“Why we can never escape our siblings”

“Why we can never escape our siblings”

http://www.salon.com/life/children/index.html?story=/mwt/feature/2011/09/10/siblings_interview
An article by Mandy Van Deven based on a book written by  scientist Jeffrey Kluger (“The Sibling Effect”)

The article starts out by making the point that sibling relationships are more unique than any other kind of relationship in that siblings stay with you through the entire span of your life. Since parents leave too soon and children
come along too late, they are the people who will “know you when you are in your most inchoate form.”

This notion grabbed my attention because I have a little sister and the fact that you would sustain a relationship with your sibling throughout your entirelife seems obvious to me. I mean, you basically occupy the same chunk of humanity as your brother or sister. But I think we overlook the importance of this particular relationship in our  lives. So I read on.

The author continues on to talk about how different sexes, birth order, and aquired step-siblings might affect the development of siblings, depending on what role they fulfill. For instance, it is said that girls who grew up with brothers are more likely to lack seriousness and grimness, while boys who grew up with sisters are more likely to have a greater degree of sensitivity and listening skills than boys with brothers or only children. From a functional worldview, this makes sense. Having a strong ongoing sibling relationship with someone of the opposite sex helps one understand the mind of the opposite sex more aptly.

Another factor that shapes us is birth order. The article says that “older children get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents” before younger siblings come along. However, the advantages of being a younger child include developing ability to use “low-power strategies,” such as intuition and charm.

The relationship between older and younger siblings helps us acquire traits that we wouldn’t have otherwise have acquired. For instance: if an older sibling has a habit of aggressiveness, the younger sibling will learn coping skills to deal with conflict. On the flip side, younger siblings require nuturing from the older siblings, so the older siblings have to develop stronger foundations of empathy and nurturing skills that they might not have developed if they had not had to play the “older sibling” role. I certainly feel this way about my role as an older sister.

According to this article, in blended families, step siblings have more territorial issues at first, but can actually form ties as strong as biological siblings in about six years.

In addition to talking about step-siblings, the article reaches a little bit into the development of single children. It is a common myth that single children are less altruistic and more self-involved. However, this is not necessarily true. They often have better academic skills and a better ability to keep friends because they were forced to go out into the world and learn social skills rather than learning them at home with a sibling.

However, this article makes a good point: that relationships between siblings are important and not to be squandered, because they are perhaps the only relationship that you keep throughout your whole life.

Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds.

This is an article that my dad emailed to me a few weeks ago. I thought it was so interesting that I re-read it for this assignment.

Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds Summary and Reaction

by Lauren Groves

For the last few years of his life, Ernest Hemingway suffered from mental afflictions and was diagnosed with depression and paranoia. According to a close friend (A.E. Hotchner), he believed that his car, his room and his phone were being bugged and that his mail was being intercepted. Friends were supportive but worried about his obsession that someone was watching him. It made him lack fervor for life and, at times, lose the will to live completely.

He was soon transported to the psychiatric section of St. Mary’s hospital on November 30^th, 1960. In December he received eleven electric shock treatments. The whole time he was there, he remained convinced that his room in the ward was bugged, and that the phone outside his room was tapped. He also expected one of the interns at the hospital was a fed.

He was released for a short while, but the strife created by his “paranoid delusions” led him to attempt suicide two more times. On a flight to the Mayo Clinic, “though heavily sedated, he tried to jump from the plane. When it stopped in Casper, Wyoming for repairs, he tried to walk into the moving propeller.”

Years after he tragically managed to take his own life at the barrel of a shotgun, the truth was made known. The F.B.I. released its Hemingway File, which reveals that beginning in the 1940’s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Hemingway under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s frequent visits to Cuba. So now we come to grips with the realization that his crazy behavior in the last year of his life was highly justified. In fact, around the time his paranoia set in, he had already been under surveillance for almost twenty years.

This once again raises the constitutional debate over privacy that has been going on for hundreds of years in America. When the constitution was written, our forefathers listed our rights to life, liberty, and property. However, they neglected to mention anything about privacy. The closest we citizens get to privacy is in the contents of the ninth and tenth amendments. Even though it doesn’t say anything about personal privacy, it does provide that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” (9^th amendment) and that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution…are reserved…to the people” (10^th Amendment.) When analyzing these two amendments in unison, it is clear to me that there is a right to privacy. Because the government isn’t specifically given the power to violate the people’s privacy, it is reserved as a people’s right.

Hemingway lived a wonderful life to its fullest. It was only when his right to privacy was unconstitutionally revoked, that things went wrong. A brilliant literary mind was wasted away to nothing with shock treatments that were ordered by doctors on account of his “paranoid” condition. If his constitutional rights had not been violated, I believe he could have lived on well into his golden years. He could have retained the concentration that was needed to finish his aesthetically pleasing book about Paris, “A Moveable Feast,” and many more masterpieces. Ernest’s tragic end is an excellent example of how unconstitutional surveillance can ruin a vibrant and beautifully-lived life.

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