Stride: Striving Toward Riding: Fill & Download for Free

Based on my personal experience, I would say this:To become strong, choose to live your life like a modern-day Stoic!Stoicism, a school of Hellenistic philosophy which dates back to Ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC, was a philosophy of personal ethics. According to the Stoics, the path to happiness consists of accepting the moment as it presents itself, not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or fear of pain, using one's mind to understand the world and to do one's part in nature's plan, and working together and treating others fairly and justly (check out the Wikipedia page for more details).How is Stoicism perceived today?The word “stoic” today is often interpreted to describe a person who is indifferent, unemotional, hard as nails, even cold. But the real Stoics weren’t all about getting rid of emotions; they were focused on creating a set of rules to live by that were based on reason, logic, clear judgment, and inner calm.What does that mean for you?If you find yourself reacting to various circumstances, other people, and situations in daily life with a lot of emotion, chances are you’re allowing those emotions to get the better of you and to affect your decision-making. Feeling frustrated about a bad grade can force you to skip class and maybe fail the entire course. Interpreting feedback from your boss as a bad thing can make you take things so personally that you quit your job, which can leave you without an income to pay your bills. Making decisions about your career and even your personal life, based on an emotion that could dissipate in a few hours, is probably not the best option. Here’s where you can benefit from a modern-day interpretation of the Stoic way of life.Living your life like a Stoic starts with a few simple habits.These 9 habits have helped me incorporate Stoicism in practical ways.Stoic habit #1. Don't waste your energy on pointless activities.The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca devotes a section of his book On the Shortness of Life to a problem that many people had back then. He describes gluttony, vanity, focusing on materialistic things and trying to impress others. That’s not unlike our own world that’s focused on social media and often on creating a superficial image of lifestyles we see on Facebook and Instagram. There are ways to use your time more wisely: always focus on a specific goal you are striving towards. Don’t just keep it on an abstract level; actually create a plan to reach it. And don’t let random situations, chance, or other people’s behavior dictate how you lead your life. Seneca says that nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation.Stoic habit #2. Practice gratitude for everything you have in your life today.Speaking of social media, especially during this busy holiday season where you are inundated with vacation pictures of friends and the tropical destinations they’re gushing about, you may find yourself wondering how come they’re enjoying their lives while you’re sitting at home in snowy weather. The envy you’re feeling will soon turn into frustration and eventually unhappiness about your life, and for what real reason? The reality is this: there’s so much you already do have going for you. Think about what those things are. Set aside a few minutes each day to develop your own practice of gratitude. For example: list 3 things you’re grateful for in your life this very moment: having a home, a job, a skill you are good at, or a close friend who you enjoy spending time with.Stoic habit #3. Don’t complain all the time — get proactive about what’s possible.There’s nothing unique about complaining. It’s easy to do it, which is why we tend to do it by default. We are human. However, to be realistic, complaining won’t change a thing. Why waste your time? What will make a difference is if we take a proactive stand on a problem that bothers us. What does that mean? It means do something about it. If there’s a situation you don’t like, think of ways to change it. Brainstorm what you will need to do to change it — start with a list of possible solutions. You may need more resources, or more knowledge on a topic, or just a bit more time to reach a personal goal. For additional support, ask a trusted friend or someone who is an expert in the field.Stoic habit #4. Don’t make comfort your top priority in life.Living like a Stoic doesn’t mean surrounding yourself with material things or a bunch of people in order to feel comfortable and happy. It means taking life in stride and making peace with discomfort when it occurs. If there’s a situation that you don’t like, don’t immediately do everything you can to avoid it. Embrace it for a bit, sit with it, and ask yourself, How can I benefit from this? What will it allow me to learn about solving a problem? When you frame discomfort in this way, you take control. You also learn to rely on yourself so that when tough times come around, you’re better prepared to deal with them. You can practice this by trying to solve problems by yourself first, even if that means making mistakes, before you give up or turn to someone else to help you fix the situation.Stoic habit #5. Learn to manage your thoughts better.This is one area of life in which we can all improve. On any given day, chances are you have thousands of thoughts running through your mind, and let’s face it, a lot of them are not exactly sunny and happy ones. They can be negative, self-critical, dismissive, they can focus on past failures or tap into your insecurities. Think about this powerful statement for a second. You are not your thoughts. There are ways to manage your thoughts more successfully and even change your entire mindset. You can practice a short 10-minute meditation to calm your thoughts. For an even bigger shift in the way you think, you can get a copy of Carol Dweck’s book Mindset which can impact your entire attitude and how you think about what is possible to achieve.Stoic habit #6. Do your hard work first, before you do anything for pleasure.On any given day, we give in to the urge to start our morning by checking social media apps on our phone and sending messages back and forth with our friends. But mornings are the ideal time of day to get the hardest work out of the way. Try maximizing each morning by building a habit of doing your hard work early. It will help you deal with the feelings of procrastination whenever you have to study for an exam or finish up a project for work. Even better: it will improve your focus and concentration so that your brain can do its brilliant work more efficiently and effectively than any other time of day.Stoic habit #7. Learn to practice self-discipline with delayed gratification.It may not seem like a natural choice at first, but putting off doing what makes you feel great and that gives you pleasure has its advantages. It’s about instilling a good dose of self-discipline so that you do something difficult first in order to reward yourself later. There’s even science to back this up: Stanford University’s Marshmallow experiment showed how delayed gratification can increase your chance at succeeding in many areas of your life. You can practice it too. For example, if you want to watch a movie or go out with friends, leave it for the evening after you have completed what you planned to work on during the day. Or, if there’s a slice of chocolate cake you really feel like having, go for a 30-minute walk or bike ride beforehand so you get some cardio exercise before you enjoy it — and even then, eat a smaller piece.Stoic habit #8. Turn an obstacle into an opportunity to approach a problem in a different way.What often happens when we are faced with an obstacle is that we stop everything we are doing and we start reacting, often emotionally. Maybe it’s a sign I should just give up! Maybe it’s just too hard for me to do! Those are all emotional reactions. You can change your approach in three ways. First, start anticipating that there will be obstacles you will encounter on your path. If you prepare yourself psychologically for them, they won’t feel so devastating when they actually do happen. Second, use the opportunity to learn something new, to take a different approach to the problem, to think it through, and to try something different that can yield better results. And third, take advantage of the tough times to achieve mastery in one area so that you can become an expert at something.Stoic habit #9. Accept that although you cannot control life, there are some things you can change.Sure, you can’t control life, no matter how much you feel a deep desire to do so. But you can control how you react to it. That is always your prerogative and your right as a human being. What if you don’t think it’s possible? Take on this challenge. Read Viktor Frankl’s book Man's Search For Meaning. It is a manual describing the psychology of survival, written by a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who found strength to live in circumstances where most people would have given up. It’s a real-life story about living life stoically — by accepting the moment, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the fear of pain, and by using one's mind to understand the world and how to make it a better place.

This kind of question usually becomes some kind of celebration of dictatorship or smug jeremiad against democracy.You’re going to find that most boosters of the CPC as a ruling party will studiously avoid the points raised here, or will cheaply dismiss them.We could ask other questions. A better one would be: Why are some societies wealthy? Why do they remain wealthy over time? What is prosperity? If the default condition of humanity is subsistence and starvation, why is there prosperity at all?Why did the US become wealthy? What caused the massive increase in wealth, over time? When did it start? Was it, as many people say, slavery that built all of US wealth? (In fact, the opposite argument is likely: that slavery was a net opportunity cost and drain). What about the British Empire? Is Mercantilism best? What about monarchy? Lots of people love the idea of an ethnic monarch ruling over society. Is it better?Nationalists in China usually have contempt for democracy because they see it as weak. They want a Strong, Powerful Force to Lead China into the Future - etc. This requires a great Generalissimo or figurehead or some ideological banner. But there are others who endorse this. Capitalists dislike having to deal with non-compliant consumers and labour; lots of capitalists love the idea of a single-party state that can just order people around, usually at the behest of the captialists. Thus, many elites in the West endorse China’s system, envious of the Chinese state’s ability to just ignore the wishes and needs of its people. Engineers hate the idea of committees that don’t do the “logical” thing that they know is the right policy. Revolutionaries want to impose their policies and hate that there’s significant resistance or opposition, so they want to railroad them through. Etcetera.As for the economy:China mostly self-destructed in the 150 years before 1949. Almost all of its pain was self-inflicted, …. and this was almost always true, and it remains true today. China has a habit of destroying its future through self-digestion and self-destruction, because its elites are almost always arrogantly blind to their own limitations. Nationalism is a huge problem here, as is clannish, factional infighting, both seriously crippling features of the Communist Party of China. One of the reasons for China’s self-punishment is that China has never had a political system that was able to limit the negative effects of dictatorship.Because China suffered from its own corruption and decay for so long, China was mostly picking low-hanging fruit from the 1980’s on. All it had to do was, for a time, stop enacting bad policies. That’s what it did: The government just stopped being in the way. The more it freed up the economy - the more it just absented itself from governance of the economy - the better the economy did. Most of its good policies were not really policies so much as they represented the abandonment of any policies; instead of interfering in the economy or trying to lead it, it just stepped aside and let its people do what they naturally do. It was definitely a great “opening up”. The arrogance comes in thinking that this was some kind of state genius, that it was the result of some kind of specific policy or planning an not the absence of planning and interference. In truth, it was a great letting go - an abandonment of planning.Also, its economy is now facing extreme challenges, and these emerge from the contradictions inherent in the system. Most of its statistics are inflated and comically unreliable; its meteoric rise in prosperity ended some time ago. The years of endless growth are coming to an end, if they haven’t ended already. The State backed off and let people do what they want and this generated wealth; but now, it’s trying to step back in and manhandle economic actors directly. This will predictably result in long-term crippling of the economy.China’s increasing inflexibility means it’s also going to get very badly caught in the middle-income trap, and its ongoing structural stability, especially but not only politically, will depend on China *not* having political or economic reforms. So not only won’t it reform, but if it wants to maintain stability, it actually can’t substantially reform. Its rulers are riding a tiger: If they get off of the tiger, they’re finished. If they want to remain the absolute rulers of China, they have to prevent China from becoming unruly, which means no reform.We’re seeing the effects of this now. Prior to Xi,China was much more freewheeling. In the space between the collapse of a top-down state economic model and a bottom-up rebirth of organic capitalism, there was room for imagining a more energetic future. There was, it has to be said, also no real taxation regime.Now, as of the last 5 years or so, China is leveraging technology to create the most effective, and punishing, tax collection regime in history. This is relatively new. Not a lot of commentary has emerged around this, but the consequences of this huge grab for money cannot possibly be understated. It’s the quiet omission that changes everything. This will be the most profound change in China in decades, possibly centuries. Before, in every age of China, taxation was the main purpose of the State, but never has it been able to implement anything substantial, and nothing like it’s engineering today. It’s also applying a kind of Orwellian asset control to everything everyone does - making it possible to know exactly what people own, where their money goes, what they buy, when they buy it, how they pay for it, and what every RMB and what every bank account ever does. This is a fundamentally new and different thing: absolute State financial omniscience and the possibility of total financial control. Capitalists be warned.This is something the western capitalist admirers of the CPC had not banked on. They loved the lack of democracy and labour rights, but this will change everything about China.Note that this does NOT come with the rule of law. This should absolutely terrify anyone with assets, to the bone.The State has made it clear that its arbitrary rule allows it to simply seize assets, something it needs to be able to do more and more as part of its economic model. This means not only that there’s no rule of law, but that there’s no potential room for the introduction of rule of law, ever.One of the main reasons for the success of the entire Western social and political and especially economic infrastructure is the concept, properly implemented, of the Rule of Law. The importance of this social innovation cannot be overstated. Pretty much the entirety of the wealth of the West is fundamentally founded on the rule of law. Democracy and civil rights depend on it, too. It’s the cornerstone of everything.China’s “quantitative easing” and pumping of cash into the economy is a symptom of its rigidity and lack of diverse tools. All China can do is creatively re-invent what it’s been doing for decades: Mass investment in infrastructure, state spending of capital, etc. This does exactly what you would predict: it creates massive inflation, so that now the price of everything is skyrocketing. The actual purchasing power of the people is radically declining, in a way that hasn’t happened in 30 years. The imbalances of wealth are expanding astronomically, between regions and individuals. In the face of this, instead of reforming and adapting, State control of people’s lives and media must expand exponentially, and we see this happening, because the potential for active resistance in China has never been higher. Thus, the State must become more immeasurably more repressive, and it must control more and more information. If you’re an academic, China has been rapidly shuttering archives, restricting access, and closing down avenues for publication. Media is feeling the pinch. Thus, the ability to honestly talk about these problems is diminishing. But this is no accident: The State has determined, in its wisdom, that “normal” people are not to be allowed to have any voice in the direction of the country, nor to be able to effectively criticize and move it.China has no choice in doing this. As a state, it has no other tools at its disposal. It can only continue doing what it’s always been doing, but just with more intensity, or more creatively applied. Its tools are defined by its nature, and its nature lacks key ingredients that make for successful, wealthy societies: Rule of law, transparency, accountability. These things are actually very serious threats to the Chinese system, so it can never effectively embrace them. Without embracing these things, the contradictions within the CPC’s state system can only be papered over, and not eliminated or reformed away.In a real sense, China’s current economy is a house of cards, a ponzi scheme that has to expand or it will fall into disarray as a result of its own crippling inconsistencies and contradictions. Already, Xi and the ruling elite are looking for distractions so that the people of China can be bought off with excuses and lies. You can expect them to double down on radical nationalism and everything associated with it, because they will need to be able to excuse themselves from blame for the inherent problems within China’s formal governance structure.China’s current strategy is all about doubling down: instead of rooting out the problems, it’s just magnifying its old strategies in the hope that the success will paper over the deficiencies.China can’t do this: the arbitrary will of the people within the Party is an absolute feature of the Chinese system. To change this would be the equivalent of subjecting the Emperor to the rule of law. It’s the question of being the monarch of England or the monarch of Russia: In Russia, the king was absolutely absolute. In England, the king ruled at the sufferance of Parliament. While both were ostensibly monarchies, they were going in radically different directions; the very nature of rule of law pushed Russia in one way, and England in another. Rule of Law is so core a concept, so central to everything that means anything in the West, that no aspect of society - not prosperity or peace or war or failure - nothing can be understood without reference to this concept as the core, underlying principle at the very fountain of it all. And this is the ultimate reason for the success of the West, economically.You need more than rule of law, of course. But rule of law is the “sine qua non” of everything else.Because of the nature of the CPC’s state system, China can never effectively introduce anything like rule of law. It’s going to try to do this, but rule of law is a fundamental and very serious restraint on the powers of the people who rule; they bind the ruler as much as the ruled. They imply the generation of serious checks and balances; introduce the idea of rule of law, and things like parliaments and independent courts will eventually spontaneously generate within the system, so long as society is striving towards rule of law. China’s current system has built into it a total denial of this concept: Politics and the political will (ie the elites with that power) must be able to govern with arbitrary, and absolute, power. They must not answer to law, like common people.The people who praise China’s CPC generally make the case for this themselves. When you listen to people who idealize China’s “meritocratic” dictatorship, inherent in their claims is the idea that China is rich because its leaders have complete freedom of movement, not answerable to the people/ the demos / the angry mob. It means that, they think, the very stupid, short-sighted people of China have no say in policy, and must submit to the Optimates, the Better People, who rise up through the party, and that the Party can then rule. Because the party is composed of the Best People In China, they rule without resistance and always make the best decisions. This is “meritocracy”: Domination by the “Best”. This is almost always the gist of their argument.We can laugh at a few things in this. First, there’s the idea that the people in the Party are necessarily always the most intelligent. Then, that this makes them the most qualified. Third, that they must be the most moral, that they aren’t selfishly motivated. Finally, even if we assume all of these things, which is very much a stretch, it’s not necessarily obvious that such Better People should be in positions of power. Remember that the most morally zealous are very often the most dangerous; True Believers in anything are usually deadly to everyone around them when they get power. Also, the most intelligent often live in world disconnected from reality; in many universities, filled with super smart people, it’s common to find a surplus of utterly delusional Marxists, whose ideas seem to be disastrous when implemented, and these people are often incapable of useful introspection; in fact, in real life, they are often the last effectively intelligent people of all. Thirdly, its not clear that giving ANYONE this level of power is a good idea, without serious restraints: All people are basically human, and each one of us might be a nightmare if we were given power.Democracy is cynical, but realistic, in this sense: nobody can ever be really trusted to “be” ruler, because of human nature.In this sense, democracy and limited government is far more mature than the other sentiment - that if we “just get the right people” into positions of absolute power, things will work out great. A full reading of history would tend to disabuse anyone of this notion.In terms of the economy, we’ll never know how well China would have done without the lead weight of a dictatorship; its possible that its performance would have been greater. If not as meteoric, it might have been more broadly distributed and socially, and economically, sustainable, over a longer period of time.Certainly, from the experience of a country like South Korea, we learn that great strides under dictatorship can be made, but this comes at a very high long-term cost: Built in to the South Korean policy model was the creation of a near-permanent and mostly indolent upper class. Right now, the great challenge is to remove this class from power and redistribute resources and power to the mass of the people. The crippling inequalities and structural problems in the South Koran economy were created by the original system that created the wealth in the first place. In other words, the rot in the tree was there from the beginning. It is currently destroying the country.This was inevitable: When you concentrate all wealth and power into only a few hands, eventually, the rest of the people get left out, and, humans not being mindless sheep, they react against such an abusive situation. In a way, SK is more successful as a state now, at least *for its people*, than it was in 1975. The same was true of the Roman Republic. As limited its “democracy” was, its actual citizens were mostly better off before the fall of the republic than after the rise of the Principate; the “virtus” of the people bled away as the Empire became little more than a taxation and rentier clearing house for the rich families to barter luxuries and slave populationsIt’s definitely true that development is easier when you can just order people to do what you want (or not do what you don’t want), and imprison, kill or discard them if they disagree. A society that disallows organized dissent has great potential for single-minded action.But what if such a system should make a mistake? The consequences of errors are also magnified greatly.China, as a dictatorship, has a history of “lurching” - it can lurch in one direction, but then it just as often lurches in another direction. It’s often nonsensical. So when the leadership of a country like this beats its people sufficiently so that they support a given direction, sure, like forcing an angry mob of cats to move in one way, you can get things done. But that mob then requires tough rule to maintain cohesion.Note that China’s history fits into an almost rigid series of cycles:Disunity: Many competing states, ideas, and formsConflict: These ideas beat each other, usually killing millions, until only one remainsGrowth, during which time there’s peaceDecay, as the ruling class become self-indulgent and lives off the fat of the land, while the people grow indolent, self-interested and cantankerousCollapse, as the corruption of the State and its systems reaches an apogeeRevolt, as the masses overthrow the incompetent, self-interested government; this can also happen as an invitation to outside forces to step in and reintroduce a fairer system.And the cycle starts over again. This usually takes a number of generations; with the modern world and its condensation and acceleration of social processes, we’re likely coming up on an inflection point, now.When foreign invaders show up in China, they’re very often invited in to repair this damage. The sad truth is, in these hard times, it’s often the government itself that is the chief enemy of the people, not foreigners; Nurhachi, for example, was, in many ways, a liberator, freeing the people from onerous state interference, corruption, incompetence and abuse. In essence, very often, the people of China needed to be saved from their own masters.What we’re seeing in China fits neatly into this pattern. Of course, CPC-boosters and Hoo-Ra! China-nationalists will say that China has miraculously found a way *out* of this pattern now, and we need fear nothing, as the CPC is a historically unique, super-great genius organization that will permanently break the cycle. But, …. if you think, we’ve heard this before, we have. This is a dangerously arrogant conceit, common to nationalists around the world, that most people have a tendency to believe when things are going super well, or have been. The Nationalist believes that history speaks only their language, speaks to them Right Now, is absolute, and that Their Great Nation is not just another social structure with inherent flaws, but some kind of force of nature. Chinese patriots think that China is not just a place, a collection of people, but a historical inevitability.In truth, this belief in unconquerable power, in historical inevitability, in irresistible force, is very much like what happens in a basic biological metabolism. In a petri dish, where bacteria consume agar and resources, a bacterial colony’s numbers and prosperity are always at the very highest right before they start to collapse. Just when things look like they’re going better than they ever have, the structural problems inherent in the system cripple it. In the case of the bacteria in the petri dish, it’s because in-built to that experiment, there are limited resources. It looks like, at that moment when their population is highest, that it will go on expanding and improving forever. And then it all falls apart. The structural impediments China has incorporated are different, but no less serious.You need to put the arrogance of the Party Dictatorship types into historical context. If you think we’ve heard all of this before, it’s because we have, indeed, heard all of this before. If you think others have claimed a unique ability to overcome the price of dictatorship, then, …. yes, indeed, you have actually heard this before. It’s the same thing. It’s not new, and China and the CPC are not the end of history or unique or special.Here’s the caveat to dictatorship: The price of a negative policy is vastly greater than the boon of a good policy. This is why dictatorship has a tendency to produce negative outcomes. The benefit you get from a short run of good policy is always vastly outmatched by the high price of failure from bad policy.You want Augustus Caesar, but the inescapable reality is that you mostly get Tiberius or, worse, Commodus. Usually sooner rather than later.The problem with dictatorship (and this is what China is, a dictatorship; at best, it’s a party-oligarchy, and don’t mistake it) is that with no checks and balances, while nothing blocks good policies from being implemented, nothing blocks bad policies, either. Mao’s policies on the economy were almost wholly bad, and in many cases totally catastrophic. Millions, tens of millions, died a a result. You need to have no concern for mass death not to see this as a national tragedy.With no democracy, Mao’s policies were fully implemented. With no democracy, society suffered the domination of the Red Guards, who tore China to pieces before it was allowed a breathing space. And don’t forget the persecution of minorities; after decades of persecution and dismissal, at the moment, the Uighur people are basically being baked into oblivion by the Chinese state in one of the ugliest, most tragic actions of any state today. even people who usually ave nothing but reflexive praise for the CPC are beginning to question its moral foundations.Also, blind love of any dictatorship forgets that there are lots of dictatorships that produce misery, war, and failure; in fact, the vast majority of dictatorships fail to produce any progress at all.This also doesn’t take into account the costs of the problems inherent to the “development” that dictatorships champion. Think of South Korea, or wartime Japan. Japan’s economy was more or less predicated on imperial expansion; it was its very nature. It needed a different economic basis, very different fundamental assumptions, not to declare war on Asia. And don’t forget - dictatorships have ruled almost all societies from the beginning of history. The discussion we’re having here is pretty much the same discussion people had 4000 years ago. Its nature hasn’t changed, at all.Athens produced wonders the world had barely imagined. It did this when it liberated even a portion of its population from indentured servitude to political masters; it’s called the Golden Century for a reason. That amazing time, about 130 years long, more or less laid the foundations of 2300 years of Western civilization. And it was absolutely the result of the freeing of (some of) the people from political domination.The United States may have stolen its land from other people, a very lucky thing; it may have had slavery. But what built the West was not colonialism, but the liberation of its peoples from the burden of oppressive overlordship. As free(er) peoples, the full brilliance of the population was more capable of expressing itself. As in ancient Athens, by freeing the citizenry, it unleashed the full potential of its people.Sure, you get mediocrity. Some people love big statues and appeals to Greatness and Empire; some people just never stop admiring Caesar, or calling for him to return.Sure, you get a messy kind of slow evolution. But the social, political and economic capital that comes from this slow accumulation over time is more sustainable, in the long run.Sure, you can have a kind of prosperity under dictatorship. But if you want to see the future, in a dictatorship, all you need to do is look at the present, if you’re even able to; sometimes, the system itself prevents you from seeing the truth, or its own nature, to protect itself. In many ways, the problems China will have are, like South Korea’s, baked into the current system. Because it’s not democratic, it can’t evolve out of them. Instead, these problems just fester and get worse. It can paper over them, but it can’t escape them.So when you exclude the vast and incalculable opportunity costs of dictatorship, ignore all of the actual costs, and ignore the negative results (Congo, Somalia, Indonesia under Suharto, Imperial Japan, etc.), then sure - dictatorship looks great.But if you do this, anything looks great.Nothing in history is inevitable. And reality bites.

As a society, we don’t normally associate the issue of ‘rights’ where children are concerned. While there are criminal statutes on the books that protect them from severe physical and emotional harm, children are not provided rights in the same sense as adults.I’ve written an article that addresses this issue:“Human Rights for All?As a culture, we demand the basic human rights of freedom from violence, oppression, physical threat, and discrimination. Unfortunately, we somehow fail to include children as a part of humanity.It seems apparent that many of us are seemingly imprinted with the notion that children should be treated in a less respectful manner than other human beings. As a matter of fact, even some egalitarian and existential positions still fail to include children as a part of their philosophy.Many of us find it extremely difficult to entertain the notion that children should be afforded the same basic human rights that we demand for ourselves. This type of thinking predominates in spite of the fact that it would seem logical to grant children a greater leniency and tolerance with regard to their daily behavior. In light of the innocence of children, and their lack of understanding or knowledge as to how they should behave according to our culturally defined expectations, one would think that we would be less punitive toward children than we are toward ourselves on a daily basis. While they can be excused as novice students in the way of cultural expectations and the ways of the world, we adults, on the other hand, have no such justification for not following the rules of society. Yet, we adults demand that we not even be threatened with treatments of a violent nature... which I should add includes hitting, swats, whacks, taps, smacks, or spankings. Even our most murderous adult prisoners are legally protected from corporal punishment as a means of routine discipline.It seems to me that if anyone is deserving of physical pain as a means of punishment, it should be us adults rather than children. After all, we should already know better while children are still trying to learn what's expected of them. But, when we find ourselves forced to suffer punitive physical pain, we consider such treatment to be inhumane, cruel and unusual punishment, abusive treatment, and even torture in some cases. While many will support the idea of children being painfully struck as a punitive measure, these are often the same people who will scream 'Foul!' should they themselves ever be accosted for the same reasons.Some people find it difficult to conceptualize a more esteemed view of our young. This prejudicial attitude stands as the major obstacle in the way of children becoming viewed as sufficiently worthy of being considered viable members of the human race along with the rest of us. Until we put such thinking behind us, it would seem fruitless to propose that we expand our definition of 'fairness' to include children under the umbrella of treatments we consider for ourselves to be fair, just, and humane.The commonly held discriminatory ageist (prejudice based on age) view allows children to be held to a lower standard of treatment, which serves to explain why people find it acceptable to treat their own children with less respect than they would an adult stranger on the street. This double standard serves as the justification for people to deem children as being unworthy of being afforded the same protections from physical assault we've so vehemently demanded for ourselves.I don't believe any of us would deny the wisdom and humanity offered by the Christian tenet, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. Most of us like that idea when it comes to interacting with other adults. But we all pretty much know that when it comes to treating others, as we ourselves would like to be treated, most of us exclude children as being people or 'others'.There was a time in our history when 'we the people' also excluded slaves, women, and Native Americans, as well as children. Well, times have certainly changed, and we can look with pride at the social progress we've achieved over the years in developing a greater degree of social sophistication. As evidence of this fact, we can point to the just fairness we've come to show toward minorities and women by affording them the same protections under the law, which had been previously enjoyed exclusively by white men.It seems to me that if we are to remain on our path toward making continued strides in our social progress, a logical issue to now address should include one of our last remaining bastions of societal double standards, and discriminatory treatments... the lack of social-status afforded to the children of our society. Of course, there are developmental issues concerning children which serve to limit their full participation in this adult world of ours, but that fact doesn't have a bearing on the unrelated circumstance involving equal protections under the law... those same protections we consider the most basic of our rights and freedoms.There is certainly no reason why we cannot at least start talking about granting children the same protection from violent treatment we adults enjoy. As defined by the law of the land, a husband who spanks his wife against her will is guilty of Spousal Abuse, Assault, and Battery, and/or Domestic Violence. It's a law designed to deter the violence-prone husband from physically disciplining his wife, and to serve as a means to further safeguard her well being in the future. I suggest we take yet another step forward by offering children the same level of protection from violence that we provide for adults. After all, such an added protection granted to children would provide us with yet another reason to feel encouraged about our continuing efforts toward social progress, as we become a society of greater social sophistication.A note to spanking mothersYou want equality in your relationship with your husband, of course. You don't feel it would be acceptable for him to spank you for disobeying him, or making repeated mistakes just because he is bigger and stronger than you are.I totally agree with you. But, given this circumstance, I would like to ask, "What makes you more susceptible to being abused than a child?" You can state that you don't deserve to be hit, but so would any child. That's not much of an argument. You can say that the relationship you have with your husband is 'different'. But, no loving relationship is 'different' when it comes to treating a loved one in a violent manner. You can say that you are 'responsible' for your kids as a justification for hitting them, just as I can take the position that a man is responsible for his wife, and should, therefore, have the right to 'keep her in line', to discourage her from embarrassing him in public, and to teach her to stop making the same stupid mistakes all the time. For every excuse you can state as a justification for hitting kids, I can counter with the same type of chauvinistic excuses for men hitting their wives as a means of discipline (as many husbands once did).The difference is, you are 'abused' if you get spanked against your will, while your children are not. I'm simply asking what makes you think you're better than a child, and therefore deserving of a more respectful treatment. Is it because you think that a spanking would be more harmful to you than it would be to a child?We know from countless testimony (which young children are ill-equipped to provide) that all adults are emotionally harmed by threats or acts of violence to varying degree's, regardless of whether physical injury has occurred. The sad irony here is that young children are much more vulnerable to suffering emotional damage as the result of assaultive acts (including threats) than are we adults.Just as you moms would like to be legally protected from the threat of physical and emotional harm at the hand of a bullying husband, so should your children be protected in the same manner from the hand of a bullying parent.A note to spanking fathersTraditionally, it has been the male species that has been most guilty of denying basic human rights to those viewed as smaller and weaker. We men have practiced the philosophy of 'might makes right' from the beginnings of known History. Perhaps we've come a long way from our knuckle-dragging, cavemen ancestors, but men, it's time we evolved further beyond such atavistic tendencies. We've already evolved beyond corporal punishment as a routine means of controlling law-breakers and our women. Let's take the next step-up in our level of humanity by also putting behind us the corporal punishment of children as well.The Ins and Outs of Double Standards and Discriminatory TreatmentsFor those of you who may not be aware, a 'double-standard' involves holding another gender, ethnic group, race, religious group, or age group, in lower regard than the one with which an individual identifies themselves as being a part. These societal groups of 'less worthy', 'inferior', 'unsavory', looked-down upon segments of humanity have historically been the victims of unfair and discriminatory practices by the majority, the ruling class, and/or those in power.Our human past is filled with examples of various social groups being treated with a double standard within their particular society at large. And even though we can safely say that the existence of these double-standards have diminished over time, we have not yet evolved to the point of social sophistication that would have us putting an end to all unjust double-standards.We now see that Western Cultures have reached a point where even the previously seen 'lowly' Woman (who was once denied the right to vote and was physically punished by husbands as a socially acceptable practice) has been accorded equal legal protections from all forms of violent treatment, whether injurious or not. Women, and especially wives, have been the victims of one of the most enduring double standards of all time, and still suffer expressions of this unjust, prejudicial attitude toward them by men in many parts of the world.With the women of our culture now being generally granted the same respect, consideration, and protections that men have traditionally demanded for themselves, perhaps the time has come when we are able to move yet further ahead in our social evolvement by considering the notion that children might be worthy of a more respectful treatment as well. After all, children are the last remaining segment of our society being acceptably victimized by a double standard in terms of legal protections from the threat of physical and emotional violence. In this regard especially, children are being denied their basic human rights.We should remain ever mindful that just a relatively short time ago in our history, wives being beaten with switches were not being 'beaten' as far as their husbands were concerned... they were being disciplined. The language that was then used as a reflection of a double standard toward wives is the same language parents now use in describing the treatment of their children under a double standard. Husbands didn't speak in terms of hitting their wives... they spoke in terms of 'correcting' them, keeping them in-line, and having to show them who's boss. People knew exactly what these terms and expressions meant, even though the language did not apply to a treatment of the male establishment. Men had a different language to describe such a treatment of themselves... Assault.It's not quite enough to have parents stop spanking without those same parents also experiencing a change in attitude toward children. While we would see less physical injury occurring to children as the result of eliminating the practice of spanking (granted, no small thing), we would still see the ravages of emotional damage occurring to children as the result of their being held to a double-standard. The continued existence of this double standard would still see children being treated with disrespect in the form of disregard, dismissal, insensitivity, and being regarded with the demeaning rejection of harsh demeanor. As we've seen occur in Sweden*, perhaps a legislated ban on spanking would motivate parents to increase the level of their parenting skills.If we are to consider children a part of humanity, it's time we brought them into the fold by starting to consider the possibility that our young might be even more susceptible to the emotional harm of being treated with disrespect than we adults.The over-riding issue at hand here concerns the fact that all adults, even including the most vicious of incarcerated criminals, are legally protected from physical punishments as a disciplinary practice, while children are left excluded from such legal protections. This discriminatory inequity is the reflection of a prejudice against minor children on a societal level... it's a prejudice known as Ageism.Ageism is just as difficult a social issue to overcome as the bigotry of Racism or Misogyny because these behaviors represent the same behavioral characteristics (an irrational, misguided, and misinformed prejudice against others). While the targets of prejudicial intolerance might differ, the basis for group prejudices remains the same.The male chauvinist views his wife as a sexually objectified possession who is also seen through an attitude which dictates that the wife is held in lower regard than his male peers. As a result of this prejudicial, discriminatory attitude toward the female gender, wives are subject to be treated with what is seen as a justified, deserving lower standard of respect and consideration. This lower standard of treatment is closely associated with women being designated a lower social status than men as a result of their being perceived as the inferior 'weaker sex'. The 'real man' reserves his friendships for other equally deserving men... he rules his roost with an ever present aire of aloof superiority over an understandably diminished and bowed 'little lady', who dutifully meets his demands and satisfies his needs in her role as bought and paid for chattel to be used as a bed-partner, mother, cook, and housemaid. And, the basis for this problem lies with a man in possession of a superior attitude toward women.We are all fairly familiar with the specter of Racism. The behavioral dynamics are the same as those comprising the prejudices of Ageism and Misogyny... the targeted group that's regarded as being 'inferior' is held to a lower standard of social-status, while justification is apparent to establish an acceptably lower standard of treatment for the targeted population deemed to be inferior. I should reiterate here that throughout History, the rationalizations used as excuses for 'physical discipline' have been basically the same for slaves, women, and children alike. Typically, these excuses have included striking the offenders for 'safety issues', 'disobedience', or 'defiance'.In the same vein, Ageism involves a perception of children as inferior forms of humanity, and as such, they are regarded as being justifiably held to a lower standard of treatment with less respectful considerations... children essentially being devalued in human terms and forced to function in the role of 'second class citizens'.All the above-mentioned forms of group prejudice present a formidable challenge in terms of effectively instilling a raised understanding, a higher level of consciousness, or increased levels of empathy through an educational process. To begin with, these are seldom individuals who feel a burning desire to change their existing attitudes toward those they regard as inferior human beings. Secondly, these prejudices commonly represent deep-seated orientations that were instilled in these individuals during their early formative years... which is a time when learned behavior is subject to manifest itself as deeply ingrained beliefs.It's my feeling that we should strive to progress beyond the inhumanity of socially accepted ageism in the same way that we've already progressed beyond the inhumanity of socially accepted racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Given this, I support the notion that children should be afforded the same societal protections from violence as are enjoyed by the rest of society. After all, it's simply a position calling for basic human rights for all of us.”Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9886222