The Detriment of Obedience
Modern methods of child-raising are in fact everything but modern. They stem from a long tradition of forcing obedience onto children, beginning ideally directly after birth. We are caught in a vicious cycle as we have all suffered the effects.
Our own upbringing causes us to see our children as our opponent; babies try to manipulate us, we think. They must be raised to behave and do as they are told, we believe. They must obey us, preferably without questioning our authority: “Why?!” “Because I said so!”
Obedience is the culprit of the repressed and broken will. The meaning of a broken will is we internalize the will of another and through this lose our identity. The self is denied, abandoned and suppressed in order to satisfy the aggressor. This is done in early childhood ; a time where people aren’t capable of fighting for their rights, a time where people believe themselves to be the center of the world, thus the culprit for anything bad that happens around them; a time where children are dependent on their parents and wish to please them.
Soon enough children concentrate on what is expected of them, what is proper, which behavior brings acceptance rather than detachment and pain, and even idealize their suppressor, the aggressor. These people develop a fear of authority that is falsely believed to be respect. They blindly follow authority in their obedience. The fear of disappointing someone or losing suppresses the human ability to implicitly experience, live and connect. Living turns into a struggle for survival, and in order to uphold the parent-child-bond children embed within themselves the expectations of the parents. This is why people identify with the aggressor: it’s better to adopt their set of beliefs and please them, than fight for your own will and identity in seclusion (we remember isolation can and will drive a person crazy). People gladly enter servitude of their own free will.
But what happens to the individual once he or she has repressed his or her self and replaced it with a foreign body? The true self and the will are experienced as foreign, frightening and overwhelming, needing to be repressed even further, for to go against the aggressor leads to strong feelings of guilt. Psychologists describe a pathological trait in human beings, one that stems from obedience. When people repress an aspect of themselves they are detaching themselves from a part of their psyche.
Obedience shaped most of our childhoods and conditioned us to act and behave in certain ways. There are beliefs instilled in us that we don’t stand behind, and there are reactions that are triggered by our children that we certainly do not embrace. They aren’t a part of our true selves, yet they have cast anchor and there they will stay if we don’t do some serious cleaning up.
Sadly the introjected beliefs are often upheld with a passion. People like to hold to them and don’t like to see them (or the aggressors) threatened. That is the extent of detriment – people vehemently fight for things that don’t correlate with their true convictions. This is how dictators are able to guarantee their followers’ loyalty or how it is possible that soldiers follow adverse orders or concentration camp workers didn’t bat an eyelid.
Obedience leads the way for children to grow into adults who either seek to overpower and command others or to have someone call the shots for them when they enter voluntary servitude.
How can one be moral and ethical while being obedient? How can one be authentic, when our own identity is alien to us? How can one even be a whole and satisfied human being, at peace in oneself, who recognizes and feels love?
I invite you to take your liberty and join the revolution!
