Conscious Choice: Creating Good Citizens

February 2002

Creating Good Citizens

by Michael Hansen

The traditional concept of citizenship is one of the casualties of the late twentieth century’s social meltdown. In a world where workforces are shed for profit and consumption is invoked as a form of patriotism, it’s hard even to define citizenship to our children, let alone indoctrinate them in it. Many parents today came of age inthe sixties and seventies, periods when young people embraced anarchistic and hedonistic role models, with little useful input from their parents on how to be an adult citizen in society, such as it was. Having emerged from that rough upbringing, many of us are now parents in our own right, trying to raise our kids as functional members of society without a rulebook of any kind. What do we teach our children to make them into effective citizens? How do we prepare them for a success that isn’t amoral? How do we give them the skills they need to survive a heartless world without making them cold and heartless themselves?

Pecking Orders and Painted Birds

By definition, being a citizen means undertaking positive, constructive membership in a larger community. Being part of a community requires an internal sense of belonging, a core feeling of inclusion within the group. But this inclusion is a two way street — it also requires acceptance by the group.

Human groups have a mind and a life of their own, often separate from the best intentions of their members. We evolved as pack predators, and the group dynamics of that type of socialization still permeate every aspect of our community interactions. Thus, every human group, whether large or small, has many cultural rituals and instinctive tools among their interactions. Some of the most powerful group dynamics are used for establishing pecking orders, for bonding (that is, strengthening group integrity) and for expulsion or marginalization of those perceived as "not one of us."

Even a human group as large and as diverse as to include all of modern America is no exception. Despite our pretense that we are a classless society, there is definitely an order of rank among us. We still embrace solidarity (the "Hooray for us!" effect) in appeals to such high flown concepts as national patriotism and such innocent pastimes as junior high cheerleading. We employ the mechanics of marginalization despite civil rights legislation and a fairly long tradition invoking the rule of law. Our criteria for marginalization are often arbitrary and unjust, based on factors such as skin color or religion, public dissent, or possession of a criminal record. In some circumstances, expulsion from a group can result simply from a gut feeling on the part of the majority that someone just doesn’t fit in.

Despite the glamour literature has assigned to the outsider, lone wolves are rarely effective citizens, even when they’re functional. Jerzy Kosinski described the fate of outsiders well in his horrific masterpiece The Painted Bird. There, he described a sadistic game played by one of his protagonists in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe: a bird was taken from a flock and painted with bright colors, then released. The painted bird, unaware of its difference, continued to try to rejoin the flock, even as the flock pecked the garish interloper to death.

In ordinary life, the effects of marginalization are not so different than that. Those who perceive themselves as outsiders can fall prey to societal alienation, law breaking, drug abuse, and mental illness. Each of these, alone or in combination, is associated with decreased opportunities in life: less earning power, less likelihood of a good marriage and healthy children, and the strong possibility of running afoul of the law. All these are compounded by health problems and they can lead to suicide or other means to early death.

Schoolyard Politics

In every culture, socialization begins at an early age. The samurai were convinced of the importance of early childhood experience on later development: they believed, for example, that if they made sure a child never experienced physical fear before the age of seven the child would grow up to be fearless. In the case of contemporary America, children need early training in human group dynamics. The playground and the schoolyard are the first training grounds a child will inhabit on the path to citizenship. How our children function within that environment is crucial to later societal growth.

While friendship, delight, and caregiving will likely be a part — even a major part — of our children’s experience, they also will encounter bullying and injustice, indifference on the part of those in authority, deceit, physical intimidation, and betrayal. Running through it all like a river will be the background hum of the Group, the mindless, or peer-thinking consensus of the human social dynamic.

Innocence and a limited range of experience make the Group a relatively large presence in the lives of most children. Teenagers, with their raging hormones and their need to grapple with this sexual development, are especially likely to be slaves to the Group. With lapses in memory mercifully obscuring our own pasts, many parents have nearly forgotten just how overwhelming social interactions can be for our children. If you can jog your memory, however, you will find your own woe waiting to be understood. If you can’t, then take it on faith: we have to give our kids the tools they need for social survival.

With just two mindful practices we can show them we’re in their corner. First, we can listen. The tales of woe they share at the dinner table may not sound that godawful, but if it’s a kid’s first encounter with, say, the lunch money bully, he or she is not going to have any idea about what to do next. It’s all brand new to them. Second, we can be consistent in our advice. We all know there are no hard and fast rules, but we can give our children steadfast principles in dealing with putdowns and insults, in standing up to manipulations and injustices. We can help them respond to the ups and downs of social interaction without losing themselves in knee-jerk compliance to the will of the Group, or unnecessarily exiling themselves as outsiders.

Because success breeds success, such early guidance will help our children past the progressively higher hurdles they’ll encounter on their way to adulthood. Eventually they’ll be coping successfully with mortgages and unreasonable bosses, taxes and unfriendly neighbors, and the other annoyances of adulthood. Perhaps they will have the tools they need if more dire circumstances emerge, and they will follow their consciences without caving in to conformity or abdicating to despair. Through it all, of course, we have to continue to convey the values and concerns we feel are important to live by.

Ethics: The Inner Game

As parents, caregivers, or even family friends, our job is to work ourselves out of a job. Kids learn by doing, and the best way we can actually influence their behavior in the face of moral choices is by example. Children spot inconsistencies between what we do and what we say with almost frightening expertise. We’ve got to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Some of the worst tragedies of human history occurred because people didn’t have the moral courage to refuse to "go along to get along." The Holocaust comes immediately to mind. On the flipside, we’re all aware of how many people throughout Europe risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. In studies done since, undertaken to identify common characteristics of these heroic "altruistic personalities," one recurring theme was the influence of their parents. Overwhelmingly, the "ordinary" people who rescued Jews from the clutches of the Nazis described parents who taught by reason and example, who did not inflict them with corporal punishment, who taught them to think for themselves. Their "noble" behavior was probably made possible by a childhood in which they were nurtured rather than quashed.

Of course, all this is easy if you’re part of the functional mainstream. But the skills necessary to raise a child to become a functioning member of society don’t come naturally to all of us. Many parents today are scarred by horrid upbringings. Teen pregnancy, adolescent drug abuse, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse all tend to swallow up our coping skills.

One common thread runs among many parents with (relatively) dysfunctional backgrounds: a mistrust of authority figures. That dysfunctional mistrust extends to many politically active boomers, as well. Anyone who’s had run-ins with law enforcement, or knows someone who has, may have a well-developed sense of paranoia and a real chip on the shoulder toward law enforcement agents, corporate authority figures, and anyone else who is part of the power structure. These attitudes, if passed along, can relegate children to second-class citizenship.

In his classic work Book of Five Rings, Musashi wrote that there is no room for sinister intentions on the road to victory. While his advice was specifically intended for the duelist, it applies to any parent who wants to raise a good citizen. Teaching children to mistrust the police strips them of a valuable support if they get in trouble when you’re not around. It also makes them more likely to have negative relationships with the police themselves. Active, exemplary mistrust toward authority figures ensures that your kids will antagonize employers, teachers, and other people with the power to help or hinder them in achieving their goals.

The fact is that despite the existence of racial profiling, crooked cops, vigilantes, and abusers, most police officers, teachers, and authority figures are not a threat to our children. Most come to their jobs out of a sincere desire to help. When we’re most effective as parents, we remember that automatic mistrust is a reaction to the past, not a response to the present. We recognize that such mistrust is, in itself, a form of profiling, in which people are judged by their role or status. For the sake of our children, we avoid knee-jerk reactions, prejudices, and assumptions. Instead, we encourage clear-headed judgment: we are open to positive outcomes.

Having mastered the past, we can instill in our children the self-esteem that tells them they deserve to be citizens, to be part of the Group. In social situations, as at home, we can show respect for our children as we wish them to respect themselves and others: no physical or emotional abuse, no temper tantrums, and plenty of space in which to discover their personal boundaries. And we can continue, in smaller ways, to lead by example.

Our children will need to learn by example that effective citizenship is more than just passive membership in the Group. So we will need to be active in our own community. With or without our children, we can volunteer at local food banks, take part in neighborhood watches, and practice the unplanned extension of self that’s part of our day-to-day life: holding the door for someone, jump-starting a stranger’s car, giving up a bus seat for a pregnant woman, or any of the myriad of kindnesses and labors that glue us together as a community. The accretion of goodwill that results from these efforts will encourage our children to be confident and involved. When they grow to adulthood, it will help them to take their place as joyful members of twenty-first century America.

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