Hieronymus
4mo ago
A year and a half ago Scott wrote an ACX post about why his writing had changed from the way it was 2013–2016, and it prompted me to think about the kinds of pieces I would rather read from wizened psychiatrist Scott rather than young buck Scott. One of these is his current thoughts on shared environment and the effects of parenting. Another is the state of social science research on spanking; that would give him a chance to apply his thoughts on shared environment, and it’s culture-war-adjacent enough to examine the effects of bias but outside the current focus of the culture war.
Aella’s descriptions of her own childhood make for somber but thought-provoking reading. As an evangelical Christian, though not a parent, I wonder what went wrong to produce the kind of abuse she went through. One possibility: maybe evangelical parenting advice is particularly difficult for parents on the autism spectrum to apply. Aella has described herself and her father (but not her mother) as on the spectrum. Evangelical advice focuses pretty heavily on responding to the child’s heart and will. Young children especially wear their hearts on their sleeves, but if you struggle to notice emotional cues you may miss the point where you have been severe enough to discipline effectively and you may see obstinance where there is none.
It’s also interesting that, in spite of all that, Aella writes positively about her homeschooling experiences and negatively about her brief time in public school.
Hieronymus
7mo ago
… but he’s no Roy Moore.
This is definitely a tangent, but I haven’t kept up with political scandals. What do you mean? My recollection is that Moore was accused of some things that were really serious and some things that were merely weird; then, when some of the weird accusations were proved, people spoke as if the grave ones were too, mostly without evidence. But I am fully prepared to have missed some developments in the mean time.
Hieronymus
8mo ago
I happened to read it at that age. Although it's not exactly history, it did put our brief coverage of Hawaii in my US history class to shame.
Hieronymus
8mo ago
I want to offer a data point since your example caught my eye. My go-to butter, from a very respectable American dairy brand, is 81% butterfat. Butter isn’t what they’re most known for and I don’t think chefs seek it out, but I prefer it to the well-reviewed European brands I have tried. So it surprises me that the EU forbids it to be called butter.
On the other hand, America’s minimum alcohol content for liquor to be labeled with the obvious categories (whiskey, brandy, gin, etc.) is 80 proof (40% ABV) as opposed to the EU’s 75 proof (37.5% ABV). I don’t know what that says about us, but I am grateful for it.
Hieronymus
8mo ago
I read Hawaii in high school, but Michener’s patronizing treatment of Hale is one of the few things I remember now. Whatever the movie’s take, Michener clearly didn’t think Hale’s faith a virtue; in modern terms, it felt like a lot of 1950s literary sneering at the repressed, nerdy missionary.
Is the movie more nuanced in that regard, or does it just feel that way given the evolution of the culture war? Is my memory unfair to the novel?
Hieronymus
9mo ago
I would love to read it.
I appreciate your and @screye's replies on the culture war aspects. As an American I am used to reading western history with the bias of the author in mind. But that's hard to do for parts of the world where I don't have the context; I can sometimes intuit the author's biases, but their implications are not clear to me.
Hieronymus
9mo ago
Do you know of any resources that make the history of Hinduism legible to a westerner? I got curious reading about Indo-European languages and then Indo-European religion. The parallels between Germanic mythology and early Vedic religion are fascinating. But the early Vedic religion has clearly been transformed and subsumed. (No cattle sacrifices in modern Hinduism!) I am curious what the different proto-Hinduisms were and how they met and fought and syncretized.
Books I've read on the history of Indo-European religion (admittedly years ago) were light on the Indo-Iranian branch.
One of the silly and dangerous things about the exchange in Aella's post is that it doesn't distinguish between parental motivations. I suspect, though I can't know, that the parents of authors one and two are disciplining, whether wisely or unwisely, out of love, so those kids really don't have to worry about their parents trying to hurt them this way out of revenge. But kids from worse families who tried their advice could be burned pretty badly.
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