The amount of noise us humans get bombarded with every second of everyday is insane. As adults some of us have the ability to differentiate between fact and fiction. As adults, only some are capable of this selection process. Can you imagine how this process is interpreted by an impressionable young person?
Every 2 minutes a sound bite is brought into your head. And then repeated over and over at different times. By habit alone, anyone would tend to believe the message. Especially with little life experiences and learning situations to help you interpret.
As adults we have a tendency to take the path of least resistance. Sometimes we don’t want to take the effort of wading through the myriad of opinions and thoughts to help us. We don’t feel we have the time.
Hopefully a younger person finds more time and energy to work through this process. Unfortunately, easily distracted younger people will struggle to stay on task. Buy the T shirt and wear it proud is the normal.
What do mom or dad believe? This is the easiest path to take as a young person. Younger folks might feel “ all the hard work and research has been done on this topic by my folks. If it doesn’t play out correctly it’s their fault. I used what was available to me.” Great reasoning.
What if mom and dad’s opinions are flawed? What if they learned from faulty influencers? Then, I adapt their beliefs! And then I have kids who follow the same reasoning that I did?
Generations and generations of poor decisions and effort create a less than perfect society.
An analogy that I often use (that my wife hates) is “rats raise rats.” Are rats bad? Not terrible and they have their place in the big picture of the planet, but we as humans really do not cozy up to them.
When momma and papa rat have a litter of little ones what do you suppose they are? Chickens? Puppies? Kittens? Nope, rats. Little cute ones but none the less, rats.
Do mom and dad rat see them as cute kittens and teach them how to purr? Nope, they raise them just like their parents raised them, how to survive as a rat. They actually had no other knowledge or choice.
On the other hand, humans have endless amounts of resources available to them. We can be good humans for our society, or bad ones. It is our decision. We just need to put forth effort. And that effort can be put towards good or bad as well.
Back to the young person situation. How does an impressionable young person find the resources? The best ones?
I’ll go back to something I stated earlier in this booklet. Every human born has that internal “warning light” when we know something isn’t right. In some, that light may be very dim, as many layers in of influencers have done their best to cover it up. However it is still there, we just need to accept the fact that we do have one and use it when needed. If you feel you don’t have one, really think again.
Another “teaching” technique young parents use these days in very early months and years is the technique of distracting.
When a very young child is being obnoxious or unruly, many parents today choose the technique of distraction to stop the poor behavior. Instead of making their presence known as the “superior power” to stop the action, and explain why it is wrong, they choose to try and throw them off course and get them to focus on something entirely different. Parents today seem afraid to use discipline. This obviously could have been because their parents made them feel discipline was bad and the same distraction method was used on them.
Are you starting to see the trend here?
But, don’t use your parents as an excuse to your behavior and life choices. Acknowledge it, and overpower that excuse.