CHILD CARE

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy.
I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.'
In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
-Bertrand Russell

When parents condition the behavior of their children the initial attempts are, one hopes, introduction of perceived benefit. In further confessions of a faithless hope fiend, one wishes such benefits are real instead of expedient saccharine lies; ala tooth fairy. Anyone who really watches their children listen to their words knows they have an innate bullshit detector, which may not reach untraceable critical mass ‘til their teens, though begun in the first year. Against all hope of fooling their children, all too many parents, rather than realize the capacity of children to act maturely when treated honestly, revert to the same tactics as religion and governments use when the façade of duplicity wears thin; by asserting assumed authority, “Because I say so.”

I have always taken that sort of attitude to indicate that the child’s curiosity has surpassed its parent’s own curiosity, stamina or patience. I have a friend who tells her toddling son the names of man-made artifacts; which had names before their physical existence. She lets him name the natural objects for himself, knowing there will be plenty of time before he must socialize verbally in the general public for her to explain the difference between his version of what he experiences and her own in such a way that makes her a benevolent example of the “otherness” to be found in society. That each of us has our own personal reality tunnel is the natural product of varied personal experience. Mistaking one’s own reality tunnel for a truth so universally superior it justifies intrusion on any other is the grit in the social grease. She takes it, at this point in his development, that all the things that have similar sounding names constitute his version of a species and, curiously, the homophones all kinda’ look alike too.

If the concept of external authority over ones personal life seems too incomprehensible to the developing worldview of our toddlers to illicit sufficiently immediate obedience to its dubious benefits punishment may ensue. Crafty controllers know that proper application of deprivation, or in dire cases in combination with physical abuse, will usually get the whiney little brats to heel — “Now see what you’ve made me do?” After a few such sessions the pliable clay of their loins will have become so gullibly brainwashed with fear that the mere mention of getting out the belt or no keys to the car or any other godlike threat will have them jumping into the master plan mold. Parents often excuse such treatment of their loved ones as preparing them for the real world — not for their protection, for their production!!! WTF

Within the family a child may have to go through the same sort of transference of guilt as enacted in both the biblical account of man’s banishment from Eden for being intelligent enough to question God’s omnipotence and the Bush administration’s banishing as terrorist anyone intelligent enough to recognize implosion of three buildings and see through the ensuing opacity of their government’s transparency in the death of more than Sodom and Gomorrah combined in the name of mob rule, er, ah, democracy.

Asking, or even expecting, government authority to solve the problems inherent in such unwarranted authority can only make sense to its brainwashed victims and is tantamount to asking them to raise our children to be more uniform clones for us because they know better than we do. Punishing our children trains them to become the worst part of civilization.