Continuing with my last post:
Family structures reflect societal structures, or influential cultural structures. If this is the case with our current society, then most family structures are characterized by authority in the home, usually a dominating patriarch. In my own life, I found that I could not escape the oppression at home, or in school. When I attended school, or church, I was met with the same authoritative structure that dictated foreign demands and expectations. Teachers would lecture in front of the classroom and I was expected to engage in rote memorization, as if I were an empty receptacle to be filled with someone else’s cognitions of the world. In school, students are not given the opportunity, nor are they encouraged, to engage the world’s contradictions and coin relevant meaning. Instead, students are expected to passively consume someone else’s lifeless narrative of how things are. These structures suppress the critical consciousness, the curiosity for life and the world, by delegitimized our own ‘word’ and experience with the world. This oppression turns into listless, depression or rebellion against authority. This depression is simply an ‘oppression’. Rebellion is a revolt against this authority.
Its funny how society treats us as problems and seeks to ‘prescribe’ its remedies. I was diagnosed with a concoction of physiological dysfunctions that ranged from mood disorders to learning disabilities. Psychiatrists and psychologists attempted for years to assess and ‘treat’ me with their own ideologies, yet my rebellion continued as I delved deeper into sadness and sought escape from reality through drugs and alcohol.
It wasn’t until after high school, when I was kicked out of my house and forced to live on my own by sleeping on the couches of friends, that I experienced true freedom. For the first time in my life I was met with a profound freedom. The realization that I could be whoever and do whatever I wanted, that I could transform my life according to my passions and the dreams of my heart, that I experienced true joy and true life.
From that point on I no longer struggled with substance abuse (although the habits and dependencies that had formed created challenges), nor did see learning as a chore, a mindless endeavor of rote memorization with no significance or context. I could engage reality freely, independently, and create meaning and context as according to the passions and curiosities that affirmed my being. Everything came to life.
Any human, be it parents or teachers, should lay foundations of trust and love and humility as the starting point for all human development. Exploration of reality should be a cointentional effort.
William Dare 