10-04-2022, 07:22 PM
General pattern: authoritative. Authoritarians wreck children with brutality and repression, and loosey-goosey parents get wild savages as kids. The worst are those who swing wildly from one pattern to the other, alternating neglect and sever punishment. For the kids, nothing makes sense, and their world becomes an absurd nightmare.
1. Parents must set appropriate examples. Got any towels with the name of the motel on the? You have taught that it is OK to steal a souvenir from the not-so-rich franchisee of some big business. Drunkenness and drugs are bad news in themselves. Got some hustles for getting stuff without paying for them? Getting cable or stealing internet or power without paying? Then you are teaching that theft is OK if you get away with it. OK, pens with advertising are OK as if business cards. One of the most important lessons to learn in a capitalist order is pay the price or do without.
2. Spanking is appropriate only in cases in which one wants a child to associate misconduct with pain or at least the possibility of injury. Playing with fire or electrical power, shouting ethnic slurs at ethnic minorities. Carnivores bite and scratch; horses kick. You will learn the rules.
The Ten Commandments are generally good, although idolatry is largely irrelevant today (unless you are to treat something like a political cult or pornography as idolatry). Maybe you can make a fable out of an example of a violation of the commandment to honor parents.
Example: once upon a time there was a German boy who ratted out his parents for harboring a Jew. The Jew was of course sent to a murder camp and gassed. The boy's parents were executed as traitors. But the Party honored him! The War ended and he was alone without loved ones. One night he wandered off aimlessly into the path of an American tank. He was crushed to death.
Of course there are other newer commandments, such as to not mess with children or abandon the elderly and infirm, to not own slaves, and to not get stupefied on drugs or alcohol (let alone drive drunk!)
3. As I would not keep a rattlesnake in the house, neither would I keep a gun unless a certifiable hunting rifle.
4. Household chores and school homework come before electronic entertainments of any kind. You will not stay up excessively late (as I caught one case in school as a substitute -- "Half Past Letterman").
1. Parents must set appropriate examples. Got any towels with the name of the motel on the? You have taught that it is OK to steal a souvenir from the not-so-rich franchisee of some big business. Drunkenness and drugs are bad news in themselves. Got some hustles for getting stuff without paying for them? Getting cable or stealing internet or power without paying? Then you are teaching that theft is OK if you get away with it. OK, pens with advertising are OK as if business cards. One of the most important lessons to learn in a capitalist order is pay the price or do without.
2. Spanking is appropriate only in cases in which one wants a child to associate misconduct with pain or at least the possibility of injury. Playing with fire or electrical power, shouting ethnic slurs at ethnic minorities. Carnivores bite and scratch; horses kick. You will learn the rules.
The Ten Commandments are generally good, although idolatry is largely irrelevant today (unless you are to treat something like a political cult or pornography as idolatry). Maybe you can make a fable out of an example of a violation of the commandment to honor parents.
Example: once upon a time there was a German boy who ratted out his parents for harboring a Jew. The Jew was of course sent to a murder camp and gassed. The boy's parents were executed as traitors. But the Party honored him! The War ended and he was alone without loved ones. One night he wandered off aimlessly into the path of an American tank. He was crushed to death.
Of course there are other newer commandments, such as to not mess with children or abandon the elderly and infirm, to not own slaves, and to not get stupefied on drugs or alcohol (let alone drive drunk!)
3. As I would not keep a rattlesnake in the house, neither would I keep a gun unless a certifiable hunting rifle.
4. Household chores and school homework come before electronic entertainments of any kind. You will not stay up excessively late (as I caught one case in school as a substitute -- "Half Past Letterman").
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.