What to do?

[David Friedman]

I would like to raise an issue I have been thinking about for some time, 
which is whether we can do anything about the major problems that can be 
seen in many Baha'i young people (pre-youth and youth) today.  There are two 
problems I refer to.  One is that quite a few have got caught up with 
harmful things that will give them physical gratification, such as alcohol, 
drugs and sex before marriage.  The other is the over-importance placed on 
acceptance by others.  I see the latter as the bigger problem, as it effects 
how many get into drinking alcohol, etc.  Caring overly much about what 
others think of you is a disease, and often leads young Baha'is to violate 
Baha'i laws and admonitions.  Baha'is should have no care for what others 
think of us, whether we are accepted and how popular we are.  Our thoughts 
should be on what we can do for others, not on things related to our ego 
such as what others think and how cool we are perceived as being.  I submit 
that more than 90% of the stress the average Baha'i young person experiences 
is related to what others think of us.  I would contend that if these people 
lived the life of the Dawn-Breakers, focused solely on the will of God, 
willingly accepting loss of friends, worldly goods, persecution and even 
death for their beliefs, growing up would not be stressful.  Most of the 
hardships of young people are not sent by God but rather brought on by 
themselves.  There is a link between spirituality and happiness.  We need to 
try to educate the young in such a way that the desire for acceptance and 
worry about what others think is eliminated, because when it is a person is 
a lot happier and lives a better life.  People cave in to varying degrees to 
go along with others.  At the lowest level, this may be something like 
avoiding talking to a person who is uncool.  This is done because others 
might see, leading to possible rejection and loss of social status.  If that 
person talks to the cooler person they might end the conversation quickly.  
For a Baha'i, this is unacceptable.  We are to place being nice to others at 
number one, not number two.  If doing this means loss of social rank then 
you have to live with it.  Even if you aren't mean to a person that doesn't 
mean you are fulfilling your duties as a Baha'i.  People notice if you show 
that you want to have nothing to do with them.  Another thing at a similar 
level is dropping friends because they aren't cool enough and you can have 
cooler friends.  People change groups at high school for this reason all the 
time, and may completely eschew contact with long-standing very close 
friends, just because if they didn't they might lose have problems socially. 
 They may really like a friend they dropped, but their egotistical thoughts 
overpower any desire they might have for keeping the friend, and so they 
choose popularity over a good friend.  In many cases, the new friends aren't 
people they like any too much, and are immoral losers.  While not all cool 
people are bad spiritually, that tends to be the case.  One would be safer 
hanging around with the nerds, who tend to be good people and very studious. 
 In this regard I have an interesting story to share.  I know of a case 
where there was a very who was badly teased in class at intermediate school. 
 Only two people, a boy and a girl, in this person's class did not tease 
them.  A few years later the boy went on to become dux, and the girl wasn't 
far off.  Is that surprising?  Hardly.

Swearing is another lower level example of caving in.  Quite a few Baha'is 
do it, perhaps rationalizing it as a minor sin, and they are doing it only 
because others do it, and it makes you fit in.  Smoking is another.  As far 
as I know, all young Baha'is take up smoking because others do it and they 
want to fit in.  To take up smoking to be cool is a very stupid move (of 
course it's also condemned by 'Abdu'l-Baha in such vociferous language that 
one should never want to take it up), and, in my experience, most of the 
youth that violate laws, such as the laws related to sex before marriage and 
drugs, are smokers.  A lot of them also have tattoos or body piercing, which 
again they have probably done just to look cool.  How much you care about 
what others think is highly related to how good a Baha'i you are, and I tend 
to find that non-smoking Bahai youth are better Baha'is than those who 
smoke.  I would be interested in getting views from others on this subject, 
as I have limited data, referring only to people I know in New Zealand.  
Lamentably, a number of young Baha'is have begun smoking at youth camps.  
The smokers have their own area, and they want to be cool and so they go 
there and smoke.  Also, I don't think getting into an addictive habit is of 
any help spiritually to the young.  Perhaps smoking helps in stress relief, 
but they should learn to deal with problems on their own, and of course they 
could exercise to reduce stress, which would be far better for them.  Those 
who care most about being cool seem most inclined to seriously transgress 
Baha'i law.  These people often fail to obey the admonishment to "eschew all 
fellowship with the ungodly."  I don't know if all the young are familiar 
with this, and I'm not sure that this is touched on enough by parents and 
children's class teachers in general.  The one common thing you notice about 
those who violate laws related to sex, alcohol and drugs is that they have 
bad friends, ungodly friends.  Think for a moment.  How many such people do 
you know of who hang around with goody-goodies all the time?  I don't know 
of any.  If those whom the person hangs around with don't do such things the 
Baha'i won't do them either.  The Baha'i would never try drugs if no one 
else was around to see.  They do it just because others will see, and think 
they are cool.  So I think this teaching about avoiding worldly people needs 
to be emphasized more, and we need to bring young Baha'is to the state where 
they would feel aversion to the idea to having such people as their friends. 
 We need to reduce their ego's, so that they aren't overemphasizing being 
popular, have Baha'i ideals first, and choose good friends.  If that is done 
we will have happier Baha'is, less young people will drop out of the Faith, 
and the workload of the local and national assemblies will be greatly 
reduced.  Members of these bodies have to spend a lot of their personal time 
addressing such problems, when they could be doing better things, like, say, 
teaching the Faith.  I might also note that many who take up smoking to be 
cool die a couple decades earlier because of it.  They lose a couple decades 
they could have spent doing services to the Faith just because they wanted 
to be cool, going against the wish of 'Abdu'l-Baha at the same time.

I want to now raise the issue of who is responsible for the actions of the 
youth, and for their caring overly much about what others think of them.  
Let's consider the options (1) The youth are at fault.  Their parents may 
have raised them perfectly and their children's classes and pre-youth/youth 
classes may have taught them well, (2) The parents are at fault, and any 
child, or at least most of them, who does things wrong, must not have been 
taught well enough by his parents.  While it may be their fault as well, the 
parents didn't raise them well enough to necessarily protect them.  I 
suppose I could bring children's classes into this as well.  From the 
Writings it seems that if the child is raised properly they will turn out 
good.  I guess this allows for exceptions for people who may go bad.  A 
person can always go bad, doing something wrong by choice.  I'm guessing 
that Mirza Yahya was raised well.  I suppose if they are raised well they 
would more likely go bad later in life.  I heard (this is many years ago) 
someone who had served in Haifa say that a few kids of House of Justice 
members were the worst behaved Baha'i youth in Haifa.  In my experience, 
most problem youth come from broken families, living with only one of their 
parents.  If we ignore exceptions for the moment, while the youth may be at 
fault, I think that the many cases of violation of Baha'i law amongst the 
young does reflect back to the parents.  I think Baha'i parents aren't doing 
as good a job as they could, and wonder what others think can be done about 
this.  Speaking personally, I think I was raised well, and though I have 
always obeyed the laws, I did still have some stress related to what others 
thought when I was growing up, and indeed, like others, I haven't eliminated 
it.  The thoughts I did have about what others think were less than others, 
however.  But I could had a better time if some teacher, whether Baha'i 
children's class teacher or other, had touched on not worrying about what 
others thought and not worrying about popularity.  This seems to be a sadly 
neglected part of children's class curriculums, and guess what, we are 
failing to prepare a lot of the children for the tough years because of it.  
Maybe there is some material in there that might help make them selfless, 
but it's not doing enough, and I think more can be done.  I would be 
interested to hear from others what they have noticed in regards to how the 
children have turned out in relation to how good their parents are, and 
whether some children have turned out differently to others in the family 
and why.  We need to prepare children early on, because once they start down 
the wrong path it's difficult to turn back.

Regards,

David

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