Phrases from the distant past

@SeekingConnection I've seen a mother smack her child on the backside out in the street. It looked to me that the child had no idea why. She would just be crying and screaming.

@WonderGirl Spanking can be very scary and when they actually happen, as is clear from SW posters, they create crystal clear lifelong memories. I hope that you didn't worry about it too much!

@WonderGirl Out of interest, where did this happen? - I know this sort of thing ("public" punishment) is still not-unusual in a number of "non-Western countries"

@daddybloke In my turn it wasn't being helpful - just trying any kind of distraction technique, whether it was trying to get them talking about something else (however ridiculous) or trying to create some problem which would take their mind off it...or, when we had a house with a cellar, just ineffectually "hiding" in the hope that they'd forget. It didn't work.

@SuziSatan02 And of course it wasn't the spanking that I was really afraid of...

@SuziSatan02 what was you afraid of ?

@Dez580 Free entertainment indeed- or studying new techniques.

@naughtyschoolboy Well, I don't mean this to be making light of your predicament, but I know (as much from correspondence as experience) that it could have been much worse...at least NSB's aunt and cousins, and Dez's mother's friends were only voyeuring the spanking

@SW-User It sent shivers down one's spine, didn't it? And made other parts tense!

@SuziSatan02 very clever use of the word 'do' in such instances Suzi. Are you familiar with such a phrase as it never happened to me in conjunction with strict CP ?

@MandyMitchell And I imagine that, despite what the experts now tell us, it was an effective way of deterring future misbehaviour.

@johnstretton2 Pupils who had been whacked seldom caused trouble for a while. The first whacking warmed, but the thought of subsequent treatment on the same place was quite a deterrent. A second whacking would have been harder and sorer.

@johnstretton2 I suspect some school nurses knew that best of all !

@Dez580 Yes and there was not much chatting !

@Strictdad1965 Yes but I'm sure you behaved as well and politely as you could, in order to avoid repetition of the procedure.

@barney1 My father was usually away, so I never heard that one.

@MandyMitchell sadly for me mine wasn't!!

@MandyMitchell Same here

@helenS Thank you, Helen of S. You are my favorite SW philosopher.

@Alfred22 Thank you – I still prefer Hegel over Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson though!

@helenS Greetings Helen of S.

Hegel aimed to account for all of world history. The two Americans had more modest goals.

I preferred Kim's thinner account of so-called "mental" events and mental causation but Davidson is right about two events being identical only if they have the same causes AND the same effects. Rorty was on the wrong side of whether Philosophy should try to "get it right" or be an accurate representation of nature. Clearly it should.

Hegel thought that history was fulfilled with the unification of some form of the German state. He may not have included all, of or possibly any, of S. So, watch out for Hegel's World Spirit lest it leave you and all you love behind.