EXPRESSING LOVE TO CHILDREN

it strikes me that this thread is mistitled, it should read "How David stokes his ego" as this gifting has nothing to do with love or even the best interest of the one who receives the gift. If also has nothing to do with David trying to make the world a better place. It is David getting his rocks off, mostly harmless, but mostly inconsequential as well.

I have no doubt that you would say first, that you do not understand the reference to passive/aggressiveness, and second, follow almost immediately with the above statement. Don't understand. Right.

These stories you tell of scattering coins are the saddest examples of someone without the slightest ability to create lasting relationships reaching out in the most pathetic way possible.

Joe(J. Appleseed you are not.)Nation

What children want is love . . . what children settle for is gifts.

So, you give a gift to the "prettiest" girl, huh? And the girl who isn't pretty, the boy who isn't athletic, any child who doesn't fit the dim-witted stereotypes? Tough sh*t for them, right?

How completely clueless can one person be ? ! ? ! ?

First, you have to be aware that there actually might be clues.

Joe(Some inkling of humanity)Nation

Yes; GOOD POINT !
Thank u for contributing it.


Yeah, I 'm more into HEDONISM than that, because its more FUN
and THAT 's what rings my bell.

FUN is the reason for LIVING, really.


I accept what Richard Bach said: " We are the otters of the universe. "
That 's Y I founded the Opulent Mensan Special Interest Group.



David

U think ?
I dunno; I remember being a kid.
I had both, but I was a pretty materialistic fellow; (that has not changed).
To MY mind,
the kid lives ON, in me; just older, fatter n uglier.




Yeah.
I did that.






Well, the definition of " dim-witted stereotypes " approaches being off topic;
best left for another thread.
( Maybe u 'd like to begin it ? )
I never gave prizes for athleticism; I 've never cared about athletics.
I have been encouraged to throw coins into swimming pools.
I have been disinclined to do that, because the cash is not a reward for aquatic skills.
The idea has been (among other things) the ICONOCLASTISM
of giving something for nothing,
from which the donee-beneficiaries can buy what amounts to a free lunch, if so thay choose.




Yeah.
I 'll tell u what: we 'll have a division of labor.
I 'll begift the GOOD LOOKING ones,
and u can take care of the others,
being as generous with them as u r guided in the administration of your resources.
How 's that ? Will u let us know how that works out ?




Clueless about WHAT ?



David

Aggressiveness about WHAT, Joe ?
The way u wrote that, it sounds as if u think I am antagonistic to something.
I have never distributed money in anger.



Right, but if u explain your thoughts at greater length,
then it will be possible that I will better understand what u meant.
Whenever someone has given me a gun, it made me feel HAPPY,
unless someone had given me an English Webley,
but no one has done that.





Does it make u feel sad ?
I feel happy, as a general rule; a lot of other people r worse off.
I feel sad when a gift has failed, by not evoking joy; (i.e., I wasted it);
e.g., I felt sad maybe 20 years ago, when I was distributing $100.oo bills
to beautiful girls as thay walked by around lunchtime in Midtown Manhattan.
That did not work out too well.

When I give cash to strangers,
ofen I keep walking, having no desire to create a relationship
of any length; like around maybe 1985, I was in a Long Island restaurant
for lunch, when 2 girls looking around 11, sat at the next table
discussing their desires concerning shopping for apparel, at some length, while I was eating.
As I left, I threw a little less than $100.oo on the table between them
(change from purchases that I had in my trash cash pocket)
and said that thay shud divide it between themselves, and I left.
I never saw them again; I sought no "relationships", neither "lasting" nor otherwise.
I have long standing relationships with friends I 've known for many years.
Come to think of it,
I have given most of them very little.

Whether what I have posted evokes pathos in u, Joe,
is personal to u and I have no opinion on that.



This is true.
I am into HAPPY SURPRIZES, creating FUN, not apples.




David

What part of Nebraska did you say you were from?

I had Lt. Halvorsen 's effort in the Berlin Airlift Candy Bombing,
in mind, as antedating my own cash bombing.
I 'll stand by my choice of titles.



No.
I suspect that your analysis presumes, in error,
that I accept the popular notion that sharing is good and admirable.
When first I was presented with this concept, by someone whom I held in hi esteem (my mother)
around age 4, give or take, and by my teachers (whom I did not hold in hi esteem)
I dismissed it out-of-hand as being facially nonsense.
I never changed my mind about the merit of being selfish.
I recommend it to everyone.





HOW do u define " love " ??
It seems to me that love is the intentional promotion of JOY
in the target of the love.
If u think its SOMETHING ELSE, then please tell me what it is.





I accept it as an axiom that receiving cash
is in the best interest of the recipient.
He will employ its versatility as he deems fit.
As a libertarian-individualist-hedonist, that sounds good to me.




I deny that.
I define the world as being a better place, if it has MORE JOY and freedom in it.
In some cases (if the cash is enuf) it also provides a greater degree
of financial freedom, which is good.




Yes,
but life is a series of moments,
some of which r fun and others r the opposite of fun.

It is better to cram in more fun.


There is also something else:
upon the basis of reports from people who have returned from death,
I accept the concept that at the end of incarnate life, during a life review experience,
one experiences the emotions that one has inflicted upon others;
i.e., in that sense, what goes around comes around.

I have always been a very selfish fellow.
I recommend it.




David

My goal was only to elevate their happiness.

It was literally something for nothing
( well, except for being beautiful ).

I really believe you. Why did this effort to gift some random beautiful women, fail? You must agree, when one views this dispassionately, that this choice was not well thought through. Did any of the girls hit you or scream or pull any weapon?


This was certainly a "paleo" cell phone era, so consequences of your (rather naive) actions didnt have a chance to quickly spiral out of control, (Im thinking one or more of the girls could have called her boyfriend or a cop , or worse, some TAbloid who would send a reporter and a photog) Coulda been ugly as I see it.

Thats why the "Im from Washington County Nebraska, an I aint never seen sa many perrrty geerrls in one spot since we had two Miss America finalists at the NEbrask state fair", ploy would be your only way out of a severe pommeling or incarceration.


No matter what, that story was precious.

Either you're a liar when you claim to be a member of Mensa, or being a member of Mensa is not indicative of any perceptive abilities or of any approach to wisdom. It seems that even after what people have explained to you here, you just don't get it. Giving a child a gift beceause she is "the prettiest," giving anyone a gift for being the embodiment of an arbitrary standard of superficiality is indulging a dim-witted stereotype. Being "pretty" is no indication of the worth of the individual, either to themselves or to society. Failing to attain of an arbitrary standard of superiority is not evidence that the individual so failing has no value to themselves or to society.

Dim-witted stereotypes as a description of recommending or priding oneself for having given a child a gift because one alleges that the child is "pretty" in the context of the discussion of what constitutes kindness to children is very appropriate to this topic.



Yup, you don't get it. It has shot right over your head.



An iconoclast is someone who seeks to overthrow images of popular culture and institutions. Rewarding someone for being "pretty," apart from giving someone something for a mere coincidence of circumstance, is not only not a departure from popular culture, it is an exercise in confirming popular prejudices.



That's no division of labor, because a division of labor implies an organization of acts of utility. I not only deny that giving people gifts for superficial reasons is useful, the point i am making is that it supports a stereotype, which is inutile. It additionally would probably tend to delude the recipient into confusing a superficial (and in the case of physical "beauty," a transient) condition with self-worth. You also seem to have missed the point about how supporting stereotypes of superficiality such as physical appearance is continuously and ubiquitously harmful to children who do not possess the physical attributes which you choose, in this case, to be described as "pretty," and are painfully aware of it.



You are clueless about how superficial your standards are. You are clueless about the unintended consequences of your ill-considered and trivial acts. You are clueless about what constitutes real kindness to children. Simply giving a child candy (feeding someone's drug habit is a really, really stupid idea) or money for something so superficial, transient and totally coincidental as physical appearance does the child no long-term benefit, and likely any short-term benefit you might allege will be ephemeral. But more than that, it would tend to impress upon a child a belief that superficialities such as appearance are important, when the sum of wisdom is that they are not. Especially with regard to physical appearance it is dull-witted, given that physical appearance won't survive the life's experience which might eventually confer wisdom.

I suggest to you that you know little to nothing about children, and would likely be unfit to raise a child. I certainly would not want you around any children for whom i were responsible.

My continued experience of your ideas also tends to lower my opinion of Mensa. But as i've pointed out, superficialities are misleading and usually unimportant--such as how well one scores on a "IQ" test. It certainly is no indication of wisdom.

Most of his song and dance about his life's experience are. Frankly, i suspect that he is either indulging lies, or has completely deluded himself about what has happened to him in life. One of his biggest whoppers was when he recounted how "the commie next door" had told him about the Sullivan Act in New York when he was three or four, and he ran home to his mother in tears. Other candidates for real stretchers are his stories about his youthful sexual experience--either they're outright lies or he has deluded himself about the actual character of his experiences.

yeh but just imagine walking up to some babe in NY and handing out 100 bucks.

"YOU CALLIN ME A HOOKER CLOWN?"


The problem with DAve is logic. He , as an attorney , had been taught to never ask a question that he didnt already know the answer to. However, handing cash to a complete stranger who happens to be a beautiful woman, immediately opens several outcome options that dave has not considered .

The topic of the thread is "expressing love to children." It appears to me that David knows nothing about children, or he would not propose giving them refined sugar products (i.e., candy) or money randomly. Apart from the justifiably negative reaction of the child's parents if they knew, it would enabling drug abuse. Refined sugar is a powerful drug--adults prefer it in the form of alcohol. Children prefer their drug more directly, in the form of candy (although i suspect the little drug addicts would eat sugar directly from the bowl with a spoon if given the opportunity).

To give a child refined sugar products or money is to enable them to consume their drug of choice. Give them money and they will go spend it on candy (refined sugar products) at the first opportunity. Therefore, i suggest either that David knows nothing about children, or that he doesn't genuinely care about them.

Quite apart from that, giving things to children doesn't express love. Chester the Molester will be more than happy to give children candy and, or, money--the kind of love his is peddling is illegal in all 50 states.

Finally, David seems to think that an arbitrary, fleeting and circumstantial condition--what he thinks of as pretty--is a sound basis for giving a child a reward. The numerous consequences of that also apparently have not occurred to David.

It creeped them out; like one said to me:
" Eeeeeewwwww ! What r u DOING ? "
She distorted her face, as she said it.

Some rejected the cash; others accepted it.




An experiment is supposed to be actually TRIED.
An experimenter is not supposed to simply ASSUME how it will turn out
and then forget about it.




Not these in Manhattan,
but there was one pretty cashier on Long Island
who became enraged, approaching hysteria against me
after I laid down a $100.oo bill near her cash register and walked away.
I had not made a purchase.
(Is that like the OPPOSITE of shop lifting ?)



Thank u.

AN experiment usually tries to control as many variables as possible in order to achieve (or not) the answers that were the subject of the experiment. Random experimentation often can cause mental or bodily harm.

Maybe lawyers do this, scientists dont . Id have gone through several hoods in my chemistry days had I not "experimented" in stepwise and safe fashion.

Candor impels me to reply to your insolence by informing u
that several other members, including Marvin,
who is the most brilliant member of Mensa I 've met therein,
and Elliot, who is the 2nd most brilliant member whom I have met therein and my ex-law partner,
have agreed with your position and disapproved of what thay saw me do
when I led a Mensa expedition to the Bronx Zoo in the 1990s,
throwing coins on the ground in front of some good looking children, during the day.
I threw coins and some Zip Lock Freezer bags with cash inside,
from a little train (on wheels) run at the Bronx Zoo in front of children along the side.
(I also did that in India when I went there in 1984; the plastic bags with hundreds of rupees
and Milky Way bars in them, for ballast, thrown from taxis
were big hits, but the Indians were not very good looking; O, well.)



Mensa addresses intelligence.
It makes no representations about wisdom.
It administers intelligence tests, not wisdom tests.



I don 't agree with them.
Do YOU accept advice with which YOU do not agree ?



Let me clarify one point:
altho I have called over waitresses in some restaurants
and given them $100 bills, telling each of them that it is because
she won " the most beautiful girl around here contest " (thay liked that),
I have not articulated my donative criterion to a donee-beneficiary
in other cases; i.e., I have not offered gratuitous assessments of the donee's beauty.
Indeed, that criterion has not always controlled.
What controls is what I feel like doing at the moment;
insofar as giving away free money is concerned, I can be impetuous.
I have given $100 bills to old ladies seated in restaurants.
I even granted the solicitation of a black bum that approached me
in in Midtown Manhattan and hit me up for $7 for a bottle of jin.
I figured "what the hell ?" and gave it to him; depends on my mood.
A lot does;
e.g., around 1 a.m., in 1969, I was walking on 8th Ave.
around 44th St, and I was approached by a lad who was accompanied
by a girl. He said that he had misjudged his finances, he was broke
and he coud not get his girl home. He requested small change for the subway.
Hard laissez faire capitalist supporter that I am: I refused. I saw him go back to his girl, in defeat.
I entered a subway to go home. On the way, it started working on my mind.
My callous indifference was working on my conscience (which usually does not get much work).
After a while, I felt so bad that, like a fool, I returned to the scene.
I knew clearly that I had no duty to help them, but I felt that I shuda done it anyway.
As u 'd expect, I did not find them; I felt painful emotion.
Several years later, in the daytime in Midtown Manhatten,
the same scenario presented itself. I 'd bought an ice cream pop from a street vendor
that I was consuming, when I was approached by a fellow who said the same thing,
with the girl as Exhibit A near at hand.
Thay looked like thay cud well be the same ones,
but the intervening time left me unsure as to identity,
tho the precise repetition very strongly suggested fraud;
a fraudulent daily routine; (for years, on end ?)
I had plenty of time to think about it, as I ate the ice cream
and cleaned my hands. Thay were fairly good looking.
I gave him more cash than he asked for; I figured: "aw, what the hell ?"




Assuming for the moment that u r correct,
Y is that important.
I fail to see that this factor is of any significance.
About 99% percent of the time the donee is thrilled n elated.
I have fun with it.
To my mind that seems to be all that is important.
In my mind (speaking as a person has ALWAYS been ugly)
there is no problem with supporting the standard of beauty.
I agree with that standard; I don 't challenge it. I 'd not change it.
If it is superficial that is OK with me; thay will not become my friends,
in that in MOST situations, not all situations, I have walked away
without identifying myself, never meeting the donee again.
However,
experience has shown me that throwing cash to children
is a very, very fast way of becoming embraced in friendship by their parents.
That is a quick way of becoming hail fellow well met and invited to dinner.
Its not just their lust for cash (well, in at least one case, it was)
but real friendships have developed from that
apart from mercenary considerations; not EVERYTHING is money.





The gifts were not rewards for being worthy.
Give the worthy ones the amount of cash of which u deem them worthy.
MY gifts have been something for nothing,
in iconoclastic defiance of the maxim to the contrary.
Thay can buy lunch with it if thay wanna.





I did not deny that.
I did not address that.




U MISUNDERSTAND me.
I have always rejected the notion
that sharing or being generous is anything to be proud of.
(For the first 2/3 of my life I deemed it a stupid and worthless thing to do.)
I do it to create FUN,
because it is fun to create more fun; it is a pure exercise in HEDONISM.






I 'll take your word for it.
I 'm sure that if u feel like it,
u 'll explain it to me more clearly.




It was a just a typo. (Mr. Setanta, what are these tiny, little digs ?
Are u jealous of me, or something ?)






One of the criteria that I apply in deciding how to spell is efficiency.
Another criterion is foneticism; that the word be spelled as closely as possible
(within reason) to how it is pronounced.
It is pronounced as a long A,
not as an E.
I hope that I did not interefere with your good laf.





That is incorrect.
Iconoclasm is BREAKING images
that are not supposed to be broken (usually religious images).





This is not important to me.
Bear in mind that I myself, have always been ugly.


The iconoclasm to which I referred was my violation and disproof
of the dicta that:

1 ) u cannot get something for nothing

and

2 ) there is no such thing as a free lunch.





I believe that its OK
to use "gift" as a word.

To my mind, "begift" is not awkward.







However that may be,
I seldom openly offered an assessment of their beauty.
I ofen just dropped the cash silently in front of them,
for instance, on a table and kept on walking.

Toward the beginning of my hedonic funds-transfer program,
a chick in Las Vegas dropped some cash on an escalator in Caesar's Palace.
I gave it to her, saying: "U dropped this." For some reason,
she was willing to take it back, and was not enraged at me
like the cashier on Long Island.
After that, for a while, I falsely told pretty girls that thay 'd dropped cash



As I said above, except for some waitresses,
I have not articulated gratuitous beauty evaluations.
Most of the time, I just silently dropped the cash on a table, without breaking stride.




Maybe,
but superficiality has not been hi on my list of important considerations.
If u accused me of being collectivistic or of causing injury,
that might get my attention to a greater extent.




Over the last 20 years,
some donees have TOLD me what thay have done with the cash.
That is more than a clue.
However, once I have dumped the cash on them
thay have the right to do whatever thay please with it.





I have not given away anything to eat to anyone
(altho, there WAS that black bum that got the $7 for a bottle of gin).
Their mothers have their own ideas about spoiling appetites, or nutrition.
I don 't wish to intrude food; (altho, in Denver, before the Mensa Annual Gathering,
we went to a movie and after I bought some Milk Duds, I gave change
from $20 to 3 boys next to me, at the counter before I went in to see the movie.
Thay might have bought more candy, not that it was any of my business).







The importance of an act
is not negated by its superficiality, nor by its TRANSIANCE.
If a guy gets a mosquito bite, its effects will probably be transient,
not permanent, but it is felt. It is false to assert that only matters
of enduring PERMANENCE are of any significance
and that we shoud forget everything else.
Life is a succession of moments few of have permanent effect.
We owe it to ourselves to cram as much fun and freedom and guns and gold
into as many of those moments as possible.

Its like stopping & smelling the roses once in a while.
Without fun and freedom, life is worthless.





I have never discussed this with any child.
So far as I am able to remember,
I have only discussed this with u.










That 's just as well, in that I have never wanted any.
I do not claim to be knowledgable about children,
but I remember my 3rd birthday, some of the time leading up to it,
and ever since; that 's not hard.





U r afraid that I 'm gonna slip them each a $50 or a $10 Gold Piece ?
If thay promise to employ and to propagate fonetic spelling ?

Parents who know me
and to whose children I 've given cash, have requested my services
in briefly looking after their children; the children eagerly wanted me.
No harm ever came to them. Thay were perfectly intact each time
that I returned them to the care of their parents.

I did not feed them to reptiles nor did I hurl them into fires.
I did not deny them "refined sugar"; thay ordered what thay wanted
in restaurants.





Jealous ?

Mensa is my social club.
It has fun activities, to which I contribute.
I particularly enjoy its Regional Gatherings around the nation.
My friends & I like to attend.
For our part, we neither know nor care about
anyone 's opinion of our club.



Nor has it ever alleged that it is;
this question has arisen before.

This was a long post.
U shoud take it as a compliment, Mr. Setanta.
If I did not respect your ability to reason,
I 'd not have bothered this much.

I 'm gonna get some ice cream.
I feel like a Butterscotch Sunday, with extra Butterscotch
and plenty of refined sugar
and then a Hot Fudge Sunday with plenty of extra fudge for dessert.
I don 't mind leaving some cash behind
for the waitresses at the local ice cream parlor,
so thay reciprocally take care of me.




David

I have no reason to take a tediously long post which just indicates more clearly that you don't understand the concepts in operation here to be a compliment. I won't continue to point out to you that you don't get and why you don't get it because it is all too apparent that you are only interested in argumentation. I'll just put it as succinctly as possible, and have done with it.

Giving things to children does not constitute an expression of love. Giving things to someone for such an arbitrary reason as that one alleges that someone to be "the prettiest" is a bad idea with children because it will give them unreal expectations of life and society. Giving children candy or money (which will more than likely be spent on candy or other forms of refined sugar) feeds a drug habit and leaves the parents to deal with the consequences. I consider your claim that this is an expression of love for children to be about as far from reality as it is possible to get without actually having a morbid pathological problem.

The word "thay" does not exist in English, so using such a dull-witted substitute does not create confusion about the meaning of a word. But to apply your standard to other such words, how would you propose that someone distinguish between pray and prey, if it were not immediately apparent from context? Your idiosyncratic spellings generally suffer from a lack of consistently coherent application.

As for preening your ego with the belief that i am jealous of you in anything, don't kid yourself. I happen to have scored sufficiently well on the Stanford-Binet "IQ" test to qualify for Mensa--but i'm not a joiner. The only time i joined anything was when i joined the army, and although i don't regret the experience, i would not have done so knowing what i now know. I am unimpressed by the concept of "IQ" testing as a measure of intelligence. Alfred Binet himself cautioned people not take his test as a literal measure of intelligence--and it had been designed to find those with learning disabilities quickly without the use of individual interview and case studies. Binet never intended it to be a serious measure of intelligence, and he personally believed that intelligence could not be determined by testing. More than anything else, it tested enculturation, and the extent to which a student had imbibed the scholastic culture to which they had been committed.

For me to be jealous of you, i would have to envy something about you. Make no mistake: there is nothing about you that i admire, and nothing about you which i would wish to emulate.

Setanta, I think we are being scammed. I don't think David exists, at least not in the way OMSIG portrays him. I think he is a figment of someone's mind, a sick mind to be sure, but only that, a character that the writer uses to joust about with innocents such as we.

You just did a very good job of defining exactly what is wrong about this character, but part of the character's character is to carry on.

For myself,

Joe(I'm done with him.)Nation