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Dependence Day
During my vacation here on the East Coast I have had the pleasure of hanging out with a lot of little kids under the age of five. I have two beautiful nieces and a nephew. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been exposed to children and they are not something that usually enters into my train of thought on a day to day basis. So it has been really refreshing to have them around (even despite all the crying). Being around them has shifted my perspective on a lot of things and given me some new insights into problems that I have been contemplating for quite some time.
This whole thing about freedom, which is ostensibly what we are celebrating today here in the United States. We celebrate our nation’s independence, whatever that means. Little kids have a funny relationship with freedom and independence. A big part of having little kids around seems to be regulating and restricting their freedom and independence - both for their own benefit and often for your own peace of mind. You don’t want to have little kids running around hitting everybody, spitting or putting stuff into electrical sockets. And that’s just to name a few instances because they are extraordinarily creative at finding other ways to get into mischief.
But at the same time, it seems like it’s really important to build up in kids their own self-confidence. They take a lot of pride and achieve a certain amount of personal development when they believe that they can do things on their own like a “big girl” (or boy). It’s a really funny process to take part in sometimes and often seems to be a delicate balance to strike.
It’s been especially interesting for me to witness all this in light of the many conversations we’ve had here and elsewhere about individual freedom, personal autonomy and conspiratorial and government schemes to restrict the above. When it’s little kids who you love and want to protect, there is no inner personal turmoil about restricting what they do. But when somebody else, some unseen force seems to be applying this same thing standard to you, an adult, it’s simply maddening. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum or crying, we start conceptualizing and adult-ifying it with words like “rights” and whispers of “revolution.”
What it seems like to me, with my extremely limited exposure to kids, is that the same emotional hooks, rewards and punishments that we use to steer them away from harm and trouble and into positive personal development are the same ones which are used on us throughout our adult lives. It is only the language and the symbolic/conceptual clothing which is upgraded.
And so it seems like there are a number of potential things we could take away from this simple observation:
- That parents are often little different from benevolent dictators (and sometimes not so benevolent, at that).
- That the mental-emotional relationship we have to power and authority is likely formed very early on in our lives. And the patterns we instill in our kids become the model by which they will judge the fairness and righteousness of their government and their ultimate personal response and relationship to it someday.
- Emotional manipulation, reward and punishment seem to be deeply ingrained in humanity. So many of us today - conspiracy theorists, activists and the politically, socially, and spiritually conscious - rail against these things. But the truth of the matter is that these things are not simply evil so much as they are practical methods of creating incentives for and against behavior.
Would it even be possible to raise a child in such a way that they were impervious to outside manipulation and what adults call “oppression”? How would that child need to be raised? Would they be a holy terror on everyone and everything around them? Would they somehow naturally balance out? How much restriction and how much freedom is right for kids and at what age? How does the government of your individual household compare to the (way that you perceive) the government of the United States? Are you guilty on a day to day basis of lower levels of the same kinds of oppressive tricks, tactics and manipulations that get you so riled up when you read about them in the newspaper? And is there anything wrong with that? Is it simply natural or are these games just buried so deep within our culture that they simply seem natural when they are not?
I don’t pretend to have answers to any of these questions, nor is it my intention to criticize people’s parenting skills. Cause God knows its a complex and beautiful thing that I myself am not quite ready to tackle personally. It’s just a topic that I’ve never heard anybody really address and I know there are a lot of people with kids and families who read this site. Maybe some of you have thought about this and could share your ideas and experience.
July 4th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
I really love the topic of this post, and shit dude u always have a knack for
word-ifying these topics that cross my own mind from time to time.
I will think about this a little more before posting and then respond.
But my first thought is that yes it is a great analogy, and of course it is not an answer to anything because within that microcosm analogy you have all the same issues that make it different on case by case i.e. how wise is the parent to begin with, is there advice and direction sane and sound with all best intention for the kid (because buddha knows there are real stupid fucks having kids too), even if it is best intention, it may backfire. The parent may not get the expected result. Then there are the kids, where the one method may work on one and not on the next, or produce entirely different responses and results in 2 different kids. One may be more capable / intelligent naturally, and so not need the same sets of rules and guidelines as the other. Etc. It’s already pretty messy and we are only talking about 1 family. I was reading the other day about Dr. Carroll Quigley, who is apparently a respected “macro historian” and was a teacher of Bill Clinton’s at Georgetown, who had an impact on his thinking. He talks of an anglophile network of social engineering (British Empire) - not in the sense of conspiracy “lunacy” but as a fact and he is or was a part of the elite insider circle - and how he agrees with their goals but not necessarily the secrecy or the means to the end. So as analogy, you have one parent who may curtail a child’s “freedom”, but may also explain the how’s and why’s of it all to the child. The other may do the same but also not really explain it to the child or just expects obediance…or else… That sounds kind of like good government vs bad government. Anyway, I went on longer then I thought I would here.
July 4th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
[…] I’ve been watching a lot of kids’ television shows lately with my niece. Being around kids so much the past couple weeks has really put a lot of things in perspective for me. One show that I’ve found interesting has been LazyTown. […]
July 4th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
I really like that point you made about how one way of envisioning the difference between “good” and “bad” parenting and government has less to do with the punishments or decisions made by the parent on the child’s behalf, than by the ability to explain the decision-making process to the child.
What is the purpose when a parent tells a child exactly why they are being punished? It is so that the child will internalize the rules and behavior that is desired, so that punishment will become unnecessary. Doesn’t always work, but it’s a great analogy to try to apply to governments and the governed.
July 4th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Ya it’s on to something. So to go to a little deeper, there are societal rules that are enforced, and we are explained why they are in place. Some of them we agree with, some we don’t. Some we obey some we don’t, even knowing the “why” provided by our “daddy”. Because, we also see the hypocrisy of applying those rules - for plenty of examples I’m sure we could all come up with. And so parents determining and enforcing laws for their kids, while unable or unwilling to explain but also erroneously explaining the reasoning, or applying the “do what I say, not what I do” philosophy (and then worse cases of outright abuse etc that I don’t even want to get into) is another level of problem in the analogy, but I think it still fits.
Where it gets most murky is when we get to the ultimate punishments society sees fit for crimes. We don’t accept that parents would incarcerate or beat their children, we can’t envision the child being so wrong in their normal behaviour. But in society, we could allow (agree or not) the death penalty, blaming the “child” not the parents influence on the child. This is not really a new analogy I guess, since I seem to have heard / read the same type of reasoning somewhere before… like whether the US is responsible for creating terrorists or are they just fed up with all their mom and dad’s shit.
Hey Ma and Pa, what the hell is wrong with y’all??? (fishbone)
July 4th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
I was thinking if I ever had created an angel/monster child from scratch how would I instill spirituality into it? I think it would be challenging to feed kids an open-ended idea of spirituality—– for, I think children need some foundation other than being brought up with ’spiritual but not religious’ platitudes. But I wouldn’t really want to damage the psyche of a child by forcing it to watching ‘religious themed monster movies’ all day. Heck, should children even be conditioned into believing in God?
Needless to say, I am suprised it is the year 2006 and you can’t buy already programmed robotic children. If I could program into my child I would give it a love for nature, encoraging free play of the imagination, and compassion for animals. “children are hideous monsters which only time could destroy, or children are little angels.” Dr. Dilldeau
July 4th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
I think they already come like that…
July 4th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Well, my robotic children might not.
July 4th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Speaking of pre-programmed children, check out what Osho has to say about that. A lot of food for thought here:
http://oshoworld.com/kids_corner/kids_corner.asp?news_id=ed
And speaking of parenting, ditto:
http://oshoworld.com/kids_corner/kids_corner.asp?news_id=parents
July 4th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
children come with a default setting for joy, passion, inquiry etc. it is us who put the boundaries on. government and religion are fashioned out of the memories our forefathers had for thier parents. as someone posted here recently, the old testement god was a cranky recriminatory parent. the government we have is a raging despotic parent that believes that without total domination we (the children) will burn the house down.
we can`t create a child impervious to the mechanisms of control. all we can do is give them some permission to have flexibility……and hope that they can find a way through the maze like we are trying to do.
July 4th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
I also wonder how children would come out if they raised themselves and each other. Sort of like a Lord of the Flies situation, but without them ever having met or heard of such a thing as an adult. How would they turn out? What would their culture be like, their government?
My guess is not too different…
July 4th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I have 3 nieces, and the youngest turned out to be very possessive of her toys, food etc. She’d get angry if you tried to take her things away and she wouldn’t share, probably a result of having the older 2 girls around. I had to watch them for my sister years ago and if I left them alone to do their own thing they would try to cook brownies that didn’t turn out so well, and take out all their toys and not clean them up, chips and cookies all over the floor etc. Sometimes they’d fight but if they were all playing in a group together they got along well.
I have a nephew about a year and a half who is smart, clever and curious. If he comes across a problem he usually finds a way around it i.e. moving the end table to reach the phone, pushing a box so he can climb up onto something. He also tries to pickpocket your wallet and he’s sneaky. He’s a daredevil who jumps off the couch and runs around at full speed. You can’t look away for more than a second and he’s into something. He can’t be left alone to his own devices or he’ll wind up getting hurt. He’s governed so his actions don’t get himself injured and so he doesn’t get into something he shouldn’t but he’s like Han Solo and grins and then finds another way around.
July 4th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Maybe instead of a Lord of the Files situation, they would create a magical never never land and erect Michael Jackson/Peter Pan statues all over the island.
For it was Jesus who said something about people turning into children to enter the magical kingdom of heaven.
July 4th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
In which case, maybe we’re preventing them from being in heaven. Which makes sense in a kind of metaphysical sense. In order to incarnate as a physical being, you must be sort of drawn down from the pure spiritual realms. And once you’re here, we try to teach you how to be here without getting yourself killed (floating back to the spiritual realm) by sticking a fork in the toaster or testing out how well the microwave works on your toys.
July 4th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
I believe the soul exists, (I do not care what the eliminative materialists say!) The soul is probably pretty child-like, children it seems are so much closer to the divine spark/mystery.
And really, adult hood is so cumbersome with the accumulation of dead skin that blocks access to the soul. So it is no surprise Jesus said “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3-4
The hell of adulthood (is a blob like demonic-monster that) feasts on the brain, it sucks up the child hood spirit/spark and turns people phony and traps people into a phony status-obsessed world.
Speaking of phony, I remember reading Cather in the Rye. Holden of course did not want children to grow up because adults were phony!
July 5th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com
July 7th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Would it even be possible to raise kids without “oppressing” them? I doubt it, but I don’t know what that means for adults’ freedom. I figure that once you’re an adult, no one has the right to oppress you that way, even for your own good. With kids, it is necessary, I think, to be firm sometimes and restrictive even so that they don’t grow up to be assholes. A kid who gets everything he/she wants is a brat; people don’t like being around others who are selfish, and the only way to stop such selfishness from developing is to nip it in the bud when the kids are young by restricting what they do, punishing them, etc. I don’t have kids by the way (nor do I want any, at least for a damn long time).