Learning from the mistakes of others

This is a sequel to We learn from our parents.

Now we need to discuss a couple of topics deeply related to 'you have to make your own mistakes.'

First of all, the source of this statement is mysterious. Why can't a person learn from another person's mistakes? Everyone knows that if a man leaps off a cliff and dies, we needn't repeat the act to see if it leads to our death. As I have said, all the social and physical sciences are built up upon experiments conducted in the past. And learning the results of these past experiments, by people who went before us, is called education.

This begins at home. Our parents pass down to us their own accumulated experience, plus the experience of others before them they were told of, and taking this advice begins a child's journey to maturity. The adage that a person must make their own mistakes (ignoring the results from the past) is itself a mistake in reasoning. And we will now explain why.

The notion that it is good parenting to allow, encourage, and expect your children to make their own mistakes regarding some things (like drugs) but not other things (like picking their nose) is based on the notion that one is being liberal - live and let live. Giving permission to explore and learn, and giving a person more individual sovereignty.

But in fact if one examines the language, they will see this is an illusion. The statement is an injunction of something one must do. They must rediscover the wheel. They cannot learn from others. Not only is this not true of smart people, it does not give children permission to make the right choice from the start.

Now this brings up the subject of "just say no." A lot of liberal Baba lovers find this saying, that they think was coined by Nancy Reagan (a conservative) to be useless and even harmful. Just look up the expression and you will see the media filled with such charges, and claims that it didn't work.

But what are the facts about 'just say no'?

When the Reagans moved into the White House in 1981, drug use, particularly among teenagers, was hovering near the highest rates ever measured. Of that year’s graduating class, 65 percent had used drugs in their lifetimes, and a remarkable 37 percent were regular drug users. Eight years after Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign was launched, when the Reagans left Washington, only 19.7 percent of 1989’s graduating class were regular drug users, a 47-percent reduction. And the trend that began under their leadership persisted until it reached an all-time low of 14.4 percent in 1992, 61 percent lower than 1981.

So why do we hear that this was a terrible policy?

Let's see why in fact it worked. Notice that 'Just say no' a permission statement, and a positive suggestion. It says something you can elect to do. It tells you you have a right to say no. This, believe it or not, is not obvious to people. A store clerk told me that people will bring an item to the counter of a fancy store without knowing the price. Upon learning it, though they are shocked, they are often too shy to stop the transaction, as the feel they are obligated in some way, as if they have entered into some kind of agreement by coming up to the counter. If they have more than one item, they are more likely to shyly ask if they can put one back. Note the sense that we do not have permission to say not.

But telling a child that they can just say no to drugs empowers them. It gives them information that wasn't obvious. They are not obliged to take a reefer if it is handed. And so sure enough when they are surrounded by friends passing a joint, and they decline, they are amazed and empowered to learn that the people are not upset.

Compare 'just say no' to 'you have to make your own mistakes.' Note the difference. One is a suggestion, and an informing a person of their right. The second is a command to try the substance. It is basically insisting they 'have to' try drugs. Then where is the incentive to stop? The effects of drugs, especially marijuana, is such that it hides its own ill-effects from the user, and decreases incite, it does not increase it.

Now this may be a surprise to some, but the "Just Say No Foundation" was established by the PIRE Institute under the leadership of Allen Cohen, a Baba lover and a Sufi. (source)

So while telling your children: "You have to make up your own mind" or yourself "They have to make their own mistakes," sounds at first liberal and giving sovereignty, these statements actually aren't. They are restrictive, and they are even untrue. Smart parents teach their kids to study, not make absurd experiments. And as far as peer pressure, real freedom is giving your kids the knowledge that they have permission to say no, and make the informed decision. They do not 'have to' experiment.

Real education includes teaching a person to learn from experts the results of an act before doing it. It is not to test what the experts say is harmful to see if they are right.

For instance, we go to a doctor to learn our condition. We don't defy his suggestion to stay off of some product the doctor said is causing a reaction to see if he is right.

Imagine haring an investment advisor who says, 'Well people are losing money in X, Y, and Z, but you need to make your own mistakes. Why not learn from those who have lost and made money, and the expert telling you which ones. Imagine the advisor suggested investing in Y, but you felt that you needed to first try X, Y, and Z to make your own choice.
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So what's going on with this weird count-intuitive poor advice parents are giving their children.

Many of the sayings that hippies used in the 1960s, and many of the ideas they espoused, were first coined and developed by adult academics in the 50s, though obviously teenagers in the 60s had no way to know that. 'Turn on, tune in, and drop out' was actually coined by Marshall McLuhan (Canadian professor born 1911), who gave it to Timothy Leary. 'Do your own thing' (from Crowley's 'Do what thou wilt'), 'generation gap,' and 'youth culture' were fostered onto the youth, not coined by them. If you think about it 'youth culture' is an oxymoron and no teenager would have coined it. Many of these terms were created in places like Harvard and foisted on the youth of the 1960s to produce social change.

But most young people of the time fully imbibed these terms and ideas as real and immutable truths, when they were nothing but social experiments by an older class based on theories.

Erik Erikson

For example in the 1950s a professor at Harvard named Erik Erikson (born 1902) published his theory that if the parents allow the child to explore, they will conclude their own identity. If, however, the parents continually push him/her to conform to their views, the teen will face identity confusion.

This is not some ancient immutable fact, and introspection on a good reading of history shows it is baseless. It is from academics like these that we got our 'generation gap.'

When these kids from the 60s, brought up on slogans with these theories embedded in them, they thought that it was a natural thing for each generation to look down on their parents as "square."

So they didn't dare seem "square" or push their kids, or even instruct them on what Baba said. Instead they said implicitly 'do your own thing' and 'you have to find your own way.' And today their kids say 'you do you.' Proving that kids really do learn from their parents, even when it's misguided.

I was always instructing my daughter, as did my educated friends. We would tell our kids the consequences of actions, and about history and scientific thinking, and looking before you leap. We gave lectures like a professor, and our kids were interested.

But in the end my daughter likes me just as much as the kids of these ex-hippies love their 'groovy' parents. It's so sad they wasted all that energy. They basically wound up encouraging their kids to do drugs and have multiple partners and get lost in the world.

Kids are not this fragile. This parenting has, not suprisingly, become the most oversensitive generation in history, the most skinless. Words like 'safe space' and 'triggered' now fill the campuses of the kids of the hippies.

Back to Baba.

The culture does not generally agree with Baba about his indictments of marijuana. And certainly taking marijuana won't 'teach' anyone what Baba says is the case. Quite the opposite.
The best parent that believes Baba, would explain to their children they love how marijuana ruins lives, by pointing to examples and doing research. Read Allen Y. Cohen's article to them. Cohen is one of the most respected authorities on drugs, drug prevention, and drug rehabilitation in the world.

People will make mistakes, not just kids. And we will all inevitably do stupid things by mistake that wind up being self-destructive. But encouraging people to intentionally do destructive things in the name of learning from those errors is just confused. It is perfectly intelligent to learn from other people's mistakes. That is how societies are built, and what education is.

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Addendum:

I think this is a needed ad-on. It is unpopular to state the obvious, that marijuana is a gateway drug. This statement is often misunderstood. No one is saying that marijuana will make someone take cocaine and then heroine. However, a person who has never tried marijuana is much less likely to ever take other drugs. In other words, statistically marijuana opens a gate open but doesn't push you through. Marijuana-use is virtually a necessary precondition for taking stronger drugs. Hence you are more likely to statistically, especially among boys.

This thus explains the numbers of children of Baba lovers dying of drugs, or winding up revolving through rehab, is directly connected to the way they were taught about marijuana by their parents.

This was not a reason Baba gave for not using marijuana. Hence even if you did not believe this (which is a statistical reality, but druggy people deny reality daily) it does not change what Baba said about the negative consequences.

Also, concerning Erick Erikson's theory. When you tell people about Louis Pasteur's discovery of germs and that they are a cause of infection and disease, and thus we in our culture now wash our hands after we go to the bathroom, we are not 'pushing them to conform to our views.' The difference can be subtle at first, and I discuss it in Two kind of parenting. When we teach our children, or point out to our children, facts and scientifically proven consequences, we are not pushing our views, but science, reason, and the law of cause and effect.

It is often said, 'Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.' Imagine a national leader today hearing that Napoleon and Hitler both were defeated after invading Russia, and they decided they wanted to try it too. Can you imagine saying of that person, 'Well he has to learn from his own mistakes.' Why? Why can't he learn from the mistakes of others? Of course the answer that he not only that he most certainly can, but that it is the intelligent thing to do. Learning from the past practically is practically the meaning of education.