Tell The Truth

Mary Shelley's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. This name is fairly unknown too in modern times outside small circles of the enlightened. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first feminist. And whether you agree with feminism or not it is hard not to agree with Mary's idea. In fact probably the only reason her name is not set in gold and adorned in every corner of the world is that William Godwin wrote a posthumous biography of her that was considered way too honest, and it is, even by today's standards.

http://zgrossbart.blogspot.com/2007/11/library-problem.html

My wife and I have several hundred books on our shelves, and I'm preparing to fully integrate them (heck, we've been married ten years...I think it's safe to say if she hasn't gotten sick of me yet she's not likely to!) this month.

Consider the comment about divorce. I think it is false. What proportion of divorces come after 10 years or more? Well, it can't be too low: Googling turns up the median length of first marriages that end in divorce is 7.85 years. A 'median' means that half are more and half less. So ten years of marriage doesn't make you "safe" from divorce at all.

Worse, suppose she was getting sick of him. Would she tell him? Probably not. If she did, it could poison their relationship, make things worse, or even cause a divorce. She could ruin the option of staying by admitting she was considering leaving.

That is one of the ways which marriages suppress open discussion and problem solving. Of course, things don't have to be that way. But the fact is they are. A marriage has to be unrecognizably unusual for that to change.

Some people say we should not torture terrorists because it doesn't produce reliable information. They say that the person being tortured can just lie, or not answer: nothing about torture actually causes them to truthfully reveal information.

What they are really saying is this: people can act rationally while being tortured.

That's possible. But consider that people rarely act rationally when not being tortured. And torture is adapted to make it harder to think clearly and rationally.

I don't know how reliable torture is, but it definitely does do something to cause truthful answers. It's adapted to impair rational thinking in humans. (This doesn't mean it was consciously designed this way, it could simply have evolved by people using whichever methods turned out the best results.)

It's easy to think, "There is no rational reason torture would work." But that is a mistake. Torture isn't about rational reasons. It's about hurting people very, very badly in order to coerce them and prevent reason from playing any role in the proceedings. Torture isn't about having a discussion.

Here is some conventional parenting advice:

Good kids don't suddenly go bad. Drug abuse, irresponsible and early sex, and teen opposition to authority are all preventable acts.

The examples chosen are telling. What, in particular, constitutes a teenager "going bad"? Drugs, sex, and disobedience. Comments on each follow:

I don't like recreational drugs. I think they are bad. But it's not the end of the world if someone smokes some pot. It's common, and arguably better than getting drunk. It's definitely not true that a child has "gone bad" if he tries some drugs. Lots of the parents reading this advice tried drugs when they were younger, and don't consider themselves to be ruined because of it.

If teens have sex, it's ridiculous to say they have gone bad. Our culture values sex very highly. Why shouldn't they want to have this thing which is held up as one of the best parts of life? Adults are the hypocrites here. They teach that sex is good, then they tell young people not to do it. Why not? Because that's slutty. Because sex is only for married people. Because young people "aren't ready". And so on. But there are no actual reasons on this list. What preparation do young people lack? What about marriage makes sex work better? Calling youthful sex "slutty", and therefore bad, is just labeling without giving a reason.

What's going on regarding sex is that our culture believes that as great as sex is, it's also sinful, unless there are special circumstances (marriage) which justify the sex. This is a horrible way to approach life which is very good at hurting people. It tells teens that sex is great, but then rebukes them if they try it. It tells people to enjoy sex, but to feel bad about having sex. It's created a culture where words like "slut" and "nympho" mean something. People are hateful towards girls who have and enjoy sex, while simultaneously being jealous.

Add to this that young people are considered most attractive, and also pressured most strongly to avoid sex, and you have a recipe for hurting children. But how do parents react? By blaming children who have sex as having "gone bad". That's so unfair. Teens are put in an impossible situation, and then somehow the whole thing is blamed on their age.

Lastly we have opposition to authority. This, we are told, is preventable. What would that mean? That teens obey without question and without independent thought. Obey who? Authorities of all types: parents, teachers, priests, government officials, even experts with PhDs.

This highlights one of the major clashes between conventional parenting and reason. Parents wanted their children to "listen" (obey), whereas reason says we should discover the truth and do that. Parents want to assume they are right, instead of finding out what is right. This is a way of entrenching error -- if they make a mistake, it won't be corrected.

http://www.marriagemax.com/tip.asp

The people I know who have the best marriages are people who went through hell in their relationship. They "got over" their past because they used it as a catalyst to IMPROVE their situation. In other words, the painful events inspired them to change themselves and their marriage.

Why get married if it's probably going to hurt you?

Maybe there are some answers to that question. But when people decide to get married, they don't first answer the question. They don't face the issue. They just assume it won't happen to them because they are in love. That's not rational. The people who get hurt felt in love, too, and it didn't help them. You need to think of a genuine reason your situation is different, or it's not reasonable to believe that it is.

How predictable? You can record them, one-size-fits-all, on audio CDs:

Your program is a no brainer if you just think about it...the CD's explain in full color what we have been doing to each other.

Isn't it amazing that marriages cause the participants to hurt each other in such standardized and predictable ways? But what's worse is that when people marry, they think this won't happen to them. That's unreasonable. They should consider marriage dangerous because it hurts many people, and should find a defense against these problems.

Marriage hurt all these people. There are lots lots of comments like:

We have been married 8.5 years and have been in counseling almost seven years.

So, most of their time together has been messed up enough that they wanted counseling. By the way, marriage counseling is unpleasant, stay away.

Here is another type of comment where someone finds his or her spouse does not even want to try anymore:

My husband wanted a divorce. I was out of hope ... I registered for the lone ranger track ... There I was wanting to save my marriage and my husband could care less. I wondered how a marriage could be saved when only one partner was willing to participate.

And this is how much marriages can hurt people:

We've been married for 15 years, have four children and were on the brink of divorce. The emotional pain I had inside was so bad it was almost a physical pain.

(And the person goes on to talk about how this was hurting her children and her heart was broken.)

And consider this:

I am blown away with how far we have come in just 10 weeks. Everything is different. My husband and I are more in love now than we were on our wedding day. 10 weeks ago I couldn't stand being in the same room with him and today I know with all my heart that we will be together forever. Divorce will never be an option for us.

When they got married they were sure it would work. Now that they've experienced marriage failing, perhaps they should be a little less confident. A little more cautious and thoughtful. But, no, very quickly they are back to feeling completely sure that their relationship is special, and they won't divorce.

What's especially interesting to me is that you can take people who hate to be in the same room, and you can get them to fall madly in love within a few weeks. That's how shallow love is: you can create it, quickly, even between people who hate each other. And you can tell it's the real thing, because they act like it. They feel nothing could ever go wrong. Here she even explains how this love, that was created between her and a hated enemy in two months, is actually stronger than the one she originally married over.

Some assume that the purpose or goal of reading something is to read every word, in order. This may even be taken to mean subvocalizing every word. This view stinks of propriety and blind obedience. It has no use but to satisfy an external standard of what constitutes reading.

The true goal of reading something is to learn what ideas are in the document. How to best accomplish this should be approached with an open mind. In many cases, some of the words are not important. At times, some parts are best read more than once; even though that is not necessary in order to be able to say one has read it, it may be necessary in order for one to *understand* it.

Sometimes parts should be read out of order, or parts should be skipped. Sometimes it is most important to stop reading any words for a moment and recollect what the purpose of this section is, to better understand what one is reading.

Please read thoughtfully.