Indoctrination, war & parenting
A brief interlude from the Millennial Parenting series to share my thoughts on parenting in the wake of the Palestinian genocide.
Ten years ago I sat in my office, sobbing quietly behind a closed door at work.
I was eating lunch and turning the final pages on Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. That was the last time I ate meat. Last night, we took our kids, 4 and 6, to the peaceful Free Palestine protests at City Hall.
So where do these two seemingly isolated experiences converge? They both speak to beliefs I hold. And now that I’m a parent, it’s my decision when and how to impose those beliefs on my children.
But having grown up with toxic religious messaging, and having internalized damaging millennial coming-of-age messaging, I want something different for them. I want them to form their own opinions. I want to steward in them a skillset to navigate this increasingly complicated world.
After all, when you deconstruct indoctrination, what’s the point of it? It certainly wouldn’t mean that the decisions they go on to make have anything to do with what is truly on their heart.
And it definitely doesn’t guarantee they’ll be good people (another idea to let go of).
So, no, I don’t force my kids not to eat meat. But I also don’t shy away from answering honestly when they ask me questions about why I don’t. Yes, that is the same kind of chicken on your plate as the one down the street that you like to visit.
And when I bring them to a peaceful protest for a political cause far beyond their comprehension, I don’t try to force all the concepts on them. I also don’t try to instill in them any ridiculous notions of all good or all bad people.
No, I simply tell them that in this world we show up to the things we believe are right, even if it’s hard. That is really the point of bringing them.
In the meantime, we talk in age-appropriate terms about the complex things going on. Then, somehow, they don’t seem so complex. But I know that’s just a facade; one day they will.
I need to raise my children to have the skills to navigate that, because things change. Oh, make no mistake, they stay the exact fucking same. They repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Then, they “change.”
Today, I see what I see.
To paraphrase Ezra Klein paraphrasing Spencer Ackerman: “The essence of the politics of 9/11 was to make scandalous the presentation of context.”
Quite frankly, we live in a world where an influencer would have to qualify a bread recipe and apologize to the gluten-free among us before sharing it. So it’s no surprise that a major geo-political upheaval finds us unable to dialogue.
Instead, we find ourselves in a climate where you will be “cancelled” in some circles for zooming out and looking at the 75-year history as an explanation for the today’s geo-political context, which is literally why this is happening.
You’ll also be cancelled in others for not doing this.
Or you may find yourself in questionable company, because sometimes some your beliefs may overlap with the beliefs of others’ to which you do not prescribe (I have seen vulgar, anti-semitic posts in response to this genocide and it is also not okay).
In today’s world you must know yourself so deeply that you can think critically and hold a position, but continue to question from a place of good faith. You have to be willing to be – god forbid! – cancelled. And most important, I believe, you have to do everything you can to maintain your sense of empathy, even in the face of the ugliest things the world has to offer.
How am I supposed to raise children into adults like that by indoctrinating them to believe everything I believe before they have the life experience to place it? It just doesn’t make sense.
No, that creates little people who seek validation through parroting line-fed ideas. Little people who build their self esteem by defining themselves through their relation to a group. Little people who, mostly, grow to become big people who believe they must “side with their people” (whoever those people may be and whatever those people may do).
So in the face of the utter cruelty that can exist in this world, on a fortnight that has painted the world grey, I look, again, to how we parent as one of the biggest ways we can make change (yes, please also spread awareness, make donations and make your voice heard).
But the larger point is, if violence meeting violence meeting violence meeting violence was the answer, then after thousands of millennia this world today would be utopia. But these past weeks it has felt like hell on Earth.
The answer must lie elsewhere. In a complexity of solutions, I just know that the kinds of people we bring into the world has to be part of it. The tricky part, of course, is how do we do this right?
First and foremost, I believe we must be willing to do the work to heal ourselves. Heal ourselves of the indoctrination that made us forget who we are. The indoctrination that told us we were not good enough in a world largely not built for our true natures.
Heal yourself so that you may raise children who don’t hurt.
As the circulating meme says: “if you're able to tuck in a healthy, peacefully sleeping child into a warm bed in a safe home, you've won the lottery of life” (source unknown). Now take that good fortune and multiply it.
Resources for further learning
Yes, I support Palestine. I’m also firmly against anti-semitism. I won’t be gaslit into believing you can’t maintain these two beliefs without cognitive dissonance. That’s the kind of thinking that demands we remove context.
Over the past weeks I’ve had conversations with people whose perspectives range the spectrum. I’ve solidified certain beliefs and questioned others. And all of these conversations have been underpinned with respect. We should all try that more often.
Make no mistake, the following resources come from my lens, which is to sharpen the focus on the bigger picture and to give a voice to a lesser known history. I’m always open to hearing from other perspectives if you want to share yours respectfully (as the kids say, DM’s are open), but this is my newsletter, so here we go:
Israel Is Giving Hamas What It Wants - The Ezra Klein Show (podcast)
If you are on TikTok, which I highly recommend if you want to access more information during this crisis, this post summarizes some excellent accounts that are providing nuanced education on a variety of topics.
Also on TikTok, saffana | how to write copy shared an excellent post on media literacy and the power of the language we use. This is useful in re-thinking all language used in media on all topics at all times.
Gaza Fights for Freedom (Documentary)
Farha (Film, available on Netflix)
I’ll leave you with this post I made on patriarchy versus matriarchy, which I see as central to the systems that sustain war:
