Brainwashed: Part 2
Part 2 – Etiquette and Peer Pressure
Etiquette
We left you, gentle readers, in Part 1, pondering the extent to which we control our children’s minds, from infancy through school.
During those same years we might also attune our children to our etiquette rules.
Let’s eavesdrop on Jack and Harry, who are very, very old friends, widowers, right now having a cup of tea together. (This dialog is from a play by your correspondent, used with permission.)
HARRY: You’re the educated one, Jack! You tell me: exactly who says we have to “behave” ourselves?
JACK: Generally, our wives do.
HARRY: Our wives are gone! I’m talking about what we’re allowed and not allowed to do in general. Who tells us we have to hold open doors, and then years later they tell us we don’t have to hold them open, and then years after that we’re holding them again?
JACK: The times change, Harry.
HARRY: Who tells us not to chew with our mouths open? Who tells us to smell nice? Who tells us what smells nice and what doesn’t?
JACK: Common sense tells us. Common decency.
HARRY: There are so many rules, and we just follow them!
JACK: Society makes rules to keep us all functioning in harmony with each other.
HARRY: Well, I feel disharmonious.
JACK: At least you smell good.
HARRY: [Grunts.]
JACK: We learn all this from our parents. We learn it in school.
HARRY: Is that the purpose of school, to make us conform?
JACK: School is supposed to teach us to think.
HARRY: I don’t know how to think. I don’t even know what I’d be supposed to think if I knew how.
JACK: Then you didn’t learn!
Jack and Harry will go on pondering these matters. The underlying question may be the extent of the conformity pushed by those shaping the young persons. Or might we question the rewards to be gained by conforming?
Are we shaping how our children think? Is this a type of mind control? Maybe it is. Jack and Harry probably did the same for their own children. Is conforming to a society’s etiquette beneficial?
The rules of etiquette are not universal. Think of diplomats, and how they must learn the protocols for each country to which they will be assigned. In some places one must remove one’s hat. In other places one may not under any circumstances remove one’s hat. Do we bow to the Queen or do we curtsy? And if we curtsy, what form do we use?
Do we eat buffalo wings with a knife and fork in polite company?
I know that in some homes all people are required to remove their shoes, while in other homes no one would ever come out of the bedroom in stocking feet. This has caused all sorts of consternation in mixed-footwear marriages!
All of this training shapes our behavior, and also the way we think about it. Let’s call this “thought control.” At least we will have a name for it as we ponder its use.
It falls short of teaching the difference between good and evil, yet it is a higher level than basic cleanliness or toilet training: it still informs us what we must and must not do in given situations.
Many of us have known individuals who refused to bend to some societal norms, who insisted on being individuals – sometimes in okay ways, and sometimes not.
Some say forced conforming affects our freedoms, our liberties. Others say “Mom and Dad know best, just do it.”
We also know parents who have bought into such things as only black-and-white toys, who play Beethoven for the baby, who have refused to give the toddler any “gendered” toys (in the parents’ views). These parents have made a conscious effort to buck the presumed norms in child raising. Is this different from those in our high school classes who wore only green clothing, or who always had hearts painted on their cheeks?
On the other hand, some of the outliers in our world have eschewed etiquette in one way or another and continued to live a productive life, or at least left worthy legacies. Composer Erik Satie is said never to have changed his bed sheets. No matter what his mother might have said about that, he is far better known for his music. Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikola Tesla, and many others may not have conformed to etiquette rules.
For now, until Part 3 of this series, let’s think about how we indoctrinate our children, in terms of everything from potty training to etiquette, and how we attempt to control or to free their minds.
There is much going on politically in the United States lately about what we teach our children, and what we may allow them to learn. Some folks hold forth that exposing children to certain thoughts, ideas, or even historical facts may leave them open to some sort of conversion to the negative. There are those who ban books, based upon criteria which seem arbitrary to others, and hold that our children are not discerning enough to handle what are perceived by those banning to be “adult” themes. If our teenagers wish to learn about a particular topic – especially one which is difficult to ask parents – depending upon where they live their library may not be able to help them.
(This, by the way, leaves them searching the internet for information, which is far worse than asking a librarian for a published book.)
There are those who feel our White children should not learn that folks in the United States and elsewhere were previously in the habit of enslaving Black persons. Is the withholding of information a form of mind control?
Let’s think about what we teach children in preschool, school and in other classes and even in sports. Are we training them to think for themselves? Do we teach it well? Or do we spend so much time shoving information into their brains we end up teaching none of the skills of discretion, skepticism, and criticality?
Are we opening their brains, or are we closing them? And to what end?
Was your young mind shaped in these ways? What color is your pinwheel?
Peer pressure
Another influence on our minds and thoughts, especially as children, is peer pressure. It may begin with our siblings at home, but its strongest effect is felt in school through our adolescent years, at the very same time as we may be being glazed over with information from those teachers.
At its best, peer pressure can keep our young friend Val, the kid who never showers, at least sponge-washing sometimes. At its worst, peer pressure can drive our youth to depression, eating disorders, thoughts of suicide, sexting, cutting, and all sorts of other behaviors.
Consistently being chosen last (or not at all) for Basket-End-Ball might have deleterious effects. Peers making fun of slow or delayed development, lack of the latest fashions, someone’s demographics, differing abilities, difficulty learning in the traditional ways, and those who have gotten into trouble, will only exacerbate the situation. It does no one any good.
Peer pressure is a basic form of bullying. It is subtle, insidious. When peer pressure escalates and is perpetrated by an individual or a group for the purpose of control or dominance, it does become full-fledged bullying. Even without escalation, the effects may last a lifetime. The means of inflicting such nastiness now include online venues, and we note especially the sort of communications that inflict pain and then disappear from the ether but not from the psyche.
Nowadays, many encourage children to call out bullies, to report such behavior to teachers or other trusted adults. We are beginning to allow them the space to report other brands of unkind peer pressure, as well.
Ridiculing and bullying people persists from adolescence through adulthood. We will discuss in later installments just how public this ridicule can become. (We sometimes see it nowadays among political candidates, don’t we?) How much lower can we fall as a society? Stay tuned, as they used to say.
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Join us for Parts 3 and 4, please, where we will discuss convincing, advertising, and societal pressures, including falling in love, social media, and more.
