What you see is what you get.

A couple of months ago, Tiarnan, four, collared his mum, Syahidah with a thought.

"Sometimes," he began, ruminatively, "you cannot tell the good or the bad...but you can DEFINITELY see the ugly."

When I heard this, I thought it eminently wise, for one so small. He had come to observe that moral quality, was not immediately visible, or was, perhaps, at times, ambiguous but that beauty, or its absence was immediately evident.

It is interesting, for me, that he thinks on these matters. He is weighing what is good and what is evil - and how to determine these. He has realized that it is not always easy to say, without further information, whether something or someone is good or evil. He has also come to understand the immediacy of visual beauty and its opposite.

I do not know whether matters of good and evil; beauty and ugliness, are the common thought of four year olds, everywhere...I suspect not. However, it is revealing to me, that they are the material of Tiarnan's thoughts. He is, though he knows it not, having philosophical thoughts. He is thinking about moral values and aesthetics - and, indeed, many other philosophical concerns. His thoughts are concerned with the human sphere and the human experience and what he understands of them. It is not so important what, exactly, he thinks of these matters, but the very fact that he IS thinking of these matters. It says something deep about the nature of his nascent personality and mind, that he should dwell on such matters over other things. I am led to see a certain commonality between Tiarnan and my younger self. For, you see, I have written a book that considers many similar matters, though it is yet unpublished. I find it telling, therefore, that little Tiarnan, who knows nothing of my work, my writings or my deeper thoughts on life (for I have yet to discuss them with him, of course), should, of his own accord, give thought to allied matters.

We are each unique, yet we each share dispositions with our forebears. So it is with my children: though they are unique and unlike any others, in some ways, they are also akin to ourselves, sharing elements, themes, inclinations and instinctive outlooks, with either myself or my wife. It is reassuring to see those dispositions and ways of thought emerging, unprompted, from their growing minds. It informs me that, one day, there will be in this world, three young men who understand their parents better than any others in all the world. They will understand us, because, in some ways, they will be us, be echoes of ourselves, reverberating into a future we may never know, for, of course, our time is likely to be less than theirs. When we are gone, they will remain and, in some way, parts of our human tale, will go on, told by other tongues, and other minds, but informed, nevertheless by some of the very same substance, that made us, what we are and, one day, were.

Carry on thinking Tiarnan...for as your world view forms, I will be here, to understand it - and you.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The obscenity of cake.

There is nothing more obscene than cake, in a world of widespread hunger.

I shall explain the remark. A couple of days ago, I was in one of Kuala Lumpur's many splendid malls. This particular one, is a small, but stylish one, near where we live. As I made my way past its shiny shopfronts, one caught my eye. There, to my left, was an array of multi-coloured, delicately crafted, promisingly textured cakes. Each one was well presented, like some culinary gift, all decorated with little bows, and most inviting to the eye. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, a sense of disgust welled up in me. It was an emotion I had not felt before, on seeing a cake, but in that moment it was very clear: the whole idea, the very conception of a "cake" was an obscenity. Here we live in a world in which millions, indeed billions of people, really do not have enough to eat, to keep themselves well nourished. No doubt millions every year succumb to starvation and the diseases associated with malnutrition, including untold numbers of babies. Yet, there I was, standing before a shop that sold nothing but expensive cakes - a food that had been divorced from the notion of nutrition, and existed in a world of pure pleasure.

Consider that for a moment, please. What kind of world have we built, in which a privileged, relative few, have access to fake foods, that have no real nutritional value, and are made purely to induce pleasurable sensations - whilst multitudinous others go without sufficient food and nutrition to maintain their health and even life. It is both absurd and profoundly obscene.

The eternal purpose of food is to nourish life. Yet, modern man has created foods of no nutritional value, but which serve to entertain and delight: food has become a medium of pleasure, divorced from its primal role of sustaining life.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not some kind of puritanical anti-hedonist. I am quite content with the idea that people should enjoy their lives. However, what I am not content with is that a modest few of humankind should eat empty foods just for pleasure, whilst others die for the lack of basic true foods. That, to me, is an indicator that Man, as a whole, particularly the people of the developed world, have lost any moral sense, that they might once have had.

When the world is viewed, widely and all sides are considered, at once, it can be seen that to create foods without nutritional value, simply to evoke pleasure, when many others are dying for the lack of foods WITH nutritional value, is an unrecognized kind of evil. It is, if you like, a taunting of the impoverished. It is saying: "We have such abundant food and resources, that we can create foods that could never sustain life, and would in fact kill us, if we ate nothing but them, just because of the pleasure they give us."

Cakes mock the very idea of food. They also mock those who could never conceive that foods could exist, that only serve to bring pleasure. They mock those who have no food at all. There is something callous about cake: it offers pleasure, but has no substance. Were one to eat nothing but cake, one would as assuredly "starve" as one who ate nothing at all...and what kind of "food" is that? How can "Mankind" apportion limited resources to creating a food totally unable to sustain life, an "unfood" if you like, whilst millions die for the lack of real food?

Seeing those cakes, taught me something. It showed me another way in which modern man has lost any sense of proportion, lost any understanding of what is meaningful, important or worthy of effort. It is not worthy of Mankind to create dead foods, just so people can feel a momentary pleasure at their "eating". There is something very decadent and sad about a race that would actually do that. Whilst millions die, without real food, millions of others, eat empty foods that, ironically, would kill them, if that was all they ate. There is a madness in that, so common, that everyone fails to see it. I hope, however, that my words might awaken in you, an understanding of the innate obscenity of cake.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

A first step towards civilization.

I have been silent for a week, as I said I would be. I write now, not out of any particular motive to write, but because I promised to have a decision in a week - so a decision I must post.

I have decided to take an interim step towards improving the experience of writing this blog. From this moment forth, there shall be no anonymous comments on my blog. It is my hope that this step, alone, will be enough to restore sufficient civility to the comments I have been receiving. Should it not do so, I will strengthen the limitations on who can post, on my blog, and even who can read it.

From now on, anyone with a blogger account or an OpenID can post on this blog. I am sorry if you have neither and you wish to post - you will just have to get an ID. For four years, I allowed all readers the privilege - and it is a privilege - of posting anonymously, out of a misguided belief that some people might have sensitive things to say, that required them to protect themselves with anonymity. However, the opposite thing happened. People with INSENSITIVE things to say, abused the privilege to hurl invective, spite and sheer nastiness whenever I wrote something they disagreed with. So, it has to stop. If you have something to say...you must now do so, in the open, with a name and an ID.

Now, should the unpleasant remarks not stop with Open ID and blogger, I will restrict the permissions further, to just blogger members. If that doesn't work, then I will restrict the READERSHIP, to invited people only. If that doesn't work, I will have a private blog, readable only by the author.

I am tired of reading abusive comments from often less than perfectly sane readers - or less than perfectly pleasant, anyway. I hope that this first step towards achieving a civil blogging experience will be enough to attain it. If not, I have already outlined the successive steps I will take to gradually restrict access to commenting on this blog and eventually to even reading the blog. I would prefer not to have to restrict the blog further, but I shall do so, if the net nastiness continues.

I hope to have a better blogging experience, from now on. We shall see.

Thank you to all those who wrote letters expressing appreciation of my writing (under the previous post) and asking me to continue. I have weighed those words and decided that I should take this minimal first step towards restoring "civilization" to my blog, before taking any more drastic steps. Let's hope it works. Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)