From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Jul 09 2003 - 17:49:18 MDT
Randall, on Saturday 6:35 PM by his watch, apparently
anticipating my post in detail, wrote
> On Saturday, July 5, 2003, at 08:50 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> > Here is a true disconnect: I, as a committed non-rebel, cannot
> > grok how when there is nothing important at stake, people can
> > be so stubborn?
>
> Oh, but there *is* something very important at stake: who you
> are. If you force a person to repeat something over and over,
> most will eventually come to believe it. All you have to do
> is force someone to repeat, every day, that they deserved any
> punishment that you mete out, to turn them into someone who
> really believes that on some level.
This is an important point, but I still cannot credit it.
I agree that very compliant especially young children
perhaps might get brainwashed in exactly the way you suggest.
(I also acknowledge your additional explanation below.)
But anyone who has the presence of self to have resisted so
hard and so long, why had she not the ability to say and do
what they wanted, yet continue to lead a quite separate
inner life? I would have had no trouble after the age of
eleven or so.
Why is it that they simply cannot act? I'm not a bad actor,
(even though many of my associates say that I am, for some
odd reason).
Moreover, I do not believe that this girl subscribes to your
theory on an intellectual level. I wonder if she had managed
to learn at a tender age that if you scream long enough and
do whatever else it takes, you *can* win the contest of wills
with your parents. "Spare the rod, spoil the child", as
ancient wisdom has it.
(Listen---I do apologize for the troll-like quality of that
last remark, but to soften it here on this list would be to
give in to pressure, to submit to domination, to surrender
my soul, to lose my identity.)
> I'm 30, and I haven't yet been able to completely throw off
> the deep belief that I am not deserving of success, ingrained
> in me by years of being forced to repeat after my parent that
> I was not deserving of good grades, etc, since I hadn't done
> enough work.
Remarkable.
> I know, intellectually, that I'm capable, but there's something
> very deep in me that is only satisfied if I'm very far from the
> goal, and makes actually finishing any project harder than stopping
> just shy of success. I often "come to" saying "What the hell am I
> doing?" when I find myself playing a video game for hours on end
> when I would otherwise have finished a weeks-long project that day.
Now this part, I intuit, doesn't really add up. I think
some other factors must be at play.
> There's a difference between a minor inconvenience from someone who
> fancies themselves in authority, and the horror of having that person
> insist that you tell them that you believe that they are right, day
> after day, for years. Eventually, you'll really agree that they're
> right. You may think that you could resist that indefinitely, and
> you might be right, but children are, by nature, far more malleable
> than you are.
Yes, some children at any rate. But those teenagers who are such rebels?
Lee
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