Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

I was reading an article in a mag today. The grabber here was "Would You Kiss a Pig?" And there was a pig with lipstick on one of the pages. So as not to infringe on their rights I will just briefly explain what the artical was about. Its about how people have different beliefs for differnt situations.

For instance... Aunt Judy is wearing a dress that is just so ugly you can't stand to look at it. Unfortuanatly you are Aunt Judy's victem of the day. "Do you like my new dress?" she asks. Poor you. Do you lie and tell her its lovely? Or do you hurt her feelins and tell the truth? This is where most people would lie and say... "Aunt Judy, its lovely!" Poor woman is going to wear that ugly dress a lot now. Because someone told her it is lovely. This coming from a person who really is not one to usually lie is now committing situational lieing. Try to explain to your little girl now that its wrong to lie. So what should have been done? Hmmmmm... yikes. Try to find something positive about the dress and a sensitive but truthful way to tell her the truth. Something like this. "Judy, the cut of the dress is great but the pattern isn't something I would have pictured on you." Maybe she will see that you are trying to be kind. And maybe she will look for another dress in that same cut but something more becomming on her.

How about situational theiving?"I don't steal" said the old man in the store. And yet when I pinched a grape off the bunch at the store and ate it and my mother caught me and spanked me 'right in front of God and everybody" I learned that yes it was too stealing. "But MOM! That old man did it too!" The old man of course did actually steal a couple of the grapes. But to him that was ok. However, he was a straight up dealer in his business which was like furniture or something. He never stole his neighbors tools etc. But to him it was not stealing when he ate the grapes at the store and didn't pay for them. To my mother it was most deffinitly stealing and I paid for it not only with the grounding I got, the money I had to fork over from my hard earned savings of pennies found on the sidewalk, but also with the embarassment of having to tell the shopkeeper what I had done and the spanking I got from my mother.

To be continued....