Trust nothing. Trust no one.
But that is impractical in daily life, as well as isolating, so there has to be some level of confidence in some people. However, this came up in conversation with my daughter after school today, and led down several rabbit holes with her, and it was fun. At Finnish schools they still have religion classes, but my daughter doesn't attend those. Instead, she participants in something that translates like "life stance studies", where they discuss various life situations and skills.
Smallsteps finds them boring.
Probably because she has a father that discusses these things at home too.
But the topic for today was "who can you believe?" and they had to answer some questions and colour in some circles as to who they can believe, and who they can't. For instance, she said she can believe her parents (fool!) and one of her friends, but not everyone, or even all of her friends. She also mentioned that this belief leaves room for joking, because it is fine if a friend or parent says something in joking way, even if it isn't true. She also believes that she can tell when one of her friends is lying, but the one she named as trusted, she says has never lied to her about anything real - only when they are playing games. This belief that she knows when someone is lying piqued my interest, so I asked her if she could tell if someone was lying if they were very good at it, if they had practiced it. This uncovered her näivety, as she asked,
Why would someone practice how to lie?
In her judgement, because lying is wrong to do, no one would actually practice the skill. We didn't go into incentives and the like, but instead I wanted to highlight people who practice lying for a living, that she has believed. Actors. When we watch a movie as an adult, we know that people are actors, but for the short period of time we can suspend our disbelief in order to enjoy the performance as if it was real. A child (and many adults these days) on the other hand, might not be able to differentiate fact from fiction, which can evoke strong feelings like fear.
This led into a conversation about editing and tricks that make us "believe" what we see, even though they are unbelievable, through the magic of editing. She had never considered editing earlier and when I gave her the example of someone being filmed fainting onto a mattress, and then filmed laying on the floor, and splicing the two together, she thought about it for a moment and then said...
That's coooool....
(She then acted it out)
We then spent some time looking at set design, and how they build entire rooms and houses into a warehouse, so they have control over the environment. We looked at a video of how they make the flats, and then put the room together, move walls and make it feel authentic for the viewer. She asked, but how do they set someone's head on fire? She was thinking about Joe Pesci in Home Alone, so we looked at fire gels and stunt people. And then I asked her to imagine a scene from a movie where a girl is lost in a dark forest, and is scared. But then, imagine what is actually happening while they are filming.
"There are many people around her, she is completely safe."
It was an interesting exercise to go through this with her, and she realised that she can indeed be tricked into believing something that isn't true. She also recognised that there are reasons to learn how to lie to play a part, because we talked about how a bad character in a movie doesn't mean the actor is a bad person. Again, some adults seem to struggle in this area, like asking actors who play doctors in a show to look at weird rashes. Knowing little about the behind the scenes gives the ability to control emotional reaction, or choose to be open to it, so a persona can immerse into a movie, or resurface by choice.
Over the last couple decades, I believe that people have both got less trusting, but also more gullible, as they have the "seeing is believing" habit. This gets leveraged in many subtle ways, but if you watch a lot of the internet videos from influencers and those "acts of kindness" that just happened to be captured on camera, you will see that all isn't what it seems. They are edited, they are setup, yet they attract millions of likes and shares.
Incentivised to lie.
My daughter is observant and in time, she will learn what to observe that is important, and how to read into the clusters of events to derive some kind of meaning. We all do this naturally, yet even though we feel we are right because that is the best we can do, it doesn't mean we are right. Similarly, I said to my daughter that yes, you can believe me when I say something, and I can believe what I have told you is correct, but it might not be.
That confidence in trustworthiness is not actually trust in the other person, it is trust in the judgement made about that other person. It is trust in the self. So when someone breaks our trust, is it their fault, or our trust in our own poor judgement?
Some lie for a living.
Some lie for fun.
Some lie to make themselves feel better.
Some lie to make another feel better.
Who should you believe?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Did you get into green screens at all with her? That adds a whole other level to it.
Yes people really became more gullible. Turn on Fox News and you are in one reality, turn on CNN and you are in completely other reality. Neither is reality. But if you want to see stuff from another galaxy turn on Russian main news channel 1. Russia Today would also do if you are English only...
I think one of the most difficult things in the process of raising a child is having to show them how the world really is. I’ve had this kind of conversation with my daughter, and also about how some people can be really mean... It’s amazing to me how, with all her innocence, she doesn’t understand how people can’t truly be trusted, even if they seem trustworthy... At the same time, it hurts me a little.
I love the conversations that I have with my daughters, they are great at seeing things that we often miss, or overlook. They see life in simple terms, whilst life itself has gotten so complicated of late. It really is hard sometimes, to know what is real or not these days. Because for so long the truth has been twisted and manipulated.
Thanks for sharing this conversation with your daughter, it really is an important one. xx
Until now I believe with the lie of giving money to the poor video or an actors that plays homeless, and if other people help him/her there is a reward of big money. However, I cannot see an authentic happiness on the face of poor that being rewarded. Even I know it's just a stage play or something, my stupid little brain believe it is true followed by the emotions. The fact is these world is full of lies, people have two faces and the video seems authentic is not.
Now we have AI manipulations to add into the mix and it seems as though we will see a whole new level of gullible come out. It's good to get Smallsteps thinking about things like this early so she will have that sliver of doubt in all that she sees on screen. Hopefully she keeps her sharp intuition intact when dealing with people in real life. She's a pretty smart cookie!
Definitely some a-ha moments for Small Steps!!! Do you opt out of the religious instruction? Good they have an alternative.
I trust everyone, with a little caution. He has the right to deceive once. The second time, I don't allow it, I take precautions.
The first time is his mistake. After that, it's my mistake.
"Believe" what we see while simultaneously knowing it's not true and reacting like it is anyway XD
Youngest was just earlier discussing with J how soon no one was ever going to believe online news because of how easy it is to generate AI nonsense (J pointed out that a lot of people don't believe online news or news in general already but I think he has a bit of an echo chamber bias as on the other end of the scale I know way too many people who saw it on the news therefore it must be true because journalists would never lie especially not "real" journalists from the "reputable" news channels, you definitely can't trust other ones because anyone can write anything on the internet).
We did that one as well actually relatively recently when the younger two (who are much older teenagers mind) were (perhaps playfully, perhaps not) accusing J and I of lying to them about the death of our old neighbour. We hadn't heard from or seen him for a concerning amount of time so J attempted to call him and on failing that he popped over and found someone else at his house, so asked what had happened to the neighbour and got told something along the lines of "we don't know, we think he died" and that seemed plausible given his age and the complete lack of any other information so we broke the news to the kids and everyone was sad. A couple of years went by and he suddenly appeared on our doorstep as he'd been in the area on some errand, there was a saga involving skyrocketing rent prices and an accident around his disappearance. That was an entertaining conversation especially with youngest of how one can "lie" unintentionally.
Just before the sleep few days ago, I thought about trusting people. I think it has been harder to trust someone in recent years as many people have become more selfish, more alone and have focused mostly on their own interest/purpose. Therefpre, willy-nilly, our confidence in people in any relationship might be used in this way.
Dear @tarazkp !
Should Smallsteps not trust her parents first?