An Issue of Control

I am of the last generation prior to Dr. Benjamin Spock, who taught the proper parenting raises kids to believe that feelings are real and cannot be changed any more than the shape of a telephone pole can. To deny the validity of a child's feelings, he taught, is to traumatize him and cause him a lifetime of emotional damage. (That's not quite what he actually taught, but that's what millions of parents took from his books.)

So, pre-Spock, when I was upset over something that someone else, did my parents would tell me, “You cannot control what other people do. What you can control is to what degree you are affected when they do it.” This did not come from some high powered psychologist. It came from a military officer and a housewife. It was common sense, common knowledge, knowledge that was simply part of growing up.

Spock taught parents that feelings are real, that they cannot be changed by the person who feels them, and that the child's reality must be altered to accommodate those feelings rather than the other way around. What he was advocating was applicable to raising children, but of course what you are taught as a child carries into adulthood. So we have generations of “adults” who think that their feelings are reality and that they can and must control others and control the outside world to be consistent with the way they feel.

And so we have a social and political milieu in which everyone is frantically trying to control everyone else because they have never learned control themselves. They do not even know that it is possible to control themselves and believe that controlling others is their cause in life. How anyone can fail to see that is a recipe for chaos is completely beyond me.

If I can control everyone around me, then everyone around me can control me. If everyone is in control of everyone else, then no one is in control and chaos reigns.

If, on the other hand, no one is in control of anyone else, then each person is free to be in control of himself, and free to cooperate by choice.