Discussing Santa Claus with Fiancee

[hunterrose]

I don't think it's the irrationality of the act that is at issue here. It is the irrationality of the mind that would permit such an act. And that matters.

It matters, as an reflection of their mind, when a friend is unwilling to stop an irrational behavior, agreed. Some behaviors matter to the point that the only proper course (when they are unwilling to change) would be to no longer associate with them.

But I would disagree (with Meta) that all irrational behaviors matter to that extent.

Irrationality is always ... anti-life, and when ones acts toward one's own death, one is acting on the premise of suicide.

That's rather nebulous. Do you mean that

1. it is suicidal to befriend anyone who acts irrationally in any way
   
2. it isn't necessarily suicidal to befriend someone who acts irrationally, but it is suicidal to associate with them
   
3. it is suicidal for me to act irrationally, but it isn't necessarily suicidal for me to associate with others who act irrationally
   

???

Mislabeling the family of food that a Tomato is in is fundamentally different...

In terms of its affect on the child's capacity to deal with reality, how is a false statement about tomatoes fundamentally different from a false statement about Santa?

[IAmMetaphysical]

Why do you confuse "associate" with "appease"??? The issue was not whether or not one associate's with a woman who is irrational, but whether one decides to build a family with her, which will include sacrificing one's own values and principles to her irrational beliefs.

A "false statement about santa claus" is not just that. Because Santa Claus does not exist. Convincing someone of the existence of something which does not exist, and which is logically impossible, does hamr their capacity to properly understand the real reality. Simply mislabeling a tomato does no such thing. Tomatoes actually exist, and telling someone that they are similar to other vegetables does not harm their ability to make logical conclusions on their own. You are trying to equate saying that something IS, with saying that something is something in particular. There is a distinction.

[piz]

In terms of its affect on the child's capacity to deal with reality, how is a false statement about tomatoes fundamentally different from a false statement about Santa?

Because for all intents and purposes, everyone treats a tomato as a vegetable and not as a fruit? When I first learned that a tomato was a fruit and not a vegetable, I just thought "Hm, interesting" as I integrated that fact into my technical knowledge of fruits and vegetables. But when I make a grocery list, I put tomatos under the heading Veggies, not Fruit, and my cognitive ability isn't harmed in the least by the supposed contradiction.

I would see nothing wrong in teaching a child that Santa Claus is an amusing fable or a cute story that goes along with the holiday. The child would know it's fiction and could enjoy it on that basis. I do have a problem with teaching a child that Santa Claus is real.

[KevinD]

I would see nothing wrong in teaching a child that Santa Claus is an amusing fable or a cute story that goes along with the holiday. The child would know it's fiction and could enjoy it on that basis.

Even there, you'd have to be careful. Can a very young child really understand what it means for a story to be "fictional"?

Make-believe is a dangerous luxury, which only those who have grasped the distinction between the real and the imaginary can afford.

[IAmMetaphysical]

A child's concept of "make-believe" is very strong and very accurate.

[JMeganSnow]

According to a number of parents I've encountered, filling your kids' heads with bull is just a way of teaching them an extremely valuable lesson: sometimes people are full of bull.

I've seen kids raised in households full of the most egregious kind of bull turn out fine and ones raised in hyper-anti-bull households turn out all screwed up. I don't think it's important whether you Santa or don't-Santa. What is FAR more important is that you love your children and treat them that way. Get that part right and they will easily weather goofy things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Oh, and, btw, Kevin is right about how you must approach a romantic relationship, ESPECIALLY with a woman. If you want her to continue to have romantic feelings towards you, it is absolutely necessary for you to consider how romantic your actions are before you do anything else with her. It's actually not that hard if you follow a fairly simple rule: whatever else is happening, she needs to know that she is extremely important to you.

This doesn't mean "don't argue with her". Personally, I have times when I'm just spoiling for a "fight" and I would adore anyone that cared about me enough to sit down and really argue out a point at length, ditching everything else that he might want to do at that moment. What it does mean, is that you must make it clear that she is more important than whatever point you wanted to make.

[IAmMetaphysical]

...make it clear that she is more important than whatever point you wanted to make.

And what makes someone them?

[IAmMetaphysical]

I've seen kids raised in households full of the most egregious kind of bull turn out fine and ones raised in hyper-anti-bull households turn out all screwed up. I don't think it's important whether you Santa or don't-Santa. What is FAR more important is that you love your children and treat them that way. Get that part right and they will easily weather goofy things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

The above is based on a limited amount of data and in no way does correlation amount to causation. I am not saying that telling your kids that Santa exists will kill them or make them totally incapable of living, but it is NOT GOOD, and shouldn't be done.

[~Sophia~]

Oh, and, btw, Kevin is right about how you must approach a romantic relationship, ESPECIALLY with a woman. If you want her to continue to have romantic feelings towards you, it is absolutely necessary for you to consider how romantic your actions are before you do anything else with her. It's actually not that hard if you follow a fairly simple rule: whatever else is happening, she needs to know that she is extremely important to you.

This doesn't mean "don't argue with her"....What it does mean, is that you must make it clear that she is more important than whatever point you wanted to make.

Amen.

[IAmMetaphysical]

Can someone please define romantic is this context?

[JMeganSnow]

Hmm . . . affection that inspires sexual desire.

[IAmMetaphysical]

I hope (and know) that what inspires sexual attraction in my gf for me, is not necessarily how affectionate I am, but because of what I do in relation to all of existence, not just her, this includes arguments we might have (which we don't) about reality.

I am affectionate to her, but it is not a primary, it is a result of more fundamental things, e.g. my sense of justice. IF I was affectionate to her, while she was being irrational, it would be a great injustice, and I know that she would not think it was romantic.

[piz]

Even there, you'd have to be careful. Can a very young child really understand what it means for a story to be "fictional"?

Depends on the child (and the parent). Some people were horrified that I took my four-year-old to see Jurassic Park when it first came out, fearing he'd be traumatized. To the contrary, he loved it!

Of course, he had a firm grasp of the difference between reality and fiction. Just as importantly, I knew that he had that grasp.

If the parent knows what the child can handle, there should be no problem.

[JMeganSnow]

I hope (and know) that what inspires sexual attraction in my gf for me, is not necessarily how affectionate I am . . .

Perhaps I was unclear. There's a significant difference between "being affectionate" and "having affection" for someone. Something is romantic if it represents the kind of affection that inspires sexual desire.

It is very easy, with women, to be affectionate and still not actually communicate affection to her. Actually, this is pretty easy to do with kids, too. And probably men, come to think of it.

If you'd like a concrete example: for a long time when I was still dating I had the habit of coming home, finding my boyfriend wherever he was in the house, and giving him a hug and a kiss. This continued until I was greeted with the following statement: "Oh, come on, are you horny again?!"

My thought: well, not any more. So sorry I intruded on your personal space.

The result: some hours later, when it was "convenient" for him to pay attention to me, I had no interest in him whatsoever.

Of course, I may be more sensitive to this kind of thing than many women because I have extremely low tolerance for people that don't walk the talk. The thing that you have to convey at all times (and I think women have to learn how to do this as well) is: even though you've said something that I don't like, you are still major huge important to me.

Heh, ideally you want to convey: I like you so much that I'd prefer not to disturb you by informing you that you've said something I didn't like, but of course I must do so because I know, long-term, that it will only make both of us unhappy if I don't tell you, ever so politely, that I think there may be a conflict here, and that's just the kind of guy that I am: always looking out for our long-term happiness 'cause I want this relationship to keep on smooth sailing forever.

Given, that may seem a little smarmy, but the idea is that in a romantic relationship that's what you should actually be feeling, and not "OMG I can't believe you said that you're so irrational and it makes me crazy."

[IAmMetaphysical]

Thanks for that clarification, but I don't think you and Kevin agree. Re-read his post.

[hunterrose]

Why do you confuse "associate" with "appease"???

Because your position is that all associations with irrational people require appeasement?

Convincing someone of the existence of something which does not exist, and which is logically impossible, does harm their capacity to properly understand the real reality.

In what specific way is their capacity diminished???

When I make a grocery list, I put tomatos under the heading Veggies, not Fruit, and my cognitive ability isn't harmed in the least by the supposed contradiction.

Exactly. You realized you were wrong about tomatoes and mentally put them in their proper category of "vegetable". A child eventually realizes that she was wrong about Santa and puts him in his proper category of "not real". Neither harms one's cognitive capacity, because there's no reason why mistakenly believing one datum is true would affect one's capacity to analyze of the truth of other data.

you must make it clear that she is more important than whatever point you wanted to make.

Indeed. It's nonsensical to divorce (or even have protracted arguments with) the love of your life simply because she believes sweeping someone's feet is unlucky. I don't think that eventually leaving such an irrelevant (albeit irrational) issue alone would be appeasement.

[IAmMetaphysical]

Because your position is that all associations with irrational people require appeasement?

Where did I say that? I thought we were talking about marrying and having children with someone. Certainly that does not include in it "all associations."

In what specific way is their capacity diminished???

Well there are two ways, which aren't necessarily interrelated.

1- To a child, especially a very young one, their parents are almost oracles to them, the source of a lot of their higher level abstract knowledge. To a child, who is integrating his lower levels concepts from experience, to mistakenly integrate a higher level concept such as "magical elf" into his normally sound hierarchy of knowledge, based on first hand experience, which contradicts this knowledge, will raise all types of hell in his thinking, and stunt his ability to induce his own higher level concepts correctly. If he accepts that it is possible for a fat old elf to fly to every house in the world in one night, he has rejected cause and effect, the three spacial dimensions and the fourth temporal dimension. This will have an effect on his psycho-epistemology and his method of integrating his experience from then on.

2- When a child learns that his parents have lied to him, he will see them as hypocrites, and will not trust them as much as he had. He will not listen to them when they tell him that honesty is a virtue, and will see no reason to tell them the truth about anything. This type of divide between parent and child is not a good one.

Edited November 15, 2006 by IAmMetaphysical

[Ifat Glassman]

Jennifer: I have been giving thought to this approach you are advocating about romantic relationships, and there is a problem with it: A distinction is needed here.

To make this easier, let's assume that one side is 100% rational, and the other side is 70% rational. Let's say the man is 100% and the woman is 70% for convenience. The man and the woman don't know each other thoroughly and completely.

The man has only witnessed the woman exercise her 70% rationality in her professional life (but not in her spiritual life). He assumes that she is 100% rational because he has seen the 70% 100% of the time he has been with her.

At some point (let's say after marriage and 4 kids), he begins to discover the remaining 30%.

The good, healthy thing for him would be to carefully examine her mind, and eventually, after learning about the 30%, to divorce her.

Now the couple goes to a counselor who tells the man to be accepting of his wife, to give her a feeling of being loved. Now let me tell you, because I have seen it happening: attempting to follow this advice, and to make a breach between one's judgement and one's emotions, is a very powerful destructive force. It quickly reduces a man to an unhappy bundle of self-loathing fakeness. Whenever he tries to convince the woman of some rational argument she feels threatened, and he has to choose between "accepting her" ("that's okay honey, I still love you") and keep interrogating her.

In the situation you are describing, on the other hand, the man and the woman are both rational. Now suppose the man finds something about the woman that seems irrational to him (but in reality it isn't really irrational): There are two possible attitudes, that when taken to the extreme are:

1) To immediately suspect fundamental irrationality, and change attitude to be hostile and/or not caring.

2) To trust your previous judgement that the woman is rational, and persist in trying to find the logic in her arguments while remaining affectionate until you understand the arguments completely, can point at the argument where the flaw is (or realize there is no flaw), and conclude with certainty whether or not the woman is irrational.

In both cases there is a correlation between the judgement of the woman, the experienced emotions, and the expressed emotions.

I think that the choice between options 1 and 2 reveals a person's premises about people in general. I don't know what premises exactly yet. Maybe someone here has an explanation?

But I would choose option 2: which means that if my lover appears to have irrational thoughts about some subject, I would invest a lot of time in trying to find the logic in his arguments, because from past experience I know him to be logical, and contradictions don't exist. If I have to choose between believing the suspected evidence for bad, or trusting my previous knowledge of good, I choose the later, automatically.

Huh, I just realized that choosing 2 can also apply to the case of 100% and 70% that I described, so I guess I need to explain further the attitude that I think should be taken, and where the line between affectionate and inquiring and cold interrogation should pass. The line should be the amount of credit you give to the person in question, based on what one already knows about them.

And as for the other part of ths thread:

You realized you were wrong about tomatoes and mentally put them in their proper category of "vegetable". A child eventually realizes that she was wrong about Santa and puts him in his proper category of "not real". Neither harms one's cognitive capacity, because there's no reason why mistakenly believing one datum is true would affect one's capacity to analyze of the truth of other data.

You are very much wrong, and I am the living proof for that. It is VERY important to teach your child the pleasure that learning about the real world can provide, the pleasure of using logic to gain knowledge. If you teach them that pleasure should and can be sought in imaginary things, they will seek their pleasure in those things, and not in earthly things, which directly harms the child's ability to deal with the world. And since learning about the world and taking things on faith are contradictory, you cannot teach a child to do both.

Teaching a child that imaginary creatures are real is evil.

[KevinD]

[L]et's assume that one side is 100% rational, and the other side is 70% rational. Let's say the man is 100% and the woman is 70% for convenience. The man and the woman don't know each other thoroughly and completely.

The man has only witnessed the woman exercise her 70% rationality in her professional life (but not in her spiritual life). He assumes that she is 100% rational because he has seen the 70% 100% of the time he has been with her.

At some point (let's say after marriage and 4 kids), he begins to discover the remaining 30%.

Anyone who undertakes to marry another person without knowing them "thoroughly and completely" cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be "100% rational."

It's more like 0%, if you asked me.

[piz]

Exactly. You realized you were wrong about tomatoes and mentally put them in their proper category of "vegetable". A child eventually realizes that she was wrong about Santa and puts him in his proper category of "not real". Neither harms one's cognitive capacity, because there's no reason why mistakenly believing one datum is true would affect one's capacity to analyze of the truth of other data.

Regarding the tomato, you have it exactly backwards. The proper category for the tomato is fruit, by the definition thereof. But they are used in the same way as vegetables, so are considered vegetables in everyday situations, like making grocery lists.

One's cognitive capacity is not harmed by calling them vegetables in everyday situations and fruit in "technical" situations because there is no contradiction between the different contexts.

With Santa, on the other hand, when a child learns that a cherished, deeply held belief is false, it can cause him to doubt the validity of everything he's learned and, perhaps more importantly, damage his confidence in his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. In addition, even though ultimately the child must decide to accept things that he's taught, he does depend heavily on his parents to help him make sense of the world. Learning that his parents have permitted him to persist in a false belief can make him lose his trust in his primary guides (and rightly so). That's the potential harm in allowing children to believe that Santa Claus is real.

[Time_Maker]

Kevin Delaney: You stated "Anyone who undertakes to marry another person without knowing them "thoroughly and completely" cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be "100% rational."". That is completely true. Marriage (or any other type of close relationships) without full, complete knowledge of the person is a contradiction in itself.

plz: You said "One's cognitive capacity is not harmed by calling them vegetables in everyday situations and fruit in "technical" situations because there is no contradiction between the different contexts." I completely disagree. Words mean things. Different words have different definitions. To include the word "tomato" in the definition of "fruit" would be to destroy the word "fruit". HOWEVER, all things consider, that destruction is tiny, and for the most part, "doesn't exist".

However, believing that Santa Clause is real is a major problem, which you correctly identified.

The next question is, how much damage does Santa Clause cause to a child. I think, it depends on the individual child. Some children can overcome it. Other children can't.

I suppose an analogy of Santa Clause could be like breaking a leg. Depending on how bad the break is (or how serious a child believes in Santa Clause), the injury could be as bad as a contusion (or almost no damage) to a complete multiple break (or a complete loss of self esteem). However, for most people, its someplace in between.

[Inspector]

Okay, this has gone on long enough: It's Santa Claus.

[hunterrose]

Hehe, when I first saw the title, I thought this thread was about movie commentary

Where did I say that [all associations with irrational persons require appeasement]?

Well, you said (in reply to Inspector) that it's not about the irrational act itself, but about the irrational mind. Isn't an irrational mind present in any association with an irrational person?

If he accepts that it is possible for a fat old elf to fly to every house in the world in one night, he has rejected cause and effect, the three spacial dimensions and the fourth temporal dimension.

Believing that Santa has a super-fast sleigh that allows him to visit everyone doesn't reject causation or dimensions.

When a child learns that his parents have lied to him, he will ... not trust them as much as he had. He will not listen to them when they tell him that honesty is a virtue.

Learning that his parents have permitted him to persist in a false belief can make him lose his trust in his primary guides (and rightly so).

On what issues would you rationally want a child to blindly trust his parents? And why would being punk'd on some irrelevant prank like Santa rationally lead a person to think that his parents would lie about, say, hazardous things?

I guess I need to explain ... where the line between affectionate and inquiring and cold interrogation should pass. The line should be the amount of credit you give to the person in question, based on what one already knows about them.

I'd say the line is that some irrational behaviors rationally are up to individual preference as to whether they ought to be accepted in a mate, and some irrational behaviors ought to be dumping grounds for every rational person (e.g. serial killery).

When a child learns that a cherished, deeply held belief is false, it can cause him to doubt the validity of everything he's learned and, perhaps more importantly, damage his confidence in his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy.

I strongly disagree with that. What kind of idiot child is going to start putting her hand into flames because Santa's demystification makes her no longer is sure that fire is hot? At any rate, reality would quickly put such doubts at ease.

[aleph_0]

Now, I like to argue. Hell, I love to argue.

Now that's what I'm talking about! When I'm in a relationship where we don't argue, I get worried. It gets me thinking that the woman doesn't stand up for herself--has no conviction. I don't even care if I'm wrong or if she's wrong. I want at least one good fight every year, and a regular diet of minor fights in-between. We're talking bare minimum. I can't be with a woman that doesn't know how to disagree.

Naturally, I don't want fights over core issues like god. I could never have a long-term relationship with a theist. But politics and art are the perfect sources of argument. Politics is sufficiently inessential to a person's sense of life that I could easily have a long-term relationship with somebody whose politics are diametrical to mine, yet it's important enough to have a slam-your-first-on-the-table, wake-up-the-neighbors-shouting fight. Art is intimately tied to one's sense of life, but you can still have a backwards view of art and live a good life. My current girlfriend and I have an on-going argument over taxation. She also is a Warhol fan and listens to hard metal. I wring my hands in anticipation of the day when we really explode at each other. I can see it already. She's a tough one. She might make me bleed. I love it.

[Ifat Glassman]

Anyone who undertakes to marry another person without knowing them "thoroughly and completely" cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be "100% rational."

It's more like 0%, if you asked me.

So how rational (in percentage) is a religious woman, who wants to tell her child that Santa exists?

Suppose your answer is X%.

Could you explain the mathematical relation, of how:

100&70 ---> 0 but

100&X ---> 100 ?

Also, could you please explain what you mean by "accept someone"?

As for the rationality of someone who marries a woman who is 70% rational, and thinks she is 100%.

There can be several reasons for that:

1) The woman simply never talked about her attraction to religion, the supernatural etc', and the man never asked.

2) The woman's irrationality developed with time, until finally it burst out, much like a virus that lays inactive in the body for years.

3) The man did not, at the time, realize the significance of an "inner world" (probably he was not aware of his own as well).