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     There are two kinds of parents and two ways of
bringing up children: those who rely on assimilation and
those who rely on coercion.  The former understand that
character and personality develop by unconscious
assimilatikon.  That we become like those with whom we
associate.  Not only in speech, but also in thought, in
perception and in feeling.  The latter understand that our
actions are not responses to will or conscuious
determination, but are the consequences of the environment
in which we find ourselves.  One avoids the flame once one
has been burned.  And so these punishing parents use their
power to presume to construct an environment which will
compel their children to act according to the parents
intentions. But such parents are successful only to a
limited extent, because their children, while they fear
them, also imitate them, and in turn become punitive,
hostile, destructive individuals.

     Writ large, this schema will be seen to be reflected
in the history of mankind, which is more likely to try to
compel compliance by force than to nurture compliance by
"setting a good example."

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Copyright 2007, Ernst Jochen Meyer
