To Fear Change Is To Fear Life
If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.
Every living thing finds life dangerous. Every living thing becomes food for other living things. Those that do not become food for other as prey or fodder become food for microbes and other life forms after they die.Those at or near the top of the food chain tend to be in the latter group. We humans, with few natural enemies, tend to die for reasons that have nothing to do with predators.
Yet so many of us act as if we have something to fear at every moment of our lives.
Caution and the fight or flight response and its attendant physical stressors are built into us from birth. Fear is not. Fear is learned. In nature, an animal in fear tends to soon become lunch for a predator. We humans experience fear and its consequences differently.
Some kinds of fear result from unfortunate events in our lives. In my case, I fear heights (acrophobia) and closed-in spaces (claustrophobia) as consequences of seeing many movies, as a young child, that intentionally made viewers afraid as a form of thrill. The producers of the films set out to create shock in viewers. Indeed, it's what most kids my age wanted when we watched a film. The producers did not intend to develop phobias in their viewers. But they did in some.
Some kinds of fear are taught. They might be taught through role modeling by a parent ("my mother hates spiders and I do too"), by a teacher ("you don't want me to send you to the principal, do you?"), or by another person known to the one developing the fear ("Wait till your parents get home").
The colour-coded risk alert levels broadcast in the USA after 9/11 accomplished absolutely nothing in terms of preparing citizens for a possible attack by terrorists, but "amber alert" notices from the White House built fear into the hearts of people, of others who were "different" in appearance or in the way they speak or dress ("You don't see anyone from Sweden becoming suicide bombers"). This in a country that for a very long time claimed to be a melting pot of cultures, where everyone could mix freely and join into one nation in the process. Fear taught by the nation's leaders brought that claim to an end.
Those who fear seek stability. They want the same weather at the same time each year, which can't happen any more, if it ever could. They want stability in their family life, which is awkward with over half of marriages ending in divorce and grown children moving to all parts of the world for work in their specific fields. In fact, a fearful parent is more likely to cause other family members to want to get away from them.
They want stability in their jobs, which is nearly impossible in today's economic climate. More than anything else, they want to avoid change. To a person with fears, change means instability and instability ramps up their fear level.
Yet change is not just a major factor in today's world, it's critically important and inevitable. It's even part of nature.
It's possible to overcome fear, as many can attest as they have had to do so to survive. An overcome fear hides in the background, the way alcohol does to a recovering alcoholic or casinos and lotteries do for a recovering gambling addict. In the background it doesn't impact daily life. It's tolerable.
Fear of change is much more difficult to conquer. In many societies, such as the USA, fear has become a cultural norm. How do you overcome a cultural norm? The same way the US tackled the problem of tobacco smoking, reducing adult smoking from around 75 percent of adults to just over 20 percent (including the major smoking group teens).
As Hazel Henderson said in the quote that began this article, people must be taught that change and uncertainty are normal. That means, as is the case with most teaching, these lessons should be taught to children (whose lives change frequently anyway). They must also be taught how to cope with change. That means they must know what to do when something major happens in their lives over which they have no control. That means planning ahead and having coping skills.
Children need stability as much as adults. They must have stability in some parts of their lives. But they should be taught how to cope, what to do, where to turn, who to ask for help, if unanticipated change strikes them suddenly.
As grown adults, we can learn to cope by planning as well. If your parents are alive today, it's highly likely that they will die before you do. What plan should you have, at least emotionally, for that? Your spouse or a child could die in an accident any day, or from terminal illness in the near future. What would you do then? These are problems most people would rather leave until the last minute, until they happen. Then their impact can be tragic, such as a fear of commitment to someone who might die.
We know that birth and death are part of life, even though either can come unexpectedly. But "unexpectedly" means major change. If you lost your job, what plan would you put in place so that you could get back on your feet as soon as possible? If your home burned so badly it was no longer habitable, what would you do?
Being prepared for life's possible emergencies means you can cope. Coping means less chance of emotion turmoil, including fear or turning to unhealthy alternatives such as addictions, bullying, depression, thrill-seeking and cutting of social connections that brought love into your life. When your life is upside down and inside out, that's when you need love more than ever. Do you know how to handle the love relationships in your life so that they do not get destroyed when another part of your life implodes?
Change and uncertainty are inevitable, but that doesn't mean we can't prepare for them. When these events trouble you most, you need those who love you to depend on. Having no one to fill that role can be devastating.
If you do not have anyone who loves you unreservedly, this would be a good time to learn how to develop that kind of relationship. Social skills are learnable. You can learn them by reading or taking courses.
No one's life is easy. The ones who survive best are those who prepared for downturns ahead of time. They do not become emotionally destroyed. They put their plan in place. They know how to cope.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers who want to help children grow and develop so they know how to cope with the most important things that happen in their lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/ - Hazel Henderson, English television producer, futurist, author (b. 1933)
Showing posts with label change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change. Show all posts
Friday, July 08, 2011
Saturday, March 05, 2011
End of Stress for World's Ticking Social Bomb
End of Stress for World's Ticking Social Bomb
Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what we are told;
Religious dogma is doing what we are told, no matter what is right.
- Elka Ruth Enola, Canadian poet, advocate, teacher, opponent of Sharia-based schools
A bit of departure from my usual range of topics for this article as I attempt to explain why so much trouble in every country in the Middle East is actually the best thing that could happen for the future of our world.
I recently finished reading Chasing A Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, by Tarek Fatah. Fatah is nothing if not blunt about a disease that is infecting every democratic nation in the world. We might call the perpetrators of this disease terrorists, suicide bombers or militant Muslims who have politicized one of the world's great religions for their own personal power or for the power of their leaders. Fatah calls them Islamists. Comparing an Islamist to an ordinary Muslim is like comparing Adolf Hitler to your average Christian. These people all worship(ed) the same God, but they do and did so very differently.
When the great Prophet Muhammed completed setting down the Muslim holy book, known as the Qur'an (or Koran or any number of other English spellings of an Arabic word), the last thing in the book was the clear statement that the book comprised the whole religion of Islam, as given to him by Allah (the Arabic word for God). He made it clear that what he wrote down as messages from Allah was a religion, a way to lead one's life, a belief set, not a political formula. When he died shortly thereafter, struggle began for leadership of the religion, but also for political leadership of all Muslims. Potential leaders then and now don't follow the word of Allah (the Qur'an), the word of Muhammed or the word of any sincere Muslim imams since that time, but instead their own greed for power.
That struggle continues to this day, 1400 years later. It powers terrorism, radical Islamists who lead violent revolutions when they can and use force to oppress or kill their own people when necessary to gain or to hold power over them. As I write this, that powers Moammar Gadhafi's slaughter of his own people in Libya, a country he seized control of and has held total authoritarian control over for 42 years. Gadhafi, like other political leaders of the Arab world (some of whom have been ousted already, some are still struggling to hold power), believes that he holds ultimate power over his people by divine right. Divine right means that he believes he was anointed by Allah.
When demonstrations in Tunisia toppled the president of the country, it troubled world-watchers who expected the Middle East (almost exclusively Arab, except for Persian Iran) to ignite with civil wars virtually overnight. The Tunisian demonstrations had been peaceful, but they were not expected to be so elsewhere. Then hundreds of thousands of Egyptians (to start, they became millions) gathered in Tahrir (liberation) Square, in Cairo. Egyptian demonstrations were notorious for being bloody, even deadly, in the past. This time they were peaceful and President Mubarak resigned (encouraged by his own military). Something had changed.
Demonstrations in other Arab countries have also been peaceful. Libya became violent only when Gadhafi's military fired real bullets at unarmed demonstrators and killed many of them. The only Arab countries where large demonstrations have not happened were in places like Saudi Arabia and Syria, where the military stopped demonstrators quickly and assisted some of them to "disappear" permanently. Within the Arab world, people knew that other Arabs under all other autocratic regimes were also ready to shake off the shackles of oppression by their dictatorial leaders (sometimes also known as "kings," often as presidents-for-life).
Why should we who live in free countries care? Saudi Arabia (home of two of Islam's most important cities, Medina and Mecca and owner of about 20 percent of the world's known oil supplies) has sponsored schools and universities that teach nothing but militant Islamism in every democratic country in the world. The Saudi royal family has spent billions of dollars on these schools, building them and maintaining them, for many years.
These are the schools that teach young people who become suicide bombers, aggressive demonstrators at G8 and G20 summits, political candidates who claim prejudice against Muslims in order to gain enough sympathy to get them elected to political office in many parts of the world. That includes the USA, the UK and Canada where the schools are kept open and active when police try to shut them down by their leaders cry prejudice in the media.
Meanwhile, back in the home countries in the Middle East, the leaders have blamed the US, the UK, Israel and the West in general for all the problems in their respective countries. Especially for poverty of the people, which the leaders have claimed is caused by the capitalist West. Politically left-leaning people in the West believed the claims of the Middle East leaders and the imams of the Islamic schools. In Canada, for example, a country that prides itself on its official multiculturalism, the New Democratic Party has often publicly supported the Islamic schools, claiming prejudice against them in matters such as the wearing of the hijab.
The people, the ordinary citizens of Middle Eastern countries, were apparently not fooled though we didn't know that. They finally admitted to themselves that their problems were caused by their own greedy leaders and not by the US or Israel. Now the people want to throw out the lying militants that have ruled their countries for so many years.
They will succeed, as large masses of people always do eventually. To you, that will mean that Islamist schools and mosques run by militant imams in your country will have their main sources of income (such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran) dry up. That will likely reduce the risk of terrorist problems in your country considerably. That could change the political climate in your country. Not just for the next few years, but forever.
It might mean that sociopathic industries in the West who have made uncountable billions of dollars by teaching us to fear "terrorists" may finally have to become more ecologically friendly with their environment--with our environment--as we turn our attention to their pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink and away from "terrorists" who never presented much of a threat to us anyway. As the poor citizens of Middle Eastern countries mature and take control of their own destinies away from power hungry and greedy autocrats, we will mature along with them and take control of our air and water--and of our own lives in many ways--away from industrialists. They had no right to teach fear and materialism to us to distract us from the emotional control they have held over us for decades. By believing them we became emotional slaves to their will, which was always to make huge profits, no matter what effects that had on our lives or our environment.
Let's cheer for the citizens of the Middle East, but not send our militaries there. They don't want us to interfere. They want to feel that they are finally in control of their own lives. If our militaries interfere, people like Gadhafi will slaughter their own people and blame the West for starting civil wars.
Let's learn from them. It seems they are ready to treat us as brothers and sisters after all. We should respond accordingly, with respect.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know how to develop the children in their charge socially and emotionally as well as intellectually and physically. Our worst social problems are caused by people who are underdeveloped or maldeveloped socially and/or emotionally.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Morality is doing what is right, regardless of what we are told;
Religious dogma is doing what we are told, no matter what is right.
- Elka Ruth Enola, Canadian poet, advocate, teacher, opponent of Sharia-based schools
A bit of departure from my usual range of topics for this article as I attempt to explain why so much trouble in every country in the Middle East is actually the best thing that could happen for the future of our world.
I recently finished reading Chasing A Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, by Tarek Fatah. Fatah is nothing if not blunt about a disease that is infecting every democratic nation in the world. We might call the perpetrators of this disease terrorists, suicide bombers or militant Muslims who have politicized one of the world's great religions for their own personal power or for the power of their leaders. Fatah calls them Islamists. Comparing an Islamist to an ordinary Muslim is like comparing Adolf Hitler to your average Christian. These people all worship(ed) the same God, but they do and did so very differently.
When the great Prophet Muhammed completed setting down the Muslim holy book, known as the Qur'an (or Koran or any number of other English spellings of an Arabic word), the last thing in the book was the clear statement that the book comprised the whole religion of Islam, as given to him by Allah (the Arabic word for God). He made it clear that what he wrote down as messages from Allah was a religion, a way to lead one's life, a belief set, not a political formula. When he died shortly thereafter, struggle began for leadership of the religion, but also for political leadership of all Muslims. Potential leaders then and now don't follow the word of Allah (the Qur'an), the word of Muhammed or the word of any sincere Muslim imams since that time, but instead their own greed for power.
That struggle continues to this day, 1400 years later. It powers terrorism, radical Islamists who lead violent revolutions when they can and use force to oppress or kill their own people when necessary to gain or to hold power over them. As I write this, that powers Moammar Gadhafi's slaughter of his own people in Libya, a country he seized control of and has held total authoritarian control over for 42 years. Gadhafi, like other political leaders of the Arab world (some of whom have been ousted already, some are still struggling to hold power), believes that he holds ultimate power over his people by divine right. Divine right means that he believes he was anointed by Allah.
When demonstrations in Tunisia toppled the president of the country, it troubled world-watchers who expected the Middle East (almost exclusively Arab, except for Persian Iran) to ignite with civil wars virtually overnight. The Tunisian demonstrations had been peaceful, but they were not expected to be so elsewhere. Then hundreds of thousands of Egyptians (to start, they became millions) gathered in Tahrir (liberation) Square, in Cairo. Egyptian demonstrations were notorious for being bloody, even deadly, in the past. This time they were peaceful and President Mubarak resigned (encouraged by his own military). Something had changed.
Demonstrations in other Arab countries have also been peaceful. Libya became violent only when Gadhafi's military fired real bullets at unarmed demonstrators and killed many of them. The only Arab countries where large demonstrations have not happened were in places like Saudi Arabia and Syria, where the military stopped demonstrators quickly and assisted some of them to "disappear" permanently. Within the Arab world, people knew that other Arabs under all other autocratic regimes were also ready to shake off the shackles of oppression by their dictatorial leaders (sometimes also known as "kings," often as presidents-for-life).
Why should we who live in free countries care? Saudi Arabia (home of two of Islam's most important cities, Medina and Mecca and owner of about 20 percent of the world's known oil supplies) has sponsored schools and universities that teach nothing but militant Islamism in every democratic country in the world. The Saudi royal family has spent billions of dollars on these schools, building them and maintaining them, for many years.
These are the schools that teach young people who become suicide bombers, aggressive demonstrators at G8 and G20 summits, political candidates who claim prejudice against Muslims in order to gain enough sympathy to get them elected to political office in many parts of the world. That includes the USA, the UK and Canada where the schools are kept open and active when police try to shut them down by their leaders cry prejudice in the media.
Meanwhile, back in the home countries in the Middle East, the leaders have blamed the US, the UK, Israel and the West in general for all the problems in their respective countries. Especially for poverty of the people, which the leaders have claimed is caused by the capitalist West. Politically left-leaning people in the West believed the claims of the Middle East leaders and the imams of the Islamic schools. In Canada, for example, a country that prides itself on its official multiculturalism, the New Democratic Party has often publicly supported the Islamic schools, claiming prejudice against them in matters such as the wearing of the hijab.
The people, the ordinary citizens of Middle Eastern countries, were apparently not fooled though we didn't know that. They finally admitted to themselves that their problems were caused by their own greedy leaders and not by the US or Israel. Now the people want to throw out the lying militants that have ruled their countries for so many years.
They will succeed, as large masses of people always do eventually. To you, that will mean that Islamist schools and mosques run by militant imams in your country will have their main sources of income (such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran) dry up. That will likely reduce the risk of terrorist problems in your country considerably. That could change the political climate in your country. Not just for the next few years, but forever.
It might mean that sociopathic industries in the West who have made uncountable billions of dollars by teaching us to fear "terrorists" may finally have to become more ecologically friendly with their environment--with our environment--as we turn our attention to their pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink and away from "terrorists" who never presented much of a threat to us anyway. As the poor citizens of Middle Eastern countries mature and take control of their own destinies away from power hungry and greedy autocrats, we will mature along with them and take control of our air and water--and of our own lives in many ways--away from industrialists. They had no right to teach fear and materialism to us to distract us from the emotional control they have held over us for decades. By believing them we became emotional slaves to their will, which was always to make huge profits, no matter what effects that had on our lives or our environment.
Let's cheer for the citizens of the Middle East, but not send our militaries there. They don't want us to interfere. They want to feel that they are finally in control of their own lives. If our militaries interfere, people like Gadhafi will slaughter their own people and blame the West for starting civil wars.
Let's learn from them. It seems they are ready to treat us as brothers and sisters after all. We should respond accordingly, with respect.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know how to develop the children in their charge socially and emotionally as well as intellectually and physically. Our worst social problems are caused by people who are underdeveloped or maldeveloped socially and/or emotionally.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Who Is That Person In The Mirror?
Who Is That Person In The Mirror?
The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, American self-help author, writer, speaker (b. 1940)
Wayne Dyer ranks among the top few advocates of the "Change your mind, change your life" school of thought about life. I have admired his thinking for many years, though I have stayed away from his so-called New Age thinking about spirituality.
Yet I can't avoid the attraction of this quote, though he may have intended something different than what I take from it. I grant that if you look at life positively, life looks positive, you will feel positive about life. I grant that with few exceptions the media try to make our world look much worse than it is by using the Shock and Awe strategy to secure listeners, viewers and readers. But there is more to this quote than that.
When I look in the mirror I don't really see me. What I see is a right-left-reversed image of what others see when they look at me. Yet others see what they want to see when they look at me anyway, not necessarily the real me. The real me doesn't show up--has no way of making itself that "public"--either in the mirror or to others.
When I look in the mirror I see only the vessel I use as my travelling companion. Crippled at birth but recovered enough to walk and run close enough to what other kids could do to look "normal." Brain damaged at birth (breech, no blood to the brain for too long) but managed to reroute enough neural pathways over the succeeding decades to get by.
The man in the mirror had much to overcome. He received no nurturing, no teaching, nothing most of us expect from parents for the critical first six years of life. When he "went public" at age six, a feral child newly exposed to peers who had grown and learned in normal ways, it was as if he had just be born. At six years, this little fellow unknowingly had walls created around him intellectually, socially, emotionally and physically as his age peers grew while he just got a bit taller. He had, in effect, a deep well to climb out of if he were to survive in a world that cared no more about him than his parents had.
Some time during high school he learned to read, though he remained functionally illiterate until past age 44. He got a girlfriend whom he eventually married and with whom he had two children. Co-supporting his young family he secured a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in education--all the while still functionally illiterate, never having read a single book all the way through.
Why do I write about myself in the third person? I can't see any of that in the mirror. People I meet can't see any of that. In fact, I am no longer that person because I have changed so much.
In the process of climbing out of that pit, I got into habits of learning and improving myself I have retained throughout my life. When most people slowed down from learning at a rapid rate as they got older, I sped up because I could and didn't know there was an unwritten rule that you could stop when you wanted as an adult.
My father and mother knew virtually nothing about parenting. They taught me everything they knew about parenting. I used that little bit of learning about parenting to fail badly raising my own children. When my first wife left our family, I hurt. When she later died and my children decided they no longer found me of any value, I made up my mind to learn why. I knew it would be hard and it was. I knew much learning would be required and it was. What I didn't know along the way was that I would surpass what most other adults knew about parenting only to find myself blazing new ground, beating a path for those to follow.
I went from a know-nothing who could do little physically, had no skills and could only follow the lead of others to someone who takes the lead himself. That wasn't easy. Knowing nothing has its own problems, but leaders always have enemies who don't want to see others succeed where they can't or don't care to go.
I changed dramatically as a person. None of that change shows in the mirror. My life changed because I made up my mind that knowing more than most people about how children grow and develop meant little if I didn't spread the word. I kept climbing because leaders can be seen and heard better from greater heights.
I became someone much greater than I could ever have imagined as a child or as a young adult. I know that person better than the child or the young adult I used to be. I know that person intimately. I like him. None of that shows in the mirror.
Today the man in the mirror and I tolerate each other. The real me pays little attention to the mirror man because he isn't like me and he has changed only by aging. The real me changed by growing, spiritually, emotionally, socially, intellectually. The real me is still a motor moron because I depend so heavily on the man in the mirror and he is still that barely recovered cripple with a sometimes dysfunctional brain.
How much attention should we pay to the person in our mirror? That person does absolutely nothing to help us. He or she gets older and insists upon demonstrating the effects of that aging in the mirror daily. The person in the mirror never gets better, only older.
Pity the person who cares deeply about the image they see in the mirror. That image will inevitably change, but never for the better. The person who identifies closely with the image in the mirror is destined to eventually be both old and stupid. The person in the mirror never gets smarter either.
There is a saying: Aging is inevitable, getting old is voluntary. I don't care for that saying. I prefer to think that the person in the mirror gets older while I keep getting better.
I do get better. So should you. If you haven't already decided to get better, you can make the decision and act on it today. Simply making the decision makes you better. Knowing that you need to learn in order to get better, and that no matter how much money you earn and spend won't help, is a big leap forward in your quest to get better.
If you make the decision to get better before you reach the end of this article, you will already be better for it. Wow! Congratulations.
But hurry because....
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook of epic importance but easy to read on the subject of child development and learning and of parenting.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.
- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, American self-help author, writer, speaker (b. 1940)
Wayne Dyer ranks among the top few advocates of the "Change your mind, change your life" school of thought about life. I have admired his thinking for many years, though I have stayed away from his so-called New Age thinking about spirituality.
Yet I can't avoid the attraction of this quote, though he may have intended something different than what I take from it. I grant that if you look at life positively, life looks positive, you will feel positive about life. I grant that with few exceptions the media try to make our world look much worse than it is by using the Shock and Awe strategy to secure listeners, viewers and readers. But there is more to this quote than that.
When I look in the mirror I don't really see me. What I see is a right-left-reversed image of what others see when they look at me. Yet others see what they want to see when they look at me anyway, not necessarily the real me. The real me doesn't show up--has no way of making itself that "public"--either in the mirror or to others.
When I look in the mirror I see only the vessel I use as my travelling companion. Crippled at birth but recovered enough to walk and run close enough to what other kids could do to look "normal." Brain damaged at birth (breech, no blood to the brain for too long) but managed to reroute enough neural pathways over the succeeding decades to get by.
The man in the mirror had much to overcome. He received no nurturing, no teaching, nothing most of us expect from parents for the critical first six years of life. When he "went public" at age six, a feral child newly exposed to peers who had grown and learned in normal ways, it was as if he had just be born. At six years, this little fellow unknowingly had walls created around him intellectually, socially, emotionally and physically as his age peers grew while he just got a bit taller. He had, in effect, a deep well to climb out of if he were to survive in a world that cared no more about him than his parents had.
Some time during high school he learned to read, though he remained functionally illiterate until past age 44. He got a girlfriend whom he eventually married and with whom he had two children. Co-supporting his young family he secured a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in education--all the while still functionally illiterate, never having read a single book all the way through.
Why do I write about myself in the third person? I can't see any of that in the mirror. People I meet can't see any of that. In fact, I am no longer that person because I have changed so much.
In the process of climbing out of that pit, I got into habits of learning and improving myself I have retained throughout my life. When most people slowed down from learning at a rapid rate as they got older, I sped up because I could and didn't know there was an unwritten rule that you could stop when you wanted as an adult.
My father and mother knew virtually nothing about parenting. They taught me everything they knew about parenting. I used that little bit of learning about parenting to fail badly raising my own children. When my first wife left our family, I hurt. When she later died and my children decided they no longer found me of any value, I made up my mind to learn why. I knew it would be hard and it was. I knew much learning would be required and it was. What I didn't know along the way was that I would surpass what most other adults knew about parenting only to find myself blazing new ground, beating a path for those to follow.
I went from a know-nothing who could do little physically, had no skills and could only follow the lead of others to someone who takes the lead himself. That wasn't easy. Knowing nothing has its own problems, but leaders always have enemies who don't want to see others succeed where they can't or don't care to go.
I changed dramatically as a person. None of that change shows in the mirror. My life changed because I made up my mind that knowing more than most people about how children grow and develop meant little if I didn't spread the word. I kept climbing because leaders can be seen and heard better from greater heights.
I became someone much greater than I could ever have imagined as a child or as a young adult. I know that person better than the child or the young adult I used to be. I know that person intimately. I like him. None of that shows in the mirror.
Today the man in the mirror and I tolerate each other. The real me pays little attention to the mirror man because he isn't like me and he has changed only by aging. The real me changed by growing, spiritually, emotionally, socially, intellectually. The real me is still a motor moron because I depend so heavily on the man in the mirror and he is still that barely recovered cripple with a sometimes dysfunctional brain.
How much attention should we pay to the person in our mirror? That person does absolutely nothing to help us. He or she gets older and insists upon demonstrating the effects of that aging in the mirror daily. The person in the mirror never gets better, only older.
Pity the person who cares deeply about the image they see in the mirror. That image will inevitably change, but never for the better. The person who identifies closely with the image in the mirror is destined to eventually be both old and stupid. The person in the mirror never gets smarter either.
There is a saying: Aging is inevitable, getting old is voluntary. I don't care for that saying. I prefer to think that the person in the mirror gets older while I keep getting better.
I do get better. So should you. If you haven't already decided to get better, you can make the decision and act on it today. Simply making the decision makes you better. Knowing that you need to learn in order to get better, and that no matter how much money you earn and spend won't help, is a big leap forward in your quest to get better.
If you make the decision to get better before you reach the end of this article, you will already be better for it. Wow! Congratulations.
But hurry because....
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook of epic importance but easy to read on the subject of child development and learning and of parenting.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Your Life In A Day
Your Life In A Day
With the passage of time, all such actions or lack of them, appear less significant. And anyway, since the cells in our body die and are renewed, replaced by different ones, we do in a literal sense become difference individuals. The connection I have to the boy I once was is now so fragile that it requires an act of conscious 'faith' to maintain that we are in any significant sense the same person.
- Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, Vintage Press (Random House), 2008
Today ain't like it used to be. But then, you aren't either.
As Faulks suggested in the quote, our physical self changes every day. In fact, there is no part of your body that still has the same cells as it had 15 years ago. Over that period you have been completely rebuilt.
In a world obsessed with the shape and appearance of the human body, that might seem disappointing. Especially as strings of genes in our DNA don't always and forever reproduce themselves exactly. Over time, they tend to lose code at their tail ends. Even our replacement parts don't reproduce exactly.
So what is the real you? Your body changes over time, completely replacing itself repeatedly over your lifetime. Your brain's memory contains all the same stuff it did 15 years ago, but it has added 15 years worth of learning and experiences to itself. If you attempted to count the new information your brain has added over the past 15 years it would be so staggering you wouldn't be able to count it if you took the rest of your life. Your brain has changed markedly over the past 15 years.
Your personality has changed. Sure you retain many of the same habits, relationships, values and so on, but if you could meet the you of 15 years ago today you might not recognize yourself. You don't even look the same in the mirror.
What identifies you as you? How do you know you are the same person?
Let's add a little perspective. Do you remember a movie or television program you watched over the past week or month? Was it real? Was there a real program you saw or maybe it was just a memory? In fact, you can't prove you even saw it. Memory proves nothing, as the recall of witnesses in recent court cases has shown. Some memory has been altered over time, some is purely invented.
For that matter, you can't prove you existed yesterday, or that there even was a yesterday. As shocking as it may seem, maybe today and the world you know about today came into existence when you gained consciousness this morning. If you believe that someone can create a movie in which you participate as viewer and in which you find yourself thinking that it's really happening at the time, then why could it not be possible that a whole past, an entire history, was created when you woke up today?
I know, it's not the way you have been taught to think. It's not what you have been lulled and trained into believing.
You have family members, loved ones, neighbours, work friends who aren't with you now as you read this. You can't prove they even exist, at this moment as you sit reading this. You trust that you can move from where you are to some other place and you will find them where you expect.
You may be right. But you can't prove it. When you move to one of these places, you change your own reality. You change from the present NOW to another NOW. Once there, what you are doing in this NOW will be equally as unprovable. It might be just a created memory, like your memory of that movie or TV program. What we know as memory and history could be entirely self-created memory.
The only reality you can depend on is this one, the one you are in. If you hope to be remembered by someone in a future NOW, then you had better act in ways that will cause you to be remembered. If what you do in this NOW only benefits you, then others will have no reason to remember you later. Why should they? They will be busy with their own NOW of the moment.
That may give you some insight into what you do with your time, the time you think of as NOW, as your own. Do you want to be remembered or not? Memories of people who think only or mostly of themselves don't last long. People remember (or create memories of their NOW moments) others who helped them, who cared for them, who showed them that they mattered.
If you believe that your body, your own personal NOWs, are all that are important, you have no reason to believe in a God. God serves no purpose if all your NOWs will eventually vanish and be forgotten. If there will never be anything left of the YOU you know when you die, then there is no need for God, no afterlife. Not even any purpose to what you are doing in this NOW. If nothing of you will continue to exist after you die, then life has no purpose. Does that make sense, that everything around you has no purpose?
Look around you. Does it seem as if all this could have happened by accident? The moon is as old as earth, as are the other planets in our solar system, yet they have nothing remotely similar to the reality of NOW you live in. Why? Cosmologists and science fiction writers claim there are likely many other civilizations out there somewhere in our universe, but they have absolutely no evidence to support their claims or speculations. No one has any evidence that the NOW you live in is anything but unique.
Does everything change constantly or does it all remain the same? Or do--gasp!--some things change constantly while others remain the same? Sorry, that last statement doesn't make sense to a thinking person. It's inconsistent, unlike anything in evidence around you. Everything you know changes, though some things change slower than you can detect so it seems as if they remain the same. Rocks change just as surely as the universe itself changes. We have evidence. At least we have memories of evidence we believe we read.
Your body changes when you die. Many of the bacteria that cohabit your body with "you" today--there are more of them than of cells in your body--may live on in other environments when the life that was your body has dissipated. Your body cells may separate into various atoms and molecules, but they won't disappear. Even if someone were to burn your body, the matter would change into energy, as Einstein proved. Remember e = mc2
Does that mean that when you die you are gone, or not? Are you comprised of your body and nothing else? Every atom that was your body remains and becomes something else. Does the part of you that you think of as "me" disappear? In nature, nothing disappears. It's the natural Law of Conservation. Why would the "you" that you spent so many years creating disappear? That's assuming you believe there is something more to you than animated cells.
If the "you" you created disappeared at your death, that would defy nature's laws. It would defy everything you have come to believe is real. Stuff doesn't disappear, it just changes.
You created something. You created you. Maybe you didn't create everything you know as real, but you created something. Does that make you a Creator? Does that make you God? Well, sort of. For that to be strictly true then there would have to be 6.7 billion other Gods on the planet. That doesn't make sense.
What makes more sense is that you, as creator, are part of a larger Creator, a system. You can't hold the whole system together. But you can be a component of it. You can't be God. But you can be part of God. God can be part of you. This isn't a religious lesson, it's an exercise in logic.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of Christianity and the figure believed even by Muslims as the Son of God (Jesus and his mother are both mentioned in the Qu'ran), taught that. Read the Gospel of John. Read it straight, not filtering what you read through what you have been taught. If you grew up in a Christian family, your beliefs were more those of Paul, not so much of what Jesus taught. Paul, a Greek, taught what he believed and attributed it to Jesus and God. That's what inventors of religions do, they never give themselves credit or their followers wouldn't believe them. Read the actual words of Jesus, not their context because the Church of Rome doctored up the context of the few words of Jesus that were recorded.
Jesus taught that God is within each of us, not up in the sky somewhere. He said that we could find God within ourselves. We just have to look.
Having read this far, you have had a peek at possibilities relating to existence, your own and that of the world you know. Look further. Never mind the crap you have been taught by others. (Sorry, that was rude. I detest being asked to "have faith" in something for which there is no evidence when real evidence of something different is all around us.)
God, the purpose of life and the continuance of you after the death of your body are not subjects about which you need to "have faith." The evidence is all around you. Nature gave you some of it. Your brain can now give you more. If you want to know what life is about, study your surroundings and think it through.
What is real may not necessarily be what is around you. NOW is like that movie you saw and remember. Reality is much more significant, more grand, much superior to what you see in advertising or hear in your place of worship. Or to what you see as you look around the room you are in.
Look for it. Start now.
One final point. While you are creating you, create something worthwhile, something worth enduring. Keep in mind, if you want to be remembered, don't be too generous at helping yourself because selfish people aren't remembered fondly.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who can think for themselves as adults, who will pay attention to what is real instead of advertising disguised with smoke and mirrors.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
With the passage of time, all such actions or lack of them, appear less significant. And anyway, since the cells in our body die and are renewed, replaced by different ones, we do in a literal sense become difference individuals. The connection I have to the boy I once was is now so fragile that it requires an act of conscious 'faith' to maintain that we are in any significant sense the same person.
- Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, Vintage Press (Random House), 2008
Today ain't like it used to be. But then, you aren't either.
As Faulks suggested in the quote, our physical self changes every day. In fact, there is no part of your body that still has the same cells as it had 15 years ago. Over that period you have been completely rebuilt.
In a world obsessed with the shape and appearance of the human body, that might seem disappointing. Especially as strings of genes in our DNA don't always and forever reproduce themselves exactly. Over time, they tend to lose code at their tail ends. Even our replacement parts don't reproduce exactly.
So what is the real you? Your body changes over time, completely replacing itself repeatedly over your lifetime. Your brain's memory contains all the same stuff it did 15 years ago, but it has added 15 years worth of learning and experiences to itself. If you attempted to count the new information your brain has added over the past 15 years it would be so staggering you wouldn't be able to count it if you took the rest of your life. Your brain has changed markedly over the past 15 years.
Your personality has changed. Sure you retain many of the same habits, relationships, values and so on, but if you could meet the you of 15 years ago today you might not recognize yourself. You don't even look the same in the mirror.
What identifies you as you? How do you know you are the same person?
Let's add a little perspective. Do you remember a movie or television program you watched over the past week or month? Was it real? Was there a real program you saw or maybe it was just a memory? In fact, you can't prove you even saw it. Memory proves nothing, as the recall of witnesses in recent court cases has shown. Some memory has been altered over time, some is purely invented.
For that matter, you can't prove you existed yesterday, or that there even was a yesterday. As shocking as it may seem, maybe today and the world you know about today came into existence when you gained consciousness this morning. If you believe that someone can create a movie in which you participate as viewer and in which you find yourself thinking that it's really happening at the time, then why could it not be possible that a whole past, an entire history, was created when you woke up today?
I know, it's not the way you have been taught to think. It's not what you have been lulled and trained into believing.
You have family members, loved ones, neighbours, work friends who aren't with you now as you read this. You can't prove they even exist, at this moment as you sit reading this. You trust that you can move from where you are to some other place and you will find them where you expect.
You may be right. But you can't prove it. When you move to one of these places, you change your own reality. You change from the present NOW to another NOW. Once there, what you are doing in this NOW will be equally as unprovable. It might be just a created memory, like your memory of that movie or TV program. What we know as memory and history could be entirely self-created memory.
The only reality you can depend on is this one, the one you are in. If you hope to be remembered by someone in a future NOW, then you had better act in ways that will cause you to be remembered. If what you do in this NOW only benefits you, then others will have no reason to remember you later. Why should they? They will be busy with their own NOW of the moment.
That may give you some insight into what you do with your time, the time you think of as NOW, as your own. Do you want to be remembered or not? Memories of people who think only or mostly of themselves don't last long. People remember (or create memories of their NOW moments) others who helped them, who cared for them, who showed them that they mattered.
If you believe that your body, your own personal NOWs, are all that are important, you have no reason to believe in a God. God serves no purpose if all your NOWs will eventually vanish and be forgotten. If there will never be anything left of the YOU you know when you die, then there is no need for God, no afterlife. Not even any purpose to what you are doing in this NOW. If nothing of you will continue to exist after you die, then life has no purpose. Does that make sense, that everything around you has no purpose?
Look around you. Does it seem as if all this could have happened by accident? The moon is as old as earth, as are the other planets in our solar system, yet they have nothing remotely similar to the reality of NOW you live in. Why? Cosmologists and science fiction writers claim there are likely many other civilizations out there somewhere in our universe, but they have absolutely no evidence to support their claims or speculations. No one has any evidence that the NOW you live in is anything but unique.
Does everything change constantly or does it all remain the same? Or do--gasp!--some things change constantly while others remain the same? Sorry, that last statement doesn't make sense to a thinking person. It's inconsistent, unlike anything in evidence around you. Everything you know changes, though some things change slower than you can detect so it seems as if they remain the same. Rocks change just as surely as the universe itself changes. We have evidence. At least we have memories of evidence we believe we read.
Your body changes when you die. Many of the bacteria that cohabit your body with "you" today--there are more of them than of cells in your body--may live on in other environments when the life that was your body has dissipated. Your body cells may separate into various atoms and molecules, but they won't disappear. Even if someone were to burn your body, the matter would change into energy, as Einstein proved. Remember e = mc2
Does that mean that when you die you are gone, or not? Are you comprised of your body and nothing else? Every atom that was your body remains and becomes something else. Does the part of you that you think of as "me" disappear? In nature, nothing disappears. It's the natural Law of Conservation. Why would the "you" that you spent so many years creating disappear? That's assuming you believe there is something more to you than animated cells.
If the "you" you created disappeared at your death, that would defy nature's laws. It would defy everything you have come to believe is real. Stuff doesn't disappear, it just changes.
You created something. You created you. Maybe you didn't create everything you know as real, but you created something. Does that make you a Creator? Does that make you God? Well, sort of. For that to be strictly true then there would have to be 6.7 billion other Gods on the planet. That doesn't make sense.
What makes more sense is that you, as creator, are part of a larger Creator, a system. You can't hold the whole system together. But you can be a component of it. You can't be God. But you can be part of God. God can be part of you. This isn't a religious lesson, it's an exercise in logic.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of Christianity and the figure believed even by Muslims as the Son of God (Jesus and his mother are both mentioned in the Qu'ran), taught that. Read the Gospel of John. Read it straight, not filtering what you read through what you have been taught. If you grew up in a Christian family, your beliefs were more those of Paul, not so much of what Jesus taught. Paul, a Greek, taught what he believed and attributed it to Jesus and God. That's what inventors of religions do, they never give themselves credit or their followers wouldn't believe them. Read the actual words of Jesus, not their context because the Church of Rome doctored up the context of the few words of Jesus that were recorded.
Jesus taught that God is within each of us, not up in the sky somewhere. He said that we could find God within ourselves. We just have to look.
Having read this far, you have had a peek at possibilities relating to existence, your own and that of the world you know. Look further. Never mind the crap you have been taught by others. (Sorry, that was rude. I detest being asked to "have faith" in something for which there is no evidence when real evidence of something different is all around us.)
God, the purpose of life and the continuance of you after the death of your body are not subjects about which you need to "have faith." The evidence is all around you. Nature gave you some of it. Your brain can now give you more. If you want to know what life is about, study your surroundings and think it through.
What is real may not necessarily be what is around you. NOW is like that movie you saw and remember. Reality is much more significant, more grand, much superior to what you see in advertising or hear in your place of worship. Or to what you see as you look around the room you are in.
Look for it. Start now.
One final point. While you are creating you, create something worthwhile, something worth enduring. Keep in mind, if you want to be remembered, don't be too generous at helping yourself because selfish people aren't remembered fondly.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who can think for themselves as adults, who will pay attention to what is real instead of advertising disguised with smoke and mirrors.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically
How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically
"The social, emotional and spiritual are part of a child's connection with the world."
- Mary Paradis, director of development at the Vancouver Waldorf School
Why doesn't every child deserve the kind of education kids get at some private schools? The schools I refer to--Waldorf and Montessori are among them--teach the whole child, not just curriculum dictated facts and skills.
Children develop along four main streams: intellectual, physical, emotional and social. Mainline school systems address the intellectual and physical needs of their children, but curriculum seldom leaves time or room for social or emotional/psychological development. At that, intellectual development follows strict guides and physical development varies hugely from school to school and among various districts.
What would those strict guides be that schools follow? Education systems, in general, are designed to produce future employees who can do the jobs that big employers such as industries need to be done. And they produce consumers who will buy, use, throw away, then buy more of the products those industries manufacture.
Schools produce employees and consumers. The evidence is so glaring that those who argue against the claim have difficulty finding evidence of support. In fact, those who argue that schools are not designed to produce employees and consumers of the future delude themselves and try to persuade others so they don't feel so alone. If you doubt, just look at what topics fill school curricula and the young adults the schools produce.
Ironically, many of the leaders of the industries that employ public school system graduates themselves attended private schools. Is this true irony? In fact, no. Private schools, in general, prepare children to be leaders in their communities, not followers as public school systems do.
Providing "the right thing at the right time" in a child's learning development is the key to teaching to the whole child, according to Ryan Lindsay, president of The Waldorf Association of Ontario. Public schools, on the other hand, provide indoctrination of facts and skills in the employee-consumer model at the time most child have the ability to manage them. Those who are not ready fail--emotionally, if not by repeating school years--drop out when they reach the minimum age, often believing that they are too dumb for school. They try to work for large companies so they can depend on a steady income.
"We make sure we focus on teaching children how to think and not what to think," according to Lindsay. "We like to think we are laying the foundation in a more thorough way so that when children get to a certain age the approach aids their intellectual development."
Casting aside the lack of expertise you may feel regarding the topic of education as a whole, if you attended a public school do Mr. Lindsay's statements ring a bell about how you were taught? From what you know of adults today, do they know how to think, not just what to think when they make purchases?
We must keep in mind that private schools have the same number of teaching hours in their days as public schools. They don't have eight-day school weeks. Private school students are in class roughly the same number of hours as public school students the same age. Sometimes less if they have special assignments that take them outside the classroom.
What's the difference?
Some may claim that public schools have many more problem children to deal with than private schools. From my personal experience as an educator, I can see that argument having some merit. I also know that classes I taught in public schools had far fewer "problem children" than many of the other classes in the same schools.
In my teaching years in public schools, it was the teacher in my classes who kept getting into trouble, not the students. In my case I kept wanting to deliver to my kids what they needed and wanted and were desperate to take in and develop, not just what was on the curriculum. I believe my mission was to grow whole people, not just adults who were ready to be employees and consumers. I did. Administration often objected.
In general, classes with "problem children" do little to address their emotional and social needs. Consequently their problems tend to be emotional or social in nature--bullying, depression, fighting, shyness and so on. Where children have intellectual development problems--slow learners--very often the slowness of intellectual development relates back to emotional or social problems of the past.
And often to emotional or social problems of the present. How efficiently can we expect a child to learn if he or she has problems with a drunk or abusive parent at home, with a classmate or neighbourhood child who bullies them to and from school or on the bus, with a parent who does not provide a home atmosphere that supports what is taught at school, or even with the results of a recently broken close friendship?
For a child, emotional and social problems always take precedence over intellectual challenges in school. Always. It's how we are built. Emotional and social problems are related to our individual ability--our basic instinct--to survive. For our ancient prehistoric ancestors, intellectual development and learning took place when survival and personal safety and comfort were not at stake.
Most private schools address the social and emotional needs of their students. "I could never say enough good things about the value of community in a school," says Karen Murton, principal of Branksome Hall, a private school for girls in Toronto.
If a child can't get enough help with social or emotional development at home and his school doesn't have the time or the authority in its curriculum to address these needs, where does he get it, where does he turn to fill in the blanks he knows inherently he must fill? Television. Movies. Video games. Rumours picked up in casual conversations with peers. "Information" gleaned from overheard adult conversations behind closed doors and at parties.
Please consider that list carefully. Your child, or at least many of the children in your community, derive most of the emotional and social development information they receive from these same sources. Are they the sources you want young people to take as models? Think about their content.
Public schools could provide factual input, but most don't. They have the same amount of time with their students as private schools, but public schools spend their non-curriculum time dealing with created problems rather than teaching what the kids need to know to prevent them from happening.
One kind of school deals with kids who may already be broken. Another teaches what kids need to avoid breaking.
As astonishing as it may sound, addressing the emotional and social needs of children would not be a costly change for public schools. Most teachers already know this stuff and just need some direction, guidance and the authority to teach it.
If private schools can grow men and women who can lead major industries, professions and governments, public schools should easily be able to grow men and women who can think for themselves, who are more than mere automaton employees and consumers who work and buy as they are told.
If you believe what you have just read, then your family, your community, your world needs you to speak up about it. Only by speaking up will you find how many others think like you so that we can all work together to make life better for the future.
If we don't talk about this, we leave industries to manipulate their way into the lives of every student of every public school.
That's simply not acceptable.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and other interested people who want to know what children need to learn and when, not just what industries want them to be taught and how.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
"The social, emotional and spiritual are part of a child's connection with the world."
- Mary Paradis, director of development at the Vancouver Waldorf School
Why doesn't every child deserve the kind of education kids get at some private schools? The schools I refer to--Waldorf and Montessori are among them--teach the whole child, not just curriculum dictated facts and skills.
Children develop along four main streams: intellectual, physical, emotional and social. Mainline school systems address the intellectual and physical needs of their children, but curriculum seldom leaves time or room for social or emotional/psychological development. At that, intellectual development follows strict guides and physical development varies hugely from school to school and among various districts.
What would those strict guides be that schools follow? Education systems, in general, are designed to produce future employees who can do the jobs that big employers such as industries need to be done. And they produce consumers who will buy, use, throw away, then buy more of the products those industries manufacture.
Schools produce employees and consumers. The evidence is so glaring that those who argue against the claim have difficulty finding evidence of support. In fact, those who argue that schools are not designed to produce employees and consumers of the future delude themselves and try to persuade others so they don't feel so alone. If you doubt, just look at what topics fill school curricula and the young adults the schools produce.
Ironically, many of the leaders of the industries that employ public school system graduates themselves attended private schools. Is this true irony? In fact, no. Private schools, in general, prepare children to be leaders in their communities, not followers as public school systems do.
Providing "the right thing at the right time" in a child's learning development is the key to teaching to the whole child, according to Ryan Lindsay, president of The Waldorf Association of Ontario. Public schools, on the other hand, provide indoctrination of facts and skills in the employee-consumer model at the time most child have the ability to manage them. Those who are not ready fail--emotionally, if not by repeating school years--drop out when they reach the minimum age, often believing that they are too dumb for school. They try to work for large companies so they can depend on a steady income.
"We make sure we focus on teaching children how to think and not what to think," according to Lindsay. "We like to think we are laying the foundation in a more thorough way so that when children get to a certain age the approach aids their intellectual development."
Casting aside the lack of expertise you may feel regarding the topic of education as a whole, if you attended a public school do Mr. Lindsay's statements ring a bell about how you were taught? From what you know of adults today, do they know how to think, not just what to think when they make purchases?
We must keep in mind that private schools have the same number of teaching hours in their days as public schools. They don't have eight-day school weeks. Private school students are in class roughly the same number of hours as public school students the same age. Sometimes less if they have special assignments that take them outside the classroom.
What's the difference?
Some may claim that public schools have many more problem children to deal with than private schools. From my personal experience as an educator, I can see that argument having some merit. I also know that classes I taught in public schools had far fewer "problem children" than many of the other classes in the same schools.
In my teaching years in public schools, it was the teacher in my classes who kept getting into trouble, not the students. In my case I kept wanting to deliver to my kids what they needed and wanted and were desperate to take in and develop, not just what was on the curriculum. I believe my mission was to grow whole people, not just adults who were ready to be employees and consumers. I did. Administration often objected.
In general, classes with "problem children" do little to address their emotional and social needs. Consequently their problems tend to be emotional or social in nature--bullying, depression, fighting, shyness and so on. Where children have intellectual development problems--slow learners--very often the slowness of intellectual development relates back to emotional or social problems of the past.
And often to emotional or social problems of the present. How efficiently can we expect a child to learn if he or she has problems with a drunk or abusive parent at home, with a classmate or neighbourhood child who bullies them to and from school or on the bus, with a parent who does not provide a home atmosphere that supports what is taught at school, or even with the results of a recently broken close friendship?
For a child, emotional and social problems always take precedence over intellectual challenges in school. Always. It's how we are built. Emotional and social problems are related to our individual ability--our basic instinct--to survive. For our ancient prehistoric ancestors, intellectual development and learning took place when survival and personal safety and comfort were not at stake.
Most private schools address the social and emotional needs of their students. "I could never say enough good things about the value of community in a school," says Karen Murton, principal of Branksome Hall, a private school for girls in Toronto.
If a child can't get enough help with social or emotional development at home and his school doesn't have the time or the authority in its curriculum to address these needs, where does he get it, where does he turn to fill in the blanks he knows inherently he must fill? Television. Movies. Video games. Rumours picked up in casual conversations with peers. "Information" gleaned from overheard adult conversations behind closed doors and at parties.
Please consider that list carefully. Your child, or at least many of the children in your community, derive most of the emotional and social development information they receive from these same sources. Are they the sources you want young people to take as models? Think about their content.
Public schools could provide factual input, but most don't. They have the same amount of time with their students as private schools, but public schools spend their non-curriculum time dealing with created problems rather than teaching what the kids need to know to prevent them from happening.
One kind of school deals with kids who may already be broken. Another teaches what kids need to avoid breaking.
As astonishing as it may sound, addressing the emotional and social needs of children would not be a costly change for public schools. Most teachers already know this stuff and just need some direction, guidance and the authority to teach it.
If private schools can grow men and women who can lead major industries, professions and governments, public schools should easily be able to grow men and women who can think for themselves, who are more than mere automaton employees and consumers who work and buy as they are told.
If you believe what you have just read, then your family, your community, your world needs you to speak up about it. Only by speaking up will you find how many others think like you so that we can all work together to make life better for the future.
If we don't talk about this, we leave industries to manipulate their way into the lives of every student of every public school.
That's simply not acceptable.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and other interested people who want to know what children need to learn and when, not just what industries want them to be taught and how.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The World's Worst Problems Can Be Solved
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
- Douglas Noel Adams, English author (1952-2001)
No one likes to blame themselves for anything. It's not easy to accept fault, then lie down nicely and wait for the consequences to assault.
That's not what Adams is suggesting we should do. He's recommending that we change ourselves to account for the new learning we gained by making the mistake, by committing the crime or the sin, by simply being a fallible human like everyone else.
Change is what growth is about. Change in our lives is more important today than ever before in history.
It used to be, in past centuries and millennia, that the older people were the wiser ones. In the past, the sum of human knowledge changed very little over a lifetime, so the longer one lived, the more one knew. That applied to human experience--personal or vicarious--as well as to information. That is, an old and wise person could speak to the wisdom of a younger person taking a particular action or making a specific decision because he or she would know that the way proposed did not work in the past when others had tried it.
Today the sum of human knowledge doubles every century. It's totally impossible to keep up with it. Older people are more inclined to fall behind with their grasp of new technologies and ways of thinking. They tend to be behind the mainstream, not ahead of it. Most old people are not wise in the traditional sense of the word. They are likely backward. So the younger generations tend to ignore their advice because they don't have the wisdom that older people of past generations were able to accumulate.
Old people today have less value to the functioning of their society and their culture today than ever before in history. The reason is that younger generations need different things from the older generation than the younger generations of the past needed. And the older ones have not changed to fulfill those new needs. Of course there are exceptions, as there are with any generalization.
That disconnect can change. But only when people accept that they must learn and continue to change throughout their lifetime.
Every change is not necessarily right. Some are wrong. Wrong in every conceivable way except that they give more power to one or more individuals. See the history of Hitler or today's Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for confirmation. That requires older people who may have the time and the improved level of wisdom relating to change to speak up and gather people to work toward reversing or eliminating the results of the power mongers who made the wrong decisions.
Would removing Mugabe today result in the same consequences as removing Saddam Hussein did in Iraq? Answering that question well requires much greater cognitive functioning and knowledge retention than life decisions did in the past.
A few years ago we blamed Saddam for the state of health of Iraq. So the US and its allies removed him. That resulted in a war that has lasted for several years. The change that was needed was not simply removal of a dictator, which opened up animosities that captors of Saddam could not imagine. As it happened, Saddam (with his sons) was the one individual who was preventing a civil war in Iraq. Removing him removed the obstacle to civil war.
No one wants to remove Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, because even he was able to change when those who opposed him chose to work with him rather than against him. North Koreans will benefit as a result of changed approaches to apparently intractable problems. Not only has North Korea been removed from the notorious Axis of Evil list (only Iran remains on the list), but the people of North Korea may look forward to some day being able to eat a full meal. That's a big change. It resulted from a big change in approach by governments interested in the problem with the dictator.
Blaming doesn't work. It creates dead ends. And too often dead people.
There are no dead ends, in reality, only people who can't change their ways of thinking enough to see other possible alternatives. As Mr. Spock said in the old Star Trek series many times, "There are always alternatives." Seeing alternatives requires changes in thinking.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who will be able to learn and change throughout their lives because they have the right foundation to build on from early childhood.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Douglas Noel Adams, English author (1952-2001)
No one likes to blame themselves for anything. It's not easy to accept fault, then lie down nicely and wait for the consequences to assault.
That's not what Adams is suggesting we should do. He's recommending that we change ourselves to account for the new learning we gained by making the mistake, by committing the crime or the sin, by simply being a fallible human like everyone else.
Change is what growth is about. Change in our lives is more important today than ever before in history.
It used to be, in past centuries and millennia, that the older people were the wiser ones. In the past, the sum of human knowledge changed very little over a lifetime, so the longer one lived, the more one knew. That applied to human experience--personal or vicarious--as well as to information. That is, an old and wise person could speak to the wisdom of a younger person taking a particular action or making a specific decision because he or she would know that the way proposed did not work in the past when others had tried it.
Today the sum of human knowledge doubles every century. It's totally impossible to keep up with it. Older people are more inclined to fall behind with their grasp of new technologies and ways of thinking. They tend to be behind the mainstream, not ahead of it. Most old people are not wise in the traditional sense of the word. They are likely backward. So the younger generations tend to ignore their advice because they don't have the wisdom that older people of past generations were able to accumulate.
Old people today have less value to the functioning of their society and their culture today than ever before in history. The reason is that younger generations need different things from the older generation than the younger generations of the past needed. And the older ones have not changed to fulfill those new needs. Of course there are exceptions, as there are with any generalization.
That disconnect can change. But only when people accept that they must learn and continue to change throughout their lifetime.
Every change is not necessarily right. Some are wrong. Wrong in every conceivable way except that they give more power to one or more individuals. See the history of Hitler or today's Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for confirmation. That requires older people who may have the time and the improved level of wisdom relating to change to speak up and gather people to work toward reversing or eliminating the results of the power mongers who made the wrong decisions.
Would removing Mugabe today result in the same consequences as removing Saddam Hussein did in Iraq? Answering that question well requires much greater cognitive functioning and knowledge retention than life decisions did in the past.
A few years ago we blamed Saddam for the state of health of Iraq. So the US and its allies removed him. That resulted in a war that has lasted for several years. The change that was needed was not simply removal of a dictator, which opened up animosities that captors of Saddam could not imagine. As it happened, Saddam (with his sons) was the one individual who was preventing a civil war in Iraq. Removing him removed the obstacle to civil war.
No one wants to remove Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, because even he was able to change when those who opposed him chose to work with him rather than against him. North Koreans will benefit as a result of changed approaches to apparently intractable problems. Not only has North Korea been removed from the notorious Axis of Evil list (only Iran remains on the list), but the people of North Korea may look forward to some day being able to eat a full meal. That's a big change. It resulted from a big change in approach by governments interested in the problem with the dictator.
Blaming doesn't work. It creates dead ends. And too often dead people.
There are no dead ends, in reality, only people who can't change their ways of thinking enough to see other possible alternatives. As Mr. Spock said in the old Star Trek series many times, "There are always alternatives." Seeing alternatives requires changes in thinking.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who will be able to learn and change throughout their lives because they have the right foundation to build on from early childhood.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, February 23, 2008
How You Can Change The World
It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.
- Thomas Carlyle
While it's true that the casting of a pebble by one person literally alters the centre of gravity of both the planet he is on and the universe, neither takes notice of the change.
Does that mean the change is insignificant? Not at all. You wouldn't notice a difference if I threw a stone across a field. But then you are so insensitive that you don't think about the fact that you are spinning around in space at nearly 1000 miles per hour (1600 kph) as the planet you stand, sit or sleep on rotates on its axis. This in addition to the fact that you race at thousands of times that speed as the earth revolves around the sun each year.
If an asteroid were to head toward earth, with a high likelihood of collision, it could be diverted from its course with a comparatively small tap by a spacecraft sent to change its path. That small tap, over time, would not just divert the asteroid from its collision course with earth, it would fundamentally change its course around the solar system forever. The "small" tap would have to happen soon enough to make a minor course change significant over a great distance so it would avoid hitting us.
Science is learning that, as we search deeper into our past, all the major extinction thresholds were caused by impacts from asteroids or comets. Just last year we learned that what wiped out the wooly mammoth and its giant fellow earth dwellers, as well as the Clovis people that first inhabited North America, likely resulted from the explosion just north of the Great Lakes of an asteroid.some 13,000 years ago. A millennium-long cold spell we know as one of the Ice Ages resulted.
All the known human inhabitants of a large continent were wiped out from starvation because they didn't have the technology we have today to divert the course of the asteroid. A small tap at the right point of time would have made a world of difference 13,000 years ago.
Small actions that seem insignificant at the time can make enormous differences years later. Jesus of Nazareth likely didn't know that his words would be revered by nearly a third of the world's population two millennia later. Before him, Abraham wouldn't have known that his devotion would be the beginning of great religions that today encompass over half the people of the world.
The point is that doing the right thing when we have the opportunity to do it can make all the difference in the world in years to come. Even if very few people notice it at the time.
The people who are remembered over time are those who began something that changed the course of history by their words or their actions.
True, history books mark the passage of great warriors more than the actions of gentle folk. But perhaps it was the gentle folk who made the great changes through their small actions. Anyone can make war, only the intelligent can manage peace. It was the gentle folk of our past that made us who we are today, rather than primitive warriors and hunter-gatherers.
A few words here, a bump or nudge there can cause huge changes down the road.
The only things that can prevent such changes from happening are those who believe that nothing they do will matter later. Or that life is much worse now than it used to be. Both are clearly, unequivocally, provably wrong.
Do the right thing. It will matter. Knowing that it will matter later will be your reward.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book that shows parents and grandparents how to teach children in such ways that they will be able to make significant changes in their lives and their world confidently and competently as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas Carlyle
While it's true that the casting of a pebble by one person literally alters the centre of gravity of both the planet he is on and the universe, neither takes notice of the change.
Does that mean the change is insignificant? Not at all. You wouldn't notice a difference if I threw a stone across a field. But then you are so insensitive that you don't think about the fact that you are spinning around in space at nearly 1000 miles per hour (1600 kph) as the planet you stand, sit or sleep on rotates on its axis. This in addition to the fact that you race at thousands of times that speed as the earth revolves around the sun each year.
If an asteroid were to head toward earth, with a high likelihood of collision, it could be diverted from its course with a comparatively small tap by a spacecraft sent to change its path. That small tap, over time, would not just divert the asteroid from its collision course with earth, it would fundamentally change its course around the solar system forever. The "small" tap would have to happen soon enough to make a minor course change significant over a great distance so it would avoid hitting us.
Science is learning that, as we search deeper into our past, all the major extinction thresholds were caused by impacts from asteroids or comets. Just last year we learned that what wiped out the wooly mammoth and its giant fellow earth dwellers, as well as the Clovis people that first inhabited North America, likely resulted from the explosion just north of the Great Lakes of an asteroid.some 13,000 years ago. A millennium-long cold spell we know as one of the Ice Ages resulted.
All the known human inhabitants of a large continent were wiped out from starvation because they didn't have the technology we have today to divert the course of the asteroid. A small tap at the right point of time would have made a world of difference 13,000 years ago.
Small actions that seem insignificant at the time can make enormous differences years later. Jesus of Nazareth likely didn't know that his words would be revered by nearly a third of the world's population two millennia later. Before him, Abraham wouldn't have known that his devotion would be the beginning of great religions that today encompass over half the people of the world.
The point is that doing the right thing when we have the opportunity to do it can make all the difference in the world in years to come. Even if very few people notice it at the time.
The people who are remembered over time are those who began something that changed the course of history by their words or their actions.
True, history books mark the passage of great warriors more than the actions of gentle folk. But perhaps it was the gentle folk who made the great changes through their small actions. Anyone can make war, only the intelligent can manage peace. It was the gentle folk of our past that made us who we are today, rather than primitive warriors and hunter-gatherers.
A few words here, a bump or nudge there can cause huge changes down the road.
The only things that can prevent such changes from happening are those who believe that nothing they do will matter later. Or that life is much worse now than it used to be. Both are clearly, unequivocally, provably wrong.
Do the right thing. It will matter. Knowing that it will matter later will be your reward.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book that shows parents and grandparents how to teach children in such ways that they will be able to make significant changes in their lives and their world confidently and competently as adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, February 24, 2007
A Better Life Is One Decision Away
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
- William James
This statement will mean little or nothing to most people who have not experienced the effect of exercising this discovery. It is as life-altering as James suggests.
We all understand that our life can change in a flash if we are suddenly struck with a disease, if our spouse become disabled or if our business goes bankrupt. Those are all outside of our control to a great extent.
We also understand that our life can change instantly if we make a bad choice or decision, such as to take an addictive drug, to rob a store or to kill someone. Those are all choices that bring about negative consequences. We can also make positive decisions that will improve our life ever after.
We each grew up in a family and community environment that shaped our life from its earliest days. We made friends or enemies, faced dilimmas about religion and God, worked to make a living and develop a life based on that combination of environmental influences and principles. However, as adults we have choices that do not apply to children. They can change our life as quickly as a tragedy.
We all understand that we must build a new life for ourselves if we divorce, if we get fired from a job, if our spouse dies or if we experience some other personal tragedy. While those are forced on us, we also have the power to make decisions that will help us build a new and better life for ourselves if we can't stand our present one.
We can be whoever we want to be by recreating ourselves. That doesn't mean we can be rich or have the talent of an artist or date a movie star necessarily. It means that we can make decisions that can improve the quality of our lives. The quality, not the quantity.
We can find a new mate, have different friends, prepare for an occupation different from what we have or even be a different person than we are today. All it requires is a decision and the perseverance to follow through with it.
The first step is to understand that we have the power within us to make those decisions and have those kinds of changes in our lives. The second step is to live the role of the new person we want to be.
That may mean avoiding some people who have been friends, eating differently, forming new habits, learning how to find, meet and make new friends. It means change. Without the commitment to change our life and all the consequences that go with that decision, the change will not take place.
The third step is to understand that we can't do it alone. Most major life changes depend on others to help guide us to a life that is not familiar to us. We can ask. Many people are only too glad to help someone who sincerely wants to improve their lfie. But they must ask. It's surprising how people will help us if we only dare to ask.
No time is too late for change. People in their 80s are writing their first book or dabbing paint onto canvas for the first time. People in their 60s and even 70s are attending college. People who had trouble getting along with others during their working years have found ways to make many new friends.
It's never too late to be happy. It's never too late to make a decision for a better life. It's never too late to live a more fulfilling life.
All it takes is a decision and the determination to see it through. And the gumption to ask questions of the people who can help us most.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make great things possible for those who want them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- William James
This statement will mean little or nothing to most people who have not experienced the effect of exercising this discovery. It is as life-altering as James suggests.
We all understand that our life can change in a flash if we are suddenly struck with a disease, if our spouse become disabled or if our business goes bankrupt. Those are all outside of our control to a great extent.
We also understand that our life can change instantly if we make a bad choice or decision, such as to take an addictive drug, to rob a store or to kill someone. Those are all choices that bring about negative consequences. We can also make positive decisions that will improve our life ever after.
We each grew up in a family and community environment that shaped our life from its earliest days. We made friends or enemies, faced dilimmas about religion and God, worked to make a living and develop a life based on that combination of environmental influences and principles. However, as adults we have choices that do not apply to children. They can change our life as quickly as a tragedy.
We all understand that we must build a new life for ourselves if we divorce, if we get fired from a job, if our spouse dies or if we experience some other personal tragedy. While those are forced on us, we also have the power to make decisions that will help us build a new and better life for ourselves if we can't stand our present one.
We can be whoever we want to be by recreating ourselves. That doesn't mean we can be rich or have the talent of an artist or date a movie star necessarily. It means that we can make decisions that can improve the quality of our lives. The quality, not the quantity.
We can find a new mate, have different friends, prepare for an occupation different from what we have or even be a different person than we are today. All it requires is a decision and the perseverance to follow through with it.
The first step is to understand that we have the power within us to make those decisions and have those kinds of changes in our lives. The second step is to live the role of the new person we want to be.
That may mean avoiding some people who have been friends, eating differently, forming new habits, learning how to find, meet and make new friends. It means change. Without the commitment to change our life and all the consequences that go with that decision, the change will not take place.
The third step is to understand that we can't do it alone. Most major life changes depend on others to help guide us to a life that is not familiar to us. We can ask. Many people are only too glad to help someone who sincerely wants to improve their lfie. But they must ask. It's surprising how people will help us if we only dare to ask.
No time is too late for change. People in their 80s are writing their first book or dabbing paint onto canvas for the first time. People in their 60s and even 70s are attending college. People who had trouble getting along with others during their working years have found ways to make many new friends.
It's never too late to be happy. It's never too late to make a decision for a better life. It's never too late to live a more fulfilling life.
All it takes is a decision and the determination to see it through. And the gumption to ask questions of the people who can help us most.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make great things possible for those who want them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, February 02, 2007
Squeeze Out The Thinkers: It's Our Way
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
- John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)
This observation is similar to saying that we all dislike change. All things considered, new ideas and opinions often represent the leading edge of change.
What reason do we have to fear change? Human nature tells us that the status quo equals security. What is may not be perfect, but it's what we know. More importantly, what we have been told by our leaders must be true because we depend on our leaders to steer us along the right path as cultural communities.
In the final analysis, we are groups of followers, not self-sustaining islands of independence. Most of us don't produce our own food, build our own homes, make our own clothing or in more than minimal ways contribute directly to our own welfare. We depend on others to assist with these.
When our prehistoric ancestors gave up their independence in order to gather together into social groups, we also gave up some of our rights to freedom of thought and action. Those who thought differently from the group were forced to conform to the rules of the group, thus refraining from speaking things which went against the perceived welfare of the group and especially from acting on them.
Conformity meant security. Peer pressure ensured that conformity was the rule. Thus our leaders kept cohesion within the group and maintained their own status as leaders by making conformity a way of life, not just a rule designed for mutual security and prosperity.
We became the sheep that are referred to in the Bible stories, with our leaders the shepherds.
When the Church of Rome declared that the world was flat and the flat plane a square in medieval times, people believed that the world was flat and square. When the church changed its tune and later described the perimeter of the plane as round, people believed in a flat earth with a round exterior (an explanation which satisfied those who observed the arc of the horizon when they sailed the oceans).
Proving that earth was not the centre of the solar system and our solar system not the centre of the universe came at great personal cost. Proving that the planet was not flat--in those parts of the world that believed that dictum, as most of the world never subscribed to it--also came at great expense to those who put forward the proof.
History conformed around the myth so that even into the 20th century people believed that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Americas, thus proving that the world was a sphere. In fact, Columbus (a mapmaker) placed what today we know as Cape Breton Island, on the east coast of Canada, on a map he made in 1490, two years before his 1492 first trip to the Caribbean. Other maps of the period included Antartica and parts of the Americas, geographical realities that supposedly were not "discovered" until decades or even centuries later.
As many factors as possible are brought to bear for the purpose of ensuring that the status quo is maintained as much as possible. New ideas and opinions are treated as heresy.
But they grow anyway. The good ones often take until well after the original thinker has died before they are generally accepted. Original thinkers may be islands in a sea of conformity and mediocrity, but they are not secure islands.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective, especially human nature.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)
This observation is similar to saying that we all dislike change. All things considered, new ideas and opinions often represent the leading edge of change.
What reason do we have to fear change? Human nature tells us that the status quo equals security. What is may not be perfect, but it's what we know. More importantly, what we have been told by our leaders must be true because we depend on our leaders to steer us along the right path as cultural communities.
In the final analysis, we are groups of followers, not self-sustaining islands of independence. Most of us don't produce our own food, build our own homes, make our own clothing or in more than minimal ways contribute directly to our own welfare. We depend on others to assist with these.
When our prehistoric ancestors gave up their independence in order to gather together into social groups, we also gave up some of our rights to freedom of thought and action. Those who thought differently from the group were forced to conform to the rules of the group, thus refraining from speaking things which went against the perceived welfare of the group and especially from acting on them.
Conformity meant security. Peer pressure ensured that conformity was the rule. Thus our leaders kept cohesion within the group and maintained their own status as leaders by making conformity a way of life, not just a rule designed for mutual security and prosperity.
We became the sheep that are referred to in the Bible stories, with our leaders the shepherds.
When the Church of Rome declared that the world was flat and the flat plane a square in medieval times, people believed that the world was flat and square. When the church changed its tune and later described the perimeter of the plane as round, people believed in a flat earth with a round exterior (an explanation which satisfied those who observed the arc of the horizon when they sailed the oceans).
Proving that earth was not the centre of the solar system and our solar system not the centre of the universe came at great personal cost. Proving that the planet was not flat--in those parts of the world that believed that dictum, as most of the world never subscribed to it--also came at great expense to those who put forward the proof.
History conformed around the myth so that even into the 20th century people believed that Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Americas, thus proving that the world was a sphere. In fact, Columbus (a mapmaker) placed what today we know as Cape Breton Island, on the east coast of Canada, on a map he made in 1490, two years before his 1492 first trip to the Caribbean. Other maps of the period included Antartica and parts of the Americas, geographical realities that supposedly were not "discovered" until decades or even centuries later.
As many factors as possible are brought to bear for the purpose of ensuring that the status quo is maintained as much as possible. New ideas and opinions are treated as heresy.
But they grow anyway. The good ones often take until well after the original thinker has died before they are generally accepted. Original thinkers may be islands in a sea of conformity and mediocrity, but they are not secure islands.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective, especially human nature.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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