Outlook on knowledge and man, insecurity, neoauthoritarianism…

Yes, what sort of outlook on knowledge (what you learn about yourself besides plain fact knowledge) do the ones governing* the schools today have (are they denying that you are also learning things about yourself, and others, besides the "fact" knowledge, facts somebody maybe have chosen too**)? And what outlook on man?

*(read: the ones with the highest power, in this case the politicans, whom the people have voted for. Today maybe in a sort of request for "strong" leaders, father-figures? Wanting simple solutions in a complex society and world, a world with many confused young and grownups. In a confusion that's very often denied too? And those, the denying, are probably the most dangerous!? More dangerous the greater the denial is about these things and the more power they get and are given).

** And maybe that doesn't have to be wrong or harmful, if you declare that you (or somebody else) have chosen those facts. You can encourage the child or student to search for more facts and knowledge in parallel or something in that style.

There are neoauthoritarian winds today everywhere in the society it feels. Obey and keep quiet.

Obey and don’t think yourself. As the old time’s upbringing.

The Swedish pediatrician Lars Gustafsson writes in one of his books, with the title that would be something in the style "Guiding Chldren" ("Lotsa barn"), that it’s the history’s own irony that authoritarian limit setting seems to have become highest fashion once again.

Even though most people today aren’t for earlier times abusive, and by inclinations to violence characterized childrearing, you can wonder if a parent of the type being a plain authority is only good. And Gustafsson still meets people who are minimizing and belittling the effects of corporal punishment of children. Probably claiming that it didn’t harm them or other people.

“Look, they (people of older times) are functioning today!”

But how? What have they missed and lost? Would their lives have turned out maybe entirely differently if they hadn't gotten the upbringing they got?

Addition: But there are other forms of violence too. And physical violence probably still exists even though it's actually criminal. And corporal punishment co-exist with other sorts of violence and abuse and other sorts of lack of respect for the child.

A basic idea in all authoritarian upbringings is that the grownups know best. The children are seen as undeveloped and still injudicious or even foolish. It’s the grownups who have the experience and the general view and therefore it’s best if they decide. Children shall learn what the grownups have to say and obey their orders.

Words like order and consequence are strongly emphasized. Punishments are important (and once again punishments are much more than just corporal) and children have to learn the consequences of erroneous behavior. And it’s the adults who decide what’s right and what’s wrong. And where does the erroneous behavior originate from?

The drawbacks of an authoritarian upbringing are many. One is that the hierarchal decision order often is leading to bad decisions (both here and there I would add). If the grownup knows best everything’s so far so good. But this is in many cases not the case.

Sidetrack: And why doesn’t democracy work neither in small nor in big circumstances so many times? And is this proof that we should skip the whole democracy-idea, as some claim?

Another problem with an authoritarian upbringing is that it's neighbor with violence. As soon as a human being seizes power over another there's risk for abuse.

The big damage arises when we give us the right to lose our heads, for example because “we know best” and afterwards try to justify abuse with for example the words

“You have in fact deserved this, so that’s that!”

The risk for this is greater within the fame of an authoritarian upbringing.

But the absolutely greatest risk with an authoritarian upbringing is probably formulated by the American child psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim - and this I thought was interesting and probably very true - namely that an authoritarian upbringing leads to children lacking in independency and that this sort of upbringing makes it more difficult for the child to build both a capacity for decisions and an own inner norm system.

I would add that the other side of the coin can become the opposite; you know best (maybe try to convince yourself, sometimes unconsciously).

The result is now that we as grownups are confused now and then! Because of OUR early history (and things we haven't been able to process, because there's still a lot of denial about these things and their effects), where we couldn’t trust our feelings and reactions. Weren’t allowed to call things in question really or see them as wrong (blind obedience in a more or less authoritarian climate), because the way we were raised and treated was supported in the society and the traditional way of raising kids.

Which is no excuse for what we have suffered and missed, however. For the confusion we now struggle with because of the treatment we received. That have lead to that we don’t have contact with feelings which would lead, guide - and also adequately protect us.

And insecure people are on top often met and treated with contempt for weakness… We easily look up to and admire the secure, who “knows”, and down on the insecure!?

Neo authoritarianism and self centeredness…

There are a couple of themes I am thinking on…

Our bosses and how they are acting. How our female, and highest boss, is acting.

The self-centredness today.

My quiet thoughts: Not mentioning the purpose is quite authoritarian. We are treated in tis way in both small and bigger things. Told what to do with no information of why. We are supposed to just accept, i.e. not really call things in question. We have no right to know. We are treated as if as if we are no thinking people? We shall just do. Obey and keep quiet.

Our female boss doesn’t even seem to think on this. Explaining why we shall do this and that or change things to something else doesn’t seem to exist in her repertoire of thoughts or behaviors? No, it plainly doesn’t seem to exist (how was she as parent?). Why this lack? Was she born like this? Her genes? Innate traits in all of us? Or?

A sidetrack: how is this model for us when we deal with our students? Do we expect the same obedience from our students? That they shall just swallow what we tell them to do?

I can’t help wondering how she was brought up.

It’s the same neoauthoritarian (and neoconservative) tendencies in the whole society. It’s those models (good and bad) bosses have from the highest bosses in this society and the most authoritarian leaders are elected too? Obey and keep quiet. Don’t question any state of affairs or at least not certain state of affairs (i.e. what the power says, but “weak” people you can use as scapegoats). And, yes, amazingly few people seem to question this. How have we been raised?

I searched on an earlier posting on those themes and found a posting where Arthur Silber has written:

“The wish for unquestioning, unresisting obedience is coming true in America, more and more each day.”

And this made me think even further on something else I had read on he psychohistory list, in an essay about teaching children obedience (in school, the authoritarianism) and found what I was looking for in the essay “Freedom of Speech”:

“US state power over its citizens has been steadily increasing since the civil war, yet children are trained in schools to be blind to this fact. The US media and University system has heavily groomed the adult population to look to the national government to solve all their problems, even problems of basic emotions like fears and anxieties. The efficacy of this indoctrination into passivity can clearly be seen in lack of outrage over the recent destruction of the US legal system.

I don't think it's a coincidence at all that the same vote that over turned a speedy trial by jury also legalized torture. This is an action to frighten the population into unquestioning obedience. It is the next logical step for absolute state power after torturing people outside of the US. This vote purposely says to the US people 'when government people say jump, you say ‘how high’ or you will probably get tortured and raped just like the Iraqi's.’ The unsaid but obvious threat is the classic psychological assault of bullies, abusers and organized criminals everywhere.

However, the big secret for slave states is that it doesn't matter what you say or do, you will get impoverished, imprisoned, tortured and killed at some point no matter what. By speaking out we have absolutely nothing to lose and our very lives to gain.”

Societal approval...

Another theme is something a blogger (and leader writer) here wrote in a blogposting. She was going to take part in a café talking about

“I, I, I. What about ‘We’ then? - How to create a ‘We’ in a self centred era.”

What would a sound selfishness be about? Or should we use another vocabulary? Is the word 'selfishness' appropriate? Because it’s rather a question of sound protection of oneself? How do we achieve such a sound protection of ourselves?

By (truly) respecting our kids boundaries? By not violating them? How many of us are really capable of doing this?

Earlier postings on texts by Helle Klein. See for instance "In the individualism’s era..."

The obedience culture or "well intentioned" violence…

in the middle of the music.

[Addition February 7: It's quite horrible that people in Sweden, people in a country that was first in the world to ban corporal punishment, are talking about using methods described in my postings about the school politics in Sweden (see recent postings), and that they are using them too! Not only talking about using them, but also using them in the reality.

That "young" politicians here in this country are for harder grips, that they are so neoauthoritarian and neoconservative. That's really terrible. And extremely sad. Stupendous. Even tragic?

I wonder about the reasons for this. Have my ideas...

Has with THEIR upbringing to do. They don't begrudge young people pf today (and weak groups in the society) having it better (or good, living a decent life) than they had (or wee allowed)?

They show contempt for weakness, because they are denying what they have in their own backpacks. Honoring the "strong" ones.

What this "strength" is about?

Is this praised strength about keeping ones feelings, emotions and, certain, needs in check? Actually maybe honoring the most damaged people?? Yes, are we in the society all over the word nactually honring the most hurt and damaged?

What's real, genuine strength actually?

And the most psychologically defended tend to lead. And those now leading (and given the leadership) are approving of those things, making it possible for other hurt and damaged people to join this choir. Horrible.]

Struck me the other day: bosses and leaders (as politicians) just giving orders, expecting that people shall just do and swallow everything, with no explanation why there are new rules, conditions - what is that?

Is that the obedience culture? (Neo)authoritarianism? See earlier postings on the school politics in Sweden of today, with harder grips, limit setting etc.; "The neoliberalism and the school...", "Nanny-methods nothing for a democratic school..." and "About the presumed discipline problems in the school in Sweden…

And the abuse (violence) doesn't have to have with "only" spankings to do, it can be about other sorts of abuse, as emotional, verbal, psychological, too.

"...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.”

"Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection." (Andrew Vachss)

Arthur Silber uses the expression/notion “the obedience culture” and quotes Alice Miller (in his essay “The Ravages of Tribalism (IV): The Unknown Country: The World of the Uninjured Child”):

“Poisonous pedagogy is a phrase I use to refer to the kind of parenting and education aimed at breaking a child's will and making that child into an obedient subject by means of overt or covert coercion, manipulation, and emotional blackmail.

In my books For Your Own Good and Thou Shall Not Be Aware, I have explained the concept using concrete examples. In my other books I have repeatedly stressed how the mendacious mentality behind this approach to dealing with children can leave long-lasting imprints on the way we think and relate to one another in our adult lives./…/

There is a good deal else that would not exist without ‘poisonous pedagogy.’ It would be inconceivable, for example, for politicians mouthing empty clichés to attain the highest positions of power by democratic means. But since voters, who as children would normally have been capable of seeing through these clichés with the aid of their feelings, were specifically forbidden to do so in their early years, they lose this ability as adults. The capacity to experience the strong feelings of childhood and puberty (which are so often stifled by child-rearing methods, beatings, or even drugs) could provide the individual with an important means of orientation with which he or she could easily determine whether politicians are speaking from genuine experience or are merely parroting time-worn platitudes for the sake of manipulating voters. Our whole system of raising and educating children provides the power-hungry with a ready-made railway network they can use to reach the destination of their choice. They need only push the buttons that parents and educators have already installed.”

Here Silber’s interpretation of this:

"By demanding obedience above all from a child (whether by physical punishment, by psychological means, or through some combination of both), parents forbid the child from fostering an authentic sense of self. Because children are completely dependent on their parents, they dare not question their parents' goodness, or their 'good intentions.' As a result, when children are punished, even if they are punished for no reason or for a reason that makes no sense, they blame themselves and believe that the fault lies within them. In this way, the idealization of the authority figure is allowed to continue. In addition, the child cannot allow himself to experience fully his own pain, because that, too, might lead to questioning of his parents.

In this manner, the child is prevented from developing a genuine, authentic sense of self. As he grows older, this deadening of his soul desensitizes the child to the pain of others. Eventually, the maturing adult will seek to express his repressed anger on external targets, since he has never been allowed to experience and express it in ways that would not be destructive. By such means, the cycle of violence is continued into another generation (using 'violence' in the broadest sense). One of the additional consequences is that the adult, who has never developed an authentic self, can easily transfer his idealization of his parents to a new authority figure./…/

Gibson ... clearly conveyed that his father, his father's goodness, the fact that his father was worthy of deep admiration, and -- above all -- his father's authority were not to be questioned; all of these were immutable facts, absolutes beyond all debate or questioning. It is this mindset, and this refusal to allow even the smallest possibility that his father might be mistaken -- even with regard to a supremely significant issue such as the Holocaust -- that lead Gibson to equivocate unforgivably in his own statements about whether the Holocaust actually occurred. Whatever else is open to discussion, the worth, the authority and the inherent goodness of his father cannot be broached.”

Also see Silber in his essay “The Roots of Horror: The Demand for Obedience”.

We shall only obey and keep quiet!?

Also see his essay "Instilling Obedience and Denial, Continued":

“Another story about one of the U.S. soldiers involved in the Iraqi prison abuse story, and how he came from a military family and ‘knows how to follow instructions.’"

And also "From Mild Smacking to Outright Torture and War: The Lie of 'Well-Intentioned Violence'":

“Some news stories that show how our society commonly accepts violence, and even brutal sadism, toward children. I also examine again the dynamics of the denial in which most adults engage, and I excerpt Miller's article, ‘Why Every Smack Is A Humiliation.’"