The New Illiterates, And How To Keep Your Child Form Becoming One: Fill & Download for Free

I disowned my mother at 34 years old.It has been 4 1/2 years since we’ve spoken. She doesn’t have a relationship with 4 of my 5 children. She uses my oldest son when she needs to move something. He is hopeful she leaves him something when she passes. My other children will never know her.It took a long time. It was a long process of emotional and mental break downs, broken trust, heartache, hopes to become a family and to create a bond that ultimately became dashed, and listening to stories of my mother’s vicious backbiting against me, her constant gaslighting and scapegoating of me and my siblings, and years of therapy to decide that my mother wasn’t a good person to keep in my life.It didn’t happen overnight.It required multiple attempts to trust and share love and to help her to try to get to know me as an adult, an individual, a human being, to realize that it was best not to continue a relationship with her.As a child, my six younger siblings and I were severely neglected, starved and isolated from the world under the guise of being home schooled. Home schooling is amazing if you teach your children and use a curriculum to guide instruction. I’ve seen it do amazing things for people. In our home, however, it was just a label that gave our mother an excuse not to enroll us in school. There could be no truancy officer if she never enrolled us. No one would see how dirty, how thin, how sad or lonely we were. She kept having children long beyond her realization that she didn’t want any, and I was given small teething babies who were still in diapers and needed to be potty trained and needed to learn how to walk. I was only 13, my younger sister 11, my brother 9, caring for each other and sisters ages 7, 5 and 2. We learned how to cook by trial and error. Several of my siblings grew up illiterate into adulthood and faced many educational, psychological and emotional challenges that either completely broke them, like my younger brother who became an alcoholic, and several of my sisters who were unable to care for themselves in adulthood because they lacked basic skills and tools to survive on their own. My youngest two sisters had a 2nd and 3rd grade education at 17 and 19. I found out that at a certain point, she kept enrolling them in school from time to time to keep child protective services from taking them away but not long enough to learn anything. My second youngest sister called me to tell me she was being molested by her step father. I took her and my youngest sister out of my mother’s home and got full custody and guardianship of my sister who was 17. My mother didn’t show up to court because she didn’t care. Then, their survivor benefits started coming to them instead of her; our father had passed in 2004, and she suddenly took me to court. The judge humiliated her.As my siblings and I got older and had children of our own, she would continuously create drama between her own children that would make us fight or become angry at each other. Every time there was a problem, something she said or did was at the root of the issue and as adults today many of us have very few genuine interactions with each other. Most of us see therapists to seek help for depression, anxiety and even dissociative identity disorders today.I took care of my siblings in a house alone, our parents living next door to us at first but moving across the street from us so that they couldn’t hear their children calling their names from the windows. Child Protective Services was called on our mother, and to this day she blames me for calling them although I didn’t. She doesn’t see her behaviors, only what was done as a result and blames and slanders her own children for the aftermath.If your daughter disowned you, it is time for you to look at your own behaviors that have contributed to her inability to keep you in her life. It is time for you to seek therapy and consider the idea that you may have personality disorders that prevent you, for now, from coping with how you’ve been treating other people in a negative and destructive way.Disowning someone takes years of thinking, years of conflict resolutions that fail, years of tears and disillusionment about wanting someone to be close to you who just is not able to.Talk to a therapist and find out what you need to do to heal yourself. Make it about discovering what you’ve been through in your own life that causes you to push the people you love away from you, so that you can acknowledge what you’ve been doing to yourself and others and apologize genuinely.**Note: 9/3/18**I have received many comments about abusive daughters, too many to respond to, who use their parent’s guilt and shame as fuel to threaten the parent into providing material and financial rewards. The abusive child uses the parent’s inability to provide for them at some point in their life, or their love for another sibling, or their love for a new spouse or any number of fill-in-the-blank reasons, to create feelings of guilt and shame in the parent to get material things. They threaten the parent with “disowning” them in order to get what they want.This is called Triangulation. There is typically another person involved, for example, a sibling (either half, step or younger in most cases) or another parent (a passive biological or step parent), that the narcissist can use to fuel their bait and reward tactics against just to get people fighting and arguing over their devotion. This is not disowning someone, just a sick game being played for their amusement, no matter how many times they threaten to disown someone. They’re too dependent on attention to truly disown you. But your decision not to contact them can be disowning them. You don’t need anything from that person, they need you.If you can never seem to apologize or acknowledge a mistake or bad decision you made enough for them, under the threat of “being disowned,” which they never actually do, only to be contacted again and again because the person needed something, and they feel entitled to having financial needs met as an adult due to guilt and shame, that isn’t disowning someone. It is triangulation.Take care,Tee

I have a story to tell, of non-other than my own Mum!I come from a small desert city Bikaner of Rajasthan state in India. This place used to be in-famous for child marriage or you can say early marriage (18-22 years for boys and 15-18 for girls), however things have changed a lot since.When my parents were young, My father was the only well educated person with a respectable job of school teacher in his farmer father’s family. That time whole of the family was after him to get married as soon as possible, yet he had his own convictions that the girl must be metric pass for the least. But at a place where child marriage is so ordinary, you can’t expect a woman liberated enough to argue with her parents to go to school or college, hence being a metric pass can only be a distant dream. After excruciating search, finally family was able to find a suitable match by the time he was 23 year old (which is too late for marriage for them). However the girl hadn’t cleared matriculation exam but she had written the final exam and would hopefully pass it. For my Dad, There was a ray of hope now, so he promptly accepted the proposal.My father wanted that his wife should be well educated so that she can provide with a quality education and noble family values to the children and mould them into good human beings. He dreamt and wished to uplift his family socially and economically.My Mother’s father used to sell fruits & vegetables on his cart on the dusty roads of this desert city under scorching heat of sun (He still does). He was an uneducated person but knew the value of education in that era. My mother was fortunate enough to receive good education before marriage.After their wedding, results of my mother’s metric exam came out and she passed with second division (45%). My father was delighted and wanted her to carry-on with her education. But there was a big constraint…! That, Family was too big and she was the only one to serve them all. Not just the family members but the cows and goats in the backyard too. She was working like a machine day-in day out. My father couldn’t help this because my orthodox family simply wouldn’t allow. So all-in all she had to manage home and studies in parallel without compromising family demands . My father made her study privately rather than regular school/College student as it was the best option at that moment.She Failed in her first attempt of senior secondary examination miserably. This was expected, she was yet to figure out how to manage everything at this tender age of 17. She had to cook for 11 member family (breakfast/lunch/dinner), milk the cow, clean the house, fill the earthen pots with drinking water, wash all the cloths, prepare fuel out of cow dung , many times work in the farms and then if her body allows, finally spare some time to study. Seriously, can you imagine? Today, we the youngsters find it impossible to go to nearby general store without our automobiles.Next year on, she applied again, she failed again. Why? This time, I was the reason. Now, besides all above tasks she had to take care of me, the new-born infant ! (You can’t blame me for that). Then She failed third time and that was the last time she ever failed!After three years my younger brother was born but by now she had mastered the art of self-management and managed to pass. Subsequently she enrolled for graduate programme (again privately) and passed with good marks. She went on doing her Masters in literature with 58%. By now things had improved a lot. I and my brother were grown up, she need not to check us all the time. My father suggested her to join nearby school and start teaching. She did same and Soon became famous among children because of her teaching style and motherly love. But she was not getting paid well there because she was a teacher without a B.Ed degree. She wanted to stand on her own feet to show her ability to relatives who never missed a chance to prick her. We encouraged her, hence she enrolled for B.Ed and passed with first division (72%) first time in life.All this time it was not easy for her to not to lose hope and keep studying. Because society was same old illiterate as ever and kept on saying many things about her like ”Kya karegi itna padh ke, Madam banegi? Apne parivar to sambhaal”( What will you do with this much education, Just manage your family). She was managing everything: family, study, children and the role of a sincere Bahu, which made everyone obviously jealous.After finishing B.Ed she started preparing for Govt school teacher vacancies. She was already 36 by now. After several failed attempts she got demotivated. The reason of failure was that she was not fast enough in the exams and didn’t know the tricks to solve aptitude questions. She was scoring meritoriously in her subject but was constantly failing in GK/Aptitude. After many attempts for nearly 7 -8 years she aged out for competition exams.With hopelessness she decided to teach underprivileged girls of our town for free, who still admired her after so many year since she left school. Few months down the line she was celebrated again. There was always traffic in evening in front of my house. People used to gather to collect their toddlers from this unconventional school of hers. She used to devote 2-3 hours daily for these kids. Relatives thought she was doing this all for money. They used to say “You couldn’t pass that exam after so many years, your education is useless, there is no difference between you and us!”By now I started doing Job and my younger brother went to college. She was boundless now. Everything was good, but something was missing, one mission was still pending to be done with. That was, to clear that Govt teacher exam and reclaim the respect she deserved. She didn’t want money or securing a job and all. All she wanted was to clear the exam and show the people that all these year what she has been doing is not waste and she can also stand on her own feet. She wanted to full fill her long lasting dream for once.Then luckily came out this vacancy for school teacher post and fortunately this time the age limit was 45 and so was she. Her last chance! But for that she needed external help, A coaching may well do. But going to a coaching centre where most of students are in their early 20s was quit odd for her. There are 100 people applying for 1 post in this job starving country. This is not going to be easy for her. Also, By now she herself is a Saas ( mother-in-law) since I have got married this year. Everyone in my family as well as in coaching institute laughs that she has gone mad and still going to a coaching at this age to get a job. They say, “You are Saasuma now, soon to be a grandmother, till when will you keep studying like children?”. She do get demotivated at times and accepts that her IQ was low.But wait…! may be her IQ is low but not the will! My father, brother, my wife and myself keep motivating her to do her bit, be focused and ignore everything else. I tell her, you are special, everyone thinks of retirement or relaxation in their 40s-50s, you are not one of them. Its because of you, I passed out of a reputed engineering college and got a job at an MNC. It’s because of you, my brother also became engineer. Its you who gives a ray of hope to all those hundreds of girls you have taught. You make us proud and honoured and also motivate us whenever we feel stuck.Currently she is preparing in coaching and she thinks it has helped her a lot, she will definitely clear the exam. Right now, She is among the top 5 in the class of 150. I wish her best of luck! In future we have plans to start our own school.Its never too late to learn or achieve something. What all of us lack is a “Goal” which can satiate and fuel us at the same time.

It’s had a huge influence on me.Before I even touch this question, I’d need to talk briefly about two major political differences between America and China that particularly stick out to me. People talk about them like they’re closely intertwined, but I’m not sure how true that is.The first is the question of how leadership is chosen.We’re probably all familiar with the End of History thesis. History is over, democracy and freedom won, and now we just have to wait for the rest of the world to turn into one big happy democracy.It’s not just a thesis, not just words. At a fundamental level, it guides the way Americans think. It’s more like a religion, a philosophy. To almost all Americans, there is no alternative. They might disagree about implementation, but the same general principle of people systematically and formally choosing their leaders is present.China is a fascinating contrast. The government is structured around the ideal of meritocracy. This ideal is either the cause or the result, or maybe both, of China’s rigorous education system and cultural emphasis on education. In a country of millions competing to be the smartest, the most disciplined, only the toughest and brightest few make it to the top of the governing pyramid. Despite a reputation of corruption, the high percentage of government officials from impoverished peasant backgrounds suggests that the meritocratic elements in the government structure overpower bribery and nepotism. Do you want to influence the government? Join the government. Want to join the government? Work your ass off.These differences are profound and go deeper than most people appreciate.The second difference is the question of centralization and the presence of government in the lives of the people.Western Europe and America agree on democracy, but not as much on government centralization. Many in America conflate centralization and tyranny. The labelling of universal healthcare as a socialist idea is one example of this.Americans tend to distrust outside interference in their day to day life. They grow up far away from the government, and are raised in the most absurdly individualistic culture in the world. Many parents are lax at setting rules and bringing the child to cultural gatherings like church. As a result, children are not raised with a strong sense of structure. They may or may not have trouble disciplining themselves. Either way, they tend to think independently and are not fond of submitting to authority figures, be it the soft authority of parents and priests or the hard authority of the government. It’s just not a habit they get into. Outside interference means they usually have to change something about the comfortable semi-isolated routine they’re in. This is typically met with a response like “Geez, I already have enough on my plate without worrying about this crap.”It makes sense that Americans conflate centralized, large government with tyranny. Large government is associated with interference and inconvenience. A slightly higher gas tax might as well be the same as imprisoning you without a trial. After all, the people tend to have their own life routine worked out. Where is the government official that knows me and my life well enough to tell me what to do? Maybe if we underwent a serious effort to integrate comprehensive social institutions into the lives of the people, it would achieve good results in the long term. But people won’t think in the long term and will refuse to trust anyone who claims to. They have the power to say no to plans that will interrupt their routine, and will exercise this power. At the sign of the first politician who says, “I will not interfere with your life,” they finally exhale and think, “You have my vote. Glad that’s over with.” And thus the system stays decentralized.In China, it just doesn’t work that way. The entire society is wired around a centralized bureaucracy, and has been for literally thousands of years. Every time the bureaucracy fails, a civil war or foreign invasion happens and millions of people die. The people learned long ago to look for ways to get what they want within the system. After all, most of the time the system is good at keeping the peace, preventing crime, transporting supplies and money, and overall management. It works, and its not going anywhere, so why not work with it?The central idea in Chinese political philosophy is the Mandate of Heaven . Basically, an emperor that makes the right decisions and brings about peace will be rewarded with long rule and peaceful obedience from the people. As soon as the emperor becomes corrupt, or oppresses the people, or is beset by natural disasters, the nation disintegrates. This is when the emperor has lost the Mandate of Heaven.As a foreigner, I can only know so much about the Chinese mindset. But I suspect the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, at some level, explains why the people in China today support the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Broadly speaking, they believe that times are good, that by and large the CCP does what is right for them. If the CCP were ever to grow too corrupt and ineffective, the country would fall apart and the people would not fail to notice this. Chinese revolutions are notoriously bloody, and the CCP is aware of this too. This understanding, the Mandate of Heaven, keeps the system together.These are very different conceptualizations and social structures. America, traumatized by the ghost of the religious wars in Europe, the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, 1984 and other fictional stories of Hell on Earth, has defined itself eternally in opposition to centralized government and in favour of individual freedom. China is used to a strong, meritocratic government that leads the charge and understands it must not falter in its responsibility.So how does all of this apply to my views of China’s development?My views come from living in America all of my life. It has taken me years to unpack and begin to understand the 5000 year old civilization state that lies across the Pacific Ocean from me. For years I have followed China’s news, studied their history and language, and spoken to Chinese people at university.It seems there is no reconciling of their views. Both nations hold strong to their systems, and are in danger of clashing in an ugly way. It will take the work of giants of diplomacy on both sides to successfully navigate the 21st century relationship between China and America.In the case of America, they do not tolerate the existence of other systems. America has fought many wars and murdered millions of people in pursuit of spreading democracy and making sure history is brought to its end in a timely manner. It has used sanctions and now a trade war to try and bring non-democratic nations to their knees. More broadly, the idea of the supremacy of democracy is damn near unquestionable in America.Every party, every politically motivated individual, believes in the inevitable successful export of democracy to the rest of the world. It is what Americans have staked their last hundred years of foreign relations on. All other systems are reduced to tyranny, inefficiency, and weakness. It would be deemed absolutely intolerable for a non-democratic nation to become the most powerful nation in the world.Heh. Looks like that is exactly what is about to happen.Growing up, I definitely thought democracy was the best system the world had. I never particularly thought it was the best possible system for all time, since that’s not really a question I considered.These last ten years or so, as I’ve grown up and grown more knowledgeable about the world, my views have gone through a lot of changes. The whole way I conceptualize myself, and my relationship to my surroundings, and the invisible strings that tie people together, have been upended.Who dares to say they understand enough to prescribe a political philosophy to the rest of the world? Where did this idea come from that societies and the structures people inhabit are lego blocks you can just pick up and move around as you please with only positive results? Do people not understand how arrogant it is to think their way is the one true way?Everyone predicted no country could modernize and become a prosperous nation without democracy. No non-democratic nation could win the trust of the rest of the world. No non-democratic nation could be a leader in science and technology.So what the hell are we supposed to make of this?How Huawei Is Leading 5G DevelopmentChina just landed on the far side of the moon: What comes next?Clearly human rights, democracy, and decentralization are not prerequisites for advancement in economy, technology, and standard of living.China’s been growing so quickly in so many ways that people in the West literally can’t keep up. This isn’t even just because of wilful blindness. It takes time for changes to be processed by people, for their full implications to propagate throughout society. China is still seen as a country that mass manufactures cheap goods and just copies everything America makes, even though they’ve been innovating in engineering and construction for decades now and just might beat American tech companies at 5G.China has achieved great things and has benefited from a strong tailwind provided by its long history, studious culture and large population. There is much America and the rest of the world can learn from China, and we should expect China to continue progressing at a dazzling rate, and to eventually surpass America.History is bigger than us. The fate of nations, their rising and falling, cannot be understood in terms of the present by itself, nor can it be done just with high level political analysis. All of these fools in America thinking the world would just magically become an eternal democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union never really stopped to think about the fundamental nature of human societies and the unbelievably strong cultural inertia that permeates other countries. Perhaps because America is so young, and has been constantly changing in all this time, we have no appreciation for just how hard it is to make something that lasts and is sustainable in the largest sense.America has existed since the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, 243 years ago at the time of this writing. What do we know of tradition, of consistency, of preservation, revival from catastrophe? We talk about our history as if our entire system has persevered untarnished since the moment of its creation. Such a perspective neglects the significant changes that have emerged over time. In the early years of our republic, most people did not have the right to vote. You had to be a white man who owned land to vote, and even then the states had no constitutional obligation to choose their electors for president based on how the people of the state voted. Family structure, cultural patterns, and national identity have gone through warps and changes over the years following the emancipation of slaves and mass immigration into the country. America has been a rocking boat since the moment it was first created. Where is there any sense of consistency or tradition in there? Just how united by country and fate are we?The thing that impresses me the most when I contemplate China’s history is its sheer resilience to catastrophe. Initially I studied the civil war and the Japanese invasion, and then the Century of Humiliation before it. How many countries can undergo a hundred years of colonial plundering, mass opium addiction, uprisings, an invasion by a militarily superior enemy, years of fragmentation and local warlord reign, topped off by a bloody civil war, and then rise out of the ashes to become one of the most powerful countries in history only a few generations later? Tens of millions of people died in the Taiping rebellion, the Japanese invasion, the civil war. The entire landmass was thrown into disarray for two generations after the collapse of the Qing dynasty. Why on Earth is there still a China? How on Earth did it come back together after all of that and preserve its culture and a rough approximation of its old governing structure to the modern day? Even after this crisis it went through nearly three decades of Communist terror and a deliberate attempt to destroy its old culture during the Cultural Revolution. Clearly it didn’t work. China is all the Chinese people had for so long. There is no alternative for them.I can tell you one thing, if America faced a century of imperialism, uprisings, invasion, and civil war, there would be no more America. Maybe the idea would live on, the idea of individual liberty and people deciding their own fate. But the nation, the identity, the culture, would fragment and disintegrate.China, in comparison, eats famines, invasions, and civil wars for breakfast, and has done so for millennia. It’s not easy for me to understand why that is. Francis Fukuyama definitely didn’t understand that when he thought that this cultural and historical behemoth would simply be another vessel of democracy. I don’t think it’s easy for anyone to understand that. It’s definitely indicative that Chinese civilization has some really good things going for it. Not just any system, not just any culture and political philosophy can keep itself around for millennia. History has no shortage of cultures and civilizations that were completely eradicated even after surviving for over a thousand years.This is a visualization of China’s history (most of it, the early Xia and Shang dynasties are not included).Should we be surprised that, in response to the modern era, with its science and technology and new political ideas, that China found a way to absorb the best ideas from outside and incorporate them into its progression while holding onto its cultural and social roots?We shouldn’t. Modern technology and capitalism proved easier to integrate into the centralized bureaucracy than expected. The Chinese are a resourceful and practical people. They will find a way just as they have before to continue moving forward. Don’t expect them to westernise or democratize anytime soon.It is independent of human rights and modern ideals. There is no divine rule that says the most successful human systems must honour the sanctity of the individual. Democracy may be better at providing pleasant society and free expression in the present. That does not mean it is the best solution for the long term. Judging by the last two centuries, there could very well be a China as long as there are people on this Earth. Can the same be said of America?And now America and China find themselves in what I believe is not just a trade war, but the early stages of what will become a long and unfortunate cold war. The way I see it, China is already playing a different game than America.American analysts look at China and they see the present. They do not look beyond because at a fundamental level they have not been conditioned to do so. For the last century, American culture has been corrupted by the business perspective of only looking to the next quarter. Anything ten years from now might as well be Star Trek. Feeding on the corpse of their fathers, many companies in America today have a global market that is safely in their pockets, and does not require innovation or desperate action to keep afloat. The decadence and laziness is reflected in a government that does nothing, and a populace that is consumed with entertainment and fast food. How can such analysts really know the stakes and what will happen if they fail? How many people in the American government get fired if they mess up or grossly miscalculate the outcome of certain actions? They grew up in a soft country, where food is plentiful and jobs are about “fulfilment”. Everyone else voting for them and evaluating them also grew up in such a soft environment.China has been weak in recent history, and their leaders are acutely aware of this. Living in a time period with the rapid transformation from an impoverished nation to a rising superpower and rising through a ruthlessly competitive meritocracy, China’s top leaders have learned the difference between good and bad decisions. They understand the consequences all too well, many of them at a deeply personal level.Consider the story of China’s current emperor, Xi Jinping (quoted from Robin Daverman's answer to What kind of leader is Xi Jinping?)He’s somebody who will deal with shit. I mean it literally.In1974, Xi volunteered to go to Liangjiahe, a dirt-poor village in Northwestern China. His dad was getting the rough treatment during the Cultural Revolution, so he probably felt that getting out of Beijing was a safer move. So he volunteered.China’s GDP per capita in the 70’s was around $100 per year, which is obviously not great. But Liangjiahe was a totally different ball game. It was a famously poor place. I would guess the GDP per capita was maybe $20 a year. No, I did’t miss any zeros. It was really that poor. There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no toilet, no heat, no rice or flour. Corn was a luxury, millet and wild grass were the normal diet. and people just dug dirt caves out of mountains to live.The villagers that Xi lived with - were mostly illiterate and covered in fleas. So Xi looked around, and was like, fleas, oh well, I just have to get used to it. Food? That’s OK, I’ll take a hoe and go farm with the villagers. We can feed ourselves. Electricity? Water? Nah, nothing can be done about that. So what do we have? Poop! OK, so we have poop. We can make something with that, maybe.So, he read about fermenting poop to make methane gas, and tried to build a poop-fermenter in his village, so that people can use it for light and cooking at night. He was only 16 or 17 at that time, so he wasn’t very good and got the pipe stuck, so he had to jump into the cesspool to clear the pipe, and got poop all over himself, but he got it working. The next year he traded his motorbike for water pump and some other tools for the village, and pretty soon his village was getting more prosperous. He stayed and worked in that village for 7 years, applied to join the CCP 10 times, got rejected 9 times, and finally got admitted on the 10th time. The villagers promptly elected him the Party Secretary of the village. That was how he started his political career in China.Even if half of this was made up by state propaganda, this is by and large a different kind of experience than that of, say, Donald Trump, the trust fund baby who built a real estate empire using daddy’s money. Trump was elected president after starring on a reality television show. Xi Jinping rose to the top of a brutal meritocratic struggle after decades of helping to build the economy that he would later take leadership of. Xi helped to forge the modern China, and understands much more about how it got to where it is now than Trump could tell you about the parallel transformation in America. Xi has dealt with much worse than a trade war. He and the other leaders will continue doing what makes sense.China knows how to play the long game here. They know they might lose in the short term, in the next ten or twenty years, but they will continue to make progress in the Chinese manner. They are investing resources and effort in the most productive enterprises: science, technology, education, and international infrastructure with the rest of the world. It doesn’t matter if it takes them a century. It doesn’t matter if it takes them a millennium.Behold the new world order in the making.Best of luck to China, to America, and to humanity. May there be peace forever amongst us.