Where have you been?

The argument starts thus. And it never ends. I have been concentrating my mind on bigger things in life; I never thought the day to day affairs of one’s life could have such an impact on it. In fact I have come to know that these day to day affairs are not just a statistic; they are the micro causes of the way life turns out to be, and impact us in a very severe manner.

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When a person yells at his kid for a reason he cannot comprehend; even if just once in his lifetime, the kid turns away from rationality. His belief in a rational world is destroyed. He sees that his actions are having whimsical reactions from adults, and that is how the chain reaction starts. Perhaps after five years he’ll understand (that is if he remembers the incident at all) why he had been yelled at, but it will be very difficult to make him tread the path of rationality once again.

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When a teacher rubbishes away a child’s inquisitions as foolish, the child is embarrassed publicly and refrains from asking further questions. His interest in the particular subject and education as a whole is killed. From that day onwards he progressively starts treating education as a burden and ends up a mediocre. Perhaps after five years he’ll understand (that is if he remembers his question at all) that his question was really irrelevant. He thinks it irrelevant because the teacher had no answer for it and he escaped this embarrassment by rubbishing the question altogether, and five years later the child holds the same opinion of unanswered questions: Rubbish.

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When a child encounters an irrational argument from his parent and refuses to accept it, the refusal obviously comes out in a childish manner i.e. crying or wailing. The parent trying to stoop down to the child’s intelligence level to figure out what is wrong, sometimes stoops down to a much lower level, and concludes that the argument cannot upset the child because he cannot comprehend the irrationality in it, so the only reason the child is crying can be that the child is hungry. This further upsets the child as he concludes that his rational arguments are being rubbished.

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When a child has been bullied by another and reacts violently, the act being witnessed by a teacher, and both are being punished thereafter, the child loses faith in justice as the first words he hears when trying to prove himselfinnocent, are “I don’t want to hear anything, you both were fighting and both will be equally punished.” “Equal” becomes a very different word in his mind. It’s not difficult to comprehend that the projected mentality, even if honest, is that the school’s reputation has gained a higher place than justice. The school propagates endurance of injustice in the name of discipline. This lowers the high esteem in which justice should be held in anyone’s mind. The child never embraces justice in the future. He only fears it for the rest of his life.