Just some stuff
Finally got around to trying some of the different goodies I picked up from Hotel Chocolat last week, the white chocolate Strawberry & Cream's are very nice, the insides are more fondant then runny or solid which I prefer; the milk chocolate Mandarin pieces aren't quite as nice though, even the women selling them said she preferred the raspberry alternatives. Anyway I'd also picked up the box set of chocolate slabs, which I'm looking forward to opening and dishing out.
Bloody annoying that I seem to have Lil' Chris's cover of "We don't have to take our clothes off (to have a good time)" running constantly through my hand, for starters is it Li'l Chris or Lil' Chris as I seen, besides as it's a contraction of Little shouldn't it be Li'l' Chris? Either way I don't normally have time for anyone who uses Li'l' or starts pieces to video with "Yo".
On the use of language I found it worrying watching a ten year old attempting to read something to camera, more worrying was watching him just attempting to use the English language (and yes it was his native tongue). It happened to come up in conversation with my mother, and she mentioned how she'd dragged me up "There was never any bow-wows, no gee-gees; there were dogs and there were horses. I always talked to you as an adult... I worry if that was the right thing to do" The answer of course is I don't know, there's not another version of me around to compare to; although perhaps one indication is with stuffed toys.
I had a big blue and white bear (which now belongs to my cousin), a Birmingham City one; I never supported football and still don't, but the bear was simply "Bear" or to distinguish it from a smaller brown one I had "Blue and white bear", I had a monkey hand puppet which had a squeeky bulb in it's mouth and wonderful soft fur (which the girls liked to stroke - heh) which was "Squeeky monkey" or just "Monkey", a stylised cat was (can you guess?) "Cat". I did have one stuffed animal that had a name an anthropomorphic frog called "Kermit" on the grounds that, well, it was specifically a "Kermit the frog" toy.
Perhaps as a result I've never understood the need to assign names to toys or for that matter to line them up in the rear screen of my car; or to assign 'personalities' to pets. It's a stuffed pig, it's a dog, it's a cat; they either don't think or do so in ways we would have difficulty getting our heads around. Before anyone gets worried about sociopathic tendencies I would like to point out I have no difficulty with other humans; I just don't do it with anything else. I can grasp intellectually why people do this, I just never had or see the need to do so myself.
Another indicator is perhaps in how I treat children. I am aware they don't have my experience and have less knowledge to draw upon, but other then taking that into account I don't see why I should treat them differently to adults, hyper-bloody-active adults, but still... well people. All this preserving childhood blah blah is a myth and a damn recent one at that, some actions most children aren't emotionally ready for, some are simply a matter of age; but if you treat children as children, don't be surprised if they act that way. The most important task of an adult in this regard is to prepare them for adulthood, and you can't do that with bow-wows and gee-gees.
4 comments:
Definitely Li'l. But I didn't think anyone had used that abbreviation since about 1992.
My first (real, not imaginary) cat was called "Cat", more I think through lack of imagination on my part than lack of animistic impulse. My teddies all had names but I was never that attached to them in terms of carting them around endlessly. But today I talk to my computers by name, and get terribly animistic about them, like many others in my profession. In some ways, assigning arbitrary personalities to inanimate objects provides a framework for reasoning about personality traits, allowing children to consider what observable actions allow them to recognise each personality trait; also, of course, it means that the teddies can 'stand in' for people they really know, in order to practise interacting with them.
I agree with you about treating children as adults, though. There's a scene in 'People Like Us', where Chris Langham (as Roy Mallard) is interviewing a school headmaster.
head: One of the first things I learned about teaching is that if you treat children like children, they behave like children.
Mallard: Yes. I'd have thought that was rather obvious.
head: Yes, it is obvious. That's why I learned it first.
Arguably, when it comes to children nothing is obvious, least of all what they're thinking.
On the whole Li'l thing there's also L'il Kim; who isn't.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who named things after what they were, but imaginary cats? Never had one of those, no imaginary cats, dogs, or friends - animals I've never cared for and real friends were fine.
I didn't cart off my cuddlies either, except for the monkey, which was for a whole other reason (seriously what is it with females and fur?). Bratus Major still has an elephant (Jumbo) which has to go everywhere and Bratus Minor has a stuffed scarecrow (Wurzel); Devil Child hasn't seemed to form any attachments yet, but she's still young.
I haven't given any of my computers names; sure I'll swear at them or say one's being 'temperamental' at the moment, but they're just things.
As for practice in interaction, perhaps I was lucky in that I was brought up surrounded by lots of different people so I never needed 'practice'.
Umm, s/imaginary/stuffed/. I'm sure Dr Freud would have a field day with that one. Real animals were fine and friends I've never cared for :-)
You may not know what your computers' names are, but every computer has at least one name. Mind you, the Jargon File makes the good point that although compscis often assign human feelings and will to computers, this is not because we are animist about computers, but because we are reductionist about humans. Psychologists would at this point be standing up and screaming about compscis all being autistic and thus having to "systemize" in order to deal with other people; but that's because they've been programmed to think that. :-)
About being brought up surrounded by people, this is perhaps an important common factor. I'm from a pretty large family, and we know lots of other families in the area, in the traditional way. You might say that being exposed to lots of people when you are young is like being exposed to lots of pathogens: it allows you to acclimate yourself to them so you can cope when you come across them in adulthood.
My computers have less names more epithets.
I recall your graph on ego... points at the old stereotype of the asocial computer nerd; a bit chicken and egg. Are they attracted to that field because they don't interact well with people, or because that field has a slightly greater isolating effect and as such they simply don't develop said skills. Or a bit of both ;-)
People help to paraphrase the great Pratchett 'People aren't born people, they acquire that status from bumping into lots of other people'
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