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Our Children
Every one pays lip service to the importance of children, their nurture and
their education. The facts speak otherwise: Some studies indicate that as many
as one in four girls and one in five boys are sexually assaulted. And most of
this assault happens within the confines of the family. Then there are those
who are physically assaulted. And there just aren't figures for all those
whose basic nature -- and freedom -- are assaulted by the assumption that a
good upbringing is synonymous with forcing a child to behave according to the
arbitrary beliefs of the society into which the child happens to find him or
herself born.
First we condition children to submit, and if they don't we brutalize them, or
both. Those who are successfully conditioned to believe what they are told is
the truth, are also conditioned to force their children to submit in their
turn, to become competitive and join the rat race...so the sorry-go-round
never ends. And those who fail to submit, we imprison or "treat"
with drugs. Or they find their own drugs, or both.
When we hear that there is a rape in the US every few minutes, or read of the
numbers of men who assault their partners, just where do we think these
fellows learn all this?
We fill them with our sexual guilt and hang-ups, and try to convince
them that the natural flow of hormones through their bodies is dirty and
should be repressed. We essentially cut them in half by turning them against
their own natures -- and then wonder why so many people are ready to trash the
nature of others, and the natural environment generally. Recycling anti-nature
attitudes is hardly very bright as our poor old planet creeks under the weight
of this waste.
And if all this were not enough, we continue a policy of impoverishing
children. 18%, that is nearly one in five children in the UK live below the
poverty line. And it is not just in the rich countries, but right around the
world. Children are certainly the most abused minority on Earth -- and their
mothers the most abused majority! The origin of "family" is Roman,
and meant the furniture, women, children, the pigs....
Strangely, even if the inhumanity of it all failed to move us, you would have
thought the cost might get our attention.
A recent study tried to put a figure on the cost of crime in the US and came
up with a figure of some 500 billion dollars...which included the court costs,
the prison costs, the costs of the damage done...and so on. California now
spends more money on locking people up than on educating them.
Is it really intelligent to spend such a vast amount of effort and money on
forcing our children to be "just like us" -- ensuring that they
continue to make all the mistakes that we have made. And then spend another
fortune locking them up because they didn't buy into our game.
We are the ones who have been blinded by our own conditioning so we can see
the world only through those conditioned lenses. That's the function of
conditioning. And every minute, these new young folk arrive, free from any
conditioning, without any prejudices or biases, with their natural
intelligence intact. What would be the smart thing to do? To simply show them
our world, and listen to what they say about why it is as it is. Whether we
agree or not is another matter, but at least we could start by listening. And
what do we actually do? We blind them with our belief systems, so they can't
see either. And give it pretty names like "a good upbringing," or
"education."
Is there a choice? Of course, there always is. But before we can even begin to
hear the options, we will have to be prepared to admit that we don't know --
that we are failing our children, and that this failure is suicidal for them
and for us.
These children did not ask to be here. And if existence has invited them to
partake of this incredible experiment called life, they need no one else's
permission. They are who they are.
It won't be a child who is accepted and loved as he is who will become
tomorrow's Adolf Hitler. It won't be children who are encouraged to roam
freely and to discover for themselves -- both who they are and the nature of
their world -- who become tomorrow's psychopaths, tomorrow's terrorists with
biological weapons. It won't be children who love their own natures who will
destroy the nature on this planet. It will be people like us -- people who
were taught that might is right, that love and respect "have to
earned," that submission and obedience is only proper, and above all who
are taught, not in an atmosphere of love and freedom, but through punishment
and reward, like laboratory rats being taught to perform tricks in a cage.
Some tricks. Some cage.
This book provides a basis for that alternative. Will we listen? Who knows?
One thing is already clear: we can no longer afford not to.
Amrito, M.D.
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