the Sanctity of Parental Authority

I haven't blogged for a long time. Exams and apathy have done in my previous habits from mid-September.

Let this herald the beginning of a new slew of news about my empty little adolescent life.




My father should rue the day I decided to take KI.

He tried to force me to attempt to speaking chinese constantly, yesterday. He meant well. He didn't accomplish his purpose.

Shall I show you why?

Here's why.


C: Therefore you must speak more Chinese, so that you can be good in it.

P: You are not the whites! You will never be the whites! Why do you want to become the whites? <-- fallacies of strawman, ad hominem, red herring unless you consider the Principle of Charity
P: Do you know now that the world is looking at China? <-- fallacy of ad populum
P: You don't even try to speak Chinese! <-- that's not even a fallacy. That's a blatant lie. In fact the whole lecture was started by me trying to speak Chinese, very badly.
P: (other blatant lies.)
-- insert short tense demand: he forces me to tell him how many languages he speaks. I manage 'six'. He growls and claims 'seven'. <-- Fallacy of red herring. Though I don't doubt the truth value of his claim. --
P: One language is not enough! You must have at least two! <-- I concede the spirit of the point, although the premises for this are unjustified.


I can't remember the other premises. It was a short speech but intense, and I was growing angry, although I kept my mouth shut.

all throughout: fierce voice and parentally-justified didactism. <-- fallacy: ad bacculum, appeal to authority




I shouldn't be putting this on a blog, or rationalising an argument like this, but my POINT is that while I've always felt angry whenever my parents told me off, I finally know why. KI's done it. The records I just presented, in the form of the argument it took, was in standard form -- used in breaking down an argument into manageable bits that may be examined for individual logical validity. As with all rhetoric, it most of the speech was inductive, inductively strong as it may be, but uncogent. In fact the speaker relies more on personal authority and the silence of his audience than the merit of his statements to present -- force -- his point: this is only very broadly what makes me unhappy.


I wouldn't have minded if they had stuck to criticising objective behaviours or attitudes, but character assassination is all too often key to their persuasive shouting for me to really respect them although I understand and accomodate their points of view. What is important is that they refuse to respect or accomodate mine, particularly my father -- any attempt to reason with him or bring him to my perspective, especially when it involves his personal tendencies, will result in an accusation of either 'talking back' or childish ignorance. He dismisses my points out of hand and my opinions as pure idiosyncratic indulgence and NOT being able to say my piece when he's hurling lies onto my reputation is what gets me. And then there is the constant threat of violence -- oh yes -- he's threatened to break my neck against the wall before because I corrected his grammar. I love him because he's my father, but I've never liked him, and I shall be glad to leave his roof when I'm older. Occasionally I hate him with a passion I never feel against my mother. I don't think this is unreasonable.

I have to count my blessings for my brothers, though. They are very nice people, although I wish I knew them better. But I think I get the brunt of the parental backlash because my highly individual tendencies stand more contrary to the traditional Chinese ideal of a submissive female, and as the apple of my father's eye THIS in particular gets a lot of attention. Also I tend to want the truth. For someone who lives on rhetoric, this is not good news. I think I must have gotten the most cane stripes in Primary school among the three of us for being 'cheeky'. Sigh. Here's suppression of free speech for you.

Isn't it ironic? Here I am spewing rhetoric right and left. To placate me, you may call it an 'impassioned speech'.



If you don't want to read this, don't.