“What are we doing right now, in the real world, just because we’re like that?”

To answer that question, I would like to remind that “we” (actually, who is who?) in the context of the real world are not just “that irrational and unfair”, but also forced to be either/or, particularly, when the apparent size presupposes so. If we equal the metaphorical size to the abstract weakness, we may admit that the weak ones are forced to depend on stronger ones, while the strong are very much encouraged to exploit the weaker. Why? I do not know.

I think this is like the other blog entry about Darfur and the teddy bear teacher. Its a matter of psychology. We have to look at others, as OTHERS. There probably would be some kind of xenophobia at first, and there might be a civil rights movement for the little people, and we might treat them equally in the eyes of our laws and such, but there will always be some kind of differentiation between us and them… that OTHERNESS that we just can’t seem to help to make.

T H White has kind of done the thought experiment - you should read Mistress Masham’s Repose without delay.

Extraordinary writer, T H White. Underappreciated. Makes J K Rowling look like very thin gruel indeed.

Oh yes. i must re-read The Once and Future King.

Could we have a little more scientific detail behind “exactly like us”? An exactly similar genome and environment?

Otherness is one thing, and justifying mistakes on the account of otherness is something else. The important definition is not, in my eyes, the extent of the otherness, but what it is good for. In addition, I might (not without fear) ask myself why the otherness cannot be completely avoided. Is there a reason for why different kinds must interact with each other by the current, perhaps, too stressful setup?

If they’re genuinely “just like us” then we can expect them to be just as prejudiced/tolerant, just as selfish/altruistic, just as brutal/compassionate, etc. etc. as us. And we can expect them to behave in this manner towards each other as well as us (and presumably towards the inhabitants of “Smaller Earth” as and when it’s discovered.)

Given this shared set of social/ethical attitudes/values, who ends up ‘on top’ would likely come down to socio-economic factors and have little to do with how big people behave towards little people.

We treat animals a bit like second class “citizens.” And if Borrowers looked like miniature coyotes we would probably treat them the same way. But seeing as they look like us, would we necessarily do the same thing?
In the past, people have been segregated because they were different. Blacks and Jews are examples of that. But has anyone except for kids ever treated someone badly because of how tall or short they are? Not much. I think that the simple fact that we look the same would generate a peaceful co-existence between humans and Borrowers.

I wonder why everybody (here and there) wants to be “The Bigger Earth”. Why “we? Why “us” Why not “who”? Clarifications are wanted.

Sammy,

Excellent point about the coyote-appearance.

Actually though I think people other than kids do treat people at least somewhat badly because of how tall or short they are. They treat them differently, at least. There are studies that indicate that taller people do better in job interviews for instance.

Oh, and another example…this is depressing…but most Tutsis are tall while most Hutus are short. The Belgians in Rwanda treated Tutsis as ’superior’ simply because of their looks, including their height; this meant they treated the Hutus worse. This was not a good arrangement…

A similar situation is described in the SF novel “The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (wiki ref below).

In this case, however, the aliens are a mixture of races: some small, some similar in size to humans.

Also, the Goodies (UK comedy: wiki ref below), did a show satirising apartheid in which racial segregation in South Africa was outlawed and “apart-height” introduced to replace it: short people became the new slaves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God’s_Eye
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goodies

Benson,

Yes, the kids are not wrong in many adults view. Recalling your example, I imagine that being a tall Hutus or a short Tutsis did not make any difference whenever these people remained invisible but judged on the account of their ethnicity. The human mind usually chooses prejudice instead of real characteristics. An instinctual holistic method to screen for better workers? Obviously, another problem is whether size at all matters here, and I wonder what the Belgians would have used it for.

I wish it were true that tallness and shortness don’t matter. But then you’d think skin color wouldn’t matter…and the shape of your nose… For some reason, everything seems to matter, potentially.

In my post I assumed we bigger people would be in control–we would either oppress the smaller people or let them be equals. Why not imagine that we are smaller? Well, no problem with that. I just happened to imagine it the other way.

Are the bigger always in control? It seems like common sense, but the Hutu/Tutsi example is interesting. One of these groups slaughtered nearly a million of the other about 10 years ago. Sammy–I’ll let you guess whether the bigger Tutsi did the slaughtering or the smaller Hutu.

Benson

Yes, the kids are not wrong in the view of many adults. Recalling your example, I imagine that being a tall Hutus or a short Tutsis did not make any difference whenever these people remained invisible but judged on the account of their ethnicity. The human mind usually chooses prejudice instead of real characteristics. An instinctual holistic method to screen for better workers? Obviously, another problem is whether size at all matters here, and I wonder what the Belgians would have used it for.

For some potential reason, not everything is important. There may be true reasons, including embarrassing ones, for what the mind cannot always imagine what it may be important and informative. Since the object here is a potential characteristic of oneself or one’s family member, typically, nobody wants to imagine the worse. What about reality then?

I think we would have little to fear though it might be prudent to initiate mass innoculation against small pox. We might look forward to an authentic version of ‘A Doll’s House’.

Sammy: What can I say to a bright and sensitive 10 year old? School age children can be very cruel, insensitive to others, and intolerant of anyone who is different, especially, someone who is more perceptive and more sensitive than the average child. When I entered the university, I found that the atmosphere was different; that I and almost all my classmates were equally sensitive, curious about the world and idealistic. However, after the university, entering the world of jobs, bills to pay,
supermarkets, unsought relations with friends of friends and in-laws, I discovered that the world outside the university classroom is basically like that of primary or secondary school. So prepare yourself. The real world functions on exactly the same level that you experience in your classroom or in the school yard. Good luck.

Amos: “…I discovered that the world outside the university classroom is basically like that of primary or secondary school. So prepare yourself. The real world functions on exactly the same level that you experience in your classroom or in the school yard.”

And I wonder to what extent we experience what we expect to experience? See what we expect to see?

I work in a university but I don’t find the people in it to be remarkably different — better or worse — to the people outside it.

I expect to have pleasant interactions with most people, and generally I do.

To some extent, the world is what you make of it.

Keith: We aren’t going to get far arguing about whether universities are similar to other atmospheres, since I left the university in 1970 in another country than yours, since universities may have changed since then, and since my perception of the university is that of young student and yours is that of someone works there. In fact, my son, age 29, teaches music in a university here in Chile, has an administrative post in the music department, and finds it to be a very stressful and far from contemplative atmosphere, where one’s job is always in risk. However, your affirmation that “to some extent, the world is what you make of it” intrigues me. To what extent? Could one enjoy oneself starving to death in Darfur? Can prison be a pleasant experience if one decides that it will be? Can one feel great in a packed rushhour subway train on a hot summer day (no air conditioning here)? Will a door to door salesperson feel wonderful after another door is slammed in her face, with her aching back and swollen feet?

Enter the great Stoic conundrum - can we be indifferent to externals?

And a perhaps even more interesting question, do we want to be?

Ophelia: Two good questions. Some people are more Stoic than others, and the techniques outlined in traditional Stoicism permit one to increase one’s indifference to externals. I agree that your second question is more interesting and more of a philosophical question, since theoretically, one could run an empirical psychological experiment regarding indifference to externals on people with Stoic training. I’m a bit ambivalent myself regarding your second question, because there are times when indifference to externals is the only way to preserve one’s sanity and the only or best way for one to avoid distractions/idiocy and to concentrate one’s energies on what matters. On the other hand, the life of a Stoic sage, a life of apathy in the Stoic sense of the word, seems poorer, less full, than a life in which one loves and loses, fights for losing causes, grieves, cries, drinks too much wine from time to time, etc.

amos: “To what extent? Could one enjoy oneself starving to death in Darfur?”

Neither of us is starving to death in Darfur or was refering to such an experience.

“Can one feel great in a packed rushhour subway train on a hot summer day (no air conditioning here)?”

If they are on their way to the beach…and focus on that…

It is the old question of whether the glass is half empty or half full.

I am quite sure that some people are more miserable than they might otherwise be as a consequence of their attitude to their circumstances.

Keith: Ok, let’s take two examples which are more like the original situation, studying or working.
A shy, sensitive, physically weak child, who desperately wants to be liked, go to a school, full of bullies. The bullies interpret his need to be liked, his friendliness, as a sign of weakness and the bullying increases. A young, sensitive and idealistic woman, recently graduated from the university as a psychologist, gets a job in a firm, where the boss is a machiavellian, sexist tyrannt and most of the other employees are envious, resentful and manipulated by the boss. Our young woman, once again perceived as weak and vulnerable, is the object of all the office envy and of the boss’s tyrannical whims. Now, would a positive attitude help either our bullied child or our young psychologist? Now, as to the glass being half empty or half full, as long as the glass contains good vodka, perhaps Absolut, I recommend it (t.i.d) in any unpleasant situation.

But I’m not sure that Stoicism is quite what’s at stake here. We don’t need to be indifferent to externals, we need to be able to remain cheerful in the face of the bad ones. We can still do all those things at the end of amos’s comment at 8.44pm, but bounce back and remain fundamentally optimistic.

IIRC, there is some evidence that individual people have a sort of natural set-point of happiness to which they tend to return no matter what (within reason) their life circumstances. I don’t know whether there are views on the extent to which this is genetic, or something to do with childhood environment, or the combination of the two, or indeed whether it is something which can be changed (re-learned, perhaps) in adult life.

My guess, FWIW, which is not much, is that it is pretty difficult to become a glass-half-full person deliberately, as K McG is suggesting. But perhaps not impossible. I am quite cheerful naturally; given how nasty it feels (to me at any rate) to be angry or miserable, I think I am very lucky in this respect. I don’t feel great in the subway train exactly, but I find it pretty easy to ignore the unpleasantness (or did; now I would probably just faint!).

I’m not sure about your examples, amos, because both of them are sensitive. Sensitive people tend to get bulied more. Being able to shrug off the unpleasant bullying will, on the whole, tend to reduce it.

But on the other hand, there is the risk that shrugging off things like bullying may just leave it unchanged. Bullying can be and often is not just random and personal but systematic and political; sometimes more sensitivity - even, more ‘misery’ - is what’s needed in order to improve things. (This may be what Julian is going after in his complaint book. It would be if I were writing it!) Blacks in Mississippi could have just shrugged off the bullying, but in the long run that wouldn’t have reduced it, it would have left it in place.

Which is not to say that I think things should never be shrugged off - just that it’s a judgment call.

Potentilla: I talk about sensitive people, because I avoid non-sensitive people. The reactions of non-sensitive people don’t mean anything to me. Both of the cases which I mention are real. Neither the young boy nor the novice psychologist were able to shrug off the bullying. Should they have shrugged it off?

I agree with you that there are people who see the glass half full and ones who see it half empty and that whether one sees it full or empty is either genetic or learned in early childhood. Once again, should I
who see the glass as half empty or even as just plain empty learn to see it as half full in order to have a more positive experience of life? Several years ago a therapist offered to prescribe anti-depressive medication for me, and I refused. I said that what she called my depression, partially the result of the death of someone close to me, was me, was my way of dealing with the world and that I preferred to be me and depressed (I hate that word because it puts in medical terms a whole vision of the world) than to be someone else and happy, that my so-called depression was not just a pimple on my face, but a way of being in the world that I had chosen or had chosen me, the result of all I had lived up to then, and that I liked being me. Perhaps I suffer more than someone who shrugs things off easily, but once again, perhaps there is a value in my suffering, because it is my reaction to what I experience.

For one ,you can’t say that everyone on this planet is exactly alike. There are short people, tall people, black people, white people, nice people, mean people etc. Supposedly we would all have our own opinions. The tall people might be afraid of the half size people. The nice people could rebel against the unfriendly half size people. And of course we all know, ” size matters not!”
But if size matters not, then over on the small planet, the small people might be preforming experiments on us! I guess it would just become an intergalactic war.

amos - I don’t think there’s any ’should” about it. You (or anyone in your position) might choose to (try to) see the glass as half full, in order to be more comfortable: or you might not, either because you didn’t think you would be, or because you chose not to anyhow for the reasons you set out.

If I were responsible for the sensitive child, I would try to teach them how not to care (so much) about the bullying, in order to give them another choice of response. But I wouldn’t think they “ought” to stop caring.

The reactions of non-sensitive people don’t mean anything to me Is a non-sensitive person one who doesn’t much notice the opinons of others about themselves, or one who doesn’t much care? I am the latter: I behave in particular ways towards people because of what I think is due to them (consideration, usually), not because of what others might think of me. There are only a small number of people in the world about whose opinion of me I care (much).

Someone once told me (approximately) that we spend the first 20 years of our life worrying about what people think of us, the next 20 not caring what they think of us, and after that we realise that they aren’t thinking of us at all.

Potentilla, I’m like you: there are only a small number of people whose opinions of me and whose opinions in general I care much about. In my experience, intelligence and sensitivity almost always go together. There is a myth of the nerd, that is, of the highly intelligent person, generally male, who is completely insensitive. I’ve never met one. I have no doubt that someone of your intelligence is highly sensitive. Let’s say that sensitivity is that aspect of intelligence which captures reality, which reacts to the world around us. I know that I’m simplifying. An intelligent person would tend to be more sensitive because she captures more variables, more data than a non-sensitive one. Especially, more variables.

amos: “Perhaps I suffer more than someone who shrugs things off easily, but once again, perhaps there is a value in my suffering, because it is my reaction to what I experience.”

I guess the problem I have (as expressed in this thread) is when you tell other people how the world IS, when a part (large or small) of how the world is to YOU is a consequence of how you CHOOSE to approach it.

amos: “There is a myth of the nerd, that is, of the highly intelligent person, generally male, who is completely insensitive. I’ve never met one.”

I have.

amos: “Let’s say that sensitivity is that aspect of intelligence which captures reality, which reacts to the world around us.”

I would say that more sensitive (in the way I think we are talking here) people react more to the way that other people treat them than less sensitive people do.

I don’t think it necessarily has all that much to do with reality because sensitive people may easily react to their own misinterpretations of what is happening.

Keith: Outside of highly controlled scientific experiments, when people talk about how the world is, they are always talking of how they see the world,
that vision being the result, in your words, of how they choose to approach the world. I not sure how much we choose our way of approaching the world or how much it is determined by genetic or other factors, but that’s not the point here. Only God, who doesn’t exist, sees the world as it is. I agree with your point that sensitive people may misinterpret reality, so let me change my definition of sensitivity to
capturing more variables in the world as one sees it, that is, having a more multivariable or more complex worldview. As to nerds, perhaps you are speaking of Asperger’s disease. Then there’s Bobby Fischer too. However, in my experience, which once again is only how I (not God) sees the world, intelligence and sensitivity are closedly, but not necessarily, as you point out, linked.

Keith: I am not using the word “sensitive” in the sense of “being easily offended or quick to take offense” or “obsessed with how others see one”. On a streetcorner there a young man drinking beer. His chief concern in life is that others perceive him as manly. If I look at him in the wrong way or for too long (I’ve learned not to look at him), he could kill me, because my look somehow offends his sense of manhood. That young man is not my model of sensitivity. If he is yours, we are not talking about the same phenomenon.

Amazing to see how a discussion about unequal interactions between human and human-like beings ended in a disquisition on interactions between sensitivity and non-sensitivity. Like amos, I also see the glass as half empty, although I knew intelligence does not necessarily relate to evaluating facts but rather to being able to explain them. Actually, because of this “problem”, all human creation can be reduced to simple description and/or demonstration, while the absolute truth (also about ourselves) remains external. Therefore, shrugging off partial facts might be prudent, but is it safe? What to do then when wrong and too close interactions (not that of the bier drinking man and its manhood) bring extreme suffering? One does not have to starve in Dafur to admit that wrong interactions can kill. There are too many sensitive examples of what it is not just painful but absolutely dangerous dealing with what I like to call ambiguous definition of the other. Paraphrasing Erasmus of Rotterdam: Let us the folly be great.

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