Remember when you were growing up and you were told by your parents that you should do this and you should not do that?
Mostly, it did not really feel right but you obeyed them anyway. It was easier to obey the parents and it often continued that way your whole life. In fact, it is easier to go with the crowd.
We know the crowd’s intelligence; it operates at the lowest common denominator and the weakest link of the crowd is the intersection of ignorance and intelligence. This is where you had the choice to rebel or obey.
It has always been a natural thing to want to be honoured, respected and loved and for this, we have had to be obedient. When we were obedient we were praised and loved and when we rebelled we were punished, ignored, neglected and unappreciated.
As young people are these days, we were years ago. Nothing has changed, because by and large we have not changed and this natural urge we all have to be loved, appreciated and accepted has been exploited by everyone. It is natural to want to live a comfortable life and to speak up for everything we hold dear to ourselves. As youngsters, it took a lot of energy and was far from easy. Do we even do it now?
So when we saw our parents and their friends and the so-called older people saying one thing and doing another we swallowed our tongues and said nothing. Alternatively, we spoke up and constantly got into trouble. I was very fortunate as I was growing up to have a father who encouraged me to always tell the truth no matter what the consequences were and a mother, who only wanted me to be happy, like most mothers.
Nevertheless, at one stage I had to rebel against both my parents to preserve my own truth. It was harder for them because they had encouraged me to live this way and speak the truth even if it was inconvenient for all concerned. It was.
There will come a time even for the most harmonious of families to be divided in opinion and often the most treasured ideals and beliefs will be challenged. These differences in opinion you may well have with your neighbours, your family, your teachers, husband and even children. Are you prepared for such a chaos?
The quickest way to dull the child’s intelligence is to give them beliefs in God, religion, society, even family values. Just let them form their own opinion and make the mistakes you were afraid to make.
It is far better to make your own mistakes than to live someone else’s life and make no mistakes; at least from your own mistakes, you will learn. Children’s intelligence also gets dulled by sitting long hours in class and university having a whole lot of nonsense stuffed into them which they will cram for the exams.
Most children are born intelligent and almost ninety-nine percent of people die stupid. The function of the parents is to support, nourish and love the children, not to give them direction, beliefs, ideals and advice on how to live their life. They have eyes and can see how we live our life and how we can often become hypocritical and cowardly and pretend to be different to the outside world.
Children can be helped by telling them the truth that you have been conditioned by your parents and them by their own parents and it has been a long vicious chain. It was unintentional to the greater part but they should not be influenced at all, nor encouraged to follow in your footsteps. When parents start telling their children what is right and what is wrong they betray their children’s trust and cripple their intelligence.
My mother and father told me that,
You need to be free of us and listen to your own intelligence.
My dear father did forget at times and then all hell broke loose because I reminded him that he had told me to trust myself.
Many times, I also forgot and tried to please him but it usually backfired on all of us and things got worse before they got better. It is better, surely for kids to go astray and learn by their own experience but the problem, of course, is that none of us trusts enough to let go of control and we say to ourselves,
…just this time and I will step aside.
But alas the time never seems to come.
Ah, let the children be! Easy to say, not so easy to practice.
Chris Borrett