https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article-parenting-children-empathy/
This article written by Thomas Verny is worth reading. As my children were growing up I realized I was not perfect and neither were they. I agonized all decisions but mostly had absorbed the book Children the Challenge which emphasized the integrity of our children should not be erased by parental needs for perfection.
Decisions I made were not always admirable according to friends and family. I often winced when my first born decided what he would wear to school. I understood how easy it was to shatter a young persons self esteem by insisting he would change the clothes he wanted to wear or let him deal with the fallout himself.
I winced when my middle child would get 100% on tests and could not praise her for wanting her to enjoy her schooling without the trap of perfection, so I emphasized her feelings about it. Later she revealed she couldn't understand why the praise she received from teachers was not echoed by her mother. I wanted her to love learning not feel she was obliged to be perfect.
All children are bullied regardless of who they are unless they rule as the biggest bully. The authority of threat and fear creates terrible consequences for society, on the street, in the classroom and the corporation.
Might makes right of violence, injustice, and bombs over lives. The bomb is not created with a conscience. Authoritarian power is a threat to the intelligence and peace of the human mind. We can't create justice when we are too scared to feel and acknowledge who we are in all our complexities.
Our world has been hijacked by bullies. They win because most of us realistically understand that power over our emotions discourages soul-searching. Those who enter political positions understand that the world insists that you win. It's not interested in the cost of winning. Power demands winning through fear and intimidation even if its over a democratic society.
Parents have to pay the mortgage or rent, they have to do their job, they can't afford to except might as a force for good. So we watch our city, country, community succumb to the highest bidder and integrity becomes a sentiment we think we can't afford, even as we watch our democracies crumble under convoys, loud bullying criticism. Even as we learn the bodies of young girls can be hijacked by criminal gangs for the highest bidder, even as we listen to all the ways the young are threatened -- a shopping list of dangers as if we are acclimatized to corruption and our virgin children are naive.
As if empathy is just another Pollyanna, as if feeling is redundant, as if the Orwellian world is all there is. Money without conscience or love for life is all we have to secure a home so guard it with locks and bulldogs.
There is a man who became the ruler of an ancient civilization and the only power he has is bombs and guns as he attempts to annihilate a group of others who are attempting to annihilate his country, humans who are trained to kill then sleep at night to get up again to kill more women, children and men.
Our nightly entertainments are replays of killers, their victims and men who must catch them. It's not a world for women and children. Some countries make it illegal for women to appear in public. Why are women and children a threat? What feelings do they impart to our minds we should be offended by the sight of them?
If we cannot organize a society that embraces life, if we cannot feel the pain of those who suffer, we shall lose it.
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