Spare the child, stash the rod, it's time to make your minds broad

I've uncovered a pet peeve and I'm coming at anyone who waves it in front of my face. Not because of my personal ego, but because it's about the personal ego of those people who have been scarring children since when man officially turned stupid. And here I fire. 

Some values are celebrated across the spectrums of religion and society, and one of them is spanking children i.e. giving them a good thrashing. Apparently, it's the only way that children will learn and they will become disciplined adults, rant back some uncles, aunties and (surprisingly) some young people too. Now sit back and watch me tear apart this nonsense that has seeped so deep into our thinking that it's normal. 

"It's the only way they'll obey", say some of these other strange people, "and you'll know when you have one." Let's consider obedience. It's another of those values that have been accepted across the spectrums. Everybody wants someone to obey them (except themselves), but why should anyone? If your answer is because "we should", you should try and complete that thought with a full sentence and see how much actual sense it makes. All the best! Generations have only successfully stopped at "should". 

There are few sensible ways to complete the sentence. "You should obey our parents because they know more than you" (among other versions). This stands true when you're really small and you need to be told not to play with fire because it will burn you or run towards the steps because you'll tumble down. The parents know as much as any adult around them, not too many years older to the child. The statement also stands true when the children get older and they don't have the advantage of general life experience, yet. In this case, the parents know much more than any adult around them, probably except for those not older than them, usually. Barring the above two examples, there is no guarantee that parents know better than the child. 

The only stand out factor with this sentiment is that the parents are the child's own parents and the only completely dedicated ones among these adults around them who ensure the best good, happy upbringing. 

With instances apart from the above two possibilities, there's a third possibility. Most parents are as clueless and put themselves into power mode because they need to deal with the responsibility. They just roll with the general wisdom that seems right to them which automatically becomes the wisdom to follow. It isn't the case that parents are always right eg. engineering is best when it rarely never is, at the rate that that wisdom becomes a robust industry reality.

Obedience is meant for protection but we've made it into a mere instrument for order. Rules should protect natural order and behaviour, and shouldn't have to be unnaturally created. The student must obey the teacher, the citizen the policeman and the child the parent - even if they are wrong? What was natural healthy mainstreaming of society has now become unnatural, imposed rules. 

We've superseded common sense and handed over the right to it to the next person to control us under the guise of 'rules', and are told how it is "good" to follow them. Creating empty order (for the sake of it) just gives people power and creates a role where they assume overarching responsibility for the good of the world so this delicate appendix of a structure doesn't fall apart and lead the world to certain doom. 

Let's focus back to my peeve. To maintain order, we have collectively decided, at some point, if the more sensible among reject this silly idea of rules merely for order, we really need to get them back in line. So, what we do? We thrash the living daylights out of them till they do, until they are beaten right back into shape into obedient donkeys which do the master's bidding. 

We've ordered natural human behaviour, given into an over-natural need for order, created a position of power to ensure it and beaten those who don't conform. If there is any good in this order that appeals to the true human evolving sympathetic, empathetic, observant, curios, spirited, learning nature of a child as he grows, a good thrashing does the opposite of getting it out. It makes him discard it for a 'Yes sir no sir' attitude to life, like the third possibility.

While parenting is never easy, if you're one who swears by child thrashing, and speaks of the glory of the rod on a child's buttock, like it's your sworn right as a parent, what you only achieve is trying to make a growing person into a full-fledged obedient donkey surprisingly successfully, which is a shame. It's just the power trip of the ego you get from the rules that are over-obsessed with order and not focussed on the person. Rebellion and opposition happens when the rules don't match, and don't help, the people. What we need to do, then, is adapt the rules into ones that do.

Your methods should allow the child to harness the natural human tendencies of their own evolving being as you induct your children into the world, step by step, helping them relate and understand why and what. That produces the exact good behavior you're looking for with the rod, but it's deep rooted and firm. The rod just destroys every hope of that happening. All you get is the outcome.  

It will never always be easy. It may also never be easy. If you were to think through using the benefits of using the rod, for any reason apart from power, ego and control, you won't find any. The rod is just an excuse for bad disciplining and anger issues (and the like). Also, parents are not God-like, or God, just because they brought you into the world. If they think they are doing their child a favour, or honour, by having them and they deserve to be obeyed for any travesty they think up, they have children with the wrong reasons.

As for those uncles, aunties and surprising young people, most of them have been victims of the rod to the point that they think they are incapable of being the people they're supposed to, without being donkeyed into it. They can't think any other way to be. They may as well be walking zombies who know nothing else but to beat their own children in turn simply because they haven't been zombified like them. Hence, the mass acceptance of the rod.