I just wasn't raised with that idea and I saw no reason to raise my own kids with that idea.
My father fought in the front lines of two wars and had a Purple Heart. My mother escaped East Germany in her teens with her infant niece in tow to return the baby to it's mother. Her older sister had come home with the baby to attend their mother's funeral and the East German border guard did not let her take the baby home with her.
I come from people who believed in fighting the good fight and quietly standing up to tyranny in myriad ways.
It's not about obsessing about the unfairness of it all or pursuing self-destructive behavior. It's about honoring a child's expectation for the world to live up to a lot of the high-minded claims of duty and honor and so forth that we talk about and often don't follow through on.
I did my best to follow through as a parent and I think I did the right thing. My son eventually mellowed some in certain respects as he got older and developed a more complex world view and came to understand that sometimes the simple and obvious answer isn't really the best answer. But he was never broken and that mattered to me as a parent, so I'm content with the choices I made. I don't think they were a waste of my time, nor do I think they led my son astray.
A friend of mine thought it was unfair that people were judged by the clothes they wore, and she was going to fight the good fight and wear jeans to all occasions - work, school, dates, weddings, church, everything.
That sounds like "bored and has nothing but first world problems and no real idea what on earth injustice actually is" not "I'm really dedicated to justice."
I run multiple websites to help the homeless. This began when I was still homeless myself.
I currently do live in t-shirts and sweat pants, in part due to dire poverty and not because I prefer to dress this way. "Ima gonna fight for my right to live in jeans even for weddings" doesn't really compare to having a Purple Heart or smuggling a baby out of an oppressive regime and returning the child to its rightful mother.
My father fought in the front lines of two wars and had a Purple Heart. My mother escaped East Germany in her teens with her infant niece in tow to return the baby to it's mother. Her older sister had come home with the baby to attend their mother's funeral and the East German border guard did not let her take the baby home with her.
I come from people who believed in fighting the good fight and quietly standing up to tyranny in myriad ways.
It's not about obsessing about the unfairness of it all or pursuing self-destructive behavior. It's about honoring a child's expectation for the world to live up to a lot of the high-minded claims of duty and honor and so forth that we talk about and often don't follow through on.
I did my best to follow through as a parent and I think I did the right thing. My son eventually mellowed some in certain respects as he got older and developed a more complex world view and came to understand that sometimes the simple and obvious answer isn't really the best answer. But he was never broken and that mattered to me as a parent, so I'm content with the choices I made. I don't think they were a waste of my time, nor do I think they led my son astray.