Teach Your Child
Beppe Grillo has a beautiful and righteous open letter today from Frei Betto on what to teach your child in today's mire of lies, agression, war and privilege. Here are a few extracts (I cleaned the text up a little to make it gender-friendly):
Teach your child that not having a talent for sport, or not having the face or body of a top model, or feeling ugly in comparison with the current fashion for defining beauty, is not a good reason for losing self-esteem. Happiness cannot be bought, nor is it a trophy that can be won by beating competitors; it is bound up with values and virtues, and which creates, in our existence, that sense of what is worth living or dying for.
...Teach your child to avoid the privileged lane of this neo-liberal society that tries to brainwash them into thinking that being a consumer is more important than being a citizen, that esteems what brings fortune, that exalts the aesthetic rather than the ethical. Convince your child that happiness is not the result of the sum of pleasures, and that the spiritual route is a treasure that is conserved in the depth of the heart -- those who manage to open it will enjoy indescribable happiness.
...Teach your child that it is not necessary to agree with the established disorder and that he or she will be happy by joining those who fight for social transformation, who make this country free and just. He or she will thus transmit to your grandchildren the inheritance of your wisdom.
...Teach your child to vote according to his or her conscience and to never be disgusted by politics, in as much as those who belave in this way are governed by those who have no politics, and if the majority should happen to feel like that, it will be the end of democracy.
Teach your child that not having a talent for sport, or not having the face or body of a top model, or feeling ugly in comparison with the current fashion for defining beauty, is not a good reason for losing self-esteem. Happiness cannot be bought, nor is it a trophy that can be won by beating competitors; it is bound up with values and virtues, and which creates, in our existence, that sense of what is worth living or dying for.
...Teach your child to avoid the privileged lane of this neo-liberal society that tries to brainwash them into thinking that being a consumer is more important than being a citizen, that esteems what brings fortune, that exalts the aesthetic rather than the ethical. Convince your child that happiness is not the result of the sum of pleasures, and that the spiritual route is a treasure that is conserved in the depth of the heart -- those who manage to open it will enjoy indescribable happiness.
...Teach your child that it is not necessary to agree with the established disorder and that he or she will be happy by joining those who fight for social transformation, who make this country free and just. He or she will thus transmit to your grandchildren the inheritance of your wisdom.
...Teach your child to vote according to his or her conscience and to never be disgusted by politics, in as much as those who belave in this way are governed by those who have no politics, and if the majority should happen to feel like that, it will be the end of democracy.
posted by Nur-al-Cubicle | 12:37 PM
2 Comments:
Voting or any other particular manner of determining a governance is not the essence of what the word "democracy" means to me. Rather than an exercise that can leave one less than half the people on the outside, I It take it instead to indicate a manner of government, however ensconced, which attends to and provides as near as possible to the needs and desires of all its peoples. That in mind, Frei Betto's lesson is beautiful and certainly worth heed with exception of its final paragraph. In both his and my terms, and though I imagine he is at odds with it, his Vatican rulers present a clear counter example of that paragraph.
Well to me i lived the vote till i learned electorial votes took my individual vote away now votes are by area and now thay have a machine you vote with so no recounts allowed someone please tell me when will my vote count again or will it ever or has it counted in my life time?????
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