As predicted, the mediated furore has quelled and the talk back lines quietened but no doubt, the agendas’ still seethe ready to rise and shout. My position remains unchanged (see: Soap Boxing: ‘Spanking – Part One’).
http://psychowreckers.blogspot.com/2007/04/soap-boxing-spanking-part-one.html
And for some inexplicable reason the document that follows makes sane and rational sense:
Amendment Bill
Member's Bill
Explanatory Note
The purpose of this Bill is to stop force and associated violence and harm under the pretence of domestic discipline, being inflicted on children.
Clause 4 simply repeals section 59.
Clause 5 makes consequential amendments to section 139A of the Education Act 1989 to remove the exemption for guardians in the prohibition on corporal punishment in schools.
Sue Bradford
Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline)
Amendment Bill
Member's Bill
To continue from the previous blog on this subject, I have one further comment to make. One of the right-wing debaters on the ‘Campbell Live’ panel, in an angry and incensed pique and having already implied that the Prime Minister, Helen Clark is a lesbian, went on to state that her childlessness precluded her from offering parental advice: another example of the typically condescending platitudes proffered by these types.
Helen’s an easy target I guess and more so in absentia (they never have the balls to level those kinds of comments to her face!), but I always wonder why she’s so singularly implicated whilst equally strong, clever, career-minded and childless women like say, Theresa Gattung, remain impervious to such allegations.
Above: Theresa Gattung
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10423405
Anyway, who was it invented the rule that the childless are precluded from comment on child-rearing? They’re told ‘you can never understand because you’ve never experienced it’ Again it’s an ignorant misunderstanding of humanness. That ‘sacrosanct’ experience is a biochemical response from the limbic brain, an instinct shared with all mammals: the maternal or paternal instinct to protect ones progeny is not part of the differentiation between a dog and a human, it is emotion more akin to lust than love. And whereas I know many parents who have no problem with their instincts, when it comes to an ability to truly love their children it sometimes seems that they don’t even like them. Perhaps that’s why they hit them (?)
In Eric Fromms’ seminal book “The Art of Loving” (1956) he discusses the potential of real love and human alienation:
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not towards one 'object' of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.” (Fromm 1957: 36)
“The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love, is brotherly love. By this, I mean the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life. This is the kind of love the Bible speaks of when it says: love thy neighbour as thyself. Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness.” (Fromm 1957: 37)
“Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.” (Fromm 1957: 67)
And from his book “Having and Being”(1979) the differences between possession and Heidegger’s authentic Dasein:
Above: Martin Heidigger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger
“While the having persons rely on what they have, the being persons rely on the fact that they are, that they are alive and that something new will be born if only they have the courage to let go and respond. They become fully alive in the conversation because they do not stifle themselves by anxious concern with what they have. Their own aliveness is infectious and often helps the other person to transcend his or her egocentricity. Thus the conversation ceases to be an exchange of commodities (information, knowledge, status) and becomes a dialogue in which it does not matter any more who is right.” (Fromm 1979)
Above: ‘The Art of Loving’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm
Someone who expresses their right of ownership and therefore power over their children may choose to inflict violence upon them and yet probably baulks at the idea of inflicting that same brutality on an adult. The violence describes their ownership, just as they might discipline their dog, so they seize their right to discipline their children. This is not the kind of love that Fromm describes.
Ultimately, love is a conscious decision formulated in the part of the brain that makes us human and is therefore accessible to everyone, not just the producers of offspring: people who understand this concept are most able to make comments on the nurturing of children.
Above: “Baby Love” by Nita Springer
