Posted on 08/07/2011 7:49:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
How many of you have met the book smart 4.0 summa cum laude lady who, in regard to street smarts, is a summa dumb loopy chick? What about the poor honey who is neither book nor street smart? What a shame, eh?
My goal has always been for my girls to own the twain. My wife and I have pushed our now twentysomething daughters to academic excellence; we insist that they strain their brains so they won’t sound like Matt Damon when they open their mouths.
That being said, as much as I want my little rays of sunshine to have high GPAs (not that a jiffy GPA means squat anymore given the bogus bunk being taught in school) I want them to have an equal or higher level of street smarts: what some would call a sixth sense, an otherness, a discerning spirit, a fourth dimension, or what I call a well-honed and greased BS Detector (BSD)—y’know, something that’ll make ‘em cough “bullcrap” when they hear terms like “Super Congress.”
Street smarts will give our kids the shrewdness to see through the veil of crap most guys, governments, gimmicks, gadgets, gurus and evil girlfriends live behind.
Bad dates, scum sucking politicians, marketing leeches, PR mooks, agents, corporate America, late night infomercials, televangelists, used car salesmen, and mechanics all love the gullible dolt who has a weak dung detector. Therefore, parents, one of the most important things you can ever do for your offspring is to help them become shrewd and skeptical young ‘uns who cannot be bamboozled by people, places, and politicians that seek to do them harm.
So what is BS?
You can call it bull smack, or the nicer sounding Latin term “stercore tauri,” or simply bull, horse hockey, bollocks, gobbledygook, or truthiness. Whatever you want to call it, BS can be defined as: “Communications where reality and truthfulness aren’t nearly as vital as the ability to manipulate the audience to get it to do whatever one wants done.”
As your children plow through life in paranormal times they’re going to be hit with a tsunami of sewage. As parents we must make certain our charges can deftly navigate the crap-laden rapids of our culture and come out of this thing smelling like roses.
To keep it simple, tell your children that their BS detector is essentially, as one comedian said, that little voice inside their heads telling them to listen to the little voice inside their heads. It’s an internal salvific alarm alerting them to the fact that they’re in the process of being screwed, glued and tattooed. It will be to their own detriment if they ignore this in-house salvo. If they hone and listen to it when it screams, they’ll be the wiser, safer and richer for it.
Everybody has a BSD. Obviously, some folks have better ones than others. No matter where your kids currently are in their abilities to spot BS in all of its varied forms, if they will apply the following three simple principles I guarantee their dates with morons, their purchases of stuff they don’t need, and their gullibility in regard to a politician’s propaganda will diminish, and they’ll take on a shrewd, life-saving edge:
1. Become a skeptic. Our English word “skeptic” comes from the Greek word skopos, which means someone who scopes things out. Whether it’s a car or a polygamist cult or a current politician, train your kids to look under the hood a little bit more, would ‘cha pops? An easy exercise to increase their righteous doubts is to have them stand in front of a mirror with their arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, look down their nose and say, “Yeah, right,” in a sarcastic tone. Have them do this about 100 times every morning before they’re off to school. Yes, parents, it is your job to make your kids healthily suspicious before they date it, buy it or vote for it.
2. Trust your Gut. God has hardwired us so that when we are in danger, or when we’re getting scammed, or when we’re about to say, “Yes, coffee sounds great!” to an axe murderer that our body, mind and spirit freak out. Our “gut” will check us, and the little voice inside our head will start calling us unflattering names in an attempt to get our attention before we get raked over the coals. Remember, your gut check/BSD is your friend.
3. Hang out with mature, sharp and successful people and allow them to speak into your life. I know for young people it’s not sexy to hang out with people other than their peers; however, if you’re honest, young person, most of your friends are idiots with very weak BSDs, correct?
And a final note to you, young person: If your parents, grandparents, pastors or whoever are successful and have enriched, happy lives, sidle up to them because they can sharpen your BSD; they have expertise, experience, honesty, and a spiritual maturity that you can roll into your profit if you surround yourself with them … and if you listen.
Yes, young blood, you can become wise beyond your years and by osmosis have a highly-attuned BSD which will set you up for safety and security by simply adhering to the counsel of mature, righteous adults. Yep, older folks who have been there and done that bring many things to the table that your goofy BFF cannot provide. Don’t blow these people off. Matter of fact, the more you surround yourself with wise counselors the more life is going to kiss you on the mouth rather than kick you in the butt.
ROTFL!
Well said, Doug.
Looks like you're on the right track. I did the same with my children, and they turned out just great! They not only share my political sense--and then some--but they married highly intelligent people who also do! And they're beautiful, responsible, intelligent, well educated, articulate, fabulous people! With children who are just like us!
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for posting this one Kaslin. Doug Giles is one of my/our favorites here at the ranch. The man doesn’t beat that bush to death, just says it like it is.
Good read. Sage advice!
Good one!
Surprising how many here on FR buy the stories and start prayer threads for the newbies that join up and post “heartbreaking” stories about thier horible misfortunes.
I have learned to trust my gut...took some hard lessons too.
A good read is “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker.
Spot on!
I had an engineer who worked for me back in the 90s who always had the best BS detector. After enough instances to convince me this wasn’t just accidental I mentioned it to him and he grinned and said it was something he prided himself on.
The reason turned out to be his dad, who was an electrical engineer too, had not only been a good mentor but had strictly enforced the “no calculator” rule for all his kids, and instead taught them to use a slide rule just like he’d done years prior. That taught him to always think in “orders of magnitude” because that’s what you have to do with a slide rule, and he just generalized the same approach to non-math subjects. One brother was a contractor but he said the same discipline had saved him countless hours and thousands of dollars by being able to spot something that didn’t make sense early.
Great Post, thanks.
Great article. Common sense!!!!!! Hmmmmmmm Natural Law Theory........That which Postmodernists loathe and kick out because it is common sense and none of their ideas can pass the BS meter.
It is why socialists/progressives are so ignorant...they have been fed lies their whole life by people like Stanley Ann —who have a truly warped, sick utopian vision where there is no family or religion in the world—just herded copulating animals. A world that is not wanted by all free-thinking, intelligent human beings—so they have to force-feed the ideas (over and over and over in the media).
They have to be thought control police, control all media and school curricula, and teach hate. The easiest way Dewey and the socialists in the 30s knew was write the curricula—control the language and you control the ideas and insert them into the heads of children where it will be difficult to dislodge once entered into their worldview which is forming and so vulnerable. That is why there is so many obamabots...it is the school curricula. (BK Eakman).
My aluminum hat helps protect me.
Is that you, Dad? ;-)
Thanks for posting that. It came at the right time. :)
We took our daughter to Chicago yesterday, where she starts at Harrington University at the end of the month. She won’t turn 18 until September but we’ve worked every minute of her life to give her a good BSD and understanding as to how the Law of Unintended Consequences works. She found her own roomates (one is a teacher, the other a registered nurse, both Christians), did all the research for scholarships and grant opportunities, and is looking for a job in photography.
It was hard to let her go. It was harder to leave her there. But now we have to trust that our teachings and the great I AM will protect her as she flies.
we insist that they strain their brains so they won’t sound like Matt Damon when they open their mouths.
Now THAT is the laugh of the day. Don’t be surprised if this catches on and we see it more and more. That’s an awesome statement and while a flipping riot and a half...it’s also TRUE! Thank you!
BTW, we also told our kids to listen to the voice inside them. We said when the time comes you will know right from wrong because there is a voice inside you that will stop you and make you pause. When it does....listen. Because that pause could save your life in more ways than one.
Thanks again for that statement....I’m sure it will be heard over and over.
pimg
Not only is that excellent advise that parents can give to their children. It is also an excellent advise for everyone to follow it. I know I have often followed my inner voice and it turned out it was the right thing to do
Give the kids a kiss for me!
Start an illegal school and teach the little ones and not so little ones.
“Come, let us reason together.”
Throw out the US Magazines, Entertainment Weekly’s, ESPN non-sports coverage, and most of cable. Walk away from gossip. Seek truth!
Ideas are important enough to defend to the death.
I learned to use a slide rule in a Navy electronics school in 1962 but no one spoke of “orders of magnitude” back then, the term was “scientific notation” or “powers of ten”. One thousand was 10 to the third power, one million was ten to the sixth power etc., each power of ten merely meant one more zero to the left of the decimal. Of course no one actually said power it was simply “ten to the sixth”. A fractional figure was simply a negative power of ten, one thousandth became “ten to the minus third”. Each negative power simply added a zero to the RIGHT of the decimal. It was decades later when I first heard “order of magnitude” and I had to figure out what it meant.
That kind of training is probably the main reason I want to puke when someone utters a mathematical absurdity, in fact a mathematical impossibility, such as “five times less” or even worse “five hundred percent less”. That kind of garbage is in daily use by people who definitely should know better.
I do believe that learning the slide rule helps a person learn to spot gross errors such as appear often in news reporting, it is quite common to see orders in decimal placement. I learned long ago that in any news report that includes numbers that can be compared for accuracy there is usually at least one mistake. Percentages seem to be particularly baffling to people and are very often computed wrongly. People who intend to deceive should make every effort to avoid using numbers if at all possible.
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