discipline on you you had no idea where the line was with them. It was damned scarey and you didn't know when it would end. Cold fury, red hot anger, which one would it be?

A person who knows that there's a safety net that protects them from physical repercussion to their actions does not fear discipline. There's just a temporary discomfiture which is short lived, and then they can resume their lives without any serious loss to their amoure proper.

Time-outs work for a 3 year old, they'll still work for a 5 year old. Watch what happens when you apply that to an 8 year old American child. Do I personally like violence? No. But let me give you an example of a disciplinary action issue that's ongoing.

When one of the boy's friends, Jack, comes over they invariably will get into a verbal brawl and the volume will become so great that it can be heard clearly in a room with music playing and the door closed.

They've been admonished on more than 50 occassions that they are not to raise their voices to such levels while in the house. Yesterday Jack came over, and in spite of knowing the 'no shouting in the house' rule they got into it within the first half hour.

I sat them down. I explained once again about the rule. I asked them to tell me why the rule was in place, they both in their own way recited the concept of consideration for others and how it applies in social situations. I then let them go back to what they were supposedly studying together.

Fifteen minutes later they were shouting at each other again. I asked them if I had not just talked to them about this issue, the replied that yes I had. I asked them how much time had lapsed, they said about fifteen minutes. I asked them if there was some reason they could learn things like the concept that 2+2=4 but were unable to grasp the no shouting rule. They shrugged.

If this interaction had taken place when I was a child the interaction would have been very different. The adult male would have asked them to keep it down. They might have forgotten once, The adult male would have warned them that he was going to apply physical discipline to at least one of them if they didn't respect his request.

They probably would have ignored the second request that they don't shout loudly in the house.

The adult male would have have then taken his boy and applied his preferred method of discipline.

The boy would not like it a bit. The adult male would then re-itterate that he expected the boy to 'keep it down' in such a manner that the boy understood that a further infraction would incur a more severe disciplinary action.

The boy would then inform his friend that they had to keep it down and would exert his personal influence to see that the adult male's request was honored.

Was that the way the adult male wanted to interact with his children? Generally no, most men don't enjoy that process.

Were people better behaved because of those interactions, yup.

Sad to say but a bit of corporal punishment was usually the best method of making children at certain ages pay attention and respect the rules of society and later on in life they instinctively followed those rules.

Funnily enough a poll of the 50 most successful executives in business say that the corporal punishment they recieved as children was pivotal in making them better people and influenced their path to success.

I suppose we could try appling the school forms of discipline like you shall write one thousands times "I shall not...."

That'll work...... yeah. More likely there'd be an injunction on that for the possibility of inducing carpal tunnel syndrome.

Ok, enough on this topic..

(* It's a long story.. she's was mine.. she left, we're back together.. and in between 'stuff' happened.)

Sounding

Homefires now features a flash based streaming music system. It's member access only.

So far it seems to be low latency, low bandwidth a nice change from most streaming applications.

Mind you it's only had two users on it simultaneously, so that impression may change. ;)

I'm really liking the e107 CMS package. :)

And so it goes..

GW is just bullheaded.. has got to be.. I mean all the top people, (excepting the inner most circle of cronies), practically begged him not to put more troops on the line.

And off he goes and declaims that this is the winning strategy.. that he didn't want to announce before the mid term elections for fear it might affect the outcome.

Mmmm, yeah, I can see how if a republican president announced upping troop levels for a vastly unpopular war, (ignoring the fact that every excuse given for going in was disproven), might have an affect.

As it stood the republican party lost their strangle hold on the congress. I guess that what our dear leader feared was that the people would have turned out even more g.o.p. members of the house and senate to pasture.

And I just love the 'snow' job that the WH press secratary did on the idea that opposing raising the troop levels would 'give aid' to the terrorists. Firstly, the leaders of those people come from a part of the world that invented writing.. and algebra fer crissake.. you have to be asleep with you head in the sand to think that they can't read between the lines of what has already been broadcast far and wide.

It would be nice if some of the yahoos in the inner circus.. I mean circle would read up on how well other external nations faired in maintaining control over that region.. hint, check into the methods the Ottoman Empired employed?.. oops you can't do that any more can you.. and that means using the Mongols techniques are out the window too.. I suppose the English.. but no they didn't have much luck there either.

The fact of the matter is that you can't force democracy on people who are as intractable as the people in the middle east are, and if you try you'll draw back a bloody stump where the hand you had was that you tried to use on them.

They feud.. they've feuded for centuries. And now they have a new partner they can hate and feud with too.

Smooth move.