System Boundaries and Inheritance

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jennypenny
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by jennypenny »

I know this sounds cynical, but I'm not sure most people grasp the concepts of mortality and immortality enough for them to influence decisions. Most people aren't that deep.


@7W5 -- I've thought about this a lot recently. We've expanded our prepping to include all of our extended family and have plans to rework our house so that it can be a home base for anyone who needs it. Beyond that, I want to figure out how to keep enough to sustain us and still give of our time as well as our resources. It's like trying to figure out a SWR for our life energy. I think spreading our 'wealth' around to the people and places who need it now might have more impact than dumping anything leftover on them when we're dead.

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Ego
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by Ego »

jennypenny wrote:
Sun Apr 09, 2017 7:10 am
I know this sounds cynical, but I'm not sure most people grasp the concepts of mortality and immortality enough for them to influence decisions. Most people aren't that deep.
+1/2 They know it ends but they've seen a thousand movies with differing, sometimes fantastical versions of what happens. Those contradictory versions create the big scary unknown.

@dave, if you think this didn't embed itself deeply in a generation of children you are sorely mistaken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZPMJj-X9M

or this in the next generation....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llBbANmMc-o

I'm sure 7W can go back further to classic children's literature and find even better examples.
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Apr 09, 2017 5:56 am
So, I am asking "Who/what is your baby?" or "Who/what are you choosing to care for beyond yourself?" because I am interested in how other intelligent humans are making self-aware choices about how to incorporate the desire to care-take/nurture/leave-it-better-than-you-found-it-even-though-nobody-can-see-what-you-are-doing-camping-in-the-woods into their own lifestyle designs.
What would be the first question the alien looking down would ask? Hum, I wonder why they are doing that.

Despite Halfmoon's outright dismissal of brute's point, there must be a reason, a motivation, and that motivation will determine the answer to your question.

saving-10-years
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by saving-10-years »

Good question. We have one *baby* (actually now 20 and we hope advancing down the road to FI under his own steam within the next decade). This may sound like a puny goal but I see that my niece/nephew (31 and 35) are not on a great road and of my neighbours 4 offspring (2 in 30s and 2 in 20s) there is only one who is even aware that their current financial actions may have long term consequences. She recently sold her car as there is a perfectly adequate bus service and has thus shocked her mother. On the down side she has a vast mortgage on a four bed new build house which only two people live in.

I am increasingly using my skills in community ventures which benefit others, simply because these are ventures which I hope will keep alive, thrive and help others in turn. These are my gardens I suppose. One has been going for 100 years already and another for 40. Both need some new ideas and energy to help them continue along the way. Its time and skill rather than money in both cases. Its been interesting to take the reins from people in their 70s and 80s who have nurtured these gardens and are passing things on, it feels like a real honour to have been chosen. I would like to build on their work and (some day) do the same passing along.

@halfmoon's story about her DH's son really brings home to me that the unexpected can happen. For me FI is about having enough resources (and skills) to cope with the unexpected. I want my DS to have the same (the balance of skill and resources, and not just one or the other). I suspect he will inherit all we have and as we had him later in life he will not be old aged before he does so. We have encouraged him to have ideas and perhaps he will use our money to realise some of these. We are starting to explore realising some of our own artistic ideas and it could be that we have blown the lot by the time we move on. At one stage (when he was younger) we set out in our will all sorts of bequests here and there (including to neice and nephew and children in the extended family). But as DS has got older and started to spread his wings our confidence, that he will do the right thing has encouraged us to make a new will with a lot less limits. Taking @7w5's metaphor about the dolls house, we are giving him the tools and the materials and plans but if he decides not to want the dolls house he can make something else.

halfmoon
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by halfmoon »

Ego wrote:
Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:16 am
Despite Halfmoon's outright dismissal of brute's point, there must be a reason, a motivation, and that motivation will determine the answer to your question.
I'm not dismissing Brute's point; it's just a non sequitur. It's a given that the motivation for everything we do boils down to how it makes us feel. The trick for me is identifying what makes me feel good and why, and is it a momentary sensation (eating chocolate) or something that fulfills a larger sense of purpose.

I do disagree that we're all afraid of dying. You can't make that generalization, supported by a book/YouTube video or not. I personally don't fear death because I won't be around after it to experience any sense of loss. I greatly fear the death of my DH because it will be a staggering loss to me.

Not to get too far off topic (or has that ship sailed?), but I would love to hear more about your community ventures, @saving-10-years. How wonderful to be involved in something that values the collected wisdom of older people.

7Wannabe5
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Ego: Are you attempting to make the argument that mythology trumps biology? I'm not sure how much reading you have done in the realm of transition towns or post-peak survivalist literature, but it is pretty much universally accepted that mythology is extremely important and influential, and community-share dynamics can't exist for very long without strong mythology.

Perhaps, your perspective on the two clips you linked differs from mine, but I see the first as promoting the mythology of Nature Good/Human Bad and the second as promoting the mythology of Human Good/Nature Bad. However, what they both have in common is that they communicate that the "resource" that it is a shame or sadness to waste is a young, fertile female. And this is just reflective of good old biological common sense, or the most primitive level of husbandry/stewardship. If the intelligent aliens observing humans wanted to eat human-flesh for their Thanksgiving dinner after they arrive AND also for their Thanksgiving dinner in years to come, they wouldn't choose to kill Chrissie either, or take delight in seeing her killed by shark, ...or at least not yet...blah,ha,ha,ha.

For some reason or due to some happenstance, there is a cluster of members of this forum who are all right around the same age as me and you (52.) So, let's plug us into some happy future where we have all survived until age 92 due to our superior powers of rational decision making, and we are having a meet-up. We decide that we would like to indulge in some Thai food and a performance of the local symphony. Unfortunately, all the soil in which the vegetables for our meal might have been grown has been contaminated with mercury, and there are no human beings under the age of 60 who have received advanced instruction in musical performance. Bummer!

BRUTE
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by BRUTE »

that expression, non sequitur.. brute thinks it doesn't mean what halfmoon thinks it means.

brute likes the ego-answer to all human behavior because it's the simplest.

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jennypenny
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by jennypenny »

So is it more accurate to say that we're not striving for immortality personally, but that through our generosity and focus we're trying to assure that the things that are important to us -- whether people, ideas, or institutions -- live on after we're gone?

7Wannabe5
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@saving-10-years: I keep being surprised by how there really isn't some line in the sand at age 18 or 22 when the process of parenting ceases or ceases to change. Just the three years that took my kids from 25/22 to 28/25 have almost completely tipped me into the realm of silly-old-thing. Of course, this is likely due to the fact that my children are both more serious types than me, and several inches taller to boot. Almost everybody in my life treats me like a character out of Beatrix Potter, even when I do shocking things such as coming out as polyamorous. I don't understand how this happened. I used to be very tall and important.

I think our own individual interests/personalities/skills/experiences will determine the sort of gardens or "babies" we will support and the roles we will feel most comfortable in filling in providing that support. For instance, I have almost zero tolerance for bureaucratic paperwork, little ability to handle impoverished ruffians over the age of 10, and think dogs are mostly kind of useless, messy and smelly.
jennypenny said: So is it more accurate to say that we're not striving for immortality personally, but that through our generosity and focus we're trying to assure that the things that are important to us -- whether people, ideas, or institutions -- live on after we're gone?
Maybe we want them to live on in general, and the "after we are gone" is just an unavoidable reality. I don't think there would be a huge gap in coherence between the list of things we all wish to still be in existence when we are alive at age 92, and the list of things we hope will still be in existence when we are dead 20 years later. I mean, that's not the same thing as hoping that my great-great-grandchildren will live in a world locked in static memorial to the preferences of moi. And for some odd reason I find myself able to simultaneously hold hope for a bright world for humans of the future along with no rational belief that I will be floating around with angel wings looking down on them.

BRUTE
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Apr 09, 2017 10:41 am
I .. think dogs are mostly kind of useless, messy and smelly.
this is probably what dogs think about humans, too.

brute thinks jennypenny hits the nail on the head:
jennypenny wrote:So is it more accurate to say that we're not striving for immortality personally, but that through our generosity and focus we're trying to assure that the things that are important to us -- whether people, ideas, or institutions -- live on after we're gone?
by the way, @7Wannabe5: instead of typing "jennypenny said" at the beginning of the quotation, putting it inside the quote tag will make it show up all nice and formatted. like so: [ quote = "jennypenny" ], but without the spaces. (*)

* is this why jacob keeps using foot notes in non-physical media?

jennypenny's idea goes nicely with brute's way of thinking about "self" or "identity". who "is" brute? what "is" brute? while most humans certainly identify with the physical meat slop they inhabit, that is clearly not all. many humans identify with certain ideas to such an extent they start wars over them, or sacrifice their entire lives in their name. no moral judgement here, just observation.

so if a human's idea of "self", even subconsciously, consists of "islam" more than of "physical body", is it surprising when some islamist blows himself up? he's merely trading one part of "himself" (physical body) for another (the idea of islam). the same can be said when grandparents or parents work extra hours to increase the standard of living of their children and grandchildren.

in an effective sense, children ARE part of their parents, if goal-setting of the parents is analyzed, and pain felt. the idea of a parent giving their life for their child is a complete cliche for a reason. this is only possible if the parent identifies with their child's physical well-being stronger than with their own.

edit: this might be unique to humans - that the biologically motivated externalization of identity to offspring can be mentally transferred to practically any idea. this is a basic requirements for all human social constructs. the origin is the family, for spreading genes. but it was transferred to clan, tribe, religion, nation-state, communism, capitalism, and other "greater goods". typically, these very explicitly refer back to the biological impulse of the human infant. those evil communists are trying to kill brute's babies. those evil capitalists are impoverishing brute's babies for greed. those evil <other country/religion>ers are killing brute's babies for their personal <nationalism/religion>. Hitler referenced "land for the people". in the US military, it's "the constitution" and "freedoms" and "way of life", ostensibly not of the individual soldier, who's ready to die for them, but for "those like him" and especially "those coming after him", i.e. babies again. in this sense, all of human civilization is just a parasitic hack of humans' biological impulse to die for their fucking offspring.

the idea of "7Wannabe5" includes, in parts, the idea of her offspring not merely surviving, but living happy, fulfilled, and non-impoverished lives. since 7Wannabe5 has certain ideas about how these are to be achieved, and what's about to happen to The World (tm), it follows that she wants them to have the tools to achieve and solve what she wants to achieve and solve, or thinks they want to achieve and solve.

maybe the definition of a nihilist or a cynic is an individual who doesn't identify with anything outside of their physical well-being and immediate biological, hedonistic pleasure. in fact, it's interesting that cynics are most often men - who aren't hardwired to care for external biological entities to the degree that women are. the uppercase Cynic, like Diogenes, doesn't even care for his own biological well-being much, rejecting most clothes and earthly pleasures. except sunlight, though he might've just been trolling Alexander.

brute kind of forgot where he was going with this, and maybe there wasn't ever a point. but this type of "understanding" of why humans act the way they do (understanding in the Misesian sense) makes him very relaxed, and, for lack of a better word, happy, without reality having changed a bit.

saving-10-years
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by saving-10-years »

@7w5 where (when) the line gets drawn seems to be determined by all sorts of individual characteristics (your own and your childs). Agree that a couple of years make a huge difference. My son has had several health problems to deal with and some persist. Perhaps I worry too much, we've needed to do a risk assessment on (it seems) pretty much everything he ventures into since he was a year old. He's becoming his own man, but compared to where I was at 20 myself there is a HUGE difference. I was an adult. My husband when I met him at 24 was much more mature than any of the young adults I now know (or knew then). He knew how to sew, cook and make things out of wood. How to be a roadie, a political activist and deal in second hand books. :-)

There is a but coming here. I was eldest child in a single parent family where that parent expected me to take charge in many respects (non native English language speaker with almost no formal education). You probably see this in your own immigrant community in Detroit. DH lost both parents at 17 and then moved country, leaving his close but often dysfunctional family behind. We had no-one we could rely on, financially or otherwise. We grew up and were self-sufficient. Its only now, in later life, that I look back and see that we made some decisions about what to do in almost defensive fashion. Because failure would be catastrophic. Always moving forward because going back (home) was not a possibility. This probably looked very brave and dynamic to our fellows.

Hopefully DS will feel that he has the secure safety net that we lacked, and can make a wider range of choices in his own life because of this. At his age I was more capable than him, but he has I think more self-confidence than I did.

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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by halfmoon »

BRUTE wrote:
Sun Apr 09, 2017 10:00 am
that expression, non sequitur.. brute thinks it doesn't mean what halfmoon thinks it means.
Now you're just trying to press my buttons, brute! :lol:

I was attempting to point out that brute was ignoring 7wb5's original question by answering one that hadn't been asked...and with the sort of throwaway comment that diverts a conversation. I've done this myself. In any case, I have to withdraw my complaint because brute then confounded me with a long, thoughtful post including this:

'the idea of "7Wannabe5" includes, in parts, the idea of her offspring not merely surviving, but living happy, fulfilled, and non-impoverished lives. since 7Wannabe5 has certain ideas about how these are to be achieved, and what's about to happen to The World (tm), it follows that she wants them to have the tools to achieve and solve what she wants to achieve and solve, or thinks they want to achieve and solve.'

Makes sense to me.

BRUTE
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by BRUTE »

brute is a mystery. sometimes even to himself.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by ThisDinosaur »

I'm not too proud to admit that Ego's explanation applies to me. My kids are an extension of myself.
(Although, I can also be convinced that so is all of humanity and even all life from earth, for that matter.)
That said, my thinking about inheritance has changed over the years. I used to think I wanted to leave my offspring permanently in the next higher socioeconomic class when I die. Now, I think a better use of my "life energy" or whatever, would be to somehow teach my kids everything important that I ever learned in my life before they reach 18. Imagine how far ahead an 18 year old would be if, just for once, they actually listened to all the things their elders had to teach them. Generations and generations of wisdom and their whole life to apply it! It will never happen, but getting close would be better than money.

BRUTE
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by BRUTE »

interesting, too, what the "optimally raised human child" looks like. poor humans seem to believe that it's best to leave their offspring with a maximum of material wealth. middle class culture instead dictates maximum education. certain middle-class culture (MMM comes to mind) dictate that the child should NOT inherit wealth itself, but the right mindset and work ethic and what not, basically "character", which presumably made the parents successful (at what?). upper class culture probably dictates other goals again, but brute isn't very familiar with it.

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Ego
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by Ego »

Over the weekend I had a conversation about this with two friends who are both self-made and grew up in challenging circumstances that were very different from one another. I thought it was interesting that they both defined their twentysomething children as fragile. They were wondering about the parenting goldilocks point where kids get enough nurturing to thrive but not so much that it enables or outright encourages weakness. "Optimally raised child" reminded me of one topic that seemed important to them, the passivity of education vs the proactivity of learning.

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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by Riggerjack »

So, my question for the group is what is your expectation for the eventual dispersion or inheritance of your accumulated wealth? IOW, who or what is "your baby?" (if any) , and do you have any intention to provide service towards these same persons, place, ideal or ? with some of your acquired free time or life-energy? Also, are you considering this sort of boundary, or eventual flow, in your systems-thinking based lifestyle design?
Well, primarily, my wife. Younger than me by 7.5 years, and additional deficit of actuarial tables... So, my money must outlast me. The goal is maintaining independence, after our bodies wear down. Yes, I know, ego will thru shear force of will, still be biking centuries at a century. I intend to stay active, but I expect to hire help when it is appropriate. That means budgeting for having help in the end. No soylent towers for me, thank you.

The whole point of early retirement for me was to start my own business. With room for it to fail, because I am not the outgoing entrepreneur type. I plan to simply make a unique superior luxury product. If it takes off, I will use the profits to hire folks to keep it going. It's not like running a business long term was the goal. If it doesn't work out, I will just go back to making my little corner of the world the way I want it to be.

If the business works out, I will channel the money into my own nonprofit, creating new old growth forests, by planting people. Or, if you prefer, a wooded cemetery, rather than a people lawn. Buy up clear cuts, bury the dead, and dedicate the land.

While it is not impossible to move and develop cemeteries, it is both difficult and expensive. When trying to impose your will after your death, making opposing your goals difficult and expensive is a good as it gets.
I just read books by Harry Browne, the Moneyless Man, and Vicki Robin in rapid succession, and Jacob offers yet another perspective. If you attempt to draw a systems design of your lifestyle based on the stocks, flows, and boundaries defined or deemed most relevant by Libertarian Economics/Philosophy, they are not the same as those defined or deemed most relevant by Human Surviving/Thriving in Ecological System. The boundary between ME and everything else is much more narrowly defined by Harry Browne than it is by the Moneyless Man, and Vicki Robin and Jacob would fall somewhere in between. MM, VR, ERE, HB, would be the spectrum, as I read them.

The reason why I started thinking about inheritance is that I remembered something somebody had posted about how anthropological studies reveal that humans only tend towards offering true no-strings-attached gifts to their offspring. Some sort of reciprocation, however distant or diluted, is otherwise assumed. So, the Moneyless Man's ideal of local-gift-based economy is more selfless than known human patterns, but Browne/Randian theory is more selfish than known human patterns.
I couldn't disagree more. While I am certain The Moneyless Man would agree with your assessment, in my experience, the more eagerly someone espouses these ideas, the more they expect favor trading to come out in their favor.

Take the classic example. Barn raising. The community example looks like the barn raising in Witness. Everyone gets together, raise the post and beam framed barn on a sunny day with a picknick and dancing. And when it's done, you owe service to the community, as each member has needs you can fulfill. Only, in reality, that never happens.

Reality includes the ruined timbers, because joints were cut wrong by amateurs. The whole thing being out of plumb, because it was getting late. Adam wants you to "repay" him by harvesting his corn when you should be harvesting your corn. Little Timmy getting in the way, and getting damaged when something fell... Blah blah.

The "selfish solution" is to pay someone who knows what they are doing, and carrying the right insurance to do it for you. Everyone on the crew is getting paid in full, right now. There is minimal uncertainty about when and how debts will be paid.

I find I am greatly amused by the unpaid debts run up by the most "unselfish" people I've known. I'm not saying it's not possible to be selfless and want a community/communist solution. I am saying that it isn't nearly as common as proponents would have you believe.

Whereas my greedy capitalist approach will pay its own way.

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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by halfmoon »

Riggerjack wrote:
Mon Apr 10, 2017 7:57 pm
Take the classic example. Barn raising. The community example looks like the barn raising in Witness. Everyone gets together, raise the post and beam framed barn on a sunny day with a picknick and dancing. And when it's done, you owe service to the community, as each member has needs you can fulfill. Only, in reality, that never happens.

Reality includes the ruined timbers, because joints were cut wrong by amateurs. The whole thing being out of plumb, because it was getting late.
This made me laugh, because I've seen it. Our neighbors in E WA had a log cabin with a sideways-drooping roof that pained my eyes every time I saw it. Turns out they had a roofing party, invited all their friends, and provided beer and other fun-enhancers in exchange for communal work. In a big miscalculation, they didn't withhold the party favors until the work was done. Result: crooked roof.

Amazingly enough, they didn't learn. When they had a well drilled and wanted to lay pipe from the well to the house, they had a pipe-laying party...accent on party. The celebrants didn't bed the pipe properly, instead throwing dirt and rocks into the ditch with gay abandon. Down the line, they discovered that the pipe was leaking (because rocks) and had to dig it all up. :roll:

By the way: I absolutely love your plan to create old growth cemeteries.

IlliniDave
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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by IlliniDave »

I was thinking about the relative frailty of my 20-somethings after Ego's comment above. I'd have to say they are probably less frail than I was at the same age (it's hard to compare stages of life). What I'd done (unconsciously) was to make a suit of armor out of conservative decisions starting in high school (largely followed the advice of parents and grandparents). My kids opted to largely ignore the advice of parents and grandparents and left themselves more exposed initially upon fledging, and the ups and downs of the next 6-10 years toughened them up some. Unfortunately, perhaps, it also came with a done of cynicism and a habit of looking at most things through a negativity lens (they have a fascinating ability to bring the negative into sharp, magnified focus while blurring/diminishing the positive).

I don't know exactly what the optimum raising of a child is, but I suspect I fell well short of it. Nevertheless, to draw on an old platitude, there are many roads to Dublin, and they seem to be progressing in their own fashion. One thing I do know is it's not for me to be the puppeteer of their lives, though it is hard to resist the urge to steer them back onto the trail I'm familiar with.

I too like Riggerjack's idea about cemeteries.

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Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think this thread has sprouted at least 3 topics that might be worthy of their own threads.

1) Optimal Child-rearing/Education of the Gifted Child

2) Motivation related to transmission/preservation of means/memes into the future

3) Description of the most effective (not to be confused with most efficient), or the most reality-based, boundary between communal or ecological based economy vs. libertarian or money/price based economy

BRUTE wrote:interesting, too, what the "optimally raised human child" looks like. poor humans seem to believe that it's best to leave their offspring with a maximum of material wealth. middle class culture instead dictates maximum education. certain middle-class culture (MMM comes to mind) dictate that the child should NOT inherit wealth itself, but the right mindset and work ethic and what not, basically "character", which presumably made the parents successful (at what?). upper class culture probably dictates other goals again, but brute isn't very familiar with it.

I am kind of laughing at myself to the extent that I have somehow veered towards portraying myself as some sort of uber-hard-working, self-sacrificing martyr in my maternal functioning. My parenting style was about as far down the spectrum towards liberal-laissez-faire as you can go without falling over the cliff into neglect. IOW, pretty much the opposite of Tiger Mom. This was due to a combination of my personality, my relative youth when I had kids, and my parenting philosophy which was somewhat based on my own upbringing, and it would be difficult to completely untangle this ball of wool.

My mother was upwardly-mobile, 3rd generation immigrant, first person to get a college degree in her family, and my father was from an upper-middle-class, highly educated, came over on the Mayflower background. My grandfather was a distant, domineering figure who argued cases in front of the Supreme Court and grew roses. By the time I knew my father, he was "dear old Dad" and Yankee-frugal, but there are photographs of shiny cars, jazz clubs, and attractive females in 1950s bathing suits with straps slipped off shoulders, that give testament to the fact that he was a bit of an affluent playboy in his 20s. My parents met while vacationing in cottages with friends at a resort town on Lake Michigan. So, my father was a proponent of some sort of early 20th century child-rearing philosophy, perhaps developed in the spas of Dr. Kellogg, that advocated putting children out-of-doors for at least a couple hours everyday, no matter the weather, and my mother was the sort of person who did read "The Drama of the Gifted Child" when it was first published in 1979. Therefore, my sisters and I were pretty much expected to grow up to be lawyers who played a decent game of tennis while looking decent in a tennis dress while raising a couple of our own children - give or take. Maybe this is what would have straight-forwardly happened if my mother hadn't flipped into full-blown bi-polar disease after the birth of my youngest sister when I was 10, dunno...The funny thing is that in spite of a couple of decades of "running with scissors" dysfunction, and every possible form of bratty and/or Bohemian rebellion, at this juncture of mid-life tally, my sisters and I have ended up mostly (69.9% ?)fulfilling these mostly unspoken expectations.

My parents moved out of Detroit before the riots, and my first home and school was in the most white-bread, safe suburb imaginable. I had already mastered the curriculum when I entered the 2nd grade, so my teacher allowed me to quietly read whatever book I preferred. The next year (1973),I was placed in a program for gifted children. We rode in a bus to a facility that was completely stocked with supplies and tools for independent learning. We had notebooks in which we were told to record our plans for study or projects, and then keep track of our progress. The adults on-site mainly functioned as facilitators or leaders of round-table discussions. I chose to listen to Hebrew language learning tapes, watch instructional speed-reading film-strips, and create artworks using acrylic paint and styrofoam spheres. This program lost funding or was discontinued for some other reason after a year, but my sister and I were placed in a similar environment for another couple years when we attended middle-school in an even more affluent district.

So, very early on I internalized the message that intelligent, civilized people should be allowed to self-organize and learn or create independently. Rote instruction administered along with ruler raps on the knuckles was for the likes of Carl and Carl (2 Appalachian youth I was assigned to "peer"-tutor when I was 12), not moi. Nothing I experienced in the 15 years between my enrollment in this gifted program and the birth of my own children, caused me to doubt this philosophy or practice. In fact, the two years I spent living in a semi-vegetarian co-op with 30 other youth, half of whom were the children of Ann Arbor academics, just prior to becoming a mother, completely validated this perspective. Breast-feed for a year or two, teach them to read, keep them out of traffic, stock the house with books, piano, paint, yogurt, oatmeal muffins, otherwise set them free, was pretty much how I did parenting. My son went through a phase of late adolescence, shortly after I divorced his father, which caused me to worry myself sick and writhe about in anguish of maternal doubt and guilt, but I did an 82% good job of sticking to my guns, sitting on my hands and not rescuing him, and now he is a man.

Very few opportunities for "do over" in parenting, so I can't judge what to ascribe to luck or practice. If I had to do it again, I think the only thing I would do differently would have been to practice a bit more Montessori than Absolute Laissez-Faire. IOW, I would have been even more inclined to assign my children fun little skill-oriented challenging jobs. In one of the cutest photographs I have of my son, he is wearing a nothing but a cloth diaper and rubber pants, standing on a little stool, happily washing dishes in the kitchen sink.

So, in retrospect and/or conclusion, I would say that my primary goal in parenting was raising not just "good company", but "best company" (like the members of this forum :) ) , so mission successful, and on to other things with my excess life-energy.

ThisDinosaur
Posts: 997
Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:31 am

Re: System Boundaries and Inheritance

Post by ThisDinosaur »

There is an argument to be made that parenting style makes very little difference (beyond extremes.) People are who they are. I was estranged from my father and his family for most of my life. When i met him as an adult, there were some strikingly similar personality traits between me, him, my uncles, some of my cousins. By then I had rationalized some of my favorite and least favorite attributes as being a result of some experience or another.
I think a lot of the credit and blame people get for how their kids turn out is undeserved. Unless mine become astronauts. Then it was all me.

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