Dignity, and nothing else

Do you remember talking about relationships based on intimidation and fear?

I do. Your assessment was that some people are so used to the mode that they do not see it as anything bad.

It is convenient for many---which is rather scary, in my opinion---because it spares people from making judgments on their own. Some others have done the thinking for them, and they are willing to follow suit without careful consideration.

I'm afraid such people will always be with us. It does not necessarily have to be intimidation and fear; it could be crowd psychology which has its uses. Without it, we may never reach some kind of consensus.

I beg to differ. Every one of us can think independently, and still reach agreement through compromises. That is what democracy is all about. If we do not discourage crowd psychology, that amounts to allowing seedlings of totalitarianism to grow among us.

What about the problem of personality, though? You have implied that, in the end, what matters is personality, and that the strong ones dominate the others. We have to learn to live with that imperfection.

I agree. In other words, the problem is how to deal with strong characters which tend to steer the system to their liking. We should be equipped with penalties for dictator types.

Ah, that sounds like another avenue to totalitarianism, though, because in the ideal situation, nobody should be dominating or dominated, which suggests that everyone should be alike.

What we need is diversity and value criteria that do not favor the loud and the manipulative over the rest.

I can see that the loud is obviously so, but detecting the manipulative may not be as easy. It will be similar to asking a liar if s/he lies.

Talking about manipulative persons, I have noticed that most people don't mind being friends with them. First of all, manipulation requires intelligence, and that can be useful to the manipulated.

The manipulated is so, precisely because they are less cunning or smart than the manipulating. The manipulating can use their intelligence to the true good of the manipulated, if they wish so.

In other occasions, they use the intelligence to do damage. The interesting thing is that the manipulated count the manipulating as friends, even good friends.

Oh, s/he is sometimes not so nice, but other times s/he is. Is this how the thinking goes?

I presume so. They take it as a fact of life that people are not nice all the time.

But it is.

That may be so, but the problem here is that the manipulating is in total control of the emotional ups and downs of her/his targets.

Isn't that one of ignorance-is-bliss cases?

Could be. For me, it is painful and frustrating to see that some people's happiness is subject to the whims of the manipulating, who belong to the category of the wicked and the evil.

When you are smarter than others, it's difficult not to be manipulative, even if you are against such behavior. We know that one, right?

Children are manipulated by grown-ups, I think we can say that.

I'm not sure whether manipulation is a good term. We make use of child psychology, and that is different from manipulation.

On paper, they are not the same, but in the real world, there are many borderline cases.

Borderline cases... your favorite!

Think about a parent who wishes her/his child not to take up horse riding. The parent can complain about the bad smell---existent or nonexistent---after riding lessons until the child is totally convinced that s/he should stop going to the stable if s/he wants to keep her/his friends.

But then again, isn't the outcome dependent on the personality of the parent versus that of the child?

It is, but that does not take away the fact that there is manipulative element in what we call education and discipline. Recommendation alone can be used to encourage or discourage children to think in certain ways.

Well, education and discipline are, after all, imposing on children what adults think best; we cannot get rid of what could be considered manipulation.

We should, however, recognize that factor and try our best not to force any idea down the throat.

It sounds almost impossible. How can you teach ethics, for example? Usually, our minds are not negotiable when it comes to what is good or bad.

You could present your ethical values as the best possible system that you know, which could be improved upon. Certainly, it should not be taught as the universal truth.

Isn't that rather weak?

I think not. It is always good to know that your thoughts may have some unknown shortcomings. And, it is possible to openly admit so while maintaining firm belief in them.

Are you trying to tell me how to graciously change my ideas, if need be?

Not allowing leeway for yourself could put you in a quite awkward or ugly situation. Plus, it is difficult to trust people who go from one extreme to another, I think.

But extremes are attractive because of their simplicity.

Certainly. Extreme positions are often crowned with the adjective, 'pure'... Getting back to relationships, it surprises me that most people seem to think that slighting and hurting each other is a normal element in any relationship.

If people could stand psychological manipulation, it's not so surprising, is it?

True, the biggest surprise for me may be that people fail to recognize the manipulative and the abusive motives. They are also ready to go on as if nothing had happened after they hurt each other. That astonishes me as well.

Let me guess, you do not want any slighting or hurting, needless to say manipulating. That's not quite possible, you should know that.

In my mind, slighting, hurting, abusing, manipulating, etc. preclude close relationships if they know what they are doing. What if someone puts you down because s/he wants to feel better about her/himself?

That one again...

If someone is capable of doing so even once, trust for that person cannot be re-established, I would think. Consider a rather complicated case in which a friend of yours and you talk about relationships and you agree that such an act would destroy any relationship forever.

Good that we have like-minded people around.

What if that very person engages in that act of taking out her/his insecurity on you?

If we have talked about it explicitly, that is indeed serious.

What if s/he happens to be one of your best friends?

Does that change how wrong the act is?

It doesn't, but the impact is bigger, because it is someone whom you trusted. There is another case which happens, I suspect, more specifically to me.

Which is...?

They start with an assumption that I am ignorant and stupid.

What can I say---who can blame them?

In my mind, they have made an inexcusable mistake at that point already, namely, they have violated the rule of treating every person so as to preserve her/his dignity.

Tell me the next offense.

They are very aggressive toward or dismissive of my opinion, until one day, they realize that I am not that dumb and start treating me a bit more nicely.

Shouldn't they be forgiven then?

I would say this is a variant of intimidation and fear. Only after they learn that I have the mental capacity that is equal or superior to theirs, I emerge as a full human being in their world.

At least, they acknowledge it.

There is another problem. If they happen to put me in their very-smarty category, they start taking my views as the best without examining them.

From one extreme to another, eh?

We do more or less the same with the information that we have no means of verifying. We all have favorite television and radio programs, newspapers, and websites, and we take what they present as accurate, unbiased description of the topic, most of the time.

How can we be absolutely sure that it wasn't Bill's double who went to Pyongyang? The rumor has it that the one who talked to Kim Jong-Il did not crack a single joke.

Comrade, that is not worth pursuing... Anyway, if the concern is something to which we have roughly equal access in terms of relevant information, we should not cede our right and duty to think and make a judgment on our own.

I see, they turn unnecessarily submissive from being wrongly dismissive. In short, they commit three grave crimes.

There's more.

Oh, no!

What if they become frustrated because I do not want to be friends with them?

You may have to forgive, you know.

Forgive? Should I be friends with people who turn nice only after I was able to appear---and that in their eyes---not as a total idiot, and who are most likely to commit the same crimes against others?

Perhaps some of them have changed for good.

The soul of a three year old until a hundred. What is learned in the cradle is carried to the grave. Ce que poulain prend en jeunesse, il le continue en vieillesse. Lo que se aprende en la cuna, siempre dura.

Shhhh, calm down. Shall we talk about experience, learning and all that next time?

It's about dignity, the most important thing in our lives. How come that most people don't care, their own or others'?

That may be because dignity as the most important aspect in life is your universal truth, and not the universal truth, you see...

Peter Pan, why did you leave me?

I have been feeling cheated lately.

How big is the damage?

Very big. It's about life in its entirety.

Well, nobody guaranteed you anything marvelous and fabulous. I don't think anybody has been promised such things.

What about people who are born with silver spoons in their mouths?

Or, those born in a crib made of gold?

Can be both, if you are half Anglo and half Portuguese...

If you happen not to be born under such circumstances, just remember what the Georgians say. Better your own copper than another man's gold. By the way, any idea on the perpetuators who inflicted that horrible damage on you?

I know exactly who they are.

Can you give away their names?

Of course. Madame d'Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, J. M. Barrie...

They are all authors of fairy tales! Do you mean to say that they gave you wrong ideas about life?

Yes. For example, they inculcated in me that the good triumphs over the evil. You know how disappointing it can be when you cannot let go of that belief when you have become a grown-up.

Their stories are world famous, so if it is their fault that you believe in such a false idea, other people must suffer from the same consequences. However, we all know that the vast majority of us does not. The inevitable conclusion is that it is your problem that you cannot shed that misconception about the world we live in.

They also told me that being good will eventually make you nice-looking.

I'm not sure about that, although it is implied that correct people are always handsome.

Anyway, why did they try to deceive me in the first place?

Many of the contes de fées were written initially for adults, but were watered down for children. They were changed to meet their demands.

But that's like giving them a candy whenever they ask for one!

I guess you can say that.

I think it's a plot by the adults to keep the children innocent and simple so that they are easy to manipulate.

Just as we discipline them to be honest for our purposes? Isn't it true though that children prefer stories meant for children to those for adults?

That's the issue that I just raised. Should you feed them candies instead of other more nutritious food for dinner, just because they prefer candies?

Do you want them to start thinking early in their lives that the truly good guys are not necessarily meant to win in real life? Or, life may not turn out to be as glamorous as one wishes it to be?

Well, we can say that we overdose children with optimism so that they can survive through this arduous process called life. If we already turn pessimistic as kids, it would be harder to deal with difficulties which are to come.

Yes, we can do with some optimism, ahem.

It puzzles me that I haven't heard some kind of an apology as I turned into an adult, something to the effect of: "All these years we enchanted you with fairies, pirates, and talking pigs and bears. We also told you stories in which the good guys beat the bad ones hands down. Sorry kid, those were plain lies. Forget about them. We just wanted you to believe that you are one of the selected few and look forward to what life could offer to those few, because..."

It's not that bad, I'd say.

Let me finish, please.

All right, go ahead.

"Because if you die before you procreate, there will be a big problem with passing on the genes, you see, and that is something we want to avoid at all cost."

You've reduced it to a biological problem again!

We are living organisms. We can't get away from that, I'm afraid.

It may be so, but can't we say that the grown-ups are genuinely helping the children in facing hardships in the future?

Optimism is one thing, mispresentation of life, another. Don't you remember the shock that you experienced when you found out that a Captain Hook does get his way in reality?

For me, it wasn't a big bang. The realization came slowly, so when I became fully conscious of that fact, it had been quite some time that I had suspected it.

I think it is a crime against humanity. Everyday, I struggle with the discrepancy between what we were told we should be doing and what people actually do. If we do believe in what we teach, we should at least try to practice it. But most people go about as if they have never heard of honesty, fairness, morality, integrity, dignity, correctness...

The first one to abandon the gentlemen's code in the gentlemen's world is the one who manages to snatch away more than her/his fair share.

Those guys wouldn't understand what "more than fair share" is. They think they deserve it all. Life becomes a competition to shed decency, because that is the easiest way to have it your way. Do you know what such an attitude is called?

I know what you are thinking, capitalisme sauvage, right?

Bravo, my dear comrade! Let me add that authoritarianism, totalitarianism, fascism, etc., are all guilty of the same, namely, abuse of the less powerful.

And precisely in such a world, a silver spoon and a golden crib can be of great help...

Think about it, the ones who believed in the ideal world as presented by adults lose in the end, and those who didn't give a hoot win. If this is not a conspiracy, what is?

Another way to put it is that the children who are smart enough to realize the scheme get ahead. It's all about smartness and gullibility.

The fact remains: you should have never trusted the adults who told you and made you to trust them.

Going back to the stories for children, don't you think your childhood could have been less joyful if it had not been for the authors that you mentioned, plus Astrid Lindgren and...

Pippi! Karlsson! Rasmus! Where are you?

Michael Ende and...

Atréju!

Eleanor Farjeon and...

Martin Pipppppppiiiiiiiinnnn...!

... Are you still there?