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How to Protect Your Children from Propaganda Induced Outrage
[Week 32 of 52 Weeks to a Better Relationship With Your Child]
If you want to be outraged, you can find a reason
There is always something horrible going on somewhere. In fact, horrible things seem to happen just about everywhere regularly. Many of these things are the result of humans doing things to each other. Does this mean that we should all be constantly outraged?
When children start to become aware of current events in the world, it can be overwhelming. A lot depends on how the influential adults in their lives respond to such things. Children need parents who can both verbally put things in perspective and model a non-reactionary approach to all the bad news.
Part of the challenge is that outrage sells. Another factor is that outrage can be used to manipulate people. Outrage tends to make any accusation believable and any action justified.
People gravitate toward outrage for the same reason they like a good story – the passion makes them feel alive. Outrage is more tempting than positive feelings because outrage feeds a sense of superiority. It can also provide people with a depth of meaning to their lives that they might otherwise feel lacking.
Why outrage leads to misery
There are certainly some things that are going to happen to us or in our sphere that will provoke anger or indignation. What we need to teach our children is twofold:
Outrage is bad for your health. It stimulates hormones that are good in an emergency, but will wear a body out if always present in the circulation. Outrage keeps you in state of urgency that distorts priorities, including those for eating and sleeping.
Constant outrage is bad for your relationships. It makes enemies of those who don’t share your outrage. It reduces the chance of good discussion and learning because self-righteous indignation feels better.
In a nutshell, constant outrage is beguiling because it appeals to our baser nature while at the same time masquerading as noble and justified. However, in the end it can only lead to misery, because who can be happy when they are always mad?! Instead, we want our children to have a perspective that gives them hope, as well as fosters peace among all people.
Letting the air out of our outrage
A good place to begin forging a perspective that dispels outrage is to take an honest look at ourselves. We have all done thinsg, accidentally and on purpose, that others could rightly be angry about. We are all limited in our wisdom and ability to rightly discern a conflict that does not involve us. We all make mistakes fairly regularly in word and deed, though we sometimes don’t realize it or admit it until later.
A historic
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By Laura Blodgett[Week 32 of 52 Weeks to a Better Relationship With Your Child]
If you want to be outraged, you can find a reason
There is always something horrible going on somewhere. In fact, horrible things seem to happen just about everywhere regularly. Many of these things are the result of humans doing things to each other. Does this mean that we should all be constantly outraged?
When children start to become aware of current events in the world, it can be overwhelming. A lot depends on how the influential adults in their lives respond to such things. Children need parents who can both verbally put things in perspective and model a non-reactionary approach to all the bad news.
Part of the challenge is that outrage sells. Another factor is that outrage can be used to manipulate people. Outrage tends to make any accusation believable and any action justified.
People gravitate toward outrage for the same reason they like a good story – the passion makes them feel alive. Outrage is more tempting than positive feelings because outrage feeds a sense of superiority. It can also provide people with a depth of meaning to their lives that they might otherwise feel lacking.
Why outrage leads to misery
There are certainly some things that are going to happen to us or in our sphere that will provoke anger or indignation. What we need to teach our children is twofold:
Outrage is bad for your health. It stimulates hormones that are good in an emergency, but will wear a body out if always present in the circulation. Outrage keeps you in state of urgency that distorts priorities, including those for eating and sleeping.
Constant outrage is bad for your relationships. It makes enemies of those who don’t share your outrage. It reduces the chance of good discussion and learning because self-righteous indignation feels better.
In a nutshell, constant outrage is beguiling because it appeals to our baser nature while at the same time masquerading as noble and justified. However, in the end it can only lead to misery, because who can be happy when they are always mad?! Instead, we want our children to have a perspective that gives them hope, as well as fosters peace among all people.
Letting the air out of our outrage
A good place to begin forging a perspective that dispels outrage is to take an honest look at ourselves. We have all done thinsg, accidentally and on purpose, that others could rightly be angry about. We are all limited in our wisdom and ability to rightly discern a conflict that does not involve us. We all make mistakes fairly regularly in word and deed, though we sometimes don’t realize it or admit it until later.
A historic