4 Comments »

1. mattman:
   December 14th, 2006 @ 10:13 am

   Another excellent article! You have a wonderful ability to talk about difficult topics in an understandable way.

   Unfortunately, I have already witnessed some side effects of some of those “bad” parental patterns you mentioned. I do my best to not do any of them, but I can’t control what my wife does, so it’s a mixed bag.

   I hope they come out ok eventually.

2. Noell:
   December 14th, 2006 @ 11:38 am

   mattman–I’m sure that between the mother and father there are enough bad parenting habits in any relationship! Hopefully there are lots of good ones between the two to make up for them.

   Unless there are some serious malfunctions in the way a person is parenting, I always try to remind myself that there have been billions of parents and children and we all have our weaknesses.

3. Gregg100:
   December 15th, 2006 @ 10:30 am

   I would like to expand a little on your view of empathy as a fundamental for the development of ethical standards. I consider empathy to be but one facet of the ideal I refer to as “future orientation”. What does that mean? People have been foretelling the future for millennia. We forecast the weather. People claim to be able to predict the trends of the stock market. We make plans for activities in the future, a picnic, a space shuttle launch or construction of a building. In a sense this is forecasting what is expected to happen in the future. In another sense, each of these is missing the point intended and the difference is subtle. There is a sophisticated term used in philosophy to describe the difference and the word is hermeneutics. In general, the term relates to the concept of forecasting the importance of a prediction. If I say that production in a factory will be increased 6% due to increased sales, I have given a forecast in a quantitative form. If I say that increased sales will mean that we need to add 20 more jobs to the factory and the small business in the town (restaurants, barbershops, grocery stores, etc) will benefit, I have supplied a hermeneutical forecast.

   To cite your example, if a small child gets frustrated at scratches at the child’s mother, the mother can respond by telling the child to stop because, “I don’t want you to do that.” Alternatively, the mother can tell the child to stop because, “If you continue it will hurt me.” In this case the child starts to gain future orientation and will learn that actions have consequences in the future as well as a start at the concept of empathy, an important part of future orientation.

   Unfortunately, the discipline of social science is in a very primitive state of development. The hallmark of any science is the ability to apply a theory to a given situation and make prediction about the future. Based on the theory of elliptical orbits for planets, we can predict very accurately where any planet will be at any reasonable time in the future. The state of social science has yet to reach such a capability on any significant scale. Could a social scientist predict with a high degree of certainty what the Iraqi people would do if the United States were to invade their country?

   Effective future orientation requires that the individual think in terms of cause and effect, not just the immediate effect but the long term effect on a “global basis”. The term global is meant to imply the scope of the objects, systems or people involved. It involves a perspective that transcends a fixation on single events. If a person throws a can of used crankcase oil down a street drain, it is gone. If the person is thinking on a global basis that person thinks in terms of the drain going to the ocean, the oil poisoning any living thing is comes in contact with, the oil remaining toxic for a decade or more and if many people do the same thing, the eventual poisoning of potential food sources, etc. That is global thinking.

   National foreign policy is often tasked with the challenge of winning the support of major populations of people with a broad range of cultural backgrounds. Policy makers need hermeneutic future orientation. It is not enough for a social scientist to forecast that the world population will exceed eight billion people in the year 2020. That quantitative, scientifically accurate information does not provide the policy maker with interpretations that tell him that millions of people will be looking for work, will be starving, will be pressing the fresh water supply to the breaking point, will result in over fishing the oceans, will turn to religious fundamentalism, etc.

   At present, training for future orientation will need to come from the home. There are no K-12 classes that provide this kind of training or background. At the college level, there are very scientific classes that enable the student to make quantitative predictions without the important half, the hermeneutic half.

   I encourage you to think about bringing up children to have a future orientation including the important concept of empathy and what such a concept would entail on your part. An ideal society will be future oriented.

4. Ed Darrell:
   December 15th, 2006 @ 6:29 pm

   Hey, this isn’t too off-topic: Noell, you should get yourself over to P. Z. Myers’ blog. Someone asked him about books for kids, to introduce the kids to atheism.

   Got any ideas? There will likely be some in comments — in any case, go see: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/12/a_book_request.php

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