I usually ask people saying that when was the last time they went to the Sunday’s mass. A follow-up question asking if they know that not going to mass could make you a heretic and send you to the stake is usually enough to shut them up.
This is what my parents generation said and now it’s my turn to say it too.
Each generation can make the world a little brighter if we try. We’ve already come so far in the past few hundred years. Let’s keep challenging norms!
That’s more like it ✊
Sounds like something that boomer Jack Kerouac would have said.
This will never happen. Our “nuclear family” where adults have absolute authority over children makes such things inevitable.
Kids are forced to learn that they have nearly no power, control or influence. Everything in their world is dictated to them by The Powers That Be. As kids we internalize those attitudes and they persist into adulthood.
The only way to break this attitude is to break that traditional family structure and emancipate children.
Nah, you just need to teach critical thinking and history at school to make that concept crumble.
There’s a reason we don’t trust in a shaman of sorts to give us a “potion” to cure illnesses, even though 2000 years ago, we did it and it was “how they always did”.
I get where you’re coming from, but I have to disagree with you. The truth of the matter is that, when it comes to value systems, reason follows emotion, not the other way around. For most people, when they encounter facts that go against their pre-existing beliefs or biases, they will rationalize the fact away, rather than confront and change their pre-held belief - there is a lot of research out there which bears this out. Unfortunately, rationality can be abused by those with bigoted beliefs - just look at the concepts around scientific racism, eugenics, etc. popular around the 20th century.
We literally do trust a shaman (doctor) to give us a potion (medicine) to cure illnesses.
The problem is very, very deep rooted in the foundations of our society, and nothing short of a full social revolution would change it. I have my fingers crossed that we can do it, but I am very doubtful.
Happy new year, I hope 2026 is kind to you!
If they don’t change their beliefs, then I change strategy: Refer to my previous comment in this same post. Nobody wants to be reminded that heresy (and they are heretics to 500 years ago standards) was punished with fire. If we don’t burn people alive for not being christian enough, it means we don’t do things “just because we always did it that way”.
Also: likewise! Happy new year to you too!
The exact behaviours have changed, but not the underlying fundamentals - that might makes right, and that violence is an acceptable method of enforcing societal hegemony. For example, in Gaza, there are humans genociding other humans over racial, religious and ideological differences.
“Oh go ahead and let him play with those scissors. He’s emancipated.”
Much of this structure is designed so that children actually make it to adulthood. And by designed I mean naturally designed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
When I write about emancipation, I’m really referring to older children here (5-12+) because babies and toddlers have very limited agency. I’m really thinking about traditional authoritarian (and to a lesser extent authoritative) parenting styles. The classics of this are things like “my house, my rules”, “father knows best”, “do as you are told”, “don’t back-talk/question me”, etc.
The real issue for me is the two parent with absolute authority over children, who are considered to be the property of the mother and the father. I believe far more in the significantly older and more “naturally designed” approach where childraising was the responsibility of the community - “it takes a village to raise a child” is a very old saying. Having just two adults with authority over children is, in my opinion, the basic underlying cause of most child abuse in the world, because as a kid who was abused by his parents, there was no one else I could go to for help.
Inherit from whom? This hope is baseless.
