Daynote mail 1999 week 16

Daynote mail: Week of 19 - 25 April, 1999

Daynote mail and replies -- Week 16

* Link to: last modified at 23:45 GMT+2, on 25.04.1999

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Quoted mail may be shortened and is usually based on my reply quotes. There may be some minor overlap between what's on the daynote page and what is given here in order to give correct context.

(BTW, week numbering is according to the Swedish calendar, which this year started January in week 53. "Current" weekday is of course based on GMT+1.)

Monday 19.04

(Late update to Sunday's page)

Dave Farquhar responded to Friday's posting:

I hadn't thought of that outsider's perspective -- what you said reminded me that the classic analysis of the United States was written by Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman. Many contemporary U.S. historians seem to have a major problem with revisionism right now though -- almost as if they decide what their agenda is, then go find the stories that go along with that agenda and ignore the rest. Frustrating.
History, be it retrospective or more rarely current analysis, is always a story with a bias, if only because deriving a grander scheme of events from the minutiae requires substantial interpretation in a cultural matrix. The historian is always writing from his (her) own perspective, and usually for his (her) contemporaries. Not to mention writing with a particular agenda. The reader must always keep that in mind, and it can be an interesting experience to read "known" history as interpreted by someone with radically different cultural associations. Classical education may have given some taste of this, but today it is rare to find that level of discrimination (or reading habit).
On an unrelated note, congratulations on the book you're writing with Tom Syroid. I trust that's coming along.
Thank you. It is all both exciting and a challenge.
My effort's going well, but it's amazing sometimes how long it can take to write certain sections. One four-hour block might yield ten pages; the next might yield two, and those two might need another big block of time before they're even usable.
Writing about computers for a trained audience is very different from writing for an untrained audience, which is what I used to do... But it's very nice to be able to assume your audience already knows how to double-click, and very rewarding to be able to look at a chapter and see it has good stuff in it, even if it took several days to produce.
Yes, writing for a living is a strange occupation in many ways. Whether fiction or non-fiction. In retrospect, I find I have always been writing, at times very much, yet I did not see this as an occupation to pursue and was as a result surprised when I discovered that I had slid into the position of writing/translating for a living. Going for this book has been a much more premeditated and directed effort. Getting the contract was for this reason a very gratifying experience -- a tangible sense of progress.

Tuesday 20.04

(blank)

Wednesday 21.04

Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid both posted longer reflections on the Denver shooting.

To Tom I wrote:

Yes, I agree with most of what you wrote for Tuesday. And I think a large majority of parents do, even those that feel trapped in other circumstances that seem not to allow them this time.
Unfortunately, it takes only a few misguided individuals to make hell for a large number of people around them. And given the absurd amount of firepower these kids were toting... (Though note, I find *any* amount of weaponry carried by non-adults to be "absurd".) How in the world can such goings on be possible with even a modicum of normal small- community awareness. The report I heard mentioned that this was an 1800-pupil school (jr and senior high). If correct, this is also absurd. ... This is too large in terms of the impersonal atmosphere and conflicts that can arise, unmonitored, on the premises.
Once again, I suppose there will be vocal debate about the right to carry firearms in the US (though once again, I'll wager that licensing restrictions or not would be totally irrelevant to the presumably wholly illegal arms involved).
Perhaps more worrying is the way these extremes of random violence are popping up in what otherwise are felt as being calm and decent places to live. Denver has regularly been held up as one of the best places to live in the US, along with the locations of previous "incidents" of this kind. And not even down-town problem area -- Middle class, pop 65000, "normal" suburb... Just another case of individual, home-grown, incipient ethnic cleansing?
It's not a simply US thing, however, whatever the media may make of it. It is the access to firearms, legal or otherwise, and the larger absolute population base, which just makes it more frequent and dramatic in the US. England has also noted a dramatic increase of "extreme" and senseless violence (school and daycenter killings, teen and pre-teen premeditated murders of peers or toddlers). Even ostensibly placid Sweden has its share...

I commented to Bob apropos what he wrote:

"...A child in its natural state is a savage, capable of incredible cruelty without feeling remorse or even understanding the nature of his actions. Children are not born with any instinctive moral compass. They must be taught what is and is not acceptable behavior. If they are not taught acceptable behavior when very young, they will never learn...."

I disagree with this "natural savage" viewpoint, but am aware that this moral and ethic issue has been debated both ways for thousands of years. At least. Societies rules may sometimes be arbitrary, sometimes clearly for the greater good; the important point is that there are rules that the young must (learn to) follow until they become responsible adults.
I think you are more on the mark in the earlier comment "For many years now, children have been taught that misbehaving or injuring others will result in at most a slap on the wrist." Personal responsibility for one's own actions has sadly gone out of fashion.
In addition, superficially well-meaning authority has e.g. laid down that children must participate in making their own rules, rather than following fixed rules mandated by adults. The net result is commonly the total absence of set limits, coupled with the young's total disregard for adult admonitions and the adult's disinclination to get involved in conflicts concerning the children of others, and sometimes even their own.
The Swedish take on this has for many years been the deep conviction by authority that any problem, no matter how great, can be solved by simply providing "more information" to the public and parties concerned. Whenever some situation gets really out of hand, there follows a period of soul-searching (and costly investigation) about where the information flow went wrong. Because of course, the root assumption is that the people who did wrong, did so because they were not properly informed. (The Swiss take is somewhat similar, except that they place the responsibility of keeping adequately informed squarely on the shoulders of the individual.) The publicly repentant authority in the end sighingly assumes the responsibility (in the abstract, of course), vowing to inform better.
Really of course, I believe the problem is at root more to do with individuals opting out of personal involvement -- involvement with their family members, involvement with their neighbors, involvement with their schools, their community... -- involvement with the common values of the society in which they live. It is today all too easy to push this away, saying that authority XX has the responsibility to see to it that YY does or does not happen.
Abdicate personal responsibility and society soon degenerates and becomes progressively more dangerous, raising popular calls for more authority. The feedback in this process can rapidly lead to some really nasty societies to live in.

Thursday 22.04

Bob Thompson replied:

Agreed. But I don't think it's so much a matter of individuals opting out as being forced out, at least here in the US. I'm 45 years old. When I was a kid, children who misbehaved had to keep an eye out not only for their own parents, but for any adult. There was an unspoken social contract. Adults were responsible for supervising children, their own and anyone else's if they happened to be the only adult present. An adult intervened when he saw any child misbehaving or in danger. And parents did not take exception to another adult exercising his best judgement to control their children's actions. Adults were presumed to have mature judgement and good sense and children were presumed to need supervision and discipline. And that system worked pretty well for the last few thousand years or so.
Nowadays, in this country at least, any adult who is foolish enough to intervene with a child not his own is liable to be sued or arrested. For that matter, simply because it is your own child is no guarantee that some interfering government bureaucrat won't have you arrested or put through the mill of "social services." Child abusers and child molesters are no more common nowadays than they've ever been, and arguably are less so. But the Politically Correct see child abuse behind every corner.
In Common Law, children have always been presumed incompetent to testify in court, and for good reason. But nowadays, adults may be jailed on trumped up charges based on perjured testimony by children, who are not even subject to cross-examination. Read up on the Little Rascals' Daycare Center scandal that happened near here several years ago. The owner, his wife, and all the adult staff were accused of sexually molesting children. When that story broke, I told my wife I thought it was ridiculous. Could this guy be a child molester? Certainly. But how likely was it that his wife and the entire staff were also child molesters? About zero probability.
It all got started because of a lie told by one child. The interfering government social services dorks started interviewing other children. Most children are eager to please adults, so naturally the social services morons got the answers they wanted to hear. So the owner of the daycare center and his staff had their lives ruined. Dealing with other people's children nowadays is very dangerous, as these people found out. ...
Yes, it's been much the same throughout the western world. For a few years there is a veritable witchhunt for molesters under every rock and behind every door. With some very ugly and tragic situations for the people directly affected by the zeal of certain social workers. The paranoia never really lifts after such an episode, and lingering suspicions are easily aroused by perceived odd behavior or remarks by children.
Many children will today totally ignore anything adults tell them. In fact some younger hardcore cases will actively threaten to accuse the adult in question of abuse or molestation.

Friday 23.04

(blank)

Saturday 24.04

Thanks for the concern voiced. Bob's note was typical:

I hope your wife is feeling better. You haven't updated your page lately, and I was beginning to wonder if things were keeping you too busy to do so.
... Things were a bit hectic what with Isabel out of the daily routines and two kids. So my usual update yesterday got put on hold, especially when ISP-dialup froze on connect a couple of times during the day. ...

Sunday 25.04

* More from Bob, in response to what became a bit of a rant about how the state welfare system here has deteriorated:

Well, I can certainly understand why you want to relocate to the US. The government here actually lets you keep some of your money. Not all that much, but some at least. From your descriptions, the Swedish way of doing things sounds a lot like Communism to me.
In some ways I suppose it was about as close as you could have got to it west of the iron curtain.
I sometimes wonder how we let all this happen. Your ancestors were known for being ferociously independent. I mean, Russia was afraid of them, for heaven's sake. So how do the descendents of Norsemen end up being turned into a bunch of sheep?
The bold and the beautiful emigrated :)
For that matter, my own ancestors were the same (I'm of Scots extraction, as you might guess from my name, but I usually describe myself as a Viking-American), and most of us have rolled over, too.

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