A GRADUATED PROGRAM OF EXPLORATION, DISCOVERY AND UNDERSTANDING, TO HELP YOUNG PEOPLE AND PARENTS APPRECIATE THE EMOTIONAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL COMPLEXITIES OF “GROWING UP”
Forward
THIS “FORWARD” AS WELL AS INFORMING OF THE CONTENTS OF THE MANUAL, MORE IMPORTANTLY EXPLAINS SOME OF THE REASONING FOR IT. CONSEQUENTLY THE FORWARD HAS BEEN ARRANGED IN A QUESTION AND ANSWER FORMATE WHERE I HAVE HOPEFULLY ANTICIPATED SOME OF THE QUERIES ONE MIGHT HAVE
WHY?
ONE WOULD NORMALLY ASSOCIATE A “MANUAL” WITH THE MAINTENANCE OR BUILDING OF A COMPLEX ITEM WITH WHICH ONE IS UNFAMILIAR. OUR CHILDREN HAVE BEEN GROWING UP GENERATION AFTER GENERATION WITHOUT A MANUAL, WHY DO WE NEED ONE NOW FOR A PROCESS THAT HAS AND WILL HAPPEN INEVITABLY WITH REASONABLE SATISFACTION?
ONE WOULD NORMALLY ASSOCIATE A “MANUAL” WITH THE MAINTENANCE OR BUILDING OF A COMPLEX ITEM WITH WHICH ONE IS UNFAMILIAR. OUR CHILDREN HAVE BEEN GROWING UP GENERATION AFTER GENERATION WITHOUT A MANUAL, WHY DO WE NEED ONE NOW FOR A PROCESS THAT HAS AND WILL HAPPEN INEVITABLY WITH REASONABLE SATISFACTION?
It is true that as adults we have all gone through our teenage years and for the most part appear to have come through this transition reasonably capable of integrating into adult life but perhaps the nature of the process has gone unrecognised for what it is. As young teenagers we all have little if any comparative experiences with which to asses or quantify new experiences Unless we are told or given an expectation we tend to accept life as we find it, assuming it to be both normal, necessary and “the best” consequently successive generations have gone through the proses of child to adult transition in ignorance of the true magnitude of what is happening.
WHAT?
SO, WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL, WHAT IS IT THAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING SO IGNORANT OF, FOR SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS THAT WE NEED A MANUAL?
SO, WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL, WHAT IS IT THAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING SO IGNORANT OF, FOR SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS THAT WE NEED A MANUAL?
A SELF-AWARE + EGO = HUMAN
Man is unique from all other animals, and the nature of that uniqueness is best described for my purposes by looking at man as “matter”. As every young chemistry scholar knows, matter is set into states: a solid, a liquid, and a gas but if we take that further we can describe life as matter. Matter that has become sensate, aware and responsive to its surroundings but in man that evolutionary proses has gone one stage further. Man is matter that is self-aware. He has an awareness of its own existence as matter, the stuff of stars.
Of its self, an awareness of our own existence as matter is neither here nor there but there is an additional element to the nature of life that, in conjunction with with self-awareness, make for a fundamental profound difference. That additional element is that all life is “programmed” to “survive”. I feel it is fair to describe the practical implications of our instinctual “survival” as “selfish egotism”. As such we can be seen to have an emotional vested interest in our own existence We are matter that cares about itself, its existence. It is within this conjunction of self-awareness coupled with a program of selfish egotistical survival that we, man have a unique existence from other forms of life. It is this conjunction that makes our growing up a “dig deal.
”The “big deal”elements that arise from the conjunction of the can be divided into two parts:
1 The truly philosophical.
2 The analysing and processing of data.
The truly philosophical is as the title states dealing with those aspects of our lives for which there is no provable definitive answer. Topic like death, purpose and meaning to life, and at a more developed leave takes on subjects such as belief, choice and responsibility.
The manual is designed to help people explore, through a progressive program of exercises, their thoughts and feeling on a huge range of related topics. The purpose of which is to look at the implications of the reality of man-kind's situation and give a sense of resolution to the imponderables through self-awareness and understanding.
The analysing and processing of data: From the moment we are born we are being continuously bombarded with data. It is from this data/information that we can learn; in infancy and much of our early child hood most of our learning relates to fundamentals such as talking, walking and the basic emotional responses etc. In our teen-age years we acquire a greater degree of intellectual capability, and the beginnings of a consciousness of our self-awareness, this allows us to begin to analyse and processes the glean data of our childhood years.
Much of the data we are exposed to is not “concrete” but experiential, that s to say where as in learning to talk or walk, the success is self-evident, likewise academic studies are quantifiable in the passing or otherwise of exams. The experiential however relates to that which is not concrete in the sense that the former are: How we are treated and the nature of the experiences we have, all go to give us information about ourselves and the nature of the existence we find ourselves in. The abstract values such as love or hate can be explained intellectually but the reality of their concept can only really be truly understood by experiencing them.
The manual will help people explores the nature of the data that they have collected starting from the premiss “you are not responsible for the data you have acquired from what you experienced” The fact is that we all, to some degree, have been given data that has been bad for us, either by being inaccurate, malicious or just missing (data we should have had but did not get) the manual helps people to discover the “fidelity” of the data and to find corrections and fill in the gaps, allowing an individual (at worst) to live with damage done, at best to reach their full potential.
ALL-RIGHT, THERE IS A LOT GOING ON FOR CHILDREN IN THEIR TEENAGE YEARS BUT HOW IS A MANUAL GOING TO HELP?
Let me first say that although the manual is directed for young people it is most certainly not exclusively for them. As adults, we can use the manual to discover and understand aspects about our own childhood which may well be of a help contemporaneously in our understanding of our children and what they are going through, as such the manual can help in improving the relationship between a parent and child
The stereo-typical teenager is perceived negatively as lazy, recalcitrant, and unappreciative. This catalogue of negative behaviour only begins to makes sense if one is to consider the psychological, and emotional turmoil that is going on. By the time our children reach fourteen or so they will be beginning to process both their past and there future in terms of a developing intellectual self awayness There must inevitably be a considerable degree of confusion born of a lack of understanding as they try to sort things out. The “symptoms” of a child’s turmoil, presenting themselves as the stereotype image can be misread by very loving parents who take the symptoms at face value perhaps even writing them off as “just a teenage strop” but such behaviour unappreciated for what it is can lead to a strained confrontational relationship.
Similarity, as the stereotype behaviour of teenagers can be misread, it is also the case that the stereotype image some children have of there parents can be equally miss interpreted: nagging over- -controlling, un-trusting overprotective, but as every parent knows such are the traits of a loving parent worried about their child's safety future and wanting the best for them. It must be seen as so ironic that the behavioural expression of both parent and child can be mutually misconstrued and that as such have the effect of pushing each other away, at a time when they need each other most.
Social norms don't help: at a time when our children need the wisdom of a parent as an understanding friend, our society tacitly accepts that teenagers go off into there own culture to pupate as it where into there would be adult state. Our teenage children need their parents but only on the terms of the child's needs: not at the whim, expectation or need of the parent. The manual will most definitely help a child to understand its self and through that the understanding of other's It will likewise help parents to understand their children and parents can help children understand what it is to be a parent.
The manual is not just about just about parent child relationships it is something much bigger, more holistic; it is about helping young people through a particular difficult time in their lives, to reach their full potential , to understand themselves, the how and why they work the way they do, the mechanisms that constrain us, the motivation that drive us, a basic understanding of both their emotions and psychology, it is about finding a resolution to the philosophical,
And the goal? That they can “be” Living life to the full in an expansive box of there own intellectual devising, believing in it with passion.
The manual it's self will follow shortly in instalments