Education of the younger and less experienced by the older and more experienced is how civilizations form. Such education is there whether it is formal or not. For instance, a modern person would have a very hard time making fire. In fact tests show that most people cannot figure it out without being taught. Under many conditions fire is necessary for survival. Thus it is essential and not optional that primitive people taught their children how to make fire. It was not easy to discover it, and the information is passed down. If they did not, the knowledge of making fire would be lost. There is a culturally isolated island in the Bay of Bengal where the people, the Sentinelese, have lost the art of making fire, and must now rely on keeping fire going at all times, lest it go out. This shows the importance of parents teaching their young.
Now any parent knows that it is only natural that parents do not want harm to come to their children. So they keep their children safe by teaching them to:
- never stare at the sun
- look both ways before crossing the street
- not talk to strangers
- buckle their seat belt
Not only do parents teach their kids these things, but they tell them why. They tell them what the consequences are. If you don't check your oil the engine will die and you'll be without a car. If you stare at the sun you'll go blind. If you don't buckle your seat-belt you could go through the windshield. So parents teach their kids these things to protect them, to keep them safe.
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| Looking both ways |
But imagine a parent who says to their child: "The law says to buckle your seatbelt, but you have to make up your own mind."
or
"Some people say not to stare at the sun, but you need to decide for yourself."
Imagine a parent who doesn't insist their child look both ways before crossing the street, but in fact encourages them to have the experience of not doing so. This would basically be tantamount to encouraging or coaxing your child to be hit by a car, to 'learn from their own mistakes.'
In all these cases, it would be a very strange parent indeed who told their children to test these things out and come to their own conclusion.
But this is exactly what Baba parents tell their kids about drugs. I know this from testimony from a group of gathered teenagers who all agreed that their Baba parents told them, "Baba said not to take drugs, but you need to make your own choice." After kids take drugs, often in the homes of their Baba parents, the parents declare that "kids have to learn from their own mistakes."
Baba, who is supposed to be the oldest wisest most knowledgeable authority, says that marijuana is bad for you mentally, physically, and spiritually.
So why do Baba parents encourage their kids to try drugs. Why do they encourage them to reinvent the wheel? Why in this case and not in others?
Well there is only one actual possible answer. They don't agree with Baba. If they did they would do research on the topic and tell their kids the consequences of drugs and try to protect them as with the other precautions listed above.
Now I remember I pointed out that there is no label on the sun saying not to stare at it, and it isn't anything about a street that tells you you need to look both ways before crossing, beyond getting hit by a car. The malicious stranger won't tell your child not to talk to him. And the car doesn't tell you its engine will die without oil. If one were going to reinvent the wheel, not seek out advise about car ownership or staring at the sun, and had to learn from the experience, that implies going blind, getting maimed, kidnapped, etc.
So now let's look at drugs. The same exact principle applies. The insinuation that it is not bad to try marijuana for a while if you are trying to make up your mind about it (instead of believing Baba about its effects) tacitly implies that using marijuana will somehow teach you about its negative long-term effects Baba talked about. THE MORE YOU TAKE MARIJUANA THE MORE YOU THINK IT'S OK, NOT LESS. Research shows that one of the effects of marijuana is that it lowers incite. This is in Allen Cohen's article.
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| Encouraged by parents to decide for themselves |
People did not know that smoking was bad for them until the Surgeon General told them, from research. By the time you learn it "from your own mistakes" you are sick, if you just rely on cigarettes themselves to teach you. And by then it is too late. Marijuana is even worse, because there is so much misinformation available to tell kids it is NOT bad for them physically or mentally, and even GOOD FOR THEM spiritually.
So where do Baba parents think their kids are going to learn that marijuana is damaging if not from them? The streets? Do they really believe that marijuana use will teach them?
Since it is virtually a truism that parents do want only good for their kids, and would never deliberately encourage their kids to do harm to themselves, we can only assume that Baba followers disagree with Baba on the effects of (light) marijuana use.
This explains why Baba kids do get into drugs, and whey several have died of overdoses. And this opens up another subject we will talk about in a sequel to this post.
Notes:
The philosopher in me needs to address an objection that someone would be likely to make. They could say that the examples I chose are life-threatening, while marijuana is less harmful. While Baba's statement would shine doubt on that (as it is spiritually harmful, hence from a spiritual point of view more harmful) I still will address it.
We could add examples such as advising your kids to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. This is due to invisible fecal matter and germs. Louis Pasteur was considered mad when he first posited the theory that germs were the cause of disease and advised doctors to wash their hands before surgery. It was not obvious to medical doctors who had microscopes at the time. Hence it would certainly not be obvious to a child. However, experiments were done and the disease germ connection was proven. Our advice to our children, then, is passed down through us from Pasteur. We would certainly not simply ask our children to decide for themselves whether to wash their hands, or encourage them to experiment with unhygenic treatment of wounds to 'learn from their own mistakes.' This would be like asking our kids to reinvent the wheel, unnecessarily, and get harmed in the process.
But if this seems still to obviously harmful I have two other examples that we tell our children. We tell them to not pick their nose and eat their buggers. Why not? It tastes good. Besides the issue of germs, it is socially unacceptable. And we want our children to thrive socially, not suffer. Likewise, we teach our children not to lie, explaining that when we lie people cease to trust us, and we suffer.
No physical harm is likely to follow from lying or picking your nose in public. One could live their whole life picking their nose and lying constantly, and no physical harm would likely arise directly from either habit. Yet we would not tell our children to do these and learn from their own mistakes. An alienated and unpopular and unsuccessful life is an awfully high price to pay to learn something that one could simply have been told.
The reality is that smart people have always learned form the mistakes of others in the past, and this habit is begun in childhood. It is how societies advance.
See also Learning from the mistakes of others
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