Religeon Of Peace? Read first

Has no-one ever told you they are proud of you. Also have you no pride in anything.


Just why is unhealthy to 'to seek validation of one's self through the actions of your child, i.e pride in them winning a race at sports day'? Yet you also state' with children it is more understandable because you've had a direct impact on their mentality whether your a biological parent or not.' that is an oxy moron.

How so?

If you answer my question you will not only gain your own anwers to your how so question as well as providing me with something to.

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Has no-one ever told you they are proud of you[?]

People have indeed told me that they are proud of me.

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Also have you no pride in anything.

Honestly, not really. Generally speaking though I guess I could be proud of my actions/achievements that I deem to be good.

These two I believe were rhetorical but since the answer is somewhere in your post I can't afford to ignore any of it... Strangely though, they haven't helped me in understanding which bit of my post was contradictory.

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Just why is [it] unhealthy to 'to seek validation of one's self through the actions of your child, i.e pride in them winning a race at sports day'? [?]

It's actually a lot more difficult to explain properly than I first thought but, as simply as I can think to put it, the 'self' is the 'self' not the collective.

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...that is an oxy moron.

Is it that, to your mind, 'unhealthy' and 'understandable' clash?

Is it that the effect of the parent, in your opinion, goes beyond influence to complete control and as such the child running is doing so as an extension of the parent and not as an individual?

Either ( or neither, as the case may be ) way, I wouldn't have asked 'how so' if I understood and as such it's difficult to answer the question... I'd appreciate if you explained further.

I apologise ( yet again ) if you feel I'm a bit slow but, hey, I am .... deal with it.

No need to aplogise. For the record I don't think you are as slow as you consider yourself to be.

From your answers I can deduce you have doubts about what you have done, that others have expressed pride for. Therfore it would be natural to feel at odds and not to feel or express pride yourself.

Jumps to the parental aspect. Children are a part of the collective or as you also said an extension of the parents. Both are right at base level. We are a collective and extension of our parents and vice versa.

The key point is to sepearate the parts of the extension that are not required. We, like that of are parents, can live our lives as is we are apart of them. That is the part not required. We can , likewise our parents have a pride in what our children do as well as what we do and vice versa.

I am proud of my horrors, whether they come first or last in a race. For me it is the effort and willingness to take part that provides me with the pleasure and pride.

Encouragement and influence are different aspects. To influence a child or somebody else to do something you want, is not always wrong, but defers to sit on that side of the fence. Whereas encouragement to do something that a child wants to do etc is the more positive side of the fence.

I think it is wrong to push children into a way of thinking and accepting things because that is the way of things. I feel that a parent should educate a child sociably; to be polite, not to steal, find their place in society , to be respectfull of others.. A parent should not force feed politics or religion but let the child make up his or her own mind. To help them do this , a parent should open debate and bring the child to think and voice his opinions correctly. If a parent cannot answer a childs question then he should help the child find an answer , the means and ways exist today and are not based on dogma force fed to the parent when he was young.
Why should a parent not be proud of his childs acheivements? As long as these are healthy and help the child to accomplish his self? Whether it be in class, on the sports field , whether the child came first or last, as long as the child tried his utmost to overcome difficultly. Certainly not as an extension of the parent or because the child is accomplishing his parents dreams, simply that the child wants to do it. In this case the parent can be proud of his child.
To influence a child is wrong, as it means that you are imposing your will on him. You want to channel him along the line you want him to take and not probably the one that he wants. If a child wants to work with animals why make him work to be a laywer or an accountant? He will be for ever frustrated and will never work to 100% of his capabilities willingly.
It is a long and never ending debat. And one which merits on its own lots of attention.
I agree with MU, a country opens its door to you, helps you settle in , gives you acces to health services etc . You do not stab it in the back. Sure things might not be as you might have wanted them to be. But you do not go around wanting to change it to your picture or religeous beliefs. You do not impose your way of thinking on a society which welcomed you. Especially if that country lets you act out your religeous beliefs with out hinder. Not as in some countries! Wave the flag, show you are proud of your country through thick and thin. If the immigrants do not like it and find it distastefull then they can take a running jump! Go back to their own countries and try to act in the way they do in England. Or France for that matter.

Nice post Inuit.

But....... As you say to engage a child into expressing his/her feelings is an act of influence. Influence is a tricky subject and many areas actually are part of that influential family.

It is how your influence your child or others is the key to defining the correct way. But even that is simple guiding act is gulity of influence.

True Gris Gris. In this case influence would be used in the correct term of the word. To "influence" the child to express his or herself correctly and in an acceptable fashion and not by tantrums. So that the child can forward his point of view as well as accept that of others, which is possibly completly opposed to his.
I do not think that it is "influence " to teach a child to be polite , to comport hisself in a correct fashion in society. not to shout or scream, go around hitting people, stealing etc.
Influence for me is to induce a way of thinking that is detrimental to his self and possibly society as well. Religion and politiques, racisme are part of that influence as well.
There again what is influence for some , is just basic education for others. All depends upon how you , yourself interprete the word. Freedom of speech, movement, religion, way of living, where and how, are not the same for two people. When they become the same for millions then there has been influence but those doing the influencing play on the fact that they keep those to be influenced in a poor state of éducation and living . There are exceptions of course and always will be .

Please can someone define pride, I obviously don't understand what it is.

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From your answers I can deduce you have doubts about what you have done, that others have expressed pride for. Therfore it would be natural to feel at odds and not to feel or express pride yourself.

It's not that I have doubts per se, it's linked more to what is probably an inferiority complex. I try to be nice, kind helpful, etc but to me society seems broken and I have no idea how to go about fixing it. I don't feel pride for my actions because on any real scale they are insignificant; I'm insignificant.

The reason that I find pride for the actions of others suspect is that pride, as I understand it, isn't synonymous with happiness; it's much more than that ... it's selfish or at least a feeling of the self. Ignoring epistemology - for example, solipsism which would arguably contradict [well a lot of things actually but] my point - and living in the standard phenomenal world egocentrism is unhealthy and particularly destructive when it comes to societal cohesion.

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Jumps to the parental aspect. Children are a part of the collective or as you also said an extension of the parents. Both are right at base level. We are a collective and extension of our parents and vice versa.

To a degree but then, very much in the same way, we are also an extension of everyone and everything else. I don't think that it is to such an extent that we should forsake the self though; I doubt you could but don't mistake me for an advocate of individualism, what I am saying is that, yes, we exist as a collective but ... actually no 'but', that's exactly what I mean. The individual is necessarily real because without 'parts' the collective [cannot exist and so] becomes the individual.

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I am proud of my horrors, whether they come first or last in a race. For me it is the effort and willingness to take part that provides me with the pleasure and pride.

The pleasure is entirely understandable it's specifically pride that seems irrational to me.

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Encouragement and influence are different aspects. To influence a child or somebody else to do something you want, is not always wrong, but defers to sit on that side of the fence. Whereas encouragement to do something that a child wants to do etc is the more positive side of the fence.

Well, in my book encouragement is a factor of influence. Having influence often comes from a perception of authority and is a prerequisite for encouragement which itself is generally a positive act of influence but doesn't necessarily influence a positive act.

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I agree with MU, a country opens its door to you, helps you settle in , gives you acces to health services etc . You do not stab it in the back. Sure things might not be as you might have wanted them to be. But you do not go around wanting to change it to your picture or religeous beliefs. You do not impose your way of thinking on a society which welcomed you. Especially if that country lets you act out your religeous beliefs with out hinder. Not as in some countries! Wave the flag, show you are proud of your country through thick and thin. If the immigrants do not like it and find it distastefull then they can take a running jump! Go back to their own countries and try to act in the way they do in England. Or France for that matter.

I doubt we will ever agree on nationalism which is obviously fine - I don't think I'll ever understand how to love what is essentially a pretty arbitrarily drawn mechanism of division - but do you really believe that just because you weren't born on a particular lump of rock that you shouldn't express yourself? Admittedly in this case it's not particularly constructive but surely the means and the message is the important bit not your place of birth? Also, do you think it is healthy to make moral decisions based on what others are doing? It's like primary school, "but sir! Israel was doing it too!".

I guess all I'm saying is that, from my point of view, either pride is used incorrectly to describe the feeling or the feeling is misplaced and that patriotism/jingoism is just as anachronistic and nonsensical as the notion of nations itself, if not more so.