Contempt for the not so perfect or rising like a Phoenix from the Ashes…

The Swedish journalist Dan Josefsson writes in the article "’Debatt’ ska inte bygga på verbalt underhållningsvåld” or ”Debate shall not be built on verbal warnography” about:

“The knotty problem is how you make as many people as possible interested in watching a [TV-] programme not built on verbal warnography or populist contempt for knowledge and where the guests are treated with respect even if they aren’t communicating with cogent one-liners.”

This triggered other thoughts on a more personal level (as a one that works a lot and thus have limited time polishing my expressions up and am one who studied English a long time ago, but want to express things and share it with friends over the world who aren't Swedish speaking):

Yes, people have the right to express themselves with the language and the words they have - even if it isn’t perfect! Or even if they don't express themselves as well as a Nobel prize winner.

How many people haven’t become silenced when it comes to expressing themselves in both written and spoken words? Maybe in a similar manner as many have become stunted when it comes to music, something I as music teacher and my colleagues have heard many times! Quite ironically.

Something quite horrible especially when it has been shown how important narrating can be!

Maybe people need to become encouraged instead, as I and my colleagues are trying to (I hope) with our students!?

And if you don't get the opportunity to train how can you, or are you supposed to, develop skills in any area, respect?

Is it the belief that you just rise like a Phoenix from the Ashes, from nothing, in a similar way (with the underlying, maybe not conscious belief) as many of us were treated by an impatient parent? With demands on perfection and that the child should manage everything at once? Perfectly and like a grown up (or even better!). Even in cases when the child managed things (way) above average!?

PS. Josefsson also writes about "Black-and-white pictures in the media about the tsunami."

Children’s and adults’ needs…

the first snow a couple of weeks ago.

Thought further after the former posting about raising methods...

What are the child’s needs? What needs does it have to get filled to develop as optimally as possible? That is to develop to a living human being. A human being capable of forming a life he/she wants that isn’t destructive or self-destructive.

Yes, a child needs more than food and shelter. It needs emotional safety, reassurances of different kinds… And emotional needs are essential for survival!

The needs that didn’t get filled early in life will cause bigger or smaller problems later in life. Either for the individual itself and/or for other people, the extent or scale of problems the individual causes depends on the power he/she gets. Many exercise power on a micro level and some on a macro (addition November 17: the latter on a micro too, because usually those people also have families).

And some are so paralyzed so they direct everything towards themselves in different ways.

But it is possible to recover and heal to an extent so you can live a deeply meaningful life – I am sure. However, a big problem is the societal denial; the lack of talk about those things, I would assert or maintain! And the denial not least about how common those things probably are to different degrees! AND HOW HARMFUL they in fact are! WHAT they are actually causing. But if you have been a living dead more or less your whole life, from earliest childhood, you don’t know what you are missing or lacking either. And you don’t know what you are forwarding either! And maybe you don't want to know what you are forwarding...

If more people started to admit to those things I think this would be the only help many people would need! But not the only help for all. But it would be a help for the most harmed too. And a few are so harmed so you maybe can’t help them at all? As some of the worst serial killers and alike?

And what would real, adult needs be? How many of us really know?

And once again it also struck me that people have to be allowed to express themselves with the language and words they have: that not only the "educated" with a perfect grammar are allowed to write or express themselves!!! Is this actually contempt for weakness, i.e, contempt for the small child you once were, who didn't have the words yet of natural reasons, but needed to express feelings and emotions in some way. And in what ways?

Some of us need to search for the words really when we try to write about and investigate those things... For some (or maybe many) it's difficult to put these things in words!?? But it can be very important we try nevertheless. And why do we care about people looking down on our struggles and our imperfectness??? To be honest...