We all want our children to grow up fearless. In particular, we want them to believe that they can do anything they set out to do, that with the right combination of hard work and belief in themselves, they can achieve any goal they aim for.<\/p>\n
I would guess that most young people come into this world with sufficient general natural ability that with enough practice and dedication they could indeed become decent writers, musicians, lawyers, artists, athletes, and so forth. I’m not saying they could necessarily become the best<\/i>, but that focus, dedication and hard work, over a period of years, is an enormous force — sometimes even an unstoppable one.<\/p>\n
Yet societies are not generally structured to optimize for fearless children. Getting young people to grow up obeying the rules of society involves a certain level of unconscious coercion. From the time we are little, we are told in various ways — some subtle, others not so subtle — that there are lines we shouldn’t cross, doors we’re not supposed to walk through, that in fact we cannot treat everyone as an equal, because there are certain “high status” people we are supposed to defer to.<\/p>\n
Socialization, in just about any society, is a continual prodding toward the average, to the place where people are not going to question things too much, nor to stir up an inordinate amount of trouble.<\/p>\n
I wonder whether it is even possible for a society to fully embrace the extraordinary possibility within each child. Or would that just violate too many taboos, create too much uncertainty, and result in the dangerous (and exciting) possibility of a citizenry of individuals with the self-confidence to do more than tend toward the norm?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all want our children to grow up fearless. In particular, we want them to believe that they can do anything they set out to do, that with the right combination of hard work and belief in themselves, they can achieve any goal they aim for. I would guess that most young people come into … Continue reading “Fearlessness versus citizenship”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6846"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6855,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6846\/revisions\/6855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}