Liars; Yes You!

I find lying an extremely interesting area of human behaviour; we all do it at some point or another, although some significantly more than others. As children we test the water for what lies we can get away with without significant punishment. So where do we learn this dishonesty? Is it innate or learnt from those around us? If it was the latter it would make sense as to why those with impaired social skills are bad liars; they can't pick up the skills from their parents / family / friends as easily and so they get caught almost every time they tell a lie. However, I am more inclined to believe it is mixtures of both as many cases go beyond the realms of imitation.

Studies have indicated that socialisation does play an important role in whether we grow up to become liars. They conclude that those with a bad upbringing lie much more than those that had a happy childhood, but I'd take it a step further. Those with a bad upbringing are more likely to be caught out lying, as they've learnt from bad liars; we all lie. You don't? Thanks for proving my point! Those who are socialised better are more likely to examine the risks behind the lies i.e. they are more cowardly in their lies. If the chances are that the risk of being found out and the punishment is worse than telling the truth then they will do the latter. To me, there is a huge parallel between criminal behaviour and lying. The clever will use it to their advantage whereas those that aren't so smart with suffer the consequences of their behaviour.

The expansion of communication technology apparently makes it very easy to lie, because along with learning how to lie successfully we learn how to detect lies. This link describes some key ways of spotting dishonesty. In the introduction it highlights the weakness:

The following techniques to telling if someone is lying are often used by police, and security experts. This knowledge is also useful for managers, employers, and for anyone to use in everyday situations where telling the truth from a lie can help prevent you from being a victim of fraud/scams and other deceptions.

This is brilliant if you can see the person with your very own eyes, but behind a letter, e-mail or website you'll be pretty hard pushed to spot an honest comment from a lie. Here it is obvious that ways of deciding whether someone is lying are very limited, because nerves can always be confused.

As this is a blog entry, I think one of the most important elements of this behaviour is that which is found on the internet. Lying on a website, forum or msn should be much easier as stated above, because you take away any leakage from non verbal communication, but it adds one huge hurdle. When telling a series of lies it is much harder to recall everything that you have typed compared to speaking. For compulsive liars, I'm sure it would be commonplace to tell different people a different set of lies, as they lie not to get themselves out of trouble, but for the addiction to the adrenaline rush it gives them. What happens when those people collide though? If you go to a few forums with a common theme then before long you normally hear of 'old' stories of people who have been banned which normally are routed in a web of lies. They're also the people that are normally still there under a different name and a different set of lies, but their lies do no harm apart from humiliating the people who fell for them in the first place. Sometimes I have to laugh at how naïve people really are, myself included. On the internet, we can target a specific group of people by joining a forum on a subject area we are interested in, we believe we are surrounded by people who are alike to us and drop our guards and wonder why we fall for such lies. You've got to laugh at yourself sometimes.

However, the Internet is also a wonderful playground for the human imagination. People who had stopped role-playing and making fairy tales in their childhood suddenly find the avenue to do so again on the Internet. You could be anybody at all, anybody you ever wanted to be - and better still, there is no one to question you about what you are doing. There is a certain sense of freedom in living your dreams where there is nobody to be critical about them.

Source

More sugar coated bulls##t please.

A Fallen Wish Too Far

A Fallen Wish Too Far

I can’t count the times I’ve looked on these blank sheets wishing they’d consume me, but they can not as I am already consumed in the pain of the knowledge I have been given. Just like I can’t count how many times I asked the question, the question’s answer which now has me in its grips. How I used to console my friends after hearing such dreadful happenings, family secrets unearthed, yet now I realise everyone has something, something which haunts our futures for eternity. Just because we don’t know its there doesn’t mean it isn’t. What happened to the dominating ‘happy’ families there once was and the future full of hope? Now everybody seems to be carrying something within, emotional baggage you could call it I guess. Until you carry some you do not know what it is all about, you can not even begin to imagine the pain involved, I was totally innocent to it all, but I was the one who tainted that, curiosity killed the cat and all that.

She closed her book once again hoping that her thoughts would not be carried from the paper to her head. It was already too late though and she could not break away from the struggle which gripped her daily, more often as the days went by. She however chose not to tell anyone how much the news had affected her, as she did want to become ‘any more trouble than I already am’.

Instead, she wrote it all down in her book which she named ‘Iwoas’. She never left it anywhere long enough for someone to read it, but the book looked rather too tatty to be of any importance. Its pages covered in small, black scruffy words that were only legible to the trained eye. Though the most noticeable give away to its significance was the small picture of a young woman tucked into the inside cover.

Building up courage again she opened up the book to continue writing her latest entry, the entry to complete the book.

I always enjoyed watching the sea as a kid and now how easily I could jump if only this did not pull me back so fast from the edge. The guilt I feel for being alive, but the guilt I also feel for even thinking about taking it. I’m wishing on a star now, because it is the only chance I seem to have left. Sixteen months I’ve known my mothers fate now, the fate that I decided for her. How could my father tell me so easily, as if it would have little impact on me? If only history could rewrite itself without me ever being born then she would still be here. My father would have a smile on his face, how much it must pain him to stare at his wife’s murderer everyday. Oh I’m wishing on a star tonight.

She reached out her hands fumbling to meet the cardboard, which she eventually found. Quickly she drank down the glass of water before she got the chance to change her mind again. Snuggled up to the duvet to keep her warm her eyes were heavier than ever. She feel asleep almost instantly, anticipating the norm; nightmares.

Strangely as soon as she was asleep she awoke again. Her hands tingled as she rolled over to try and get back to sleep, however it seemed almost impossible and it was not long before she gave up. Standing up she did not feel the guilt she had felt before, but more deepened guilt, scarred into her memory.

Glancing over to the mirror a faint reflection could be seen. It was her own, but somehow she had not expected it to be, Walking closer she recognised herself more so, but the guilt within was becoming unliveable, something just didn’t add up. She slumped back over to her bed and leaned over to switch the bed side light on. Opening the tatty book again her eyes darted around in confusion, the picture of her mum was no longer there. Turning the pages more rapidly as she went the realisation sank in. This book was not about her mother but her herself and the book ended more abruptly than she had expected. The one thing she had wished for every night for the last sixteen months of her life was happening or had happened.

She had been what her mother had waited for, for years. Built up everything around the day that Hope would come into the world, but she was never to see that day. Her mother here had felt the same guilt she had and would give everything just to have her baby girl.

She looked to the sky, almost fully clouded over apart from one star that was shining through and she then realised she had had her wish. It was no better here. All the time she had spent wishing she was never been born she’d never thought of the alternatives. You live, you learn.

Suddenly her eyes opened, light streamed in showing the shape of a familiar face. Her father. She’d been given another chance and she smiled knowing that if life was perfect, there would be no reason for tomorrow. No reason at all.

Disorders: Why Can't People Accept Them?

Well many times I have come across people, either in day to day life or online who seem to think the growth of disorders are down to people wanting to have an 'excuse' as to why they can't cope. Isn't their an irony in telling people they are making an excuse for themselves when they are at the same time making an excuse for the growth?

We need to accept that people are different; people do have different tolerance levels. The world is not staying the same and so we as humans will not stay the same. Technology changes; we change or at least try to change.

That has had a knock on effect on loads of things, on medicine, food, entertainment, work and transportation, in fact I can't think of an area where it hasn't had a knock on effect, so why wouldn't it not have one when it comes to people? Let me give you an example.

Asperger Syndrome (my diagnosis) was universally recognised in around 1994, but years ago, some of the problems we have wouldn't have existed. Aspies dislike change, it makes us pretty depressed (in varying degrees - because no two people are the same {!}) if it's at short notice, why would it be easy to recognise now? Modern society has more change than it did years ago, people travel more frequently, whereas before if you went away you were seen as privileged. Technology and better communication systems means things don't need to be planned so far in advance and it is easier to just go out and do something, 5 minutes after you've thought about it. You can't say we're just eccentric people either, technology also means we know more about the brain than we did 30 years ago, even though its still only a tiny proportion of what is out there to learn. Our brains haven't developed to the extent which your 'average' Joe Bloggs brain has. And no it isn't the case of just stupid, I along with many Aspies been predicted straight A's so it is nothing to do with being stupid.

Then there are tolerance levels, it's a very arrogant perception to think, I experienced Sh#te loads, I'm fine, so everyone else should be (and so these disorders are excuses). People's immune systems are weaker than others, some collapse due to things, that other experience 0 problems with, so why shouldn't our brains and our tolerance to every day or bad problems be different? That's not humans being namby-pamby that is a fact of life. I know of two rodents that were neglected and given to someone who had a snake, which were put in a freezer (they were alive and fully grown) for over 12 hours, when they were taken out to be defrosted so they could feed them to their snakes, one eventually moved and survived, the other one died. One clearly was more adapted to cooler temperatures than the other; we clearly have people who are adapted to modern society better than others.

Then there is the increase in depression and similar problems, if someone is sad for no reason, then why is it assumed it is because they can't face their problems and get on with it? To me it contradicts the first part. People can be sad for no reason, just like you can be happy for no reason, or feel like something wrong is about to happen for no reason. Don't we even show signs of pregnancy for no reason? All mainly because of hormones. Then there is the other commonplace thought that depression is feeling "sorry for yourself" which is a massive incorrect generalisation. Self pity and depression are two very different things. For instance, when you are depressed you can feel a massive amount of self hatred, I know I did and I know I still get lows nowadays, sometimes people can help and sometimes they can't. Just like what you dream at night, you can't really control, you can't really control your mood. Some people have triggers that make them depressed, and that can be almost anything, could be people telling them to just get on it with it too.

I do get on with my life to the best of my ability, I work with my family friends, those that care for me, to try and adapt the best way I can to the challenges I face, sometimes I fail, sometimes I succeed. I have a label, one that hasn't been around very long, but many fail to realise, some people go in search for fecking years like I did to find out what's wrong, just so they can try and work out where they can go from there, not to sit back and say, "I've got x, I can't do that, I won't do that, you have to accept that." But to say, "I know now I've got x, which means I have problems with y, and v can help me to try and improve in areas where I so far have failed, can you help me too?"

The Era of Conspiracy

With every year that passes now, it seems we become more cynical to the events and actions that affect us. Rarely now do we look at the facts and believe them for what they are and show. Rather shine the spotlight on it, interrogate and torture them until we get an alternative perspective. Despite the fact that if you took the common sense route to which were more believable you’d find the answer lying with the former, so why? Why are exams getting easier? Why was there no terror plot to foil? Why was Sept 11^th the work of American officials? Why deviate from the reality in these situations? This is the same generation that puts down its children as mollycoddled, gadget overloaded time bombs. Perhaps our cynics and conspiracists need to wake up and smell the coffee to the fact that they are both the cause and solution. This cynicism breeds itself as a disregard to authority figures, so why wonder when new goals are how quickly one can acquire an ASBO. The flaw for our next generation is us, not them…

Sex Offenders Registry

Will it really do Britain any good to allow everyone to view the Registry? Or have access to some of the information?

I think not.

I completely disagree with it being introduced, and perhaps for slightly different reasons than the majority who do not agree with the proposal.

1. It's estimated that anything from 80-95% of offences are never reported. That means that list contains anything from 5-15% of the people out there that are a "threat" plus any that are yet to offend but will do / are looking to. False sense of security. Around 10 people in your neighbourhood that have committed similar offences yet you know only of one, how does that help?

2. Has anyone considered what this does to the victims? MOST of the time the victim knows their attacker, normally because they are family. Print their name - doesn't take a genius to work out who the victims are. Do these people who have struggled through the justice system which does almost nothing to help them through it all, deserve this? An added reason for them to keep quiet about it, with the already fear of "betrayal" and that they did something wrong.

3. Then the flip side, those 80-95% of people out there yet to be caught, will have another reason to do anything to keep their victims quiet, we should be trying to help these people find their voice not making it harder for them.

So if I was to choose between knowing 1 out of every 10 dangerous people there are around me and making it harder for those that need help to get it, or not know. I'd choose the later, without a seconds question.

Instead of this the Government should listen to the NSPCC campaign to try and get abuse victims the RIGHT to counselling, at the moment they are steered away from it and anything said in any session can be used in a trial.

For anyone that is interested the campaign is here

MMR & The Media

Well this has been doing the rounds as it seems that media are yet again making mountain out of molehills.

I have quite a long winded and strong opinion on the subject as I'm autistic myself and reacted to the MMR. I guess the best thing to do first is explain my "story" a bit and how it has affected my opinion...

After having the MMR vaccine, I slowly started to go "backwards" ie talked mumbo jumbo (ok that's still the case today), stopped being active and stopped eating and I also became very ill. These changes were noticed by my parents but ignored by the doctors at first who said that nothing was wrong with me. Until I got so ill that no one could disagree the point and so I went to hospital. My immune system had completely collapsed. I slowly got better, but I was still pretty "backwards" and never returned to the way I was before. To give a simple example of a clear and indisputable change I could no longer handle many foods and became a fussy eater. (Strongly believed that most Autistic individuals have one or more senses that are very sensitive - e.g. some can't stand noise) My mum was sure there was something wrong with me and eventually decided it was time to make sure she wasn't just being paranoid and took me to a child's psychiatrist, where eventually I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome.

Now, rather than believing MMR caused my autism I lean more to the point that it probably worsened it, because I went backwards and so it was more noticeable after the MMR than before. I also believe I'll never truly know until the root cause of autism is discovered, which hasn't happened yet, despite tonnes of research. Now due to this fact, when some people were having MMR boosters at 16, I decided not to have one, as I wasn't sure in my own mind that the same thing wouldn't happen again. My decision was made from my own experience and research into the area, rather than influenced by the massive idiots which are known as the media. I also believe that no matter what your decision on the topic, as long as you've made the decision yourself which is an informed one then you shouldn't be judged or ridiculed.

I think the media's done a good job of shooting down the cause it is supposedly supporting. Some of these parents have real fears, real cases (of course thanks to the media for every real case there are about 15-30 false ones because people jumped on the "bandwagon" which makes it very hard to do anything about because if you were to make a study, 1 in 20 would have actually reacted and the rest are making it up) and these few that should be getting support and help to explain what happened, can't because they are being ridiculed by the over exaggeration by the media. I can't tell you how frustrating that is, when most just want an answer to what happened to their kids and the support. Perhaps the media should turn their attention to campaigning for more support and help for those familes who do have autistic children. Or jump on the recent NSPCC campaign about making it a right to have councelling. Let the government and authorities find out what happened in these few cases without it being constantly in the newspapers. It's not a crazy thing to want answers.