[Buddha-l] Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing

[jkirk]

...That said, I want to underscore a comment Joanna made, that
"child-rearing practices, emotions, and ideas must have a lot to do with the
genesis of self-loathing wherever it is found." This is, psychodynamically
anyway, the most important observation. Child-raising patterns, both
cultural and personal, in the first two or three years have the greatest
impact on the capacity of the child to contain opposites and acknowledge
tensions. ...

In all cases, it seems to me the ability to withstand paradox, to maintain
conflicting emotions, to acknowledge the mixed qualities of cultures and
persons, is a cultural and familial *achievement*. The greater the success
in this, the greater are both our inner and outer capacities. Only through
genuine love and effort (and through our marvelously flexible ability to
experience that love and make that
effort) do we become fully human.

Climbing down from the soapbox.

Franz
===============================
Hi Franz,

I've not read _All the Mothers are One_ partly because I saw it in action
when I was working in India and Bangladesh. But still, if I have some time I
plan to read the book.

Meanwhile, speaking of parents and parenting, I'm reading a book that is
both witty and sad because it's written by a Waugh, titled, _Fathers and
Sons_.  It's about 6 generations (but mostly 4 of them) of Waughs, the
British dynasty that produced several writers, the most famous of whom was
Evelyn Waugh (_Brideshead Revisited_ just one of the more famous of his
novels), whose mother according to the author, Evelyn's grandson Alexander,
gave him a female name because she and her husband Arthur desperately wanted
a girl as their 2d child. (Of course, Evelyn is also acceptable as a man's
name in Britain and maybe even here, but this particular case has more going
than a mere name.)   They were almost post-Victorian in family culture, but
dressing boy toddlers like girls was still popular or at least not frowned
upon, in those days. (My father, born in 1899, got the same treatment as a
boy up till 5 or 6 years old, complete with long blonde sausage curls and
lace collars.) 

This book is a revelation of white folks middle-class British familial
culture and child-rearing habits and practices, many of which were carried
on in the USA till today in some parts. After reading this, and then
comparing it to what we know about child rearing in India, it becomes very
clear how the trait of self-loathing got started and in part why it persists
among us today. (Interestingly, some Indian parents of only one son used to
dress a boy like a girl as a disguise, but not elaborately as did the
British and Americans, in order to fake out the evil eye and insure that the
son survived childhood.)

Reminds me of the sad case --at least I and even her mother felt sad about
it--of the high class Sikh family we rented from in Ludhiana, Punjab, in the
mid-sixties, when they decided to send their charming and spirited 6 year
old daughter (their only child, too) to a Catholic convent up in Shimla, to
make sure she got a proper (meaning English-style) education. Same thing
happened to the sons of the fathers Alexander Waugh wrote about. The poor
little girl was weeping for days before they drove her up to the school--a
case of radical culture change in child rearing via partial acculturation to
British ideas. The Waugh book is full of sons getting the same treatment,
with various consequences. 

Joanna







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