When people lie and why people lie are very different things. At least that is what many detectives and attorneys think. But there is a correlation between when and why people lie.
A good comparison can be made between lying and making a phone call. When police are trying to trace a phone call, they "triangulate" the signal used in the call. There is a signal from the originating phone to a cell tower and from the cell tower to the receiving phone. That creates two sides of a triangle. Draw a hypotenuse between the point of origin and the point of reception and instantly there is triangulation.
When a person lies, there is a signal in the words. The cell tower, the capture of words on paper or recorder which allows analysis of average words used in speaking, relays the signal to a receptor. The person on the other end hears some form of a hedge normally, even if it is merely a 1/2 second pause in delivery. Then, a hypotenuse can be drawn, between originator and receptor, a subtopic through which the hedge is made. It's a triangulation, a triangle graph showing something like a target. It works every time, just like a trace on a phone call.
And how does that show more than the place in speech or "when" people lie? Because there is a structure to get to a certain point in a subtopic. Analyzing the structure of why topics are brought up and the order in which the subtopics appear under that more general topic, allow one to see "why" people lie. The place and reason are inextricably linked.
Yep, all in a day's work one can debunk people's lying words. It may keep them up thinking about how to lie and rehearsing it, but I get a good night's rest after exposing it.
Repetition has long been debated as to its benefit in education. Proponents of repetition say that things are learned for mastery by repeating the principle involved a great number of times when one starts to learn a new precept. Lots of homework is usually given by a teacher who believes this. The idea is to see an idea explained, see it used in its basic form, and practice, practice, practice.
We've all had a teacher like this. Memories of such a teacher rank right up there with dentists who have not been to dental school in the last 30 years to update their skills and knowledge of what's available in dentistry. But, are these teachers' approach to repetition right? If so, there are quite a few soft teachers in the business who practice only a small number of times comparatively.
Studies about memory show that any kind of memory is created when something memorable happens. Memories are not created by things that are part of an unnotable nature. Experiments abound in working with people's recall. For example, in one experiment, people were allowed to watch an accident happen. They participants were not told there would be an accident before it happened. When interviewed after watching the video clip, the participants agreed on the fact that an accident happened because that was notable. But, they agreed on little else about the clip because nearly all else that had happened was not remarkable.
The brain turns things to the gist of what happened rather than remembering a lot of details about an incident. Some experiments actually ask people to take the same survey a day after watching the video, again after a week, and again after three months. Details disappear from memory if they were present in the beginning. Many times, details are not even present in the beginning. Details such as what people were wearing, what colors of clothing people saw, makes and models of cars, heights of buildings, names of streets on street signs, number of people involved are not remembered well to begin with, but certainly disappear over time, if remembered to begin with.
If applied to learning, a person can see that a great deal of homework doesn't achieve what those teachers giving it say is the benefit. Principles learned don't really stay. They disappear over time. That's why people forget the rules of how and when to use commas, what the formulas for right triangles are, or the principle involving where cold and hot air can be found in a house.
What promotes learning is not mere repetition, but whether or not use of an idea learned is applied somewhere else in life. Is there a reason for learning commas? Yes, if one writes real world material a lot. Is there a use for know the formula for right triangles? Yes, if one designs interiors for house blueprints. Is there a reason to know about cold air and warm air? Yes, if one has to fill up a tire on a car often in the early spring or late fall of the year when daytime and nighttime temperatures are about 30 degrees apart.
Oh-h-h! What do we do with dinosaurs in life who don't want to keep up with knowledge that grows more current.
Over this weekend I have watched two stream of consciousness movies, Babel and The Meddle, shows portraying people other than the main character being affected as a result of decisions made by the main characters or of events that happened to the main characters beyond their control.
I don't always like stream of consciousness movies, but these two showed with great impact the domino effect of decisions made by one or to one. These movies are good for showing me the application of Newton's third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction (when it comes to the force involved in motion). Not always applicable to life, but in many cases, yes. In this case there were equal but opposite reactions as ripple effects in many, many directions.
The movies showed me again the truth of John Donne's poem below.
John Donne Meditation 17 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
'No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee....'
Donne's final thought above is a different application of the principle he cites from the application I am giving, but it would apply to these two movies regarding decisions people make. I forget many times to look for possible consequences in mundane decision making. I am pretty good at following threads in major decisions, but not always the mundane ones. I am grateful to have had these two reminders on a weekend designed to remind us of the ramifications of freedom in its various forms in our country.
People were greeting each other with hugs. There were smiles all around. Later in the evening sounds of laughter rose from the tables, chairs, and benches around the dance floor. Lights had been hung especially for this occasion. At the tables plates, of barbeque and chicken, mashed potatoes and pork & beans filled everyone's plates. One would think an ol' country hoedown was in high gear.
But it was a wedding, held at a really rustic place for retreats. The two buildings were a chapel that would hold about 150 people and a mess hall with concrete floors. A stable with a few horses wasn't too far away. The couple getting married had grown up on farms and around horses. So their venue for their wedding was this rustic place. Dancing and dining were outdoors.
The frivolity of celebration was all in place for this usual joyous occasion. What was not in place was the gravity with which the bride and groom seemed to approach this celebratory time. The groom stood at the front of the room with his groomsmen awaiting the bride and her entourage to walk the aisle. The groom never once smiled. His family had traveled 6 hours to be there, yet no smile for them. The groomsmen at his side, his best friends by him, still no smile. I thought he was staging this gloom so that everyone would see the radiance of his smile when his life's choice entered the room. Not so. His bride entered, everyone stood in honor, no smile - from either bride or groom. The father gave away the bride, the ceremony began. No smile. The groom took the bride's hand and vice versa, slipped on the wedding ring, but no smile. After the kiss of marital union, the faintest of all smiles touched the corners of the groom's mouth, but it was ever so fleeting.
The bride smiled from time to time during her time in front of the audience gathered, but not as much as a person would think when (s)he attends a wedding. Everyone except the main two participants seem to be enjoying the occasion. I thought of the word I would apply to this ceremony. It's from Latin simulare, meaning to imitate, and from similis, meaning like. I'll write again about this couple in two or three more years. It just doesn't seem this occasion was the stuff dreams are made of for this bride and groom. I think I just experienced a semblance of a wedding.
Well, I got to meet a woman from the Ukraine last night. She knew no English. Now that was interesting. Her daughter had moved to the U.S. about 8 years ago on a student visa and acted as her mother's translator. The daughter had had to learn English mostly when she got here although she spent a few months in Europe before arriving here where she learned British English.
Through a translator we talked about her stay in the U.S. I asked her what the biggest difference was between the Ukraine and the U.S. She said that the people here are generally more friendly here. Store clerks and people on the street smiled much more and were eager to help if asked.
That surprised me since, in my experience of the U.S., it seems that people shy away from talking when possible and store clerks have to be hit on the head with a brick if you want them to notice you need help of any kind. Maybe I need to pick up a Ukrainian accent.
The woman was really pleasant. I met her grandson of 5 months. He always smiled. Maybe he mirrors the value my new Ukrainian friend saw so readily in this country. I have a feeling she is friendly in her country like what she saw here. We tend to do that. I remember my mother's proverbial words so well that she graced me with often while growing up, "If you want to have friends, show yourself friendly."
Sometimes people just want what they want and nothing else will do.
USA Today carried an article about people getting upset because the president hasn't identified any of the happenings or people connected with ISIS as radical Islam or radical Muslims. The article went on to tell what the president has said about terrorism. He has used words such as "repulsive acts," "disgraceful," "terrible," and "horrific," along with other extreme descriptions of the acts and people of ISIS. But, "radical Islam" and "radical Muslims" he has not used.
I know it's true that people can get caught up in semantics. I have seen that happen before. I knew one person who would not accept the words "I'm sorry" from her children because they were not sorry individuals. They had to use the words, "I apologize" for her not to spin into a tirade. Even then, the mother didn't always accept the apology.
Words can trip people up if they want to be obstinate. But, it's like the play The Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone but the king can see what's happening. To quote Romeo from Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would be as sweet." Words are all equal. It is society that gives assignments such as "profanity" to certain words. Ever wonder what the difference among "shit," "excrement," and "feces" is? None at all. Society just assigns the value of "offensive" to one of the terms for no good reason.
In the president's case, I would rather hear precise, descriptive adjectives used than some buzzword expression any day. It shows a stronger degree of condemnation of violent acts than some formulaic expression applied by a particular political or religious persuasion. People need to get over themselves when it comes to word specificity. Does it fit a big picture or not? Seriously!
I entered adulthood as a single person with a college degree. The world was at my doorstep. I had the tiger by the tail armed with all my idealism and hope. I knew I would conquer the world at some future point.
I entered my 30s, married, no children, working hard to be the entrepreneur who would be one of America's millionaires without a worry about tomorrow and living the good life. I figured that would take about 10 years if I did it right.
I entered my 40s still married, two children in elementary school, and working for the state about 10-12 hours a day. The entrepreneur adventure didn't work out well. I liked my new job well enough. I had received an advanced degree to get an edge up on the salary scale and promotions. The aging process had started. I still played on an adult basketball team for exercise, but had lost a lot of my quickness. I sported glasses. Life had taken a twist. The family was not cohesive anymore. The children had become older and younger teens. Their choice of friends were not the ones I thought I had had at their age, so I didn't like them much. Their schedules were involved, so it became complex to juggle work and children. The one value I had put my hope in from childhood and tried to follow faithfully was no longer making any sense. It hadn't delivered on its promises. Working for the state had also become a rather dead-end job. My mate was living a challenging life fighting alcoholism. The world became a rather large wasteland.
I entered my 50s on a tragic note. My 19-year-old son died from cancer the year before. Life stood still for about two years. My other child made it through high school well enough, but got married, divorced within 6 months and decided to participate in the drug scene with all its attendant pitfalls, which she fell into all in their own turn. She had a failure to launch after her teenage years. She ended up pregnant without a mate to stand by her, so she returned home to refresh her life and get help raising her child. My father had developed dementia and had died 8 days before my son after an 11 month illness. My mate wanted to divide our belongings and part ways. Life was beginning to take its toll on happiness and sanity. I met a person who returned my sanity to me, but life always twists the plot and this person and I had less than a year's worth of an intersecting life.
_________________________________
True story - all of the above. It's a first person account of someone who started on a hopeful note in life. It represents so many lives that I run into. Some of them are worse than the one above, some of them not quite so filled with challenges. Ironically, I tell this sotry at a time of year when hope springs eternal in the human breast. It's spring, so all of nature is awakening from winter. It's beautiful. Many young people are graduating with the world at their doorstep.
The last chapter of the above person's life has not been written. There is yet time for a reinterpretation of life's events to offer a beautiful ending. The person told all of the events to build a worthy character as a gift to offer providence upon entering the door to what comes after life on Earth, to let those following him, whose world is just now at their doorstep, see how life unravels if one is not careful.
The story above is certainly not a new story, not even an old story with a new twist. A play I read once, Oedupus the King, ended somewhat on the same note as the account above. The chorus chanted the purpose of the play at the very end to all those in attendance in an old Greek amphitheater long ago in 430 BCE. The last lines are printed below.
CHORUS: You that live in my
ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus, —
Him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most
masterful;
not a citizen who did not look with envy on his
lot—
see him now and see the breakers of misfortune
swallow him!
Look upon that last day always.
Count no mortal happy
till
he has passed the final limit of his life secure from
pain.
I think it's my stage in life, but I love walking out my door or driving out of my driveway and seeing an array of colors. Lavenders, whites, and purples say hi to me as I walk out the entryway. Two different shapes of flowers slightly move in the breeze as I pass by the two pots of sunshine-loving, petunia-looking petals. I smile when I see them.
Behind them I am greeted by four fully-blooming red rose bushes. They're about head high so I stop briefly to take in their beauty. Then, I move out to the driveway and see the beautifully lush grass at this time of year. It serves as a nice contrast to the purple-red pots and bushes I passed to get this far.
As I open my car door, I glance at the foot of the tree in the middle of the yard. The flowers there smile back at me with hues of yellow and the designs of white stars in the center of more purple flowers. The purple leaf and green leaf shrubs are a good background for them and a good harmony of colors to please the eye.
I back out of my driveway, and right before leaving the scene of my yard, I look over at the corner of the house and wave goodbye to the yellow roses and yellow daffodils growing at the bush's foot. It's quite a send-off day after day, all spring and most of the summer. I never arrive at work thinking I haven't started my day off right.
Perspective is related to our backgrounds - our upbringing, our education, our fields of interest, our motivations. Together they are the ingredients of our value systems. Values are formed from the different inputs as mentioned above, which is why the saying, "One's judgment is only as good as her/his information," is so very true.
The other day I was in a conversation with my mother. She brought up the subject of a news story recounting that various school districts were complaining to the Texas Education Agency that the state tests were not scored correctly since a good number of students who usually made top grades in their schools were not showing as high scorers on the state test. My mother is adamantly against state testing. So, she jumped on this news story as support for her opinion.
I said that while that conclusion could be true, there were other factors that might show up that would not support the complaints at all. I mentioned that teachers inflate grades in the classroom, so the more statistically accurate state tests might just be showing a faulty grading system used by many school districts. I started to launch into a more detailed response about the statistical nature of scoring the state tests when she interrupted me. "You're always on the other side of whatever people talk about."
I stopped short of my launch, considering she has had a considerable history with me. It's true that in both politics and religion, we differ greatly on our perspectives. Many times in education, we see the source and causes of problems differently, typically in handling of curriculum. Other areas over the years have shown differences, too.
But, I will say this. If I had her set of facts, maybe I would reach her same conclusions. If she had my set of facts, maybe she would reach my conclusions. We bring our experiences and our backgrounds to any decision we reach, any philosophy we might have developed. I ended my comments with "The school districts could be right, but there might be more to it than they think.
Recently I was called contentious by someone. In my mind, I was merely "showing my work" for a a conclusion I had drawn. The other person wasn't using the same logic that I was using, so she cut me short and called me contentious.
Perspective is all we have to express our thoughts. I try to be respectful both of others' opinions or of their wishes not to hear the logic of how my conclusions are drawn. People must coexist, so respect is an important value to have alongside of the perspectives we also hold.
Sometimes watching a story from childhood again brings us back to our right minds. I watched the animated version of Tarzan again today. It's been a while since I saw it, but it has been one of my childhood favorites since I watched it originally. It puts me in touch with my moral self. Three scenes act like a compass to me.
The first scene is the one that starts the story. A mother ape finds Tarzan as a baby and saves it from a tiger who would eat him. Thus, he starts his journey being raised by the ape family. This scene tells me I also had a beginning in which someone was brave and kind to bring me into this world and protect me from disease and other circumstances that could have ended my life. Someone from the beginning made it possible for me to live, grow strong, and seek my destiny. I honor that person for life.
The second scene happens when Tarzan has grown to be a young man in the jungle. He has still had no contact with humans, so he only knows his ape family and their ways. A leopard one day haunts the ape tribe, so Tarzan defends his people and kills the leopard. All the apes yell and applaud, showing their appreciation for his valorous deed. This act was something the leader couldn't do, so he retreated to allow Tarzan to take over the tribe. Tarzan, however, realized what had happened, so he took the leopard and laid it at the feet of ape leader to show that he was still subservient to the leader, that he wasn't trying to take over his position. This shows me that no matter what our good fortune comes to us to in life, we never are too good or outgrow our roots. I have a family that I never outgrow. I have friends that I developed early in life that I am never to good to talk to again or meet for lunch with. And, I have mentors that allowed me to learn from them, so I could take what they offered, build and mold areas of strength with what each contributed, and live contentedly and productively.
The third scene comes 2/3 of the way through the movie when Tarzan wants to show off his ape family to Jane and her father because he is proud of his roots. The scene turns south on Tarzan when a hunter with Jane and her father wants to kill and capture some of the apes. The leader of the apes looks at Tarzan and says, "I asked you to take care of the family. Now you have betrayed us all." That hurt Tarzan deeply because he had not intended any harm to his ape family. I know that I can easily make things turn south without intention. One time in particular is representative of wishing outcomes had turned out differently. I had mentioned that I would let someone know when I would move, if I ever did. A couple of years passed, but the time came to move. I made the phone call to tell the person I was moving. Although we talked briefly, a meeting was pressing for the other person to attend, so the person said to expect a call later that night or the next day. The call never came. The other person eventually learned of my move and thought I had betrayed my word. Not receiving the expected call at a later time was a game changer. Tarzan was later allowed to mend the relationship with the leader and make it better than it had ever been. Perhaps that will be my story too. I have faith.
It's good to watch those childhood stories no matter what age we turn. They keep us grounded. They remind us of the paths we had wanted to travel whether or not we were actually able to do that.
I have found more than one place in my life where it is wrapped in symmetry. I guess that's true of everyone. But, the symmetry of greatest influence on me comes from the teacher who taught me ancient Greek. I have kept up the work of translating through the years, mainly because he taught me the value of knowing what was said "from the horse's mouth." He was also a prolific writer. He contributed to a magazine that he also served as chief editor for, and his article contributions dealt with translations from Greek. I don't know that he knew other languages, but I know he had exposure to Latin and ancient Hebrew at least. He taught with a great deal of patience in the classroom, and he made translation principles very apparent with his explications in his articles.
The symmetry is that the young me learned a language from a man who taught me to love that same language and desire to translate it with certain goals in mind. Now, years later, an older me still loves the language and translates it regularly with the same desire. Because of this man contributing articles routinely for people to read, I also have decided to dedicate several websites to several projects dealing with either languages or forensics using the English language. We traveled down similar paths in different eras, but unmistakably my mentor from youth affected my work as a
seasoned adult. Thank you J.W. Roberts for your exemplary life in the eyes of a young soul in search of a cause. I thank you in particular for the translation principles you embraced and passed on,
allowing my work and life to morph and become something enjoyable instead of lumbering down a path of slavery to a miscreant belief system.
Some evenings I sit at my dining room table and just listen to music, typing occasionally on a blog. There's something really serene about that. My headphones that bring the music to my ears block out all reality. I get to recoil into my mind, listen to words and music and let my thoughts ramble down any crook and cranny of my mind they want to go.
That's what I'm getting to do tonight. I enjoyed the rains storming their way through about an hour ago. It was a short, fierce rain, but it soothed my soul. Now comes the aftermath of my choosing - mellowing my mind listening to music and thinking of the most special time in my whole life. It's been a while.
I'll have to go back to the real world shortly, but I have a few more minutes to spend eternity inside my mind. I get lost there feeling, smiling, totally absorbed in enjoying the flashes of images like a slide show across my inner projection board. My, I could stay here all night long.
My last song is playing. It's appropriately the song Every Mile a Memory by Dierks Bentley, one of my favorite song artists.
Red sundown out across the western sky,
Takes me back to the fire in your eyes,
Texas stars in a purple night,
Not seein' 'em with you baby,
Oh, they never do look right, no.
Every mile a memory...
Every song another scene...
