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Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

One thing that helps people's motivation is being willing to explain to them why a task should be done. As a teenager, I was very reluctant to mow the lawn for years when the reason was "I told you so". I just didn't know what the benefit of mowing a lawn was and I didn't know how to persuade my parents to explain why they wanted the lawn regularly mowed.

But when my dad suggested we could avoid basement flooding by digging a drainage ditch, I was keen. This wasn't a particularly easy job -- it involved going through a really annoying mix of clay and gravel and for one section digging while I was hunched over underneath our back deck. But I was eager to do it because I could imagine how my effort was actually helping my family.

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Explaining why implies you're on their level, or close enough, which is poison to some people. If you are on their level, you could, conceivably, disagree with them, which would marginalize their authority over you. However, if you are forced to do things because of a "Because I Said So" mandate, well, you can't possibly disagree with an argument if an argument is not presented, hein?

The corrosive effect this has on the ability of the people in nominal charge to come up with arguments is never discussed, but becomes all too obvious when a social factor, such as a religion, loses a "Because I Said So" mandate it once had over society as a whole: The representatives of that religion, accustomed as they are to being able to dictate terms, are incapable of forming a cogent argument in favor of their position. They either rant and rave about how the world is ending, because, from their perspective, it is, or they come up with things which sound like arguments but which have holes in them a child could see through, and many children do.

Dictatorship weakens the dictators. So mote it be.

Actually that's kind of an interesting point. Don't know why you are getting down voted for bringing up an important dynamic about dictatorships in the nuclear family.

But is it the cause or is it the effect? Do some parents not know how to communicate positively and so they just shout the kids down (which still leads to a shouting match, just not a productive one) or do they start out with the ability more or less and then when they use the shouting down technique they find the short-term reward beneficial and it starts to become their go-to tactic to the point where they don't know how to not do it because it has become so automatic and to suddenly start going in the reverse direction would be seen as weak and they just can't have that?

It's kind of interesting watching Super Nanny when they have these extreme cases and she makes the parents change tack to more reasonable styles of communication and the kids improve dramatically and quite fast.

FWIW a mowed lawn discourages rodents from making homes next to your house, and eventually chewing through whatever they can find to make a hole into your house.

Of course people ruin this protection by then planting bushes right up next to their homes.

The idea is to create a sort of dead zone around your house where nothing really lives. Ants of course don't care and are a huge problem for homeowners.

Then wouldn't gravel or paving around the house make even more sense?

Lawns are stupid.

Lawns consume water runoff as grass uses water to help with growth. Gravel pits outside your house less so. Paving means water runoff has nowhere to go so you need to build that into any paving plan or your basement will flood.

Paving is too ugly. Gravel pits are popular in areas that don't have enough rainfall to sustain grass. The big tradeoff with gravel pits is that they're not as nice for the kids to play on.

> Lawns are stupid.

Jewelry is a big part of most people's lives.

Lawns are in large part conspicuous consumption and an honest signal of conscientiousness.

Is that to say a kid likely wouldn't find the real explanation convincing? Maybe that's telling.

I always thought lawns were a old symbol of wealth, proving you don't need all your arable land to survive.

Playing devils advocate, debating everything, and winning every debate, only works if you're a patient, skillful debater. More often than not, debate is a war of emotional attrition. Better to choose your battles. For this reason, I avoid debate and negotiation if at all possible.

I think you meant to reply to a different thread

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