Some Of What Has Shaped Us To Be What We Are Today

Reality: what is or is not real. From our earliest days, when we first began to express what we were experiencing, those in authority over us have told us in no uncertain terms that much of what we reported experiencing, or remembering, was, "just your imagination," or "you're lying!"

As stated previously, we have been indoctrinated/programmed from the beginning of our lives; a major part of this programming is regarding what, or what is not, "real." It used to be believed by most that infants come into the world as little more than lumps of unformed clay, and it was the duty of parents to try to form that clay into a, more or less, social entity.

This had evolved to the point that today, many young child's day is rigidly organized, with parents hovering over them constantly. When children get somewhat older, today's parents seem to believe that a family is a miniature democracy, (I have come to the conclusion that the best run families are benevolent dictatorships, with children allowed to be children, without them being allowed to run wild--shaped, not rigidly molded).

When I was in college, (one of the times) I was taking a course called, "Social Psychology," (in my opinion, it should have been called, "Psychologizing Sociology"). In the text book was an excerpt from a government pamphlet, (from the '50's I believe) advising new parents on how to properly raise young children, with a picture. This excerpt stated that young children should sleep in one-piece pajamas, with feet and hand coverings that had ties attached. The new parents were instructed to tie these ties to the rungs of the child's crib in order to prevent him/her from touching themselves.

Over the last fifty years, theories of child development have morphed into a "science." This science has resulted in the fact that very large numbers of children currently have been "diagnosed" as having hyperactive behavior and other problems which, it is believed, require them to be drugged in order to calm them down and make them manageable.

I remember when, many years ago, one of my sister's-in-law was told by one of her son's teachers that her son must start taking Ritalin to calm him down, so that she would be able to teach him in class. This sister-in-law saw no reason to do so, so did not act on the teacher's directive. The teacher, believing she would be obeyed in this regard, when she next talked to my sister-in-law, reported how much better my nephew was now behaving in class!

In actuality, there are many things that can cause children's behavior to become unmanageable, one of them is too much sugar in their diets, another is food dyes, another is exposure to high levels of cathode rays from televisions and fluorescent lighting, and another is parents' exposure to too many child-psychology theories.

Over the years, child-psychology theories have promoted many damaging ideas, which many parents have tried to follow; the result has been to cause children to have little or no respect for them. The state of affairs today is that parents have abdicated most, if not all, responsibility in families; children determine what their families eat, and activities they engage in etc., etc.

Added to this is the fact that, over my lifetime, extended families have splintered into nuclear families--families consisting of father, mother and child/children--with extended family members at a distance, if not alienated. Currently, many nuclear families consist of only a mother and a child, or children, with little input from mature relatives. The result of this state of affairs is that many children are currently being raised by dysfunctional people, who were raised by dysfunctional people.

In the majority of the past century, children had little chance of retaining any trust in their ability to determine for themselves, what for them, was real, because of the indoctrination of their extended families and society.

Today, it seems clear, that few individuals, at least those that come to our attention in the "news," take any thought before they act, frequently violently. People being responsible, in any shape or form, for their behavior, or for what they have taken on in life--what used to be considered responsibilities--appears to be nonexistent.

These factors, and many more, in current society, are what has gone into shaping us into what we are currently. Blaming others for what we currently are, and how we function in the world, seems only reasonable. Despite this "reasonable" blaming of others, we must claim responsibility for our own personal behavior in order to fee ourselves.

I have only touched on what is "real" in this blog, oh well, in another blog I will discuss it more, perhaps the next one.

Shirley Gallup