-=> Quoting Sondra Ball to Robin Arnhold <=-
Hi, Sondra,
 
 SB> Sometimes I get obnoxious, too; and bore people with all the
 SB> statistics I've managed to accumulate in my life time.  I have this
 SB> whole supply of totally irrelevant stats floating around in my head.  I
 SB> try to keep them under control -- but -- sometimes ....
When I get obnoxious, I tend to get in a bad mood and go around with a
chip on my shoulder just itching for an argument.  Sometimes I find them,
but not as often as I did when I was younger (probably have driven away
most of the people I could have an argument with--grin).  It's much worse
than irrelevant stats, which are actually potentially useful.  As one of
my supervisors used to say of her supervisor, the only way you could
convince him to change his mind once he'd made it up was to bury him in
as many useless statistics as possible.  Bureaucracies tend to run on
irrelevant stats .
 
 RA>It seems to boil down to the question of whether the ability to love and
 >feel empathy is inherited such as the ability to speak is or whether it
 >is inherited and also needs to be stimulated in order to develop.  If it
 SB> 
 SB> Well, even speech does not develop if a child is not spoken too.  I
 SB> think the ability to love is inherent in all people.  but how much
 SB> stimulation it takes to bring out that loving nature probably varies
 SB> from person to person.  
True, it probably works that way.  Since I've not been involved in the
raising or teaching of children, I'm not really in a position to speak
from experience beyond what I experienced growing up, but it sounds
reasonable.
 SB> Some people are born with a great natural
 SB> ability to learn languages; and others have little language ability.
 SB> Given a language poor environment, the child with great ability will
 SB> probably still do very well with speech, whereas the child will little
 SB> ability may not learn to speak at all.  
I think it is also possible that a verbally-oriented person being raised
in a language-poor environment may be considered different by the others
in his or her environment and come to believe that it is somehow wrong to
be verbally talented, sort of like the person with genuine artistic or
musical talents born to a family of jocks and being made to feel like
there's something wrong with them for not also being a jock.
Take care,
Robin
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.20
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