“Everyone has values; even criminal gangs have values. Values govern people’s behavior but principles govern the consequences of those behaviors.” — Stephen Covey
What values are our children being taught? Whose values are being taught to our children? Are our children being designed, steered and programmed by an conflicting, contrary, and incompatible values which are in opposition to the nuclear family? When one dives deeper into the Culture War and looks into the values each generation has been taught and is currently being directed layers upon layers making it more complex into areas of unhealthy habits, skills, lifestyles and being fragile; the takeaway is our children are being conditioned, influenced and coerced and the disturbing part is most of us don’t even realize it.
“Coercion occurs when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose. It is not that the coerced does not choose at all, if that were the case, we should not speak of his ‘acting’ . . . Coercion implies, however, that I still choose but that my mind is made someone else’s tool, because the alternatives before me have been so manipulated that the conduct that the coercer wants me to choose becomes for me the least painful one.” — F.A. Hayek
The human mind likes to follow the path of least resistance. If our choices are arranged to choose “the less offensive of two undesirable options“, then the “coercer” gets what he or she wants.
“A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.” — C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
By tracing our steps by where we as an individuals, families and societies by facing “the error” and working it over again, by a new start then we correct our course of direction from unhealthy to that of being strong, sound and whole emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.
While I was serving as a School Resource Officer, I was introduced to an author of several books, David Walsh (Designer Kids and Selling Out America’s Children: How America Puts Profits before Values–and What Parents Can Do). The reading of his observations and experiences, helped me understand what I too was experiencing and perceiving while serving in the schools with adolescents. The knowledge I gleaned from Mr. Walsh not only enabled me to see better of what was happening in our culture as a peace officer and even more so as a father and concerned citizen.
As a father and concerned citizen, I was seeing the state of America for the first time in an objective view by figuratively stepping out of the rat race and my comfort zone by watching society from a new set of eyes with new found knowledge from the sidelines in order to get a better understanding and picture of what was flowing into our minds, hearts and culture.
“Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.” — unknown
I am reminded by the term “Bread and circuses”, which is an endless amount of “superficial appeasement.” This way we will not investigate what is happening in the world and go with the flow and status quo and not challenge it, even if it is harmful in the long-term. It seems we are only concerned with the present and not the future cause and effects of our actions or inactions.
“Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt” ~ Juvenal
Americans have abdicated their duties of what it really means to be free.
“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.” ~ Juvenal
Americans are now content to live in servitude.
“What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.” ~ Aldous Huxley
The target for these copious amounts of intoxicating and amnesia inducement and accelerated tools are our youth from many angles and enemies who are traitors to the American way of life.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY INTERUPTED
In understanding our own children, we need to be aware and conscious of their development. Each child of course is different. Since our children are not born with a manual to help guide them through life, we can use this template introduced by Erik Erikson’s as the Theory of Psychosocial Development to assist in evaluating where our child corresponds in this framework.
“At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child – miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.” — P.J. O’Rourke
When I read the book, Mr. Walsh had compiled a list of distractions of harmful effects our society and culture was introducing into our children’s lives under the guise of betterment, but not realizing the long-term effects. As a parent we want the best for our children, but sometimes short-term beliefs and actions can be harmful to long-term development of character.
David talks about the Adultification of Youth as one of the greatest pressures to “grow up quickly” on our youth.
We are not allowing our children to mature. “The word mature comes from the Latin maturus and means “ripe.” The ripening of fruits or vegetables takes time and proper conditions. If certain stressors occur during different stages of the ripening process, then the fruit or vegetable can be damaged or injured.”
THE QUICKER THE BETTER
“There is a strong bias in American culture in favor of anything fast. . . . “ready in seconds”.
“The bias toward fast and quick has also spread into childhood. Rather than a time of slow ripening, it is increasingly seen as a stage to be gotten through as quickly as possible.”
It takes time and the right conditions for the best wines to age and mature. In the Law of the Farm and harvest, it takes time to plant and harvest what a farm produces for families and the nation to be nourished and uplifted to what is best for healthy development.
“The only thing that endures over time is the ‘Law of the Farm.’ You must prepare the ground, plant the seed, cultivate, and water if you expect to reap the harvest.” — Stephen Covey
It takes time, effort and hard work to be a parent. It seems like most of our time is spent parenting. In the long-term it is worth every effort and sacrifice to teach healthy and responsible principles to our children. In the end, it is worth every sweat, tear, hope and prayer for our kids.
A PASSION FOR EXCELLENCE
“Certainly, excellence is a positive thing. Excellence has been a goal in a wide range of human endeavors for thousands of years. But can excellence be overdone? A pursuit of anything can be overdone-even excellence. Several years ago a book on the best seller list was entitled In Pursuit of Excellence. The more recent sequel is entitled A Passion for Excellence. From pursuit to passion can mean a transition from a balanced perspective to being out of kilter.”
“No one can be the best in every situation. There can be much pride and satisfaction just participating in an activity. When a passion for excellence means never being satisfied with a best effort, then excellence becomes a tyrant.”
Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance, frustration, folly and corruption of society, culture and our youth.
How many politicians and parents have caught this bug of passion for excellence by way of Authoritarian in parenting style as it resembles a tyrant and dictator.
WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
“That same fixation on being Number One permeates much of our society. As a nation we’ve adopted the Vince Lombardi maxim, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!” What does that message say to our children? In any win-lose competition, there can only be one winner. If winning is the overriding value, then that’s fine for the one who wins. But what about those who don’t win, but give it their level best? In a class of 28, only one student is at the top of the class ranking. What does being Number One say to the kid who’s Number 28? In too many cases it says that he’s a failure.”
The “importance of children feeling competent and successful, we start to get a glimpse of the harmful effects of an overdose of “passion for excellence.“”
“Excellence for a child with limited cognitive abilities may mean that she ranks 28th out of 28 on a math test. If the only measure of excellence is being Number One, then it is very difficult-if not impossible-for that girl to feel proud of her achievement or competence about herself.”
Each child has their own “cognitive abilities” and we as parents, teachers and society needs to celebrate and understand this concept. There is no one-size fits all and we can not conform each child to the cookie cutter approach. We need to celebrate the small wins and victories as much as the large ones in life. It’s usually the small wins that come in one at a time over various failures and redo’s that build confidence in our children that add up to great sums.
We are not for everyone receiving a participation trophy. We are for getting to know each child and understand where they are on the sliding scale of the Theory of Psychosocial Development. By helping identify where our children are on the scale, parents are more likely to help their children become more healthy emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually.
CHEATING TO WIN
“With winning being the dominant goal, cheating becomes common.”
“Cheating to win becomes common when winning outdistances any other value. Whether it’s on Wall Street, on the athletic field, or in the classroom, cheating happens in epidemic proportions when the values get out of proportion. Cheating is epidemic, and the values are out of proportion.”
“When winning is the dominant value, other problems happen as well.”
What we are saying not in words, but by our actions as adults that teach our children, “the end justify the means“. The “actions people take are justified regardless of how they go about achieving their desired end result.” This is subjective to our own whims, emotions, limited beliefs and personal perspectives and narrow experiences regardless of objective truths and principles. It is set in our moods and attitudes that we are having due to what we are consuming and knowledge at the moment, it is what is relative at the time, instead of seeing the bigger picture and objective truths.
“In politics and government, lying and then justifying it through the ends vs. means philosophy of behavior is a favorite past time. You may recall that former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made a false statement to Congress when he responded to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans by saying “No sir, and “not wittingly.” We all know that was a lie borne out of a belief the ends of collecting such data justified whatever means were necessary to get the data regardless if it tramples on our rights under the Fourth Amendment that protect us against unreasonable search and seizure.“
Cheating to win, at all-cost permeates, corrupts and infuses which shows it is systemic and now fundamental in our once upon a time American institutions, including every arm of the government stemming from the Federal, state and local government. It is destructive to individual, families, societies and to our country.
When we overlap these unbalanced and unhealthy values as they fuse and merge with instant gratification, we get an unpleasant, awful and murderous monster as we continue down the road to keep our children stunted in the process of maturity.
FAST, FASTER, FASTEST
“If being Number One is an American obsession, then being Number One very fast is an even greater obsession. Fast is a great American value.”
Is this really what we as Americans want to value and then teach our children? Remember, we have already established “criminal gangs” also have “values”. Is this what we want to model and mentor our children and grandchildren?
“If it takes too long, we as a society are not interested. If fast is good, faster is better. In the past generation, we have constantly found more ways to do things faster.”
“The irony is, after a generation of inventing timesaving gadgets, we feel we have less time than ever before!”
We can fuse these values with American founding traditions, if Americans would understand the past, present and future and work together, rather than be dulled by “Bread and circuses”, be fully informed with knowledge and wisdom.
PLEASE ME NOW!
“We like things to happen fast. We don’t like to wait. We also like things to be resolved and fixed quickly. We want our efforts rewarded without delay. In other words, we have become a society obsessed with instant gratification.”
“The direct message . . . is that we should all be able to have what we want when we want it. Waiting for something is portrayed as a negative infringement on our right to have it now.”
“Children, by their nature, are impetuous and impatient. They are inclined to want what they want right now. When this natural impatience is reinforced in a thousand different ways in our culture, the drive toward instant gratification becomes exaggerated rather modified.”
“If children are taught that they don’t need to wait, then it’s very difficult for them to develop life skills which are so important for maturity. Children can be conditioned to expect instant reward either directly or indirectly. The direct message comes from the media which tells kids they should have what they want now. . . . They are taught instant gratification in the modeling they see in their parents or in other adults.”
Life is suppose to pull, nurture, and evolve the adolescence from child to adult through a natural process over time. As we can see, there is a natural tendency for children to be “impetuous and impatient”, now we can see society, especially the media and the money powers being funneled, used and made by “following the money” trail on who and why these corrupting values are spread, integrated and assimilated into our society and culture. The problem is being compounded and getting worse and worse as they are layered upon generation upon generation without acknowledging or solving the issues at hand.
THIRTY MINUTE SOLUTIONS
“We are not only taught to get what we want quickly, but we are also taught that difficult problems should be solved quickly. Television shows, for example, portray high human drama and very difficult personal problems. These problems are often resolved in thirty minutes or less. So not only do we have two minute popcorn, but we also have thirty minute resolutions of complicated human dilemmas. Everything is fast. Likewise, problems should be resolved fast.”
If problems can not be solved in the “Thirty Minute Solutions”, then they aren’t worth our time. Relationships suffer from interpersonal to family to community. Why are there so many divorces, and contention in the world?
“The fast pace of our lives, coupled with the images on television and video games, create a constant state of stimulation and excitement. By comparison, working through complicated math problems or reading a long book may seem boring. Part of life is learning to cope with boredom. But the implicit message of our culture is that boring is bad. Therefore, today’s youth is under a great deal of pressure to avoid boredom. What that often means is maintaining a constant state of stimulation. Many children do it with nonstop activities. Many others turn to TV or video games for the stimulation. Anything which cannon measure up in terms of stimulation or excitement is condemned as uninteresting.”
The “constant state of stimulation and excitement” has consequences, short and long term.
“The present study found that 9 minutes of viewing a popular fast-paced fantastical television show immediately impaired 4-year-olds’ [executive function], a result about which parents of young children should be aware.” (2)
How does this continual, unbroken and steady diet of “stimulation and excitement” have on ourselves and our posterity?
“Your diet is not only what you eat. It’s what you watch, what you listen to, what you read, the people you hang around. Be mindful of the things you put into your body emotionally, spiritually, and physically.” — unknown
Are we consuming and filling ourselves and families with wholesome information and knowledge that is feeding and nurturing our maturity in the specific fields of emotional, mental, physical and spiritual?
NO PAIN, NO GAIN
“This constant excitement and pressure for instant gratification is often accompanies by an intolerance for pain. Our culture abhors pain. We have a remedy for every type of pain imaginable. As a consequence, our children are taught that pain is always bad and needs to be avoided at all costs. This is true of psychological pain as well as physical pain.”
“. . . it is part of everyone’s life. Therefore, it is essential that we help our children to learn to cope with pain. Coping with pain includes things like perseverance, patience, and the ability to delay reward.”
“These skills are not learned automatically. They are taught. The lessons are not always easy or pleasant.”
SOLUTIONS – DELAY GRATIFICATION
“One of the most important skills children need to develop is the ability to delay gratification. Many things in life demand perseverance and tolerance for discomfort. Long-term goals can only be attained by patient persistence. Long-term relationships can only be maintained through commitment.”
Teaching our children perseverance, patience, tolerance for discomfort and commitment are the antidotes and medicines for what ails, affects and sickens our culture.
“We have to teach our children how to be efficient with time-and at the same time, patient. We have to teach them that we can’t always have what we want exactly when we want it. We have to teach them that part of living involves pain, and that part of growing up is learning how to deal with pain rather than running away from it.”
We can’t run away from pain, but must understand, endure and undertake it in order to grow. Adults need to model it and live it in order to teach our children how to become what we hope for our kids to become.
We must embrace failure as well. Even Star wars with Yoda recognizes the importance of failure as a great teacher for ourselves and posterity.
“A philosophy professor used to shock his freshman philosophy students . . . “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.” His point was that part of growing is trying things out-and at times, even failing. Learning from failure can often be more valuable than learning from success. Learning how to cope with failure is an important step in maturing.”
I will leave the last message to Mr. Walsh.
“Children do not grow automatically into the kind of adults we hope they will become. They are formed and shaped by the messages they receive, and by the environment in which they live. Being a parent entails the responsibility to monitor those messages and shape that environment.”
(1) Designer Kids
