"It works"

My brother likes crying. As 5-year-olds sometimes do. My parents can't stand it.

The other day my mom asked my brother why he cried when he was having a play-date over. His reply, "I wanted my friend to stop, but she wouldn't stop! If I cry then you come over and make her stop! It works!"

It's true. It worked. And it still works. Every. Single. Time.

Basic human psychology here I guess, toddler kid cries--> parents are alerted that there is *something* that's causing their wonderly-adorable-innocent child discomfort. Parents dislike the thought that their child is experiencing mild displeasure. Parents MUST intervene.

Which is all great and wonderful for the most part, parental love and all that, but when the child is especially brilliant (as my brother is <insert ego here>) they start abusing this basic protection right.

Fact is, my brother knows perfectly well that if he cries, he'll get attention. So he cries. And he gets attention. This basic form of "lying" is actually pretty smart if you think about it. Whereas some children and nice a quiet and doesn't ask for things, my brother will go out of his way to manipulate the minds of our parents in order to get what he wants.

Case 1: Brother tells mother his stomach hurts and asks to come home from daycare. Mother says no. He then proceeds to tell her that not only does his stomach hurt, his fingers, feet and head hurt as well!

Case 2: Brother not good at soccer in his soccer camp. The best soccer player gets a lot of attention (which brother obviously wants). Brother starts yelling crude comments and doing weird dances during games causing his friends to laugh and the teacher to talk to him.

Case 3: Brother doesn't want to eat dinner. He complains of stomach aches. Parents remain firm on the fact that he needs to eat. Brother then needs to go to the washroom. 5 times. Repeatedly. Oh, and he was tired and wants to sleep as well.

Now ego aside, I'm sure most kids do this. Because they want the attention. So it becomes the parent's job to not spoil their child too much, or else their future becomes:

Still, you got to give the kids some respect for going through the struggles of attempting to psychologically manipulate their parents. It's almost... sinister.

Google+

After using google + for a while. I have come to a valid conclusion of how to describe it to people.

Imagine Facebook and Twitter had a baby. Then Google kidnapped it and made Youtube teach it some lessons. Skype was the surrogate mother.

And that's Google+

Thing was, Skype never wanted to have Google+, but was forced into carrying the child unwillingly. Realizing the potential dangers that Google will become with the plus sign made Skype finally submit to Microsoft.

Hearing of this, Facebook, who was still pissed at Google for stealing the child, decides to team up with Microsoft... sort of. Rather, Facebook decides to let Skype help out around the home, so really it's not like Microsoft and Facebook "teamed up" against Google, more like Facebook thought Skype was cool and wanted to hang out more.

All things aside though, here's a list of things I want Google to add to Google+. Whether they do it or not may sadden me.

• Let me post on other people's profiles: facebook's wall idea was quite ingenious mostly for that
• Let me share my Google Calendar with people in specific circles
• Have a link to people's blogs that'll update on their profile so I don't have to use the blogger reading list to know when someone updated
• Share documents via Google docs: Good for people who want to edit each others works or stuff like that
• Allow separate news feeds for each circle since I care more about certain people's lives than others
• Allow me to share a post with all my circles EXCEPT one (instead of having to click all the circles I have except one I can just choose "Exclude <circle name here>" or something)

Otherwise I'm curious as to what other new contraptions Google will come up with for their newest interweb spawn. 

Lack of true emotional responses

Ever hear a piece of news and have a reaction to it, only to realize afterwards that your reaction was not socially proper?

Today my brother said he was being bullied in summer camp. Apparently some kid told him his face was ugly then encouraged the rest of the class to laugh at him.

My immediate reaction: HOW DARE SOME LITTLE BRAT INSULT MY BROTHER?!? I WILL HAVE A TALK WITH THIS KID'S MOTHER!

After a few split seconds I had another reaction: lol, kids these days with their idiotic insults

Then I switched back to the original reaction: LITTLE IDIOTIC BRAT DEFILES THE NAME OF HUMANKIND WITH HIS/HER LAME INSULT!

And then: Well kids are kids and they don't have the ability to come up with anything better... they'll learn

Which finally concluded to: Hey, I dealt with bullies when I was a kid, my brother'll just have to learn to do the same thing. It'll strengthen him up if he survives it.

But does this mean I will sit by calmly and allow some random kid to bully my brother? Actually yes I think I will... but at the same time I certainly don't think I would if I had not had a secondary emotional response.

Lately (some time ago) I've been reconsidering what makes a person who they are (nature/nurture). And I say it's the former (nature).

At this moment there is actually nothing I'd like better than to find the kid who told my brother his face was ugly and demand an apology for such insolence. But of course, I won't. A: it'll be pointless since screaming at little children does not look very good and B: I doubt the kid knew what (s)he was doing. So following through my multiple reactions to the news of my brother's bully I've concluded that my instinctive self is of an evil and selfish nature.

It may be cynical, but I stand by the belief that as a person, individually, all human beings are evil and selfish. The only reason we're good is because it's to our benefit to be selfless.

Consider this: You're lost and alone on an island. What do you do? You survive; killing innocent animals. If you're trying to be selfless and vegetarian, you kill innocent plants. If you choose to not kill or hurt ANYTHING, you die. Selflessness kills.

Now consider you're lost but not alone on the same island. The number of prey and resources has not increased. But in this situation it'd probably be a good idea to partner up with whoever else is with you as to increase your chances of survival. Out of selfishness for your own survival, you'd probably be willing to share food and water. If you were truly selfless you'd hunt and gather resources with the other person but eat and use nothing. This results in your death.

Now maybe the other person's a better hunter so you allow them to eat more, to increase their chances of survival since they can increase your own chances of survival. But I truly cannot think of a good reason to offer them more food otherwise. Unless you're just a nice person and would feel bad if they didn't eat more than you (in which case you're only being nice to avoid the guilt you'd feel otherwise).

I suppose in the end I feel like a functional society is the only reason we're even nice to each other at all.

Back to the case of my brother, society has deemed it unacceptable for me to yell at the bully, and... well if we didn't have other people around the whole incident wouldn't even have happened.

This is why I like it much better living on the island in my head. I can be as selfish and evil as I want and it would not impair me IRL at all.