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How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

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Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#131
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/world/canada/canada-schoo... And, in the end, the conclusion of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission was unambiguous: “Children were abused, physically and sexually, and they died in the schools in numbers that would not have been tolerated in any school system anywhere in the country, or in the world.” From the 1880s through the 1990s, the Canadian government forcibly r…

I've not been following most of this thread of conversation, but this reply jumped out at me so let me throw my hat into the ring here. I live in the US, but my mother went to what is known as a boarding school for native americans. They were beaten and raped, my mother got married at 15 just to get away from it all. They would do things like lock the kids outside during the winter just for using their native languag…

In a class on different cultures back in college, one of the texts for the class was American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10376

The chapter "The Big Red Apples" (Apples are not native to North America - the sweet red apples were shown as a temptation of "out east, these grow everywhere") and the section "The School Days of an Indian Girl" doesn't describe a joyous parent sending their children away to schools. The promises that were made and the reality that was experienced were very far apart from each other. Some saw it as a debt to be paid as part of the exchange for land and living it on a reservation - but that would be exacted again upon the children that went to those schools.

... And as this was intended for children, reality was likely much harsher than described (though what is described and the outcome is bad enough in its own right).

---

"Mother, ask them if little girls may have all the red apples they want, when they go East," I whispered aloud, in my excitement.

The interpreter heard me, and answered: "Yes, little girl, the nice red apples are for those who pick them; and you will have a ride on the iron horse if you go with these good people."

I had never seen a train, and he knew it.

"Mother, I am going East! I like big red apples, and I want to ride on the iron horse! Mother, say yes!" I pleaded.

My mother said nothing. The missionaries waited in silence; and my eyes began to blur with tears, though I struggled to choke them back. The corners of my mouth twitched, and my mother saw me.

"I am not ready to give you any word," she said to them. "Tomorrow I shall send you my answer by my son."

With this they left us. Alone with my mother, I yielded to my tears, and cried aloud, shaking my head so as not to hear what she was saying to me. This was the first time I had ever been so unwilling to give up my own desire that I refused to hearken to my mother's voice.

There was a solemn silence in our home that night. Before I went to bed I begged the Great Spirit to make my mother willing I should go with the missionaries.

The next morning came, and my mother called me to her side. "My daughter, do you still persist in wishing to leave your mother?" she asked.

"Oh, mother, it is not that I wish to leave you, but I want to see the wonderful Eastern land," I answered.

My dear old aunt came to our house that morning, and I heard her say, "Let her try it."

I hoped that, as usual, my aunt was pleading on my side. My brother Dawée came for mother's decision. I dropped my play, and crept close to my aunt.

"Yes, Dawée, my daughter, though she does not understand what it all means, is anxious to go. She will need an education when she is grown, for then there will be fewer real Dakotas, and many more palefaces. This tearing her away, so young, from her mother is necessary, if I would have her an educated woman. The palefaces, who owe us a large debt for stolen lands, have begun to pay a tardy justice in offering some education to our children. But I know my daughter must suffer keenly in this experiment. For her sake, I dread to tell you my reply to the missionaries. Go, tell them that they may take my little daughter, and that the Great Spirit shall not fail to reward them according to their hearts."

---

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitkala-Sa

> Zitkala-Ša attended the school for three years until 1887. She later wrote about this period in her work, The School Days of an Indian Girl. She described the deep misery of having her heritage stripped away when she was forced to pray as a Quaker and to cut her traditionally long hair. By contrast, she took joy in learning to read, write, and play the violin.

> In 1887, Zitkala-Ša returned to the Yankton Reservation to live with her mother. She spent three years there. She was dismayed to realize that, while she still longed for the native Yankton traditions, she no longer fully belonged to them. Besides, she thought that many on the reservation were conforming to the dominant white culture.

... and you have a first person account of the stripping away of cultural identity.

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#132
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anger does literally give a person energy and what can be labelled "courage" beyond their norm. Getting angry is renowned for leading people to do very stupid things that they would otherwise never do, because even themselves are fully aware it's stuff only an idiot would do. > That it is still up to the human being with a fully functional brain to figure out whether or not to use that energy (and, if yes, what exa…

I don't know how else to tell you that anger very, very, very literally gives a person energy. Amongst other emotions (like fear as I have already mentioned, but also e.g. excitement), part of its arousal is your body being flooded with epinephrine et al, which provokes a significant boost in cardiovascular performance. > The original claim was "do what needs to be done" and now you backtracked to claim that instead…

(a) recall that I made a utility judgement, not a value judgement: "anger = useless"

(b) That an adrenaline dump provokes a significant boost in cardiovascular performance is true. We are neither fighting anachronistic saber-toothed tigers, nor are we in the wild west, we are in civilised countries in the 21st century. When should improved cardiovascular performance improve any outcomes?

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion. A while ago I had a loved one both harmed and threatened. I called my insurance, who gave me a lawyer, who got the facts from my loved one and combined them with the law, giving the case to a judge, who gave us a court order which allowed us to both (a) remedy the harm, and (b) get law enforcement backup. For this outcome, very little energ…

> How would anger —or even moral outrage— have improved the situation? If at any point the chain of actions had broken down, anger would have granted the motivation to pursue through the roadblock. You do understand that this very system implicitly disadvantages those who do not have such straightforward access to it, right?

That's why I moved to a country where (a, specifically) the rule of law is accessible to all, and (b, generally) important things rarely break down.

Justice is depicted as blind in statuary for a reason.

Edit: upon reflection, even in the Old Country, where accessibility to the law is debatable, anger doesn't seem useful. Either someone has the power to gain remedy by extralegal means or they do not, and whether they are angry or not when they make that attempt has little —despite movie plots— to do with the actual state of their power.

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do many people, when older, get upset about the lies their parents told them about Santa, The Easter Bunny and such? I'm skeptical these sorts of childhood lies cause any issues.

It certainly gives you more ammunition as a teen to distrust and venture the things your parents also taught you or implied were dangerous. It also teaches your children to believe foolish and questionable speech+conduct on the part of authority figures which has creates many other problems. Why is it necessary? Why do you need to lie to your children? Teaching them that lying is "fun" is absurd, so many problems are…

The problem with distrust caused by the Santa lie (for example) is that adults don’t believe in Santa. If everyone believed in Santa (or paid lip service to the belief, at least, which is how it always goes with religion, etc) then it would just be a nice cultural element that wouldn’t cause any distrust.

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#136

I'm with the Inuit and Jedi on this one: anger is pretty useless[0], and if you must[1] take revenge, that's best served cold. Sometimes I wonder if the typical Hollywood W-plot, in which the hero's best friend/significant relation is shown partying/getting the girl/otherwise living well at the top of the middle ∧ then killed by the villain at the bottom of the right ∨, after which the hero gets angry and wins the da…

Every day I become more convinced that Hanlon’s razor is an example of malice.

How so?

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#137
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I am not a violent person, I think some people only respond to violence. They cannot be reasoned with.

Non violence is made effective by the credible threat of a violent alternative

(NB: I was originally discussing anger, as distinct from violence, but as long as we're here...)

The most famous example of non violence is the Independence of India. If I squint, I guess I can see the nascent US as having provided the credible threat in that case, but there was still a decade to go between independence and suez.

Edit: modulo a few exceptions, the fall of the Soviet Union was also a stunning success for non violence, and one where the credible threat wasn't explicitly invoked and isn't immediately clear. (as far as I can tell a generation came into power who decided "you know, how the System works and how we were told it worked when we were Young Pioneers have significant differences; why should we keep doing this?" and the rest is history)

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would anger —or even moral outrage— have improved the situation? If at any point the chain of actions had broken down, anger would have granted the motivation to pursue through the roadblock. You do understand that this very system implicitly disadvantages those who do not have such straightforward access to it, right?

That's why I moved to a country where (a, specifically) the rule of law is accessible to all, and (b, generally) important things rarely break down. Justice is depicted as blind in statuary for a reason. Edit: upon reflection, even in the Old Country, where accessibility to the law is debatable, anger doesn't seem useful. Either someone has the power to gain remedy by extralegal means or they do not, and whether they…

To be more explicit: either one has the power to gain remedy via extralegal means or one does not. If one does, doing so angrily or not doesn't change much. If one does not, I claim that first gaining the necessary power ("sleep on brushwood and taste gall") is much more likely to be effective than rashly attempting something in the expectation anger should somehow magically augment one's initial lack of power.

(in fact the latter rash attempts are likely to be advantageous for one's adversary, hence the original "hollywood for proles" conspiracy theoretic hypothesis given above)

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#139
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world, so you never really know why. Assuming stupidity by default doesn't always make you feel better and may still lead to an emotional reaction you don't want to have. The better solution is to not care why, and do what ya gotta do. Usually that's creating distance from the source of problems and you and your work.

Distance is the only solution I know of when the malice is significant and it is at an all time high right now in the USA.

on that subject, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38268138

Re: How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger (2019)

#140
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They inevitably enter a rebellious phase This is not a feature of most cultures, or at least they don't remark on it. If I were to guess, it is caused by our practice of sending kids to school.

It's well documented across the order Mammalia, not just humans.

Considering that it isn't well documented in humans, why would that matter?
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