[Kinto]

[Flylighter]

[Adilegian]

[Adilegian]

In a way, the Santa Claus story could be compared to an intro course to any deep discipline.

Most people who are fully vested in a give discipline, if enrolled in an intro course for that discipline, will see all sorts of ways in which the subject matter has been simplified to the point of caricature and falsehood. However, these simplifications are necessary in order for one to pass from a lack of knowledge to proficiency to mastery.

Learning often happens like that. You start with an oversimplified model, comprehend it, and then you discard that model in favor of a more complex and nuanced model. For the reasons that flylighter listed, kids aren't going to be able to enter into the moral sphere on the grounds of abstract empathy. They're taught that being nice can feel good, even if that initial good feeling is selfish, and then they outgrow that carrot-and-stick approach, usually to the point of experimenting with deliberately violating that model during teenage years (experimental cruelty).

They need a basic model to violate, though, and they also need something comforting to return to when they become dissatisfied with select experiments. That requires a concrete memory, and, if done well, the Santa Claus tradition can serve quite effectively.
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[Kinto]

Children have a sense of empathy, if an undeveloped one (one might say untrained). It's not abstract. It's innate, evolved into the structure of our brains, feelable. It's a sense one develops proficiency in, like a sense of balance. Why not reward this rather than the kid's desire for a reward?

[This Machine Kills Fascis]

[Loki Laufeyson]

[Adilegian]

[diplo]

Taking this opportunity to say, Santa Lucia Day >>>>>>>>>> Christmas (imhotep)

[CubaLibre]

[Mr. Apol]

[Adilegian]

I was out shopping today and saw pre-Christmas Santa merchandise for sale. One of them was a Dude Santa on a bike with sunglasses.

It contrasts with the image of Santa that I had growing up, which was much more of the traditional St. Nicholas variety. Because I grew up in Germany, I also had a variation of Krampus in my holiday tradition, so it was kind of a good-cop/bad-cop setup.

That witch was terrifying. It was awesome.
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[Mr. Apol]

obligatory:


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[This Machine Kills Fascis]

In my house we had a Belsnickel doll. Belsnickel's basically a watered-down Krampus, but my parents never bothered trying to convince me that he was a real dude.
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"Godzilla could be anyone."

[Toto]

[Oh God Spiders No]

[Toto]

No I do fine in the real world (I love sports and movies). All I meant was that the actual act of reading difficult non-fiction/conceptual work is difficult for me.

A lot of it is the language, which I find infuriating. I understand that complex ideas need a complex language to describe them, but I am plagued by the feeling that there is an elitist narrative running underneath a lot of things I had to read. There's nothing overly wrong with his; it just makes it difficult for me to sustain interest. Also, the practical fact of the matter is I don't know what many of the words actually mean, and lots of dictionary time is needed, which makes reading more time consuming. This is has probably exposed my lack of sophistication :(

Thank you for sharing though! I have always found, in regard to difficulty gelling with others, that it was about myself, rather than about them. They were willing to engage with me sincerely, whether or not I shared the same interests etc. But I created an unbridgeable gulf for myself by assuming they must find me wholly dull. Once I started pumping myself up with false bravado, it became easy. Socialising is like a video game; it's pretty easy once you get the tricks down.

[allensmithee]

Honestly, reading philosophy isn't hard at all, at least for a reader like me. I read slowly, but with great comprehension and with the stuff Adilegian is teaching me about annotation and such, I'm getting even better.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

@Toto

Well, I feel like I've probably painted myself in a worse light than I deserve, so don't fret about sophistication.

I should really clarify and say that I'm doing pretty great nowadays. I have a good job (that is like 90% human interaction and solid, academic, real skills) and I don't feel uncomfortable making friends or talking to people or anything. I also have good relationships with my family and girlfriend.
It's just... man, my early teens were really fucking rocky. I wonder if it might have played out differently if I had been reading histories instead of fantasies.

This is all speculation, of course. And either way I hear from a lot of people that the first chunk of adulthood is usually about cleaning up all the debris from your childhood.
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[internisus]

[The King]

internisus, how do you feel about sticky noting a book? It might be a good alternative for you.
Keep a stack of sticky notes, write the note on the top sticky note, take it off the stack and stick it to the margin of the page you're reading.

If you stick them outwards from the page they can pull double duty as a customizable fast index.
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[allensmithee]

Internisus, this is mostly going on in the IRC, and it hasn't been much of an ongoing thing: he linked a scanning of one of his books with the annotation intact, and I'm going to start trying it out on my next non-fiction reading.
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[internisus]

Ah, okay! Well, I hope it works for you. I don't think I could ever use in-book annotations because changing the book, especially by writing in my reactions, means that I can't open it again in the future and see it new.

Majesty, stickies are a good idea, but I'll probably stay with what I do because for the most part it's actually the same strategy. I keep an active journal like a moleskine or a homebound thing and just fill it up with any reactions to what I read, referencing the book and page number. Often I actually copy a quote so that I can have it more readily at hand and so that I stumble across it if I review one of these journals. It's certainly slower than using stickies or otherwise working directly within the physical book I'm reading, but I like the separateness; the notes from different books that may or may not speak to each other accumulate to create something that reflects my mind at that time.

What I do worry about sometimes is my capacity to read deeply, you know? Most of my notes tend to be variations on "This is interesting," or basically "Oh, what a well-phrased passage!" rather than a specific thought in response to the 'highlight' or related touchstones and so on. Probably if I felt the need to comment upon a text as thoroughly as Adilegian does, a separate notebook would seem annoyingly inefficient; what really concerns me is that I do not feel such an extensive need.

[Adilegian]

Real quick because it's morning and I just woke up:

[Toto]

[Predator Goose]

On the other end I've tried picking up Kant and Nietzsche and it's all dense drivel to me for all that I can understand it.
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I can no longer shop happily.

[cassievania]

books are banned in this household young lady until you recognize that ｇａｍｅｓ　ａｒｅ　ａｒｔ
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[cassievania]

if i ever have kids i will hire somebody to pretend to be santa and then train my kids to find out if santa is real, scooby-doo style

"gasp! why it's our kind neighbor old man richard!"

"yes, your mothers hired me to trick you kids into believing santa is real, and i played along so that i could sneak into your house and, every christmas eve, steal away enough comics from your parents' priceless collection so that nobody would notice! i did it for years, hoping to sell them all once i had a sizable collection of my own! and i would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
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[Adilegian]

Tell them that there is Santa and then there's the impostor Sandy Claws, who every time he touches you feels like shaking hands with a used litter box.

EDIT: Also if they are bad then they still get presents but Sandy Claws touches them all over and grossssssss.
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[BenoitRen]

My school's forced reading of books made me adverse to reading books. There's also the fact that my mind leans towards thinking in images, so books full of characters aren't appealing.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[This Machine Kills Fascis]

[Iacus]

[Sniper Honeyviper]

The Santa story completely disfavors kids in poor families.

[This Machine Kills Fascis]

[evnvnv]

[wourme]

Unfortunately, having to read a novel for school can hurt the experience of reading that book and even reading in general. I read constantly, but even with some books I really want to read I don't get to them right away--they sit on my shelf until the day that I feel like reading them. Some of my very favorite books are ones that some people have to read for school. I wonder whether my experience with them would have been different had I been assigned to read them.

I like fantasy literature, but I certainly don't read it to escape--I think real life is a lot of fun. Game of Thrones was mentioned in this thread--that's one that I'm always in the mood for when the next book comes out. I don't know that I'd say I'm addicted, as I've read the whole series pretty gradually (having to wait years between books), but I certainly find it compelling. I second HarveyQ's criticism of the series, though. George R.R. Martin has some other things that are also excellent, such as the stand-alone novel Fevre Dream and the short stories Sandkings and House of the Worm.

Kant and Nietzsche might not be the best place to start with philosophy. Kant especially is quite difficult to read when you're not used to that sort of thing. I'd recommend this book as an introduction to philosophy:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Philosophy-Classical-Contemporary-Readings/dp/0195112040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316286585&sr=8-1

Any edition is probably fine, but this is the one I have and it's very cheap used.

[Adilegian]

Dammit evnvnv this is the post of yours I've been wanting to read for probably 6 months now. Thanks.
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[Adilegian]

[This Machine Kills Fascis]

[shrugtheironteacup]

select button
a gateway drug into nonsense
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[ChoAnikiFan1994]