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00721: Democracy vs. Fundamentalism: a know-how
From: |
Antonio Rossin <rossin(at)tin.it> |
Date: |
Sun, 5 Nov 2006 08:35:09 +0100 |
Subject: |
Democracy vs. Fundamentalism: a know-how |
Dear democrat friend,
I'm pleased with posting you my last article, "Democracy
vs
Fundamentalism: a know-how" I wrote for the
GLOBAL
DEMOCRACY NEWSLETTER (Issue # 002, Year 1)
the article follows:
===========================================
“Democracy vs. Fundamentalism: a know-how”
by Antonio Rossin – Oct. 24, 2006
When a child comes into the world the first authority she
senses,
for understandable survival necessities, is her mother. We
can
reasonably assume that the more basic communication
patterning
a child learns and gets imprinted with, is the hierarchic
mother/child
relationship.
Very soon a second authority enters the child’s world: her
father.
Consequently a further element influences the language mediated
hierarchic relationship that the child is learning and being
imprinted with. This particular element depends on the
particular
way her mother and her father communicate together.
Two basic options of this way can be considered:
1. Father and mother question each other in a peer-to-peer
relationship. The child won’t detect and imprint any
super-authority
over the first one she learned basically.
2. The mother submits her own personality and opinions to the male
parent’s super-authority, by never questioning the latter but
always
obeying it. This implies that the attending child is bound to learn
–
and becomes imprinted accordingly – that there is a
super-authority
which transcends the mother’s and cannot be questioned even
but
always obeyed, beyond any understandable survival purpose.
Let's suppose, the strength by which the fundamentalist
trait
feeds-back and imprints into the child parallels that of
the
male-dominated hierarchy by which her parents perform their
daily
family relationships at the very delicate age – zero to three –
in
which she is learning both language patterning and language
mediated social hierarchy linked together, and from that
age
onwards. Vice versa, if the way her parents relate together
were
lined up to the utmost gender parity, reciprocal respect and
dialectic
confrontation of opposite opinions, the child is expected to
learn and
develop critical thinking, the ability to question the authority
and to
put flexible behaviours into action according to her own
individual
responsibility, self-consciousness and flexible thinking.
(1)
Accordingly, fundamentalism in children – future adult people
–
goes together with a male dominated family and social
hierarchy.
No wonder then, if all religions are male dominated.
Actually, parents and educators have two options – let’s call
one
of them “Democracy” and the other “Fundamentalism”
– at their
disposal in order to feed-back their children’s mindframe
self-fixing
since babyhood. They should be informed properly, in any
country
of the world. With this aim, an European project is being
launched
on this topic. (2)
Today’s religious fundamentalism is known to be the worst
threat
to humankind’s survival. Yet, for fundamentalism to
succeed, the
male-female hierarchy looks educationally mandatory in parenting.
Usually, within most fundamentalist countries, such a gendered
hierarchy is imposed by force onto mothers and women. But
we
also know that there are women and mothers who still ignore
that
the origin of fundamentalism depends on themselves, so that
they
voluntarily undergo the male dominated family hierarchy even
if
they had the chance not to do it. This raises a trivial question
that is
not being addressed any where in the media or in the Internet
still.
The question is: how can our Western countries hope to provide
democracy, liberty, and justice to the Middle East and elsewhere
in
the world if we to do not first provide and show democracy,
liberty,
and justice to our citizens since our families as an example?
Let me conclude with a quote from a Doug Everingham’s
letter:
“An early entrenched problem is widespread
acceptance of
leadership as the highest virtue. We foster authoritarian,
dogmatic
cultures based on holy writ, race, gender, military and
economic
power, nationalism and the information industry. It works fine
for
training hunting packs of animals that need to be shown who is
boss,
even for competitive team games. It is disastrous if it dominates
our
compassion in child rearing.”
We need to alert parents to their key role of showing infants an
example of mutual respect in the family circle. Each of us needs
to
be encouraged to take part in planning within each one's growing
capacities, not to accept ideologies as unquestionable authority.
In
developed countries this flexible thinking is most tragically
lacking
in our first tree years when language patterns and other habits of
interpersonal exchange are absorbed and tend to bias our later
thinking or hold back our social maturity.
This education long before school years may be crucial.
Growing violence and drug misuse are problems for parents and
role
models. Knee-jerk 'remedies' include censoring TV or policing
the
Internet. Too late for the worst cases. Dr Rossin suggests
parents
are most likely to consider trying his suggestions first as a
preventive
approach to one of the least confident and least secure fields
of
parenting -- drug misuse. His theory might then become a factor
for
preventing fundamentalist rigidity in stress reactions and
decision
making in a wider sphere: fanatical militancy, bigotry
etc?”
That’s all!
-Antonio Rossin
Notes:
(1) Details at: http://www.flexible-learning.org/eng/einstein.htm
(2) Details at:
http://www.flexible-learning.org/eng/objective_flexibility.htm
Copyfree
=============================================
End of the article. Sorry for cross-posting. Comments
welcome.
Best regards,
antonio
--
Antonio Rossin - Neurologist
Dialectical Philosopher
mailto:rossin(at)tin.it
http://www.flexible-learning.org
Coordinamento ISPO Italy:
http://www.simpol.org
mailto:ispo.italy(at)simpol.org
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