Parents under investigation for allowing their kids to go outside

I think the Canadians call that spring t-shirt and shorts weather :wink:

That sentence needs some scare quotes somewhere.

Soā€¦ police and social services harass families to not let children go outside because they want them to play with computers and video games?

Nobody simply ā€œhasā€ authority. It is something one attributes to another, such as with respect, or credibility. Anybody who demands that I consider them an authority is, by my standards, too petulant to deserve it.

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Indeed, youā€™re getting the point Iā€™m making. And the person who has a problem with authority is usually someone that had trouble with their parents. That person will often, but not always, gravitate to positions of petty authority over others. If they were raised by compulsive parents, they will have a strong tendency to be become compulsive, because they grew up in an environment of silly rules and ranting about made up stuff. Although compulsives can often be found in jobs where they get to browbeat people about petty rules (which they often make up minute by minute), the compulsive is notorious for their simmering hatred of authority (which can be any parental figure or someone who expects to behave reasonably) They want to have the last word, they arenā€™t at all shy about trying to get revenge, Threaten their self image and they respond with hatred that just goes on and on. The great magnet for compulsives is the internet where they can have the last word.

And through the miracle of psychological denial and projection, the person who is a tyrannical compulsive is in all its glory when it can accuse others of having trouble with authority. To get along with the compulsive, expect to be pigeonholed as a person. Stepping outside a reciprocal role that perfectly compliments their personality spells trouble, so you either go along with their plan or get labeled a troublemaker. But thatā€™s OK, because they dearly love punishing the troublemaker. In fact they are notorious for having a strong streak of sadism, so you can look for them in law enforcement and the military.

I hadnā€™t thought about this, but probably a compulsive would have a very very hard time dealing with people outside their system. Take someone who is basically a mean SOB and put them in a fish-out-of-water scenario. It wouldnā€™t be a comedy, and the story would not end with a lot of hugging and everyone learning a valuable lesson about tolerance.

Actually, my dad had compulsive traits, but he sublimated those urges into a lot of interesting projects and hard work. And in terms of disciplining us, he went all reaction formation and pretty much let us do what we wanted. And he wasnā€™t spending a lot of time constructing a temple to his self image, never referred to himself. He was a bit of a troublemaker though. So everyone with those traits does not have to become a stereotype that behaves like some wind-up toy.

Well at least we know those boys are safe as long as they are under adult supervision after hours at their local house of worship ā€¦ right?

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unquestioned authority is more likely to be abused authority. i am rarely labeled a troublemaker despite the fact that i frequently question authority. it helps that i am a middle-aged, upper-middle class, white man and am therefore much less likely to be abused by authority figures in the first place. i think many of the problems of our society, from racism to income inequality, stem from unchecked, unquestioned authority. as a teacher i am myself an authority figure and i constantly question my actions in that role just as i question my class, racial, and gender privileges. to me, your statement about troublemakers being the ones having problems with authority is worst sort of claptrap. attitudes like yours enable both great and small abuses of authority in our society.

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In most other threads he seems fairly reasonable (if we ever disagreed it must have been somewhat amicable; I had no negative connotations with his profile); in this subject he definitely has a very spiky burr of considerable size up his ass.

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To be fair, I drowned in that river as a kid.

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Keep after it for 20 years or so Javert, but learn to smile more. Do you guys notice that you are struggling to punish someone for thinking Bad Thoughts? Am I to believe this is the first time this has ever come up, this latching onto someone, claiming they have a ā€œproblemā€ that mysteriously canā€™t be identified, but then finding it imperative to punish them for the unidentifiable problem?

Wheee! You two have constructed a Karpman Drama Triangle.

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Why are you obsessed with that question?
ā€¦

I like it when I read well-stated accurate depictions of the universe I also see.

I walked a mile each way from age 9.

Literally the only car that ever pulled over to talk to harrass me was a police officer. He searched my bag and accused me of having burglars tools. I was 13. I told him he was an idiot. Calmly. To his face.

(it was the toolkit, from my stolen bike)

SOMEBODY touched a sore spot, eh @PrestonSturges?

Neat! Iā€™ve read ā€˜Games people playā€™ and always meant to explore transactional psychology more. Seems like a good place to pick it up. And from the analysis of fairy tales, no less. :smile:

I would disagree with that because I had my children late, so I saw my generationā€™s children growing up before the explosion of computers, and I would say that keeping the children inside predated having non-stop electronics to keep them occupied. I saw a lot of trashed homes, with toys and chaos everywhere, and entirely empty front and back yards and local playgrounds. I used to ask people: why did you move out to a house in the suburbs if your kids arenā€™t going outside anyway? I mean, yes, there were real dangers in urban areas in those days, so keeping a tight rein on your kids in those situations made sense, but if that was your excuse to move away, then why are you still acting like theyā€™re in the inner city?

Iā€™m not saying thereā€™s only one cause, or that I know what the amalgam of causes are (although of course I have my suppositions), but I think if anything the reason home computers took off is because everyone was staying inside their own 4 walls anyway, not the other way around.

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I canā€™t believe nobody has mentioned the very short Ray Bradbury story ā€œThe Pedestrianā€ about a man walking the empty street of his subdivision and being stopped by an autonomous self-driving police car.

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Ummā€¦ this drama triangle looks exactly like my g-string, even down to the writing on it. Which came first?

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The thing about the Drama Triangle is that it spins like a pinwheel, otherwise itā€™s no fun at all. For instance, someone does something provocative such as lying, making accusations, or violating someone elseā€™s boundaries with the intention of playing the Victim

A real life example of an incomplete triangle is the pair of boots in my closet which were rather expensive but the Chinese counterfeit ā€œVibramā€ soles are turning into glue. These can be resoled, and I donā€™t want to throw away these $140 boots. However these boots are something of an obsession for my GF who has been trying to throw them out for years, but each time she does I remind her that I do not go through her closets throwing things away and demanding that she justify each thing she owns. She starts as the Prosecutor putting me in the role of the Victim. If I yelled at her, she would immediately assume the role of the Victim and put me in the role of the Persecutor, and then if she insisted that we take this discussion to a therapist that would be dragging in a Rescuer. But she doesnā€™t do that because she goes to Al-Anon which is the alternative to behaving that way. And I know better than to take it up a notch because then I would be pushing her in a specific direction, and then we would just be a couple of idiots trying to manipulate each so we can take turns being the Victims.

Of course the larger the group the more possible combinations there are (something like n!-1 combinations, I did the math once).

So in real life the Triangle looks more like a fireworks spinning wheel.