The scracks are too big!

"No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him."
- Napoleon Hill

And yet, we do just that.

We believe what the media (especially the tabloids) say about famous people. We believe that anyone the media report as being charged with some crime must be guilty, as we seldom see the verdict of "not guilty" printed in back pages (seldom reported by television news) later.

We believe rumours that neighbours tell about other neighbours.

We easily and comfortably believe one side of a story about someone without bothering to search out the other side(s). It's easier that way.

Why do we do this? It's part of a basic instinct we have that we must be or at least feel superior to as many others as possible. It's related to the pecking order. The more others that are inferior to us in the pecking order, the more secure we feel.

But this doesn't make sense in the modern world! Who cares if we feel superior to some movie star we've never met?

That's not the point. We unconsciously feel inferior to so many others we know because of our personal weaknesses, our ignorance of so many subjects and our known failures, while we know little or nothing of these in other people.

In a sense, we are our own worst enemies. At least we can feel superior to "them," the others who so obviously are in the wrong where we are not.

Can this be ovecome? Yes. It all goes to teaching and supporting of the level of self confidence of children. Children who don't feel confident about themselves become adults who don't feel confident about themselves.

It's hard to overcome in adults, but it can be done. With children, the stage of life where self confidence is developed in the first place, it's relatively easy. The knowledge of how to do this in schools is widely available.

We just aren't doing it. Our education systems are not set up to allow this to happen over a broad spectrum of children.

Our teachers are too busy with other things (such as a horrendous curriculum load) to deal with personal needs. And too many parents expect that their kids will have their personal needs (other than food, shelter, clothing and some love) satisfied at school.

It's not just a few that "fall through the cracks." It's a few that don't.

TIA wants to change that.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to close the cracks.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl