Wow, I just compiled some excerpts from a friends essay on denial and conditioning and was about to post them.
This seems the perfect place.
We are enormously vulnerable to conditioning.
While it is not true, as classical behaviorism states, that we are a blank slate, it is true that we are enormously plastic, enormously dependent and vulnerable, especially during our younger years, and enormously vulnerable to the effects of conditioning. In fact, our psychological self is not inborn, but develops via the process of internalizing images and experiences that originally occur in our outer lives. Though fortunately limited by our inherent natural tendencies, to a large extent we psychologically become a faithful recording of our environment.
It is actually much easier to facilitate the loving qualities because that is our natural bent. It takes more of a systematic process of hurting and depriving children to install hurtful and oppressive patterns. Once installed, though, it is relatively easy to trigger those patterns and keep them activated. The primary dynamic is really very simple. It is to make the being afraid, making sure she knows that her survival depends on avoiding the wrath or abandonment of the person on whom her life depends. The end result is very simple: AUTHORITY = TERROR. The ideal in a culture such as ours that frowns on overt harsh abuse and cowering, whimpering dependents, is to make a child (or citizen) not so fearful that they utterly collapse and cringe, but just fearful enough that they do alright, but are very "respectful" and OBEDIENT to their elders or other authorities.
Installing patterns of fear and more or less blind obedience, though a lot more trouble than supporting our natural bent toward self-determination with eyes wide open, is not all that hard. John Taylor Gatto does perhaps the best job laying out how this works in our educational system.
How often do children hear "Be Careful!" In fact, is that not the second most ubiquitous mantra of our culture today? (First is "BUY something now.") Terror alert. Terrorist. Child abductor. Job loss. Be afraid. Fear. Fear. Fear.
There seems to be great confusion in our society about fear. We extol fearlessness, placing great value on the person (generally a man) who "knows no fear." At the same time, we tend to be very fearful and manifest this fear in how we treat our children. I challenge you to notice how often you say "Be careful" to your child. Think about it.
Jean Liedloff, in The Continuum Concept, gives a wonderful illustration of childrearing in a nature-based tribal society. The children are free to range the edges of steep cliffs and fire pits without concern. They are expected to learn awareness, not caution. In our own society, we teach our children to be afraid. Notice the mailings and late night TV spots depicting lost children. The impression is that children are in great danger of abduction; yet the actual number of abductions is very small and, in fact, more than 90 percent of these so-called "abductions" are committed by parents who have been denied legal custody. The way mass media handles "News" in this country saturates us with fear. Sensationalist journalism takes a horrific incident from anywhere in the state, country or world and brings it into your home and into your mind. You feel as if these daily horrors were happening right next door and you were indeed living in an extremely dangerous neighborhood.
The claim to virtue is obvious; we all want to keep our children safe, and there are dangers. I mentioned some above in reference to my 21st Century Manifesto for Parenting. There are no guarantees. Could it be that our frequent admonishments to be careful actually suppress our children's awareness, natural curiosity and exploration by making them fearful and conveying an expectation of harm or failure? You decide, but check yourself out by considering the possibility of enthusiastically telling your daughter to "Take a Risk!" as she heads out the door today.
?.I offer this Universal Declaration of Mental Rights and Freedoms1 as a wonderful vision. We hold this truth
*That all human beings are created different. That every human being has the right to be mentally free and independent.
*That every human being has the right to feel, see, hear, sense, imagine, believe or experience anything at all, in any way, at any time.
*That every human being has the right to behave in any way that does not harm others or break fair and just laws.
*That no human being shall be subjected without consent to incarceration, restraint, punishment, or psychological or medical intervention in an attempt to control, repress or alter the individual's thoughts, feelings or experiences.
our "civilization" is the most destructive ever. Its core values are two: maximum profit and minimum liability. Its fundamental strategies are two: conquest abroad, suppression at home. Its basic perception of life is called objectification and exploitation of life. Trees become board feet of lumber, land a resource to "develop," animals are food products, and children are a product market for anything: electronic games, candy, massive amounts of psychiatric drugs, etcetera.
~John Breeding~
To that we can add programs.
Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible." (quoted in Derrick Jensen's Culture of Make Believe, pp 57-58.)
