reading the chapter on children in Khalil Gibran’s the Prophet, which beautifully says how we should provide for them and care for them but without shaping their ideas/souls after our own, the following occurred to me:
If unconscious ideology exists as described in entry 11, then we unwittingly deny our children the option to re-shape the world to fit the new perspectives that each new generation can bring.
To truly be free to change things so as to live the way they see fit, future generations must be able to freely conceive of how to live, how the world could be. And they cannot freely conceive if they are born into systems with implicit ideology. Which is indeed the case: one comes into the world embedded within systems that implicitly dictate ways of thinking for one to survive or thrive.
We must find some kind of escape from this bind – some way for our children to not be forced into the same ways of thinking as us.
To be clear about what the problem is here: I’m distinguishing between the individual and societal level and stating that Gibran’s vision cannot be fulfilled by an individual family, no matter how well-intentioned they are, as long as the children are thrown into systems that implicitly produce ideology – as is the norm.