Keith Hudson wrote:
>
> Pete,
>
> At 20:49 18/09/02 -0700, you wrote:
> (PV)
> <<<<
> Every dictator wants a mechanism to control the minds of the people via
> their early youth. Wasn't it a Jesuit who said "give me a child before the
> age of seven...". The virtue of our mutable brain is also our bane, when
> the mind of the child is programmed with ancient nonsense. A large part of
> enlightened and responsible parenthood is being careful to only cultivate
> in the child the ability to find their own answers, not to blindly buy into
> our own. But who are we to proclaim a monopoly on the truth? Even when they
> are so eager to adopt it, and it is so much less work, and less thinking,
> for both the parent and child.
> >>>>
>
> But we need not over-rate the effect of early conditioning. Because
> research in social psychology (vis-a-vis the effect of genes) concentrated
> too much on various comparisons between identical and non-identical twins
> raised apart, raised together, and also of natural peers, simply not enough
> research was done using adopted children as controls. More recent research
> suggests very strongly that parental/authoritarian conditioning is far less
> powerful than the influence of peer groups from puberty onwards. It is the
> "loner" who's likely to retain the conditioning of his elders.
[snip]
This sounds to me similar to the reasoning that life
came to earth from outer space. It must have *originated*
*somewhere*. Just where did all these adolescents get
socially conditioned from? Edward Hall and Erving Goffman
and C. Wright Mills and Karl Feuerbach and Alice Miller and
Wilfred Owen et al.? I doubt it.
Also it is important to note that "rebelliousness" is often
obedience "with the sign reversed". What really threatens the
system are ideas and persons which reject its questions and
not just the answers it proffers to them (ref.: Kant,
Susanne Langer, Thomas Kuhn, et al.)
Peer pressure is more than enough to account for
infection of the soul with the locally flourishing
semiotic virus (AKA ethnicity, "way of life", etc.).
Alain Resnais' film _Mon Oncle d'Amerique_ (available
on VHS at many Blockbusters, e.g.) really does
address this issue.
It does not matter to me where the conditioning is
coming from, unlike George W Bush, who was so
obsessed with intercepting intercontinental
ballistic missiles in the exosphere that
he didn't think that terrorists might
try to attack us at altitudes where mammals can
breathe naturally.
The mother vs peer group influence issue is a
big white herring (I say white and not red because
communism is wrong). They all are unwittingly
perpetuating the existing system, sort of like,
in any competitive situation, both the winners and the
losers (and the spectators, too)
all help perpetuate the system of competition per se.
Nancy Reagan's advice to "Just say no" has a lot
of merit to it, once one ferrets out of what the
real question are.
Meanwhile, I believe George W Bush is assuring us today that
he is not looking for a blank check from "the American
people" (or the Congress) to do whatever he wants....
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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