When I saw the title of this I thought, "Come on, you're joking," but I soon realised it applied to my mother's relationship with me. When I was about to turn 20 (in 1968 - conscription call up age) I told my mother I would go on the run rather than be forced into the army. She replied that she would be obliged to inform the authorities of my whereabouts; even though she was against the war in Vietnam, she couldn't abide the idea of me failing to obey the law. I believe she had a very harsh upbringing. I would like to ask my mother about that now, but she died many years ago. (As it turned out, my number wasn't picked in the raffle, so I didn't have to do a runner after all.)
The household is where it begins, yes, but it's then reinforced by schooling, then again for some in the academy (though the culture of obedience is more subtle) then yet again via wage labor.
Obviously it's more complicated still, when you bring in our relationship to the state, economics, and so on. It's not just that we obey the rulers, we seldom have any opportunity to exercise our sovereignty, most critically because of our alienation from the land.
Team sport - the entire concept of teaming - and the way some parents push their kids into joining in so very early, is a huge culprit, in my opinion. I never once joined any sports, nor did my son. I played all summer, free as a bird. I actually probably had too little discipline. Unfortunately, life changed when I had my son, and he was in daycare from less than a year of age until he was eight, when he latch-keyed. I got home only an hour after he got out of school, and our next door neighbor was a home-schooler, so he was usually over there playing in the back yard or inside in bad weather. It worked out, but it made me damned nervous. Poverty is a hell of a taskmaster. I just couldn't afford daycare anymore.
Hm. I don't agree about team sports in and of themselves. I do think that sports can reproduce already existing relations, like the way US football is one giant allegory for imperialism and militarism. Yet soccer by contrast had this long history tied to resistance.
Or consider how football (soccer) clubs represent the best and worst of their countries' cultures, like the Palestinian clubs who continue to try and play in the midst of genocide and being directly targeted and killed for the very fact that they represent the hope and resilience of a people, vs Israeli teams like the thuggish Maccabis, who from their historical namesake to their behavior, represent Israeli violence.
While valid points are made, I can think of several people I know who unquestionably follow authority for the opposite reason. They were reared with such loving, supportive parents they believe all authority is as benign and well meaning as Mom and Dad were. If ICE says the person was a criminal and going to need to be locked up to protect you — then it’s got to be true.
Can understand that. My daughter used to say, 'They wouldn't do anything to hurt us, their job is to look after us.' Took a while for her to see, that too many are now in it entirely for what they can get out of being in government, of any kind. It once was true that leaders took good care of their people. Not anymore, it has become a money and power making career, and they will serve the highest bidder at the drop of a few thousand dollars.
There are still the odd one or two who do take up politics in an effort to help the people who voted them in, but too many lie their way into a position and forget every promise they ever made or, they're like Howard who had different degrees of promise. That's the man who began bribing pensioners before elections, a few happily took the money but didn't give him their vote, others took the money and gave him the vote. It took a few elections for all to catch on and stop giving him the vote, so when he left it was not in his coffin as he said would happen.
Well put. Often relatively stable middle class families raise their children with prejudice against "lower-class" people who must be watched and are always up to no good. If the "responsible people in charge" sometimes do illegal and brutal things to them it is in their best interests and in the interests of a morally upstanding society and so on.
These are the people who keep the monsters in charge; often going on to be police, bureaucrats, councillors, people with high-viz jackets and so on. The banality of evil is often these dull, obedient people needing control and carrying out orders. Obeying authority whatever the situation.
This can be a complicated point because there's often something else going on that messes with the child's basic instincts such as appropriate fear. gut feelings, etc.. For example parents who shield their children too much from what's unpleasant or dangerous (say, after 5, 6, 7 years of age. So the child is stopped from gradually developing/growing a more reality based discriminating wisdom while anchored in a mostly protective environment. So some stay in a kind of Pollyanna bubble that's harder to break through until the shock of some of life's hard knocks.
I used to wave at cops for this reason. But it also has me extra-horrified by abuse of power when I find out about it, because I expect authority to live up to a standard.
The world is not exactly overrun by rebels and freethinkers. Most people are sheep and followers. Honestly, I don't even think that's mainly a parenting issue - it's just human nature. Human beings evolved as social creatures: belonging to the group increased the chances of survival, while defying the tribe, its rules, or its leaders often meant isolation, hardship, or death.
That instinct is still with us. People want to belong, they want someone to tell them what's right, what's wrong, and who's to blame. That's why people gravitate toward leaders, ideologies, religions, political parties, influencers - and so pretty much anything that gives them certainty and a sense of identity. Challenging authority, by contrast, carries social costs. Those who question prevailing norms frequently face ostracism, ridicule, professional consequences, or other forms of punishment. People will call you crazy, selfish, dangerous, or irresponsible long before they seriously engage with what you're saying.
The state benefits from this mentality just as every institution. They constantly preach peace, civility, and respect for the rules when it comes to ordinary people, while relying on force whenever their own interests are threatened. They tell people that violence is never the answer, yet the entire system of projected peace and democracy is a house of cards resting on violence. From cops bashing in heads to endless wars fought on behalf of oligarchs and even genocide in the name of peace and freedom. If you refuse to comply long enough, force eventually enters the picture. Or as they say, if you don't move, you won't feel your chains.
This conditioning works so well that many people genuinely believe the police have the right to take your life because you talked back, ran away, or resisted. The conversation immediately becomes about whether the victim "deserved it" instead of whether the use of force was justified. The assumption is always that authority was right and the individual was wrong. They say that even in legal proceedings, the testimony of law enforcement including the FBI, is never questioned, whereas the testimony of an average person is seen as unreliable and biased. This is how the state gets away with locking up dissidents. And of course we all know about the FBi routeinly entrapping people and getting them to commit crimes, which they then pretend to catch, so they can justify their budget.
The cruel irony is that many of the loudest defenders of this stuff are struggling themselves. They're overworked, underpaid, drowning in debt, politically ignored, and treated as disposable by the same system they defend. But instead of directing their anger at the people and institutions with actual power, they aim it at whoever they've been told is beneath them. It's easier to punch down than punch up.
The more powerless people feel, the more attractive authority becomes. The less control they have over their own lives, the more they idolize those who have control over others. That's why so many people confuse obedience with virtue and authority with legitimacy. They don't question power - they identify with it, defend it, and sometimes even celebrate its abuses, as long as they're happening to the "right" people.
More and more people that survive abuse, like a war situation, suffer from, what we now call PTSD. Parent(s) with PTSD need to control every situation. Their children become submissive as not to anger the parent.. It causes more often transgenerational trauma.
Parents commit the “original sin” by lying to their children, then eventually the kids figure it out but have been conditioned that it is normal to see dishonesty in the ruling class. This allows Politics to exist. Dishonesty and trust are incompatible. And what was that original lie? Santa.
Wow, Kathleen, I have always said that. How can we blame them when we start lying to them from birth. Instead of telling them the truth about Santa (geez, maybe we could soften the blow a bit) but if we teach them that some stranger is fulfilling their wishes than what are we telling them? Then we turn around and punish them for lying to us. It's a mixed message and a damaging one at that. If they can receive and understand that Goldilocks and the 3 Bears is a fairy tale, then why can't they understand that Santa is a fairy tale as well.
And then we add insult to injury through the commercialization of the whole Christmas thing. They sit that fat man dressed in a red and white suit in department stores and everywhere else we can sit him. And then we let our children "sit" on the lap of a strange man pretending to be the one who will bring them presents, asking them have they been naughty or nice. The innuendoes are insidious.
On the other hand, I never taught that to mine, and Lord, did the world give them the blues about it. So now, my grandchildren are all surrounded by the Christmas madness because my children didn't have it so they are giving it to theirs. All I can do is shake my head. They know I don't celebrate those holidays, they see me as strange and weird.
My mother didn't tell us the Santa story, and I never told my kids...but we did celebrate Christmas. Nor did I lie to my kids about anything else. I'm not sure actually whether my grandkids have been told the Santa story. My daughter-in-law was raised by rigid fundamentalist parents, and they spend Christmases there--where my son says, they are given far too many presents, but he's also been telling me lately about the abusiveness, especially the sexism, of the way she was raised.
I strongly agree about the Santa thing - it makes children question everything they were ever told once they learn the truth, so they won't believe their parents about real things. It also discourages the child from appreciating the gifts their parents sacrifice to give them. It is also icky and gross to make children sit on a man's lap and tell them secrets. It's the most disgusting, pedophilic thing in our stupid western culture. Santa is also racially problematic, and a corporate creation (look it up - he's a Coke mascot) and is sacrireligious. I know a lot of Christians who think Santa is just great and I honestly think, choose one or the other (or let the stupid holiday go entirely) but not both. I won't hate on genuine religious christian belief but I draw the line at Santa.
Yes, narjis of many camels, it took me a minute to make the pedophilic connection. We tell our children, don't talk to strangers, and then we sit our children on the lap of a stranger. Some children are terrified of this man in a costume. They cry and scream and what do parents do, force the child to sit there anyways. Not all parents but it happens. It's really weird how things become normalized in Western cultures.
Excerpt: "While we do not see the overt sacrificing of children in our homes and churches, etc., we do see the covert sacrificing of a child’s innocence by the adults who prey on them with this lie of Santa Claus and Christmas. And then after this lying season is over, they want their children to be honest with them. They chastise their children for lying but are justified in spending at least an entire 40 day season of lying to them.
To me, this makes everyone who participates in this ritual, a child predator.
They are preying on children through the ritual of pretense that has no basis in truth. Even Santa’s Reindeers are not males. And Santa is simply a white washed version of the ancient mysterious child catcher named Krampus, who beat bad children and kidnapped them and placed them in his sack."
Nana's Christmas Rant, Part 2: The Dark Side Of Christmas: Nimrod's Tree And The Worship Of The Anunnaki
Bad parenting certainly is one culprit. Maybe even more so, though, could be religion. The three theologies spawned and nurtured in the desert wastes, at least.
Last two world wars were secular, not religious. And wars are based on an absolute authority that kills millions.
Whether you are secular or religious then - doesn't correlate. What is more of a correlation is your psychological upbringing as Caitlin points out, or other psychological factors, which can happen in both secular and religious settings.
Capitalism and Fascism are major religions that trump many others. Millions of people are willing to compromise their other alleged religious values in order to make profits
It might seem there was perhaps a bit of a religious element on the Axis side of WW2, with its anti-Semitism. US imperial wars, e.g. against Vietnam and Iraq, were certainly secular but clearly not based on any absolute authority: I'd say they were driven more by capitalist greed and insecurity than religious sentiments, although "God-less Communism" was invoked in the first case.
I think that the world is in its present state for many reasons. Bad parenting, propaganda. School. When my son started school, he ran into several teachers where "no" was just not an option. Some teachers insulted the kids. I took my son out of school in grade 3 because I felt school was emotionally damaging for him. I had visits from teachers to tell me what a terrible thing I was doing. I have never regretted taking him out of that place and he has told me that he is thankful that I did.
Ummm. “Parents” have been mostly extinct for decades…
Just walk into any urban setting and you will see the results of children who have raised themselves. Grown people having tantrums when they don’t receive a participation trophy for breathing oxygen…
A true parent will never accept “no” from a child but will discuss and debate the issues that are open for debate.
Teaching a child to think is the true job of a parent.
“Teachers” are an entirely different story. They have been extinct longer than “parents”.
“Education” is 100% regurgitation of programming. No thinking, reasoning or debating happening today.
Further proof than mankind is DEvolving. Evolution is such a lie. Even with all this technology and data that we’re drowning in, our great grandparents were much smarter than we will ever be. “Necessity is the mother of invention” shows they could come up with solutions to real problems and make do with almost nothing. They knew how to think, reason and debate topics. People today are mindless zombies guzzling down entertainment and getting softer by the minute.
I also see a lack of ability to refuse bad actions common in my community, State, and Federal (in Australia) levels. I see Israel as like a spoiled child of a local gangster, who is never properly stopped from hurting others, so slowly increases their abuse until they're murdering, raping, and torturing the neighbors. Then gangster Uncle Sam joins in this abuse with their local cleaners, despite resistance from their family members, so they abuse their own family. And other families start openly abusing their families. Enough is enough is enough to know.
That's how my parents raised me. No one raises their children that way anymore. These days parents treat their children more like pets. There is almost no discipline. I would expect that the new generation would be immune to authoritarianism.
Stanley Milgram- 'Obedience to Authority', Etienne de la Boetie-
“The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude”
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces ".
Arrogance, delusion, tyranny, exaggeration, injustice, betrayal, lack of sincerity in work, not forbidding evil, transgression of human law, espionage, lying, show off, hypocrisy, bribery, insults, calling names, corruption, extremism, intolerance, genocide, and discrimination (racism, nationalism, tribalism, sectarianism, and politics) and disbelief and tyranny are an immoral stances -
As the great Howard Zinn said (paraphrased) "Our problem isn't civil disobedience--it's civil obedience."
In other words, "Just say no to people who don't deserve your loyalty and obedience!"
Just say No to the existance of the Terrorist State of Israel.
When I saw the title of this I thought, "Come on, you're joking," but I soon realised it applied to my mother's relationship with me. When I was about to turn 20 (in 1968 - conscription call up age) I told my mother I would go on the run rather than be forced into the army. She replied that she would be obliged to inform the authorities of my whereabouts; even though she was against the war in Vietnam, she couldn't abide the idea of me failing to obey the law. I believe she had a very harsh upbringing. I would like to ask my mother about that now, but she died many years ago. (As it turned out, my number wasn't picked in the raffle, so I didn't have to do a runner after all.)
our parents were raised with "the back of your hand" as they used to say.
The household is where it begins, yes, but it's then reinforced by schooling, then again for some in the academy (though the culture of obedience is more subtle) then yet again via wage labor.
Obviously it's more complicated still, when you bring in our relationship to the state, economics, and so on. It's not just that we obey the rulers, we seldom have any opportunity to exercise our sovereignty, most critically because of our alienation from the land.
Team sport - the entire concept of teaming - and the way some parents push their kids into joining in so very early, is a huge culprit, in my opinion. I never once joined any sports, nor did my son. I played all summer, free as a bird. I actually probably had too little discipline. Unfortunately, life changed when I had my son, and he was in daycare from less than a year of age until he was eight, when he latch-keyed. I got home only an hour after he got out of school, and our next door neighbor was a home-schooler, so he was usually over there playing in the back yard or inside in bad weather. It worked out, but it made me damned nervous. Poverty is a hell of a taskmaster. I just couldn't afford daycare anymore.
Hm. I don't agree about team sports in and of themselves. I do think that sports can reproduce already existing relations, like the way US football is one giant allegory for imperialism and militarism. Yet soccer by contrast had this long history tied to resistance.
See:
https://www.plutobooks.com/product/a-peoples-history-of-soccer-68bff8cb97aaf/
Or any of Africa's A Country's many recent takes on the World Cup:
https://africasacountry.com/series/2026-mens-fifa-world-cup
Including their latest special issue:
https://africasacountry.com/store/product/what-do-they-know-of-football
Or consider how football (soccer) clubs represent the best and worst of their countries' cultures, like the Palestinian clubs who continue to try and play in the midst of genocide and being directly targeted and killed for the very fact that they represent the hope and resilience of a people, vs Israeli teams like the thuggish Maccabis, who from their historical namesake to their behavior, represent Israeli violence.
Thank you for speaking this truth.
While valid points are made, I can think of several people I know who unquestionably follow authority for the opposite reason. They were reared with such loving, supportive parents they believe all authority is as benign and well meaning as Mom and Dad were. If ICE says the person was a criminal and going to need to be locked up to protect you — then it’s got to be true.
Can understand that. My daughter used to say, 'They wouldn't do anything to hurt us, their job is to look after us.' Took a while for her to see, that too many are now in it entirely for what they can get out of being in government, of any kind. It once was true that leaders took good care of their people. Not anymore, it has become a money and power making career, and they will serve the highest bidder at the drop of a few thousand dollars.
There are still the odd one or two who do take up politics in an effort to help the people who voted them in, but too many lie their way into a position and forget every promise they ever made or, they're like Howard who had different degrees of promise. That's the man who began bribing pensioners before elections, a few happily took the money but didn't give him their vote, others took the money and gave him the vote. It took a few elections for all to catch on and stop giving him the vote, so when he left it was not in his coffin as he said would happen.
Well put. Often relatively stable middle class families raise their children with prejudice against "lower-class" people who must be watched and are always up to no good. If the "responsible people in charge" sometimes do illegal and brutal things to them it is in their best interests and in the interests of a morally upstanding society and so on.
These are the people who keep the monsters in charge; often going on to be police, bureaucrats, councillors, people with high-viz jackets and so on. The banality of evil is often these dull, obedient people needing control and carrying out orders. Obeying authority whatever the situation.
This can be a complicated point because there's often something else going on that messes with the child's basic instincts such as appropriate fear. gut feelings, etc.. For example parents who shield their children too much from what's unpleasant or dangerous (say, after 5, 6, 7 years of age. So the child is stopped from gradually developing/growing a more reality based discriminating wisdom while anchored in a mostly protective environment. So some stay in a kind of Pollyanna bubble that's harder to break through until the shock of some of life's hard knocks.
I used to wave at cops for this reason. But it also has me extra-horrified by abuse of power when I find out about it, because I expect authority to live up to a standard.
The world is not exactly overrun by rebels and freethinkers. Most people are sheep and followers. Honestly, I don't even think that's mainly a parenting issue - it's just human nature. Human beings evolved as social creatures: belonging to the group increased the chances of survival, while defying the tribe, its rules, or its leaders often meant isolation, hardship, or death.
That instinct is still with us. People want to belong, they want someone to tell them what's right, what's wrong, and who's to blame. That's why people gravitate toward leaders, ideologies, religions, political parties, influencers - and so pretty much anything that gives them certainty and a sense of identity. Challenging authority, by contrast, carries social costs. Those who question prevailing norms frequently face ostracism, ridicule, professional consequences, or other forms of punishment. People will call you crazy, selfish, dangerous, or irresponsible long before they seriously engage with what you're saying.
The state benefits from this mentality just as every institution. They constantly preach peace, civility, and respect for the rules when it comes to ordinary people, while relying on force whenever their own interests are threatened. They tell people that violence is never the answer, yet the entire system of projected peace and democracy is a house of cards resting on violence. From cops bashing in heads to endless wars fought on behalf of oligarchs and even genocide in the name of peace and freedom. If you refuse to comply long enough, force eventually enters the picture. Or as they say, if you don't move, you won't feel your chains.
This conditioning works so well that many people genuinely believe the police have the right to take your life because you talked back, ran away, or resisted. The conversation immediately becomes about whether the victim "deserved it" instead of whether the use of force was justified. The assumption is always that authority was right and the individual was wrong. They say that even in legal proceedings, the testimony of law enforcement including the FBI, is never questioned, whereas the testimony of an average person is seen as unreliable and biased. This is how the state gets away with locking up dissidents. And of course we all know about the FBi routeinly entrapping people and getting them to commit crimes, which they then pretend to catch, so they can justify their budget.
The cruel irony is that many of the loudest defenders of this stuff are struggling themselves. They're overworked, underpaid, drowning in debt, politically ignored, and treated as disposable by the same system they defend. But instead of directing their anger at the people and institutions with actual power, they aim it at whoever they've been told is beneath them. It's easier to punch down than punch up.
The more powerless people feel, the more attractive authority becomes. The less control they have over their own lives, the more they idolize those who have control over others. That's why so many people confuse obedience with virtue and authority with legitimacy. They don't question power - they identify with it, defend it, and sometimes even celebrate its abuses, as long as they're happening to the "right" people.
Feeling your chains might be the first sign of resisting.
Many humans are sheeple.
Good observation
Ginnie, That is why Revolutions are hard to come by.
I console myself by going back to Khalil Gibran's poem, "Your Children". https://www.poetry.com/poem/25261/your-children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you, they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite.
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hands be for happiness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So He loves the bow that is stable.
More and more people that survive abuse, like a war situation, suffer from, what we now call PTSD. Parent(s) with PTSD need to control every situation. Their children become submissive as not to anger the parent.. It causes more often transgenerational trauma.
Parents commit the “original sin” by lying to their children, then eventually the kids figure it out but have been conditioned that it is normal to see dishonesty in the ruling class. This allows Politics to exist. Dishonesty and trust are incompatible. And what was that original lie? Santa.
Wow, Kathleen, I have always said that. How can we blame them when we start lying to them from birth. Instead of telling them the truth about Santa (geez, maybe we could soften the blow a bit) but if we teach them that some stranger is fulfilling their wishes than what are we telling them? Then we turn around and punish them for lying to us. It's a mixed message and a damaging one at that. If they can receive and understand that Goldilocks and the 3 Bears is a fairy tale, then why can't they understand that Santa is a fairy tale as well.
And then we add insult to injury through the commercialization of the whole Christmas thing. They sit that fat man dressed in a red and white suit in department stores and everywhere else we can sit him. And then we let our children "sit" on the lap of a strange man pretending to be the one who will bring them presents, asking them have they been naughty or nice. The innuendoes are insidious.
On the other hand, I never taught that to mine, and Lord, did the world give them the blues about it. So now, my grandchildren are all surrounded by the Christmas madness because my children didn't have it so they are giving it to theirs. All I can do is shake my head. They know I don't celebrate those holidays, they see me as strange and weird.
I console myself by going back to Khalil Gibran's poem, "Your Children". https://www.poetry.com/poem/25261/your-children
It's a tough call when living in a society that is filled with all manner of deception and coercion to conform.
My mother didn't tell us the Santa story, and I never told my kids...but we did celebrate Christmas. Nor did I lie to my kids about anything else. I'm not sure actually whether my grandkids have been told the Santa story. My daughter-in-law was raised by rigid fundamentalist parents, and they spend Christmases there--where my son says, they are given far too many presents, but he's also been telling me lately about the abusiveness, especially the sexism, of the way she was raised.
Yes, Mary, you really get to read that Khalil Gibran story when it comes to the grands, for sure.
Thank you, Nana. "a society that is filled with all manner of deception" - are we in The Matrix? This entire melieu of deceit allows the Forever Wars.
Kathleen, if you ask me, yes we are in The Matrix, that's why it's hard to unplug so many people.
I strongly agree about the Santa thing - it makes children question everything they were ever told once they learn the truth, so they won't believe their parents about real things. It also discourages the child from appreciating the gifts their parents sacrifice to give them. It is also icky and gross to make children sit on a man's lap and tell them secrets. It's the most disgusting, pedophilic thing in our stupid western culture. Santa is also racially problematic, and a corporate creation (look it up - he's a Coke mascot) and is sacrireligious. I know a lot of Christians who think Santa is just great and I honestly think, choose one or the other (or let the stupid holiday go entirely) but not both. I won't hate on genuine religious christian belief but I draw the line at Santa.
Yes, narjis of many camels, it took me a minute to make the pedophilic connection. We tell our children, don't talk to strangers, and then we sit our children on the lap of a stranger. Some children are terrified of this man in a costume. They cry and scream and what do parents do, force the child to sit there anyways. Not all parents but it happens. It's really weird how things become normalized in Western cultures.
Excerpt: "While we do not see the overt sacrificing of children in our homes and churches, etc., we do see the covert sacrificing of a child’s innocence by the adults who prey on them with this lie of Santa Claus and Christmas. And then after this lying season is over, they want their children to be honest with them. They chastise their children for lying but are justified in spending at least an entire 40 day season of lying to them.
To me, this makes everyone who participates in this ritual, a child predator.
They are preying on children through the ritual of pretense that has no basis in truth. Even Santa’s Reindeers are not males. And Santa is simply a white washed version of the ancient mysterious child catcher named Krampus, who beat bad children and kidnapped them and placed them in his sack."
Nana's Christmas Rant, Part 2: The Dark Side Of Christmas: Nimrod's Tree And The Worship Of The Anunnaki
https://topicsfromatoz.substack.com/p/nanas-christmas-rant-part-2-the-dark
🎯
Easter bunny…
Bad parenting certainly is one culprit. Maybe even more so, though, could be religion. The three theologies spawned and nurtured in the desert wastes, at least.
Last two world wars were secular, not religious. And wars are based on an absolute authority that kills millions.
Whether you are secular or religious then - doesn't correlate. What is more of a correlation is your psychological upbringing as Caitlin points out, or other psychological factors, which can happen in both secular and religious settings.
Capitalism and Fascism are major religions that trump many others. Millions of people are willing to compromise their other alleged religious values in order to make profits
They were Zionist, as Albert Pike had announced.
It might seem there was perhaps a bit of a religious element on the Axis side of WW2, with its anti-Semitism. US imperial wars, e.g. against Vietnam and Iraq, were certainly secular but clearly not based on any absolute authority: I'd say they were driven more by capitalist greed and insecurity than religious sentiments, although "God-less Communism" was invoked in the first case.
Belief in Government AuTHORity is a religious cult. False (NOT REAL) legitimacy without a shred of Divinity.
True but these are intertwined. "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
I think that the world is in its present state for many reasons. Bad parenting, propaganda. School. When my son started school, he ran into several teachers where "no" was just not an option. Some teachers insulted the kids. I took my son out of school in grade 3 because I felt school was emotionally damaging for him. I had visits from teachers to tell me what a terrible thing I was doing. I have never regretted taking him out of that place and he has told me that he is thankful that I did.
Ummm. “Parents” have been mostly extinct for decades…
Just walk into any urban setting and you will see the results of children who have raised themselves. Grown people having tantrums when they don’t receive a participation trophy for breathing oxygen…
A true parent will never accept “no” from a child but will discuss and debate the issues that are open for debate.
Teaching a child to think is the true job of a parent.
“Teachers” are an entirely different story. They have been extinct longer than “parents”.
“Education” is 100% regurgitation of programming. No thinking, reasoning or debating happening today.
Further proof than mankind is DEvolving. Evolution is such a lie. Even with all this technology and data that we’re drowning in, our great grandparents were much smarter than we will ever be. “Necessity is the mother of invention” shows they could come up with solutions to real problems and make do with almost nothing. They knew how to think, reason and debate topics. People today are mindless zombies guzzling down entertainment and getting softer by the minute.
I also see a lack of ability to refuse bad actions common in my community, State, and Federal (in Australia) levels. I see Israel as like a spoiled child of a local gangster, who is never properly stopped from hurting others, so slowly increases their abuse until they're murdering, raping, and torturing the neighbors. Then gangster Uncle Sam joins in this abuse with their local cleaners, despite resistance from their family members, so they abuse their own family. And other families start openly abusing their families. Enough is enough is enough to know.
That's how my parents raised me. No one raises their children that way anymore. These days parents treat their children more like pets. There is almost no discipline. I would expect that the new generation would be immune to authoritarianism.
Whenever I tell people they should be free, they assure me they shouldn’t.
Stanley Milgram- 'Obedience to Authority', Etienne de la Boetie-
“The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude”
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces ".
Arrogance, delusion, tyranny, exaggeration, injustice, betrayal, lack of sincerity in work, not forbidding evil, transgression of human law, espionage, lying, show off, hypocrisy, bribery, insults, calling names, corruption, extremism, intolerance, genocide, and discrimination (racism, nationalism, tribalism, sectarianism, and politics) and disbelief and tyranny are an immoral stances -