les vignes rouges d’arles by vincent van gogh, mccain’s so-called honor, lying as social strategy
February 22, 2008 at 7:22 am | In art, news, politics, sociology | Leave a Comment
les vignes rouges d’arles by vincent van gogh (1888) or the red vineyards if you prefer.
McCain’s environmental rating 0
The Sierra Club notes:
McCain was the only member of Congress to skip every single crucial environmental vote scored by the organization, posting a score lower than Members of Congress who were out for much of the year due to serious illnesses–and even lower than some who died during the term
Yet CNN pundit David Gergen went on ad nauseum and without question from Anderson Cooper about what an honorable man McCain was. In what universe is missing every crucial environmental vote honorable.
Kids lie early, often, and for all sorts of reasons
For two decades, parents have rated “honesty” as the trait they most wanted in their children. Other traits, such as confidence or good judgment, don’t even come close. On paper, the kids are getting this message. In surveys, 98 percent said that trust and honesty were essential in a personal relationship. Depending on their ages, 96 to 98 percent said lying is morally wrong.
So when do the 98 percent who think lying is wrong become the 98 percent who lie?
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,” explains Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior.
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. “It’s a developmental milestone,” Talwar has concluded.
Kids learn, in a round about way about double standards and hypocrisy early on. Telling the truth is obviously important to my parents, but if they lie they avoid punishment. Their friends say they value honestly, but lying to protect your friends is an intricate part of what bends the friendship. Both these phenomenon together gives the good liar, not surprisingly a certain amount of control 0ver their environment. Kiddome is defined in part by powerlessness so the empowerment of lying becomes a constant and easily rationalized act.
When adults are asked to keep diaries of their own lies, they admit to about one lie per every five social interactions, which works out to one per day, on average. The vast majority of these lies are white lies, lies to protect yourself or others, like telling the guy at work who brought in his wife’s muffins that they taste great or saying, “Of course this is my natural hair color.”
Encouraged to tell so many white lies and hearing so many others, children gradually get comfortable with being disingenuous. Insincerity becomes, literally, a daily occurrence. They learn that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict. And while they don’t confuse white-lie situations with lying to cover their misdeeds, they bring this emotional groundwork from one circumstance to the other
ice patterns, empowered workers can save the world
February 22, 2008 at 6:56 am | In culture, economic, photography, photoshop | Leave a Comment
An otherwise good article starts off with an objectionable straw man, How business can save the world
When Milton Friedman famously stated that “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits,” he furnished ammunition to both free market evangelists and their critics. Where libertarians see profit as the basis of stability and opportunity, others see only greed and rapine.
You have two and only two camps to choose from a) completely unfettered capitalism or b) hate of same. What if the answer is c) capitalism that is regulated in a way that provides safeguards for workers, the environment, investors and consumers.
Thinkers since the Enlightenment have been intrigued by the link between business and society. Montesquieu famously stated that “the natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace.” This happens, he argued, not merely because commerce thrives in peaceful times, but because trade creates a kind of wealth insusceptible to conquest — in trying to take trade-based wealth by force, the conqueror can only destroy it. But Montesquieu also argued that desire for profit imperiled what he called virtue — the concept of equality that lies at the heart of participatory democracy.
Montesquieu’s idealism as regards commerce was admirable, but he was right about the caveat that the desire for profit or more aptly greed would get the best of virtue. Much of the international tensions of the last fifty years owe, at least in part has been the competition to procure oil. Ethics and worker empowerment isn’t a cure all, but seems to provide hope that business can be measurably better in contributing to better lives and fewer international conflicts,
Spreitzer also documented three case studies, which confirmed the results. One company, Rainforest Expeditions, built a lodge with an indigenous community in Peru, employing community members in jobs ranging from housekeeper to guide and lodge manager. As Spreitzer writes, the “sense of collective agency” gained by community members working together to solve business problems “has spilled over into civic matters as well … [resulting in] strategic plans for sectors such as agriculture, education, ecotourism, and handicrafts.” The community used its share of lodge profits to build a school and fund a medical clinic.
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