Affluenza: raising children to be resistant to corruption

I was reading through this unfathomably rich book known as Young Children’s Behaviour 4th edition and came across an apt term called affluenza

As surprising as it may sound, abusive and neglectful treatment of children can result in unhealthy outcomes for their future.

During these critical development years, snuffing out children’s innate capacity for growth can completely throw off their trajectory in life.

Sure system’s like the Western Propaganda Model as described by Hermann and Chomsky can manipulate all the kinds of masses into acting against their own interests. But it is our deprivation of educational nutrition in those early days that determines our vulnerability to such systems. A complicated world requires ALL of our brain’s varying skills to navigate, if any of them are impaired, such as logic, emotional or social intelligence, we are more at risk of mass manipulation, group think, and other cultish behaviours.

Which brings me to another thing mentioned in this chapter of the book: Affluenza. This is a term coined as early as 1954. The book I read describes it as the emotional abuses that proliferate around wealthier families which restrict children from becoming properly functioning humans. This small section cites the three main problems that affluent parents cause to their children.

 Bulldozer parenting - where they remove all obstacles in a child's life, preventing them from building resilience and other useful skills.

Pressuring parents -  Where the entire child’s set purpose on the planet is their success and achievement of goals, rather than on development of their character. Essentially rather than being judged on the content of their character, they are judged on the content of their wallets. Me? I’m worth five dolla.

Outsourced caring - Rich children are often raised by nannies due to their busy, career driven, GenX parents on a high in the BHP building or other such skyscrapers.

Children do need some level of adversity. They also need to learn to fall in love with the process rather than the results. Parents who remove obstacles in a child’s life or force them to focus on the results rather than the process run the risk of having a child that is either completely incapable of anything, or completely unable to do anything without approval from someone, both result in people who have a tendency to bring others down.

The way children are raised plays a major role in how society functions, and I believe, how resistant it is to corruption. Although well raised people can go on to damage social fabrics just as anyone else might, Having fully functional morality, Logic, Empathy, and some half decent gosh darn hand eye coordination (seriously, I think I have the Skull-Shivers from borderlands 2); would be instrumental in repelling against aspects of society that can be damaging, like sophisticated propaganda systems, Cults, the AFL team Collingwood and other Society Damaging structures.

In summary: It is fundamental that you do not hit kids with very big sticks for no apparent reason. If you do, they become Collingwood fans.

Thank you for reading this article. The text here was based on one of my old videos, which in turn was based on a textbook I found at my local TAFE's library explaining aspects of early childhood education, a subject that is deeply under-discussed and under-educated in society, especially amongst those who aren't trained caregivers.

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