Kids These Days...

I feel like I'm an old fart or something, but more and more younger folks that I meet online these days seem like they didn't have a good upbringing. Their parents did a terrible job if they let them grow up to be such self-centered, uncaring people.

It seems like a lot of kids were brought up with the idea that they are entitled to happiness. It's almost as if their parents catered to their every whim and spoiled them until they could no longer comprehend not getting what they want without putting forth effort.

A parent's job is not to provide kids with everything they want. Parents are supposed to provide for their child's needs, but another big part of their job is teach their kids the right lessons. Happiness is not something people are entitled to. Happiness is something people work hard to achieve.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that much of the value in things that make a person happy comes from the effort in achieving it. Isn't it much more rewarding to work hard to achieve a goal and then eventually achieve it?

Without this basic lesson, these spoiled kids end up being emotionally unable to understand how to find happiness in life. Everything in their life that doesn't go their way defies their whole world view so is incomprehensibly shattering. Everything that does go their way provides minimal happiness because that's merely the way things should be.

It makes me sad how clueless so many parents are. I wonder if they even comprehend that they are ruining their children's lives. I consider myself lucky that I have great parents.

Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told

Psychology is such an interesting field.

Apparently researchers have found that toddlers don't seem to apply lessons in anticipation, but rather they do it in hindsight. Basically, telling a toddler to do something for a hypothetical situation that the toddler isn't already in will not seem to stick. However, when the toddler is later in that situation, the toddler will be able to remember what he has learned.

The development of the human mind is so amazing.

Incompetence, Perceiving It, And Politics

I love the field of psychology. It gives so much insight into the way people around us behave on a daily basis. I stumbled across and article discussing the relationship between incompetence, the ability to perceive incompetence and how it applies to politics.

One of the main marketing points the Republican Party has been playing on is how the Democrats are "elitist." They push for candidates similar to George W. Bush, who are very incompetent by any objective measures that I can conceive of.

The article discusses how the most incompetent people overestimate their own skills the most and underestimate the skills of others the most. This applies perfectly to Sarah Palin. Her attitude of "my way is the right way" shows this basic tendency to not realize her own shortcomings and to believe that other people's way is wrong.

The article also discusses how the most competent people accurately estimate their own skills but somewhat overestimate the skills of others. This applies perfectly to Barack Obama. He has the attitude that he can work with others because he believes they they are capable of coming to an agreement with each other.

When given the choice of these two types of mindsets, I think it's pretty clear which mindset I would prefer leading our country.

I would have liked to have drawn a comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain, however, I don't think John McCain is nearly as incompetent as Sarah Palin (aside from him choosing Palin as his running mate). The comparison with Palin is still important, however, because there is a very legitimate chance that Sarah Palin might become president if John McCain is elected, given his age and history of cancer.

The Real Differences Between Liberals And Conservatives

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

This is a very interesting lecture discussing the fundamental differences in the liberal and conservative ways of thought in terms of moral psychology.

Sadly, this last segment is all stuff that I've recommended to my friends on many occasions as common sense. I just wish more people understood.