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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (4423)	11/3/2000 3:42:00 AM
From: $Mogul	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10042

At least the truth came out on Bush now..... finnally.. Gore will now take the next the presedency. (How is that for a crystal ball)

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (4423)	11/3/2000 10:36:59 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 10042

Fear of difference, fear of the taint of social stigma (of being seen to be kind - especially true of little boys), and a desire to group together- aided by the tandem desire to exclude, which often heightens the "group" sensation- these are not difficult things to understand. When I watch children, what fascinates me is how similar most of them are. We talk about diversity- and we ARE a mutli cultural society. But very little difference is REALLY tolerated socially- and by this I mean all children learn at a very early age about personal space, and what kinds horseplay is acceptable and what the limits are (and I mean within peer group- I don't mean what adults SAY is acceptable- because it is clear that children's society is driven by something much more complex than just what adults say). Very little difference is tolerated in adults- but it is greater than children tolerate because adults have more reason, and therefore can compute the possible causes of why a given person might be out of the social tolerance norms. To give all this social behavior a name- it is the huge constellation of non verbal communication. Think about how close people stand to you. How careful we all are to speak within given loudness ranges. How we don't spit on each other when we talk. All the rules about burping and farting and personal grooming- unspoken rules, but "rules" never the less. There are millions of social rules we've all picked up by osmosis- if we are successful socially. And then there are some people- autistics, NLD kids, and some of the retarded- who are of normal or even high intelligence, but are unable to learn these rules naturally. And when you begin to try to explain and teach these rules- you begin to realize it's a Herculean labor. You do it anyway- but what these people don't get is Social Pragmatics. Pragmatic language is language with it's full meaning, and carrying all it's function- Witgenstein said all language is pragmatic language(I think he may have said this in frustration with semantics and all the other studies of language of that time which were intent on looking only at language without it's function in ther real world). This means that language fails- for example in autistic children and adults and NLD children and adults- when language is used in a way (and I'm including non verbal and verbal communication- as a complete language packet) that does not achieve the results desired. I'm sorry this was so long, but many people have not been exposed to this information. The study of pragmatic language is not new- but there have been remarkable studies in the past few years and this area seems to be breaking open with new knowledge.