There have been people using training of dogs as model for how to raise children. Dogs are naively dependant on humanity for their survival. It is for this reason in the interest of the dog to ingratiate itself to humans. However, a dog still has its own mental processes. Since it belongs to a different species they can differ much form those of humans. For this reason dogs don’t always do exactly as they are told. An ideal of 100% is impossible to attain. Something some still don’t understand.
At the end of the 17th century came the idea that human nature almost did not exist. It was believed to only consist of a vague reasoning ability. Unfortunately the thought does not follow that society can be improved upon. Add a total unawareness of conflicting goals even existing. Then people can imagine they can make their own children into ideal working animals. In other words they believed individual will could be parented away. The idea one not only can but ought to is something I really hate.
That was believed possible to attain by physically punishing every expression of the child’s own will. Sooner or later the child will then give up. Not give up its own will but attempts to communicate it. A shallow thinker can mistake this for not having any own will. Yet the mental suffering is always there. It is a suffering which comes from never getting one’s own will considered.
Humans are simply not made to live only for the sake of others. This requires constant struggle against one’s inborn tendencies. Something which in turn only creates suffering. Say that optional activities are chosen for oneself by a parent. A parent which moreover has never listened to oneself. In nearly all such cases the child will be uncomfortable with them. If he or she is comfortable with any it is a matter of pure random chance. Same applies to forced marriage. Two people are forced by their parents to live together. This without any kind of consideration of the individuals’ mental characteristics. Behaving like that is a lottery with the emotions of the forced. Nearly all forced into that will be unhappy. Things making relationships work have been entirely ignored.
Moreover one has to ask how it becomes for the next generation. Say the now adult child knows what he or she wants. Then the grandchildren will be forced into what he or she had been stopped from. Should each generation live only to grant the wishes of the previous one? If the adult child does not know the grandchildren will be forced to the first to come along. This was presumably not how their grandparents imagined it. I think they imagined that their own goals would be passed on. Humans don’t work like that.
Sooner or later parents will lose their advantage. Then it is laid out for crimes of violence against elderly. Either because the parents have been poor role models. (Children don’t do as one says, they do what one does.) Or just out of revenge for their upbringing’s never-ceasing physical punishment. The degree of physical punishment was extreme even for societies accepting such. Problems can’t be solved by punishing their expression. Treating own will as if it did not exist have destructive consequences. When parents lose their advantage these goes over themselves. Unless they die before that.
Uploaded on the 25th of August 2026.
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This site was last changed on the 25th of August 2026.