SelfNESS Will Save the World

It’s always been interesting to me when people are threatened by someone else’s self-confidence or self-control.

I learned this very young … before I hit my teens. I understood that adults especially were extremely bothered by any child who was capable of asserting themselves … of speaking up and having “shockingly independent thoughts” which is how I was once described by teachers in elementary school.

What a wildly strange way to describe a human being but then I always remember that school is DESIGNED to weed out INDIVIDUALISM and teach CONFORMITY to a preset system of living and working that benefits the wealthy.

“Your child has shockingly independent thoughts …” which my parents probably felt was an indication of some kind of failure on their part to beat me into proper submission so that I wouldn’t have any thoughts at all except what they put into my head …

Shouldn’t parents strive for their children to be independent? Isn’t that the ultimate goal? It never seemed to me to be. I wrote a paper in college once about how children were still basically farmhands, just free labor to a family.

I had friends whose parents chose the “sink or swim” method, essentially throwing them out once they were college age and expecting them to “figure things out” and fend for themselves. For me college was a welcome escape … but for some it was the only home they had available, and they felt this pressure to figure out how to be independent if they weren’t already. I also knew people whose parents wanted to KEEP them and never wanted them to be independent ever. They were so controlled.

Adults saw me as frightening … as too powerful, too outspoken, too UNAFRAID. Children were supposed to be afraid of adults … which adults, at that time (and still even now) consider to be RESPECT. Fear and respect are two very different things. You can’t beat someone into respecting you, in fact it does the opposite. Violence doesn’t warrant respect. It only shows your lack of control. Anger is weakness, not control.

“Your child is so well behaved …” means that the adult has trained the child well, like a dog that can sit when it is told to and comes and heels and gives paw and, most importantly, doesn’t bark when it shouldn’t. I was a barker … I didn’t sit, come, heel, or give paw … I was “shockingly independent” … I spoke up, I expressed my feelings, and my disapproval … I asked QUESTIONS, I wanted answers, I wanted fairness … and I wanted people held accountable for fairness failings.

Any child who understands unfairness and injustice at a young age and wants to fight AGAINST it … I would uplift … not try to control and punish them. I’d encourage them.

I think there is a deep fear of children who have worked things out in unique ways … especially for adults and parents who are fumbling around doing the best they can. I think that they feel it’s their responsibility to teach … but you can only take someone as far as you have come yourself … and as most abusers were abused themselves, there is very little they can offer. They can only teach what they know which is violence, oppression, anger, control, and suppression of independence.

I’m proud of having “shockingly independent thoughts” … I’m proud of the fact that I discovered philosophy early and that it taught me how to explore myself FIRST. I think if more people spent time really looking inward first … looking deep … understanding themselves as whole people … they would be better at “raising” other human beings.

This is that selfNESS I’m always talking about … you have to put yourself first if you want to better for others. SelfNESS is a service to others.

There is still a deep fear around looking inward … even when I was teaching communication there were SO MANY adults threatened by the simple idea that they had SOMETHING TO LEARN … that they needed to grow, change, or god forbid STOP doing something that was unhealthy or detrimental to others.

My class focused on critical thinking as key for communication and critical thinking was … BEYOND a lot of people who took my class. It was just not where their brains were used to going. Critical thinking skills … higher order thinking skills … are crucial to any kind of self-focused development.

𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘦𝘳-𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘨𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦, 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴.

If you can’t look within … if you can’t reign you anger in … if you can’t recognize your own trauma … then you will probably only ever inflict trauma on others …

You have to start with SELF.

Yes, some people are just ignorant and angry and only know how to lash out, take offense, make everything about them, etc … and these people ARE troubled BUT it’s important to remember how much trauma CHANGES how the brain works … it ALTERS brain function, and it doesn’t take years of trauma to do it. It happens fast. When you start adding years of trauma … imagine how DEEPLY changed and altered someone’s brain function becomes. Then add on the fact that we now know that trauma is epigenetic … that it effects our genes … that it can be passed to the next generation …

Knowing all of these things … it is CRUCIAL for adults to stop being allergic to the idea that they have much to learn about THEMSELVES and much work to do on THEMSELVES and need to start looking WITHIN first.

It’s vital work.

One last thought on this … when my mother was older and she and I got to a state of being able to kind of … semi-talk to one another … she asked me all the time if she was a good mother to which I said no but I knew why she wasn’t. She often said things like … “well at the time they said such and such was how you should raise kids” or “they said such and such was ok” …

Who was they? And why were “they” encouraging you to do such harm? Who told you how and what to think?

I know who “they” is … “they” still exist … “they” are still doing damage to the next generation … “they” are still passing along all the wrong and terrible lessons “they” learned from the “they” of their time too …

The same “they” that didn’t have the courage, the awareness, the willingness, the … wherewithal … (I’ve always wanted to use that word) to look WITHIN and do the work …

This is why nothing changes.

This is why the same problems in society persist from generation to generation or get worse – as we’re seeing today with racism and hatred for “others”. The “they” that remain sick and trapped in their own broken, nightmarish realities and spread that sickness to their children and on and on and on …

Breaking that cycle has to start with SELFNESS, SELF AWARENESS, and SELF WORK.

Or else eventually … the “they” becomes you.