Parental Wisdom: Lacking Respect or Missing in Action?
Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.
- Marianne Williamson, American peace activist, author, lecturer, minister (b. 1952)
Where is wisdom in the inevitable transformation that is taking place on our planet? Is it stronger than ever, though apparently disguised. Has it vanished? Do we even recognize wisdom today as we did in the past?
Most people would agree that Albert Schweitzer was wise. Here's an example:
Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.
- Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)
We could explain so much about our world today using this thought. Where is that kind of wisdom? While Schweitzer's observation has always been true of our species, the fact that today the leaders of industry knowingly poison the air they breathe and the water they use in their own bodies for the sake of profit should raise alarm. They have put profit ahead of survival, which is clearly in opposition to the instinct of every living thing.
Leaders of industry hold out the promise of jobs as bait so that politicians and bureaucrats will allow them to commit acts that no other civilization in history has done to itself. They argue that, in effect, "my way must be right because I thought of it." They argue that making their industry eco-friendly will be economically unfeasible, though the evidence on the ground shows that this argument is patently false.
We believe them because we somehow attribute to them wisdom. Or we want the money that derives from the jobs they will create. Today, as in the past, wealth trumps reason. Does that mean that wisdom no longer exists?
These lessons we teach to our children, whether intentionally or not.
Historically, wisdom was the purview of the elderly. Elders traditionally had experience doing much the same activities as the younger generations were doing. Experience derives from making mistakes then learning from them. That learning could be taught, which made the teachers--the elderly, experienced ones in society--considered wise.
A century ago 85 percent of the population of North America lived in rural areas and derived their income directly or indirectly from agriculture. Today 85 percent of the populations of Canada and the United States live in cities. The continuity of experience has been broken. Today's young adults don't want to learn skills of farming. Many city dwelling adults today have not accustomed themselves to social and emotional survival methods required in city life, so cannot teach them to their children.
Within the memory span of older people living today women entered the workforce (during the Second World War when men were away fighting), it became acceptable for women to wear pants rather than dresses or skirts to work, women have learned the trades of welding, plumbing, auto mechanics and others, women have become bosses and employers rather than entry level employees and women have even become heads of states in large countries. The continuity was broken. We accept these changes but have little idea how they impact our personal and family lives.
Office "pencil pushers" of the past now press buttons on keyboards. The more skilled among them program software to operate to the specific needs of companies. Today's older people have stories to pass along to younger generations, but those stories are considered by young people to lack usable information, thus don't count as wisdom. Old folks just don't "get it."
Young people in North America now text their friends 300 times a day, on average, while their grandparents may still be reluctant to pick up a phone to call someone because they "may be busy." While many of today's parents of teenagers grapple with the thought of teaching "sex" to kids younger than 16 years, close to half our kids have sex before their thirteenth birthday and the number who have sex before their ninth birthday is closing in on double digit percentages.
Somehow our adult generations have come to believe that ignorance is important in children. They call it "innocence" as if they can stop kids from behaving in certain ways as they can stop certain behaviours of family pets.
The disconnect here is that childhood is the time people are supposed to learn about adulthood, not be protected from learning about it. The whole purpose of childhood is as a training period for adulthood. Conventional "wisdom" says that the world is too ugly for children to be exposed to, yet evidence shows it is actually more peaceful, organized and orderly than ever before in history. What parents believe becomes what children accept as fact.
Children know that they should know the facts about certain things, even if they are not certain of exactly what they should know. It's a gut feeling. A child of 12 who has sex understands that he or she should know more about what they are doing than they do, but has no idea where to learn the needed information, from whom or even what they should know. What they do know is how to put tab A into slot B, as every child knows, and nature provides them with the hormones to make the convergence more compelling.
An interviewer on a U.S. national radio network asked me not long ago, on air, when I lost my virginity. When I told him he all but called me a liar because he expected me to say age 12 or 13. He said so and his on-air colleagues agreed. This is the world of today.
Parents and grandparents who are not fully connected to that world or who are in denial of the facts will not connect with children who are constantly growing and experiencing outside of home. In turn, the children will not see their parents or grandparents as wise, maybe not even credible. Not only will many adults not tell the kids the facts they want to know, they refuse to tell them and they deny what the kids are living every day. And what they are learning, often inaccurately, every day.
How can we expect young people to consider their parents or grandparents wise when they aren't? "Innocence" equals ignorance. Denial equals stupidity. Stupidity is prolific. When kids can't get answers from their parents they turn to others who will answer. Just as with making friends, the people who are easiest to get answers from are the most dangerous and undependable. For example, drug dealers hang around outside many elementary schools today, ready to give free advice as well as "samples."
Wisdom exists today, but those who want access to it must search for it. The internet has answers to all questions. Some of the answers are wrong, even dangerous. But some are dead-on right. Rather than teach children how to evaluate what they may find on the internet, many parents deny their kids will look at such things and others put kid-control programs on their computers.
Today kids can find computers all over the place and the average six-year-old can figure out the passwords their parents put on. Denying kids access to information they want makes them believe their parents are stupid or oppressive, not wise. Indeed, parents who do not avail themselves of the opportunities to teach their children what they want to know and what they need to know--the primary objective of parenthood after having sex and giving birth--do not deserve to be considered wise.
Wisdom exists today, but not in conventional places or sources. For example, you learned something by reading this article that your parents could not have imagined a generation ago.
Pass it on.
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 know what to teach their children, and when, to help them develop socially and emotionally as well as they expect schools to help them develop intellectually. It's not what most parents think.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Showing posts with label teens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teens. Show all posts
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Why Should You Care?
That is called integrity. Unfortunately it is not something you can buy or steal.
- The L Word
The easiest way to understand the basic concept of integrity is: doing the right thing when no one is looking and no reward forthcoming.
The delicious irony of the second sentence of the quote is that buying someone's good will or stealing anything would be the opposite of having integrity.
Does integrity exist today or is it a virtue more comfortably left in the past?
No one can claim to be pure and noble. We all have our weaknesses and strengths. None of us is perfect. When we demonstrate moral weakness, we join the vast majority of humanity that is not consistent about integrity.
Most of us try to do our best most of the time. Whether anyone is watching is or not, whether we may get a reward or not. If we don't, we may have trouble sleeping at night, we may suffer stress and its resulting anxiety beyond what we should, our relationships with those we love will surely suffer eventually.
Our media fill our minds with examples of every kind of immoral behaviour that is anything but integrity. Yet, somehow, most of us keep trying to do what is right.
Whether we have integrity or we act the opposite way, a large part of the responsibility lies with our parents. In the first five years of life, parents teach us by example or by actively teaching us lessons to live with integrity or to work against the benefit of society as a whole to gain for ourselves. As adults, we each make decisions for ourselves. Yet most of us, especially after age 40 (usually sooner), follow the life lessons and role models given to us by our parents.
Integrity is how we survive instead of descending into chaos as families and communities and nations.
Why should we care about our community as a whole if our community seems to not care about us? Actually, it does. Communities don't have good enough social skills to express to us how much they appreciate us. What they do have is a penchant for whining and crying when its citizens misbehave. They whine and cry because they have not yet gained sufficient maturity to know what to do to solve its problems and avoid them in the future.
As sophisticated as we have become technologically and to a lesser extent scientifically, socially as communities we are just entering our adolescence. Seven billion of us live in an immature world that only our descendents will see into adulthood.
Just as we can't force an adolescent of 14 years to act like an adult in all ways, we can't push our communities to act more mature when they don't know how.
We can only do the right thing, do our small part to see that the community we belong to grows in a healthy way.
That means living with integrity.
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children into adults who live comfortably with integrity and maturity.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- The L Word
The easiest way to understand the basic concept of integrity is: doing the right thing when no one is looking and no reward forthcoming.
The delicious irony of the second sentence of the quote is that buying someone's good will or stealing anything would be the opposite of having integrity.
Does integrity exist today or is it a virtue more comfortably left in the past?
No one can claim to be pure and noble. We all have our weaknesses and strengths. None of us is perfect. When we demonstrate moral weakness, we join the vast majority of humanity that is not consistent about integrity.
Most of us try to do our best most of the time. Whether anyone is watching is or not, whether we may get a reward or not. If we don't, we may have trouble sleeping at night, we may suffer stress and its resulting anxiety beyond what we should, our relationships with those we love will surely suffer eventually.
Our media fill our minds with examples of every kind of immoral behaviour that is anything but integrity. Yet, somehow, most of us keep trying to do what is right.
Whether we have integrity or we act the opposite way, a large part of the responsibility lies with our parents. In the first five years of life, parents teach us by example or by actively teaching us lessons to live with integrity or to work against the benefit of society as a whole to gain for ourselves. As adults, we each make decisions for ourselves. Yet most of us, especially after age 40 (usually sooner), follow the life lessons and role models given to us by our parents.
Integrity is how we survive instead of descending into chaos as families and communities and nations.
Why should we care about our community as a whole if our community seems to not care about us? Actually, it does. Communities don't have good enough social skills to express to us how much they appreciate us. What they do have is a penchant for whining and crying when its citizens misbehave. They whine and cry because they have not yet gained sufficient maturity to know what to do to solve its problems and avoid them in the future.
As sophisticated as we have become technologically and to a lesser extent scientifically, socially as communities we are just entering our adolescence. Seven billion of us live in an immature world that only our descendents will see into adulthood.
Just as we can't force an adolescent of 14 years to act like an adult in all ways, we can't push our communities to act more mature when they don't know how.
We can only do the right thing, do our small part to see that the community we belong to grows in a healthy way.
That means living with integrity.
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children into adults who live comfortably with integrity and maturity.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Stages Of Life
The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomesan adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; theday he forgives himself, he becomes wise.
- Alden Nowlan, Canadian writer, poet (1933-1983)
We, as parents, must take responsibility when our children discover us flawed, imperfect, even breakers of the rules of common behaviour we set as standards for them in their early lives.
Babies come into this world knowing very little. What they know from 40 weeks of listening in on the world they soon will enter provides them with some information, but we don't yet know the amount or the degree of impact it has on them as children. Let's assume that they have learned enough to make them curious about their new world and they have the beginnings of cognitive abilities by which they will learn more.
Many adults believe that babies gather information as they sense their surroundings for the first several months, even years. Eventually they assemble this data into a concept of what becomes their understanding of their world. This perception about babies is fundamentally wrong.
Babies devise a concept of their world shortly after they have enough information to make sense of it, which is not long after birth. The very act of making sense of it requires the creation of a concept. The concept gets revised as they add more data to their memory banks. Even as babies we believe we know what our world is about.
Throughout pre-adolescent childhood, most kids hold the belief that their concept of their world is the way the larger world is. If their parents satisfy their need for touch by caressing them, holding them and cuddling them, they believe that everyone in the adult world behaves this way. If their parents read to them, they believe that all parents read to their children, even when they discover exceptions to this in other families.
Babies and young children create concepts of their world based on the behaviours of their parents or others who care for them. As they grow and mature, they expect that new information will add to and confirm their concepts.
Most parents teach their children that some behaviours are wrong, dangerous or harmful. They also teach, either proactively or by example (as role models), a concept of right and wrong.
Some parents point out the mistakes of their children to them, but never admit to making mistakes themselves. Some even secretly break the same rules they set for their children. When an adolescent discovers this hypocrisy in the very people who have helped him form his concept of the world, his concept cracks or shatters. This begins the rebellious teenager phase that exists in some cultures (but not all by any means).
As he searches for others to help him to assemble a new concept of the world, he may turn to the easiest people to befriend. The easiest friends to make are those who have something to gain from the relationship, usually something that society considers wrong. The bad guys among their age group are always friendly toward their vulnerable peers. They have little trouble persuading a troubled teen to join them because the teen has nowhere else to turn (or so he believes). The troubled one gravitates toward one he perceives as a friend.
The bad guy always has a clear and positive concept of the world to present to the vulnerable one. This consists not only of a code of behaviour which seems to benefit everyone in the group, but a code that is internally consistent. That is, everyone in the gang or group adheres to the same code of behaviour and set of morals and everyone feels accepted within the group because they all share something very important to them.
They share a world view. It may not be a socially accepted world view in the bigger world, but each member sees it as consistent so long as everyone follows it. When the leader breaks the code, violates the rules, the spectre of hypocrisy looms again and some followers want to leave. However, most leaders maintain their position by following the same codes of behaviour as the rest of the group.
Eventually this group may find itself coming into conflict with the rest of the larger society. In the early years of adolescence, this bonds group members together. Eventually most group members find it impractical to maintain a distinct code of behaviour that is anti-social because it prevents them from breaking into the larger world of adults.
At that time, the adolescent sees the mistakes, the vulnerabilities and the failures of his peer group and holds it up to the same for his parents, for comparison. As Alden Nowlan said, that's when the adolescent becomes an adult, when he forgives his parents.
For most young adults, that act of forgiveness of parents for being imperfect is enough to hold them together as a family for the rest of their lives. So they grow from there.
Some, however, will see their own faults and weaknesses in stark contrast to what seem to be strengths of others around them. At that stage they still don't realize that the others have faults and weaknesses as well because these seldom show or are carefully hidden by most adults.
The more that adults see the weaknesses and failures of others, the more likely they are to see their own in comparison and realize that their own weaknesses, failures and faults are no worse than those of others people.
If they can then accept the weaknesses and failures of others because it's in their mutual best interests, they can forgive themselves for their own.
That is the beginning of wisdom. Only the beginning.
If a person chooses to pursue wisdom with forgiveness as its basis, a whole new life lies ahead for that person. He can create a whole new concept of the world that is consistent, with the condition that some things can't be counted on to remain the same. That is, it's the nature of some things about life to be inconsistent, to change, to be uncertain.
A new concept of life with this as its heart opens up enormous possibilities. Life is as complex as it seems. Wisdom embraces it all and searches for more, prepared to accept that nothing is perfect.
The child has truly matured when wisdom is his goal.
Bill Allin, the author of this article, is a parent, teacher, sociologist, philosopher and life guide. He has failed and grown from his failures in each. Wisdom also comes through growing from failure to success. He distilled a wealth of information he learned from his decades of study of child development into a book for parents and teachers.
Learn about his book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems from his web site at http://billallin.com
- Alden Nowlan, Canadian writer, poet (1933-1983)
We, as parents, must take responsibility when our children discover us flawed, imperfect, even breakers of the rules of common behaviour we set as standards for them in their early lives.
Babies come into this world knowing very little. What they know from 40 weeks of listening in on the world they soon will enter provides them with some information, but we don't yet know the amount or the degree of impact it has on them as children. Let's assume that they have learned enough to make them curious about their new world and they have the beginnings of cognitive abilities by which they will learn more.
Many adults believe that babies gather information as they sense their surroundings for the first several months, even years. Eventually they assemble this data into a concept of what becomes their understanding of their world. This perception about babies is fundamentally wrong.
Babies devise a concept of their world shortly after they have enough information to make sense of it, which is not long after birth. The very act of making sense of it requires the creation of a concept. The concept gets revised as they add more data to their memory banks. Even as babies we believe we know what our world is about.
Throughout pre-adolescent childhood, most kids hold the belief that their concept of their world is the way the larger world is. If their parents satisfy their need for touch by caressing them, holding them and cuddling them, they believe that everyone in the adult world behaves this way. If their parents read to them, they believe that all parents read to their children, even when they discover exceptions to this in other families.
Babies and young children create concepts of their world based on the behaviours of their parents or others who care for them. As they grow and mature, they expect that new information will add to and confirm their concepts.
Most parents teach their children that some behaviours are wrong, dangerous or harmful. They also teach, either proactively or by example (as role models), a concept of right and wrong.
Some parents point out the mistakes of their children to them, but never admit to making mistakes themselves. Some even secretly break the same rules they set for their children. When an adolescent discovers this hypocrisy in the very people who have helped him form his concept of the world, his concept cracks or shatters. This begins the rebellious teenager phase that exists in some cultures (but not all by any means).
As he searches for others to help him to assemble a new concept of the world, he may turn to the easiest people to befriend. The easiest friends to make are those who have something to gain from the relationship, usually something that society considers wrong. The bad guys among their age group are always friendly toward their vulnerable peers. They have little trouble persuading a troubled teen to join them because the teen has nowhere else to turn (or so he believes). The troubled one gravitates toward one he perceives as a friend.
The bad guy always has a clear and positive concept of the world to present to the vulnerable one. This consists not only of a code of behaviour which seems to benefit everyone in the group, but a code that is internally consistent. That is, everyone in the gang or group adheres to the same code of behaviour and set of morals and everyone feels accepted within the group because they all share something very important to them.
They share a world view. It may not be a socially accepted world view in the bigger world, but each member sees it as consistent so long as everyone follows it. When the leader breaks the code, violates the rules, the spectre of hypocrisy looms again and some followers want to leave. However, most leaders maintain their position by following the same codes of behaviour as the rest of the group.
Eventually this group may find itself coming into conflict with the rest of the larger society. In the early years of adolescence, this bonds group members together. Eventually most group members find it impractical to maintain a distinct code of behaviour that is anti-social because it prevents them from breaking into the larger world of adults.
At that time, the adolescent sees the mistakes, the vulnerabilities and the failures of his peer group and holds it up to the same for his parents, for comparison. As Alden Nowlan said, that's when the adolescent becomes an adult, when he forgives his parents.
For most young adults, that act of forgiveness of parents for being imperfect is enough to hold them together as a family for the rest of their lives. So they grow from there.
Some, however, will see their own faults and weaknesses in stark contrast to what seem to be strengths of others around them. At that stage they still don't realize that the others have faults and weaknesses as well because these seldom show or are carefully hidden by most adults.
The more that adults see the weaknesses and failures of others, the more likely they are to see their own in comparison and realize that their own weaknesses, failures and faults are no worse than those of others people.
If they can then accept the weaknesses and failures of others because it's in their mutual best interests, they can forgive themselves for their own.
That is the beginning of wisdom. Only the beginning.
If a person chooses to pursue wisdom with forgiveness as its basis, a whole new life lies ahead for that person. He can create a whole new concept of the world that is consistent, with the condition that some things can't be counted on to remain the same. That is, it's the nature of some things about life to be inconsistent, to change, to be uncertain.
A new concept of life with this as its heart opens up enormous possibilities. Life is as complex as it seems. Wisdom embraces it all and searches for more, prepared to accept that nothing is perfect.
The child has truly matured when wisdom is his goal.
Bill Allin, the author of this article, is a parent, teacher, sociologist, philosopher and life guide. He has failed and grown from his failures in each. Wisdom also comes through growing from failure to success. He distilled a wealth of information he learned from his decades of study of child development into a book for parents and teachers.
Learn about his book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems from his web site at http://billallin.com
Thursday, February 07, 2008
On Being Truly Original
The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.
- Nicolas Berdyeav, Russian writer, philosopher
Ironically, adolescents, in their drive to be different from the rest of the society they have grown up with, tend to follow a small selection of costume styles, hair styles, jewelry piercing styles and tattoo styles. Trying to be different, they all look the same to an outsider from the same society they are trying to offend (or to be different from).
Young adults find it very difficult to be unlike anybody else because they often have no idea how to be different. They have been conditioned to follow the same patterns as their peers (who tend to be dictated to by industries) that they develop a herd mentality. This changes in college when they tend to diverge due according to specialization and interests.
How does anyone "derive one's consciousness from its primary source?" This is the point where scientists and materialists find their eyes glazing over because the discussion inevitably leads beyond their realm of understanding. Which means, to them, the topic is boring, if not outright fantasy.
However, science has no idea, no concept, of what consciousness is. They could derive it from their concept of the unconscious, but they don't have any idea what that is either. Oh, they have guesses, but they can't prove anything one way or another because they have no way to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested.
Science knows what the human brain is because it can be seen, felt, probed and examined with all manner of specialized equipment. But the mind or consciousness, not so much.
Science believes that we all act out our lives in a state of consciousness and dream in our unconscious. But it can't even prove or disprove whether the reverse is true or false. In fact, no one can prove (nor can they know for certain) that we do not dream our (apparently) conscious lives and live reality in our unconscious dreams (or what convention causes us to call dreams).
At this point, consciousness and mind (as opposed to the brain) are as impossible for science to study as the supernatural, miracles or God.
Ask science what the source is of matter and energy and they will likely point to the so-called Big Bang or some theory that serves a similar purpose. What went before the Big Bang, whether there have been more than one of them going back before the one we know and whether more Big Bangs are in store for our universe in the distant future are matters for conjecture.
Science can't deny that consciousness exists because every scientist has one. But it's neither matter nor energy. The unconscious is even more mysterious because it's apparently the opposite (with the prefix un-) of consciousness, which they can't understand.
Berdyeav and many others claim that these originate with something called the Primary Source. Call it what you like, it's beyond human understanding.
If we try to distinguish ourselves from others according to the values of fashion, occupation, beliefs or organizations to which we belong, we must inevitably deal with the values of other people. If we try to establish our consciousness on the basis that it comes from a source beyond human understanding, we have a good chance of being different, individual.
But that brings inevitable consequences with it. Those who derive their consciousness from the Primary Source don't believe in war, in the sociopathic values of business, in the materialism preached by interminable streams of advertising or in the brainwashing methods practised by most religions.
That makes them freaks. They don't mind that because they understand what distinguishes them from the rabble that doesn't understand them.
They are at peace. They understand and appreciate tranquility. They like and respect themselves. They respect everything else around them (either living or not) as part of a universal whole. They won't destroy. They will help others, but they won't force anything on them.
They are originals in the purest sense of the word.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they have the potential to be self secure individuals, originals rather than followers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Nicolas Berdyeav, Russian writer, philosopher
Ironically, adolescents, in their drive to be different from the rest of the society they have grown up with, tend to follow a small selection of costume styles, hair styles, jewelry piercing styles and tattoo styles. Trying to be different, they all look the same to an outsider from the same society they are trying to offend (or to be different from).
Young adults find it very difficult to be unlike anybody else because they often have no idea how to be different. They have been conditioned to follow the same patterns as their peers (who tend to be dictated to by industries) that they develop a herd mentality. This changes in college when they tend to diverge due according to specialization and interests.
How does anyone "derive one's consciousness from its primary source?" This is the point where scientists and materialists find their eyes glazing over because the discussion inevitably leads beyond their realm of understanding. Which means, to them, the topic is boring, if not outright fantasy.
However, science has no idea, no concept, of what consciousness is. They could derive it from their concept of the unconscious, but they don't have any idea what that is either. Oh, they have guesses, but they can't prove anything one way or another because they have no way to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested.
Science knows what the human brain is because it can be seen, felt, probed and examined with all manner of specialized equipment. But the mind or consciousness, not so much.
Science believes that we all act out our lives in a state of consciousness and dream in our unconscious. But it can't even prove or disprove whether the reverse is true or false. In fact, no one can prove (nor can they know for certain) that we do not dream our (apparently) conscious lives and live reality in our unconscious dreams (or what convention causes us to call dreams).
At this point, consciousness and mind (as opposed to the brain) are as impossible for science to study as the supernatural, miracles or God.
Ask science what the source is of matter and energy and they will likely point to the so-called Big Bang or some theory that serves a similar purpose. What went before the Big Bang, whether there have been more than one of them going back before the one we know and whether more Big Bangs are in store for our universe in the distant future are matters for conjecture.
Science can't deny that consciousness exists because every scientist has one. But it's neither matter nor energy. The unconscious is even more mysterious because it's apparently the opposite (with the prefix un-) of consciousness, which they can't understand.
Berdyeav and many others claim that these originate with something called the Primary Source. Call it what you like, it's beyond human understanding.
If we try to distinguish ourselves from others according to the values of fashion, occupation, beliefs or organizations to which we belong, we must inevitably deal with the values of other people. If we try to establish our consciousness on the basis that it comes from a source beyond human understanding, we have a good chance of being different, individual.
But that brings inevitable consequences with it. Those who derive their consciousness from the Primary Source don't believe in war, in the sociopathic values of business, in the materialism preached by interminable streams of advertising or in the brainwashing methods practised by most religions.
That makes them freaks. They don't mind that because they understand what distinguishes them from the rabble that doesn't understand them.
They are at peace. They understand and appreciate tranquility. They like and respect themselves. They respect everything else around them (either living or not) as part of a universal whole. They won't destroy. They will help others, but they won't force anything on them.
They are originals in the purest sense of the word.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they have the potential to be self secure individuals, originals rather than followers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, April 07, 2007
An Explanation for Teenage Rebellion
Be good and you will be lonesome.
- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
It's a shame that this quote was taken out of context (I don't have access to its original material source). Mark Twain embedded life lessons or observations about human behaviour in just about every story he told.
To adults this seems like an observation about life. To an adolescent, it's advice.
In the latter part of grade school and the early years of high school, every child see that the most popular kids in their grade and above are those who are a little bit naughty, if not outright criminal.
It's part of the teenage rebellion thing. The kids who brag about being bad come across as being the best at rebelling. The best attracts attention, including "friends" and members of the opposite sex.
In the western world we have come to accept that teenage rebellion is part of the process of coming of age. It's almost expected. This is not the case in most of the world where the teen years are ones where a child transforms into an adult, not seamlessly but without large scale rebellion.
Why the difference? In the west we assume that if we teach our children the principles of our culture--that whatever has to do with money is good and the more of it that is either earned or spent is best--that our children will simply grow into our money-oriented culture and adapt as we did. In most of the world, money is not a god to be worshipped.
For much of the non-western world, simply surviving takes up most time for adults and adolescents. Teenagers must learn from their parents about how to find food and support to ward off enemies or they won't thrive as adults, have families and grow old enough to be supported by their children.
To accomplish this, people must teach to their children the details of their culture, including everything to do with work, support systems, friendships, alliances and how to deal with the problems of life that have been faced and overcome by their forebears. Life continues using the proven ways of the past because life itself is at risk if anything different is attempted.
In the west we have a different attitude toward the future, especially of our children. We grew up believing (because we were taught) that anything is possible, that every job possibility is available to someone who is prepared to work for it, that the economy will provide for those who work hard and that traditional life skills didn't need to be taught because the world is changing so fast that new skills would be needed anyway.
From the point of view of adolescents, they see parents who have trouble coping with their lives, so turn to divorce, drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution and theft (or cheating), among other things. Their role models do not conform to the ethics and morals they were taught (though loosely and ineffectively in many cases). They don't want to be like their parents, so they rebel.
The problem is that they don't know how to rebel constructively, so they rebel in ways that often turn out to be destructive. Consequently, western countries tend to have the highest rates of their citizens in prison (the US is the highest in the world, by a good margin) and the highest rates of mental illness and people taking mood-enhancing or mood-controlling medications to make their lives bearable.
One recent change in high schools (in some cities) is that the geeks are now among the more popular students. Shocking? Not at all. They are the students who are most likely to have the highest paying jobs, to become wealthy in the working world. The money ethic hasn't changed, but it has taken some of the lustre away from doctors and lawyers.
Teenagers rebel because they are confused. The closer they get to adulthood, the more they learn that the lifestyles of their parents are not sustainable, which is why the parents turn to personally or socially destructive behaviours. The young people want something different.
So long as we do not teach our young people what they need to know as adults, including coping skills, and meet their needs, they will want something different and will "rebel." Rebelling is their way of signalling their needs to us, but we take it as simply bad behaviour and feel they need to be punished.
These are generalizations, of course, and do not apply to every teenager or every family. They are social trends with enough study having been done on the subject to show that the conclusions are correct in a general sense.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our social weaknesses clear so that we have a chance to correct them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
It's a shame that this quote was taken out of context (I don't have access to its original material source). Mark Twain embedded life lessons or observations about human behaviour in just about every story he told.
To adults this seems like an observation about life. To an adolescent, it's advice.
In the latter part of grade school and the early years of high school, every child see that the most popular kids in their grade and above are those who are a little bit naughty, if not outright criminal.
It's part of the teenage rebellion thing. The kids who brag about being bad come across as being the best at rebelling. The best attracts attention, including "friends" and members of the opposite sex.
In the western world we have come to accept that teenage rebellion is part of the process of coming of age. It's almost expected. This is not the case in most of the world where the teen years are ones where a child transforms into an adult, not seamlessly but without large scale rebellion.
Why the difference? In the west we assume that if we teach our children the principles of our culture--that whatever has to do with money is good and the more of it that is either earned or spent is best--that our children will simply grow into our money-oriented culture and adapt as we did. In most of the world, money is not a god to be worshipped.
For much of the non-western world, simply surviving takes up most time for adults and adolescents. Teenagers must learn from their parents about how to find food and support to ward off enemies or they won't thrive as adults, have families and grow old enough to be supported by their children.
To accomplish this, people must teach to their children the details of their culture, including everything to do with work, support systems, friendships, alliances and how to deal with the problems of life that have been faced and overcome by their forebears. Life continues using the proven ways of the past because life itself is at risk if anything different is attempted.
In the west we have a different attitude toward the future, especially of our children. We grew up believing (because we were taught) that anything is possible, that every job possibility is available to someone who is prepared to work for it, that the economy will provide for those who work hard and that traditional life skills didn't need to be taught because the world is changing so fast that new skills would be needed anyway.
From the point of view of adolescents, they see parents who have trouble coping with their lives, so turn to divorce, drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution and theft (or cheating), among other things. Their role models do not conform to the ethics and morals they were taught (though loosely and ineffectively in many cases). They don't want to be like their parents, so they rebel.
The problem is that they don't know how to rebel constructively, so they rebel in ways that often turn out to be destructive. Consequently, western countries tend to have the highest rates of their citizens in prison (the US is the highest in the world, by a good margin) and the highest rates of mental illness and people taking mood-enhancing or mood-controlling medications to make their lives bearable.
One recent change in high schools (in some cities) is that the geeks are now among the more popular students. Shocking? Not at all. They are the students who are most likely to have the highest paying jobs, to become wealthy in the working world. The money ethic hasn't changed, but it has taken some of the lustre away from doctors and lawyers.
Teenagers rebel because they are confused. The closer they get to adulthood, the more they learn that the lifestyles of their parents are not sustainable, which is why the parents turn to personally or socially destructive behaviours. The young people want something different.
So long as we do not teach our young people what they need to know as adults, including coping skills, and meet their needs, they will want something different and will "rebel." Rebelling is their way of signalling their needs to us, but we take it as simply bad behaviour and feel they need to be punished.
These are generalizations, of course, and do not apply to every teenager or every family. They are social trends with enough study having been done on the subject to show that the conclusions are correct in a general sense.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our social weaknesses clear so that we have a chance to correct them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Why Parents Need to Cruise the Streets at Night
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
New fashions, seeming to defy the passage of time, tend to reflect old fashions of three decades ago. The reasons for this are obvious. Designers don't have to think of anything creatively new because by the time the fad buyers of one generation have outgrown their gotta-have phase, the next generation has taken its place.
Fashion itself is a peculiar industry where predominantly gay designers create designs for anorexically-thin size zero heterosexual models, presumably to be copied by rip-off designers who "design" for massive chain store clothing outlets.
Teenaged girls, in their effort to look attractive to the opposite sex, wear clothing best suited for prostitutes who walk the streets in the evenings. Their fashions bear striking similarities.
The thinking of the girls--mass hysteria in full blast as they try to be up with or slightly ahead of the crowd--is that prostitutes know the kind of clothing that attracts men. That thought link is not direct, but filters through one or more layers of designers at clothing manufacturers who ensure that the clothing is just inside the line of acceptability for most parents who shell out the cash for their body-peddling kids.
Theoretically, parents should be able to cruise the streets where prostitutes hang out at night to see what teenage fashions will be popular in the coming months.
Especially if you're the parent of a teenage daughter. Either you will know what she will want to buy or you will know what she is desperately trying to avoid, but losing personal popularity by doing so.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to keep it real and up front.Learn more at http://billallin.com
New fashions, seeming to defy the passage of time, tend to reflect old fashions of three decades ago. The reasons for this are obvious. Designers don't have to think of anything creatively new because by the time the fad buyers of one generation have outgrown their gotta-have phase, the next generation has taken its place.
Fashion itself is a peculiar industry where predominantly gay designers create designs for anorexically-thin size zero heterosexual models, presumably to be copied by rip-off designers who "design" for massive chain store clothing outlets.
Teenaged girls, in their effort to look attractive to the opposite sex, wear clothing best suited for prostitutes who walk the streets in the evenings. Their fashions bear striking similarities.
The thinking of the girls--mass hysteria in full blast as they try to be up with or slightly ahead of the crowd--is that prostitutes know the kind of clothing that attracts men. That thought link is not direct, but filters through one or more layers of designers at clothing manufacturers who ensure that the clothing is just inside the line of acceptability for most parents who shell out the cash for their body-peddling kids.
Theoretically, parents should be able to cruise the streets where prostitutes hang out at night to see what teenage fashions will be popular in the coming months.
Especially if you're the parent of a teenage daughter. Either you will know what she will want to buy or you will know what she is desperately trying to avoid, but losing personal popularity by doing so.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to keep it real and up front.Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Has Lawbreaking Become A Social Norm?
Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)
Most of us who are Baby Boomers or older grew up in a time when laws were to be obeyed. We knew what the laws were and it was our social (and family) responsibility to uphold them.
We didn't know much about those who freely and frequently broke laws because we didn't come in contact with them much. Recent studies in the US have shown that 90 percent of people today break laws frequently and without twinges of conscience. Most violations are minor, but they make laws in general seem like a social evil.
What changed? Why do we have so little respect for laws today compared to a couple of generations ago?
There are no simple answers to these questions, but I will try to simplify the complex answers and give you the opportunmity to think them through yourself.
Prior to the 1960s children were drilled formally and taught incidentally the range and scope of laws they were expected to obey, by parents, teachers and leaders of their respective church groups. In the interim, regular attendance at religious services dropped off dramatically, school curricula have been loaded to overflowing with "basic learning" information and skills and two parents working in most families have left little time for parental role modelling and direct teaching of the laws of their community and their nation.
As more children grew to be young adults who lacked knowledge about laws that affected them, more also became adults who were not clear about the moral obligations each person has to the social structure of their family and their community. In other words, they broke laws because they weren't certain the laws were all that important anyway or because they didn't know what the laws were.
Governments, reacting with shock to the increase in law breaking, passed more laws and bylaws. These became filled with details of specific examples of lawbreaking so that judges, magistrates and justices of the peace were left with fewer doubts as to what behaviours were illegal and what penalties should apply to each.
The plethora of laws to which each citizen must subscribe today is so complex that almost nobody knows what they all are. In their rush to create more laws and put more power into the hands of more police officers to catch more lawbreakers, the law makers neglected to provide clear and pervasive methods by which each child or adolescent would be able to learn the many laws he should abide by.
A teenager today may be able to do physics his parents don't understand, speak languages his parents have seldom heard and know a huge amount of information his parents were never exposed to, but he may not know the laws of his community and his country because most of them never made it onto the curriculum of his school.
Moreover, he may read the pages of any newspaper to find many examples of where people have broken laws. He will know many schoolmates and acquaintances in his community who break laws freely without being caught. Even television programs deal mostly with the most violent laws, seldom with those that affect most people on a daily basis.
A young person may even see a police officer speeding down a city street or highway on their way to a coffee break or to signout for their shift. He knows that the same police officer may catch and charge him the following day for speeding on the same street.
There are many laws that are never enforced by the police because they will not be supported in court or because the courts have many more important cases to attend to than minor cases that will "waste" precious time.
Like anything else in life, if we want people to obey laws, we need to teach those laws to children before they get old enough to find out that breaking them might just work. They need to be taught the gritty details about what is wrong, about the consequences that result when people break laws. They need to know the harm that lawbreaking does and that the harm is wrong.
Not teaching about drug laws because we fear that kids will find out about drugs and become addicts, for example, has no evidence to support it. Kids who know the truth about drugs before they are exposed to drugs on the street (often by the age of six years) tend to avoid the drugs.
By the same token, kids who know the details about sex and the responsibilities and consequences of pregnancies have a much lower incidence of teenage pregnancies and often do not have close relationships with members of the opposite sex until later than their more ignorant peers. Where do laws and sex come together? Ask a 16 year old father or mother who has life-altering responsibilities for a child they didn't want but will have to look after and be fully responsible for during the next 20+ years.
Making laws is one thing. Teaching them to everyone who must obey them is quite another.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the complexities of life clear and concise.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)
Most of us who are Baby Boomers or older grew up in a time when laws were to be obeyed. We knew what the laws were and it was our social (and family) responsibility to uphold them.
We didn't know much about those who freely and frequently broke laws because we didn't come in contact with them much. Recent studies in the US have shown that 90 percent of people today break laws frequently and without twinges of conscience. Most violations are minor, but they make laws in general seem like a social evil.
What changed? Why do we have so little respect for laws today compared to a couple of generations ago?
There are no simple answers to these questions, but I will try to simplify the complex answers and give you the opportunmity to think them through yourself.
Prior to the 1960s children were drilled formally and taught incidentally the range and scope of laws they were expected to obey, by parents, teachers and leaders of their respective church groups. In the interim, regular attendance at religious services dropped off dramatically, school curricula have been loaded to overflowing with "basic learning" information and skills and two parents working in most families have left little time for parental role modelling and direct teaching of the laws of their community and their nation.
As more children grew to be young adults who lacked knowledge about laws that affected them, more also became adults who were not clear about the moral obligations each person has to the social structure of their family and their community. In other words, they broke laws because they weren't certain the laws were all that important anyway or because they didn't know what the laws were.
Governments, reacting with shock to the increase in law breaking, passed more laws and bylaws. These became filled with details of specific examples of lawbreaking so that judges, magistrates and justices of the peace were left with fewer doubts as to what behaviours were illegal and what penalties should apply to each.
The plethora of laws to which each citizen must subscribe today is so complex that almost nobody knows what they all are. In their rush to create more laws and put more power into the hands of more police officers to catch more lawbreakers, the law makers neglected to provide clear and pervasive methods by which each child or adolescent would be able to learn the many laws he should abide by.
A teenager today may be able to do physics his parents don't understand, speak languages his parents have seldom heard and know a huge amount of information his parents were never exposed to, but he may not know the laws of his community and his country because most of them never made it onto the curriculum of his school.
Moreover, he may read the pages of any newspaper to find many examples of where people have broken laws. He will know many schoolmates and acquaintances in his community who break laws freely without being caught. Even television programs deal mostly with the most violent laws, seldom with those that affect most people on a daily basis.
A young person may even see a police officer speeding down a city street or highway on their way to a coffee break or to signout for their shift. He knows that the same police officer may catch and charge him the following day for speeding on the same street.
There are many laws that are never enforced by the police because they will not be supported in court or because the courts have many more important cases to attend to than minor cases that will "waste" precious time.
Like anything else in life, if we want people to obey laws, we need to teach those laws to children before they get old enough to find out that breaking them might just work. They need to be taught the gritty details about what is wrong, about the consequences that result when people break laws. They need to know the harm that lawbreaking does and that the harm is wrong.
Not teaching about drug laws because we fear that kids will find out about drugs and become addicts, for example, has no evidence to support it. Kids who know the truth about drugs before they are exposed to drugs on the street (often by the age of six years) tend to avoid the drugs.
By the same token, kids who know the details about sex and the responsibilities and consequences of pregnancies have a much lower incidence of teenage pregnancies and often do not have close relationships with members of the opposite sex until later than their more ignorant peers. Where do laws and sex come together? Ask a 16 year old father or mother who has life-altering responsibilities for a child they didn't want but will have to look after and be fully responsible for during the next 20+ years.
Making laws is one thing. Teaching them to everyone who must obey them is quite another.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the complexities of life clear and concise.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, January 12, 2007
One Solution for Our Biggest Problem
"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937
I did.
As a teacher I wondered why kids who were such vibrant and interesting little people in grade school a few short years later had so many personal problems, many of which turned into academic, health, psychological and legal problems.
As parent of a teenaged daughter I wondered why my child felt she needed to dress somewhat like a hooker when she reached her mid-teens in order to attract boys.
I wondered why so many adults turned to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription drugs and many forms of addiction which inevitably ruined their lives and usually the lives of those they loved and who loved them.
I wondered why small crime increased so much that variety stores had to put bars on their windows and gas stations kept their attendants behind bulletproof glass overnight.
I wondered why the courts put so many more people in prison than ever before, but people were more afraid than ever to walk the streets at night, take a subway or bus at night, even to let their children play outside after school.
More police, psychologists, therapists, doctors, prisons and psychiatric facilities obviously wasn't working. A neoconservative broadcaster informed her audience that these social problems were simply the consequence of overwhelming success of western society in the modern world.
Nothing about human behaviour is inevitable. I knew she was preaching crap. Almost everything we do is a result of a series of lessons and circumstances that led us to make the decisions we do. People can be taught to behave differently, as happened when laws regarding seat belt usage for car passengers and drivers was effected.
After a great deal of study of people (we sociologists love to do that), I found the answers. Parents were no only too busy to teach their children the life lessons that parents of the distant past had taught, but many of today's parents had little idea what responsibilities a parent has or how to carry them out.
Parenting, the most important job in any society, was the only one where amateurs were not just admitted, but were encouraged by keeping young adults ignorant of the information they needed to know before they could use it.
We are afraid to teach our children about crime for fear that they will become criminals. Then we cry when they become victims of personal crimes. We are afraid to teach them about sex for fear that they will become sexually active as a result of having information. We are afraid to teach our children about drugs for fear that they will become users. Studies have proven all of these beliefs to be wrong.
We don't have time to teach our children what we have learned about being responsible adults, so we leave it to television, movies and video games to teach our children on our behalf.
... (pause for effect while you think about that)
We don't permit teachers to involve themselves with such matters because we believe they are the responsibility of parents, not schools. But too many parents are not teaching kids what they need to know.
Some parents leave teaching important life lessons to their kids until the kids are old enough to already have formed some twisted and harmful attitudes toward life and have found themselves in trouble. For example, young children should know about illegal drugs because many of them will be offered drugs while they are still in the early years of grade school.
Despite this total disconnect of young people from the information they need and of parents from the knowledge about development streams of children, we continue to believe that both parents and children are better off being kept ignorant.
If we don't believe that, then that is nevertheless the consequence of what we do believe and the way we function as a society.
Ignorance never improved anything. One way or another, we have been misled about the importance of parenthood and how and what children must be taught. So I compiled a huge amount of information and wrote a book designed to inform every parent, no matter whether they are good readers or not. It's an easy read, loaded with valuable information and tips and parenting and about how children develop and what they need to learn.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems not only discusses the problems of modern families and communities, but presents a plan to implement change that will form the basis for a reformation of society into one of real knowledge about parenting and child development. It's an easy to understand plan and will be quite straightforward to implement.
Best of all, implementation of the plan is cheap. Any initial investment spent by governments will be recouped within five years as a result of lower costs to service social problems.
Now we need you to read the book and tell others about it. Anyone and everyone with access to a computer can find out a huge amount of information by going to my web site at http://billallin.com
I can only do a limited amount without your help. To assist, all you need to do is to read the book and tell others about it. Give your book to them. Or borrow it from your local library.
Solutions are no good unless people know about them. I did my part. Now it's your turn.
I'm here to help.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word to as many people as possible before it's too late.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Albert Szent-Györgyi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937
I did.
As a teacher I wondered why kids who were such vibrant and interesting little people in grade school a few short years later had so many personal problems, many of which turned into academic, health, psychological and legal problems.
As parent of a teenaged daughter I wondered why my child felt she needed to dress somewhat like a hooker when she reached her mid-teens in order to attract boys.
I wondered why so many adults turned to alcohol, recreational drugs, prescription drugs and many forms of addiction which inevitably ruined their lives and usually the lives of those they loved and who loved them.
I wondered why small crime increased so much that variety stores had to put bars on their windows and gas stations kept their attendants behind bulletproof glass overnight.
I wondered why the courts put so many more people in prison than ever before, but people were more afraid than ever to walk the streets at night, take a subway or bus at night, even to let their children play outside after school.
More police, psychologists, therapists, doctors, prisons and psychiatric facilities obviously wasn't working. A neoconservative broadcaster informed her audience that these social problems were simply the consequence of overwhelming success of western society in the modern world.
Nothing about human behaviour is inevitable. I knew she was preaching crap. Almost everything we do is a result of a series of lessons and circumstances that led us to make the decisions we do. People can be taught to behave differently, as happened when laws regarding seat belt usage for car passengers and drivers was effected.
After a great deal of study of people (we sociologists love to do that), I found the answers. Parents were no only too busy to teach their children the life lessons that parents of the distant past had taught, but many of today's parents had little idea what responsibilities a parent has or how to carry them out.
Parenting, the most important job in any society, was the only one where amateurs were not just admitted, but were encouraged by keeping young adults ignorant of the information they needed to know before they could use it.
We are afraid to teach our children about crime for fear that they will become criminals. Then we cry when they become victims of personal crimes. We are afraid to teach them about sex for fear that they will become sexually active as a result of having information. We are afraid to teach our children about drugs for fear that they will become users. Studies have proven all of these beliefs to be wrong.
We don't have time to teach our children what we have learned about being responsible adults, so we leave it to television, movies and video games to teach our children on our behalf.
... (pause for effect while you think about that)
We don't permit teachers to involve themselves with such matters because we believe they are the responsibility of parents, not schools. But too many parents are not teaching kids what they need to know.
Some parents leave teaching important life lessons to their kids until the kids are old enough to already have formed some twisted and harmful attitudes toward life and have found themselves in trouble. For example, young children should know about illegal drugs because many of them will be offered drugs while they are still in the early years of grade school.
Despite this total disconnect of young people from the information they need and of parents from the knowledge about development streams of children, we continue to believe that both parents and children are better off being kept ignorant.
If we don't believe that, then that is nevertheless the consequence of what we do believe and the way we function as a society.
Ignorance never improved anything. One way or another, we have been misled about the importance of parenthood and how and what children must be taught. So I compiled a huge amount of information and wrote a book designed to inform every parent, no matter whether they are good readers or not. It's an easy read, loaded with valuable information and tips and parenting and about how children develop and what they need to learn.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems not only discusses the problems of modern families and communities, but presents a plan to implement change that will form the basis for a reformation of society into one of real knowledge about parenting and child development. It's an easy to understand plan and will be quite straightforward to implement.
Best of all, implementation of the plan is cheap. Any initial investment spent by governments will be recouped within five years as a result of lower costs to service social problems.
Now we need you to read the book and tell others about it. Anyone and everyone with access to a computer can find out a huge amount of information by going to my web site at http://billallin.com
I can only do a limited amount without your help. To assist, all you need to do is to read the book and tell others about it. Give your book to them. Or borrow it from your local library.
Solutions are no good unless people know about them. I did my part. Now it's your turn.
I'm here to help.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to get the word to as many people as possible before it's too late.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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