Sunday, May 06, 2012

Bad Animals

I've been traveling a little lately.  Being the quite person that I am, I watch and listen to people. A lot. How they react and act around each other amazes me.

On my most recent trip to Vegas, I heard a mother the seat behind me reading a story to her child. The line that caught me and made my internal jaw drop was about a bad mean wolf chasing something. May have been children. She used her best evil menacing voice to bring the point home for the child.

All this traveling means I've been reading. Recently I read a short... summary on taoism. (is there really such a thing?) The blank state being of Tao is reckoned to the blank unassumingness of an infant. If a child has no knowledge or understanding, then everything they know, everything we know, is taught.

Looking back, I've long had this desire to raise my sons to be free thinkers. At one point, I wanted to teach them the color orange was called green and vice versa. The wife would not allow this. In hind site, I know she was right. I did however teach them to say ' bless you' to someone that burps and 'excuse you' to someone that sneezes. Even now, they are very aware I've taught them backwards, they still use my way.

A point... yea, right....
If childrens books taught children to be aware of the skills a wolf has, the job rats and bugs and flys and maggots preform... How different would we, as humans be? I can't help but wonder if we would have less bigotry in the world, less of people jumping to assume that what they don't understand is evil. Or more basically, wrong.

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