Most of you know that I am transported from time to time into other universes. This is never with my consent, but I’ve grown to accept it. My brain cannot process certain insanities on planet Earth, and so it probably is a good thing.
Last night, I awoke from dear slumber, realizing that for sure, the axis of the earth had tilted just a smidgen quite suddenly. The reason?
Why, McDonald’s has closed its doors in Iceland. Indeed, a near panic has ensued as frantic Icelandicers, or Icelandics? rush to get their last fix. So goes America’s best hope of supersizing the rest of the world to it’s obesity level. It is a government plan put in play to prove what we all know already, America is exceptional, and fat drives it!
It seems impossible to conceive that McDonalds could suffer such a set back. I mean, let the banks close, let the hospitals overflow, let the fields run empty of potatoes, but good God, how can humanity continue with any human not within ten minutes of a Ronald Mickey D? The sheer inhumanity of the thing is enough to make one choke with tears.
I figured that from that, everything else would go downhill. And it seemed to. The other day, I was reading the remarks of a creationist, who so happily and proudly proclaimed that she had used a particular creation site to extensive use during her homeschooling days. Does this mean that there are zero requirements for homeschooling to get that diploma?
I mean, do ya just call the state education department, and say, “send me one of dem diplomas. I’s ejucated nows?” Are there no standards of any kind? Or is this part of the great lie that creationist parents put their kids through? Here’s what you need to say to get the grade, but pssst, we don’t believe any of that is true. Is this not child abuse?
I can point to any number of people today who were told such lies as kids. Most all of them have since rejected their parents theology, in favor of none, sad to say. And they of course now know better about science as well. I find it sad, and it makes me mad. We are something like 31 in the world now in science and math, and we can thank in some part such intellectually bankrupt parents who have driven their kids into a scienceless world all in the name of feeling good emotionally. Shame on them. Believe what you want, but you’re kids–they are not property to be used as your emotional crutch.
I think this sums things up rather well.
Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
you may strive to like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves the bow that is stable.
Kahil Gibran
I guess I come down on the side that parents have a duty to teach their kids morals and ethics, and how to use their minds with discriminating care. We need kids who can think critically and separate the chaff from the wheat. We don’t need to teach them what to think so much as how to think. Then we need to expose them to as varied a world as possible, and to as much varied thought as possible. It is up to them, in communion with their conscience and/or God to decide what to make of it all.
Humans are incredibly resilient. We, most of us that is, turn out okay, even against rather heavy odds against us. That doesn’t mean and shouldn’t mean that parenting is largely not important. It is. And we have become complacent to the fact that most of us turn out okay, and so nothing need watch over the parenting that goes on. But surely, we owe our kids more than to be raised as automatons of ideologically locked down humans. We owe them the true freedom of thought unhindered by psychologically driven mindsets essential to the parent, but not necessarily needed by the child.
Why we have never felt the need for parenting classes as the norm is beyond me. The wreckage of relationships is all around for the viewing. Can’t we do better than this? Are we going to live forever in the land where parent/child relationships are so sacrosanct as to be untouchable absent physical abuse? Do we not care that emotional and educational abuse are rampant in many of our homes? Is there not a better way?
Existential Ennui 