The mind of the small child is often likened to a sponge. As the former tenant of a small child’s mind, I know this comparison is silly. My mind never just mopped stuff up from benchtop of adult wisdom. No. It learned to form the question, “Why?”, then asked it of grownups for years.
“Why must I kiss Aunty?” “Why must I wear these hideous clothes?” “Why must I wear clothes when the cat does not? And, while we’re exploring feline themes, tell me: why can’t I be a cat?”
Sometimes, adults furnish the young mind with a good explanation. More often, however, they do not. We learn to expect answers like, “Because that’s the way it is,” or, “Because I say so”. It is hardly uncommon for adults to say such things to children. It may be quite common for children to think of adults as spongy.
We are spongy, you know. At some point, we become big absorbent clods who take in most ideas without question. We just suck in those ideas that seem to fit our adult reality, but rarely question a reality that is itself an uncomfortable fit.
This is how our ideas about adult reality are formed: by experiencing it. The way we survive in this reality largely determines our ideas, although, we often like to tell ourselves that it’s the other way around. We say, “I am in control of my reality”. And we say this while wearing clothes we may not like to jobs we don’t enjoy which can require us to kiss up to senior management.
“Work hard and be rewarded” is an idea formed by those who have enjoyed reward. Their rewarded reality determines this idea
Did your ideas truly form your present reality? Is there not a childlike part of you that longs to live more like a cat? Naked, never servile and always free.
I should make it clear that I have no wish to be naked for long periods of time. I do wish, however, to be free. I wish to be free from a reality which produces explanations for itself that make us much sense as, “because I said so”. I wish to be free from the reality which produces television shows in which adult politicians can say that the trick to success is to, “.”
Although the politician was speaking specifically here about success within parliamentary politics, it is safe to suppose that this idea of hers extends to every trade. “Work hard and be rewarded” is an idea formed by those who have enjoyed reward. Their rewarded reality determines this idea. They then believe that this idea determines reality and if your reality is yet to produce reward, well, it’s your fault for not working hard enough.
Loads of people believe that we determine successful reality with our minds. The billionaire believes this. My mother believes this. An overwhelming majority of politicians believe this. Western liberal democracy was, in fact, founded on the belief that any individual could reap reward equal to the intensity of their labour. “Get better, not bitter,” was the advice our TV politician offered to an audience member interested in the secrets of political success.
What does make sense is to ask “why”. Ask “Why are there so few women of colour in Australian parliamentary politics?”
Our TV politician inadvertently exposed a flaw in this popular idea, however, by expressing it to a woman of colour. The negative companion to the positive idea “hard work produces reward” is this: those who have not produced reward are lazy. The politician did not outright say that women of colour were lazy, and I imagine if we asked the politician “are women of colour lazy?” she’d answer, “of course not!” But this is the problem with ideas formed by those powerful and frequently rewarded: they just don’t make sense.
What does make sense is to ask “why”. Ask “Why are there so few women of colour in Australian parliamentary politics?”
When one person is rewarded with more power than others, their ideas can tend to powerfully reflect that rewarded reality. They can be in a room full of powerful white people and form an idea like, “White people just work harder” without considering the racist reality in which such a powerfully false idea forms.
Ask “why” and ask “why” again. Ask why the work of a very few is handsomely rewarded and the work of the many is now “rewarded” with a stagnant wage. And, if, like me, you’re white, ask yourself why white people who are not rewarded can blame people of colour for their lack of reward when this idea is one they borrowed from the most outrageously rewarded people, whose powerful lives produce powerful ideas that just make no darn sense.
And, then, just keep asking “why”. Not all the time, obviously, because you’re not a child who longs to be a cat. You’re an adult with a reality whose ideas you must often agree to hold. But, be a kid for an hour each week. Look at power and look at its ideas and ask them, “why?”
Caution: you will enjoy considerably less fun than a cat in this hour.
