“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
What would be necessary in this world for every person to be an artist? Would life then be an art?
Children are artistic from the perspective that their participation in activities tends to be more of an unconditional self expression – a self discovery – rather than doing tasks that are to be completed with an idea or goal in mind. What happens as we grow older is that we are filled with knowledge and value judgments of ourselves and world from which we create fears and desires – ideas about what to do, what not to do, and of course the reasons why we do things or do not do them.
These are conditions. For every idea of what we don’t want, is created an idea of what we do want, and from every idea of what we do want, is created an idea of what we don’t want. This is where the ideas of success and failure are birthed, and engrained in the pursuit of success will be the fear of failure. If the process of trying to succeed then results in failure, this fear is then further engrained within us, and the more this process is repeated, the more the fear of failure is engrained within us.
Children ‘fail’ all the time – but they do not see it that way – we, the adults, do. For a child, the experience of what we as adults would define as failing, is but another learning curve where the value of seeing what does not work is invaluable to the process of learning what will work, and how all things work in general. Without learned negative or positive connotations, this process of ‘making mistakes’ is invaluable and essential to learning and coming in to our own self expression and self discovery in our world.
What happens as we grow older however is we are taught by adults all about the ways of success and failure – the learned motivations for that which we do that are based within fears and desires. Children are taught that in life we must be successful and reach our goals, and then we provide for them the goals on the premise that they are in the child’s best interest. We have even devised a system to administrate this, a system of levels, wherein a child is urged to have learned certain skills or must have certain knowledge acquired by a certain age – a time limit. With this expectation/desire to have a goal reached by a certain age, the fear of failure is born and the clock is now ticking.
For an adult that has already learned this way of life, it is amazing to watch children work and play. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any real difference between work and play for the child – are these words also polarity creations of the fears and desires of adults? Children simply go about their business, exploring, investigating, expressing – it is natural and requires no knowledge from the adults, because if it did, no development would be possible as a baby cannot be instructed through knowledge. Children are no less effective in their development with the absence of fears/desires and other value judgments of the like.
How would a baby learn to walk if it was constantly judging itself for falling down? How would it learn to speak if it was afraid of saying the wrong thing? Failure is only an option for those who have learned the fear of failure and the drive for success.
Yet we as adults are doing a very effective job at completely stymieing all natural self expression and opportunities to nurture and support the self expression of the child. The child is constantly being bombarded by the parents, the society, and the education system that teach the value judgments that hinder and limit its ability to develop and express itself, whether by actual education, or purely by exposure to the ways of the parent/society that exist within/act upon these value judgments.
Through the educational system we have perfected a system of limiting the child’s self expression through brainwashing the child with all kinds of knowledge as value judgments about the child and the world in which they live. We do this in the name of what is best for the child and society, but there is a big difference between educating the child about how the physical world functions to support the child in becoming self expressive as an effective participant in our world, and telling the child what it must be as an expectation imposed upon the child to be able to serve a society that does not necessarily give equal value to all members of the society.
So what is the great fear all about? What is it that we desire so greatly in our pursuit to be successful? To what end does this ‘educational’ experience serve?
Education as it currently exist serves to teach the human how to be effective in doing the work that is necessary to serve and maintain society, for which the human is rewarded for its service to society based on how the society has valued what the human has done to serve it. There are various values given to various jobs to be done in any given society, and depending on the job and its value, the human will be rewarded through money to be able to survive.
The above paragraph may be obvious, simple common sense to some – and to be even more to the point, notice that the paragraph began with the word ‘education’ and ended with the word ‘survive’. Education = survival.
That is what education is currently about – survival. That is what our goals are about – survival. That is what our fears of failure and our desire to be successful are about – survival. Thus how can life be lived to its full potential, if it is based in survival? Survival is the lowest possible form of existence – it is literally on the verge of death. How can a child continue into adulthood, expressing itself freely, without fear, without compromise, when the child is taught to only do what it is told within the pursuit of money that is based on fear of surviving?
How can this even be a legitimate fear when the earth provides unconditionally more than enough resources for the human species to be able to live and thrive in peace with other life forms on earth? It is not – it is a fear that we have learned – as the fearless child shows – it is a fear that we are teaching. It is not real. It is not life.
Yet almost everyone is trapped within this survival system to some degree or another due to how our world system operate – which is that we have created a value system that is in imbalance, where a small minority of people have far too much and the majority of people have little with which to survive, and some have nothing at all. In no way is our survival ensured, we have created survival as something to be attained and sought after. It is among the masses of people who have little or nothing that the fight for survival has become a way of life, and from this perspective it makes perfect sense that we are teaching our children to compete and survive. Artistic endeavors and self expression become secondary, if even still relevant/possible at all, and people’s lives become consumed by the fear and pursuit of survival from which we create all our ideas of success and what we desire.
Thus a correction of our value system is required, to stop creating life within the context of survival due to artificially created circumstances of lack, where so many have so little of the resources from which they depend on to live. By unconditionally providing people with equal access to that which is required to survive, survival will no longer become the main issue that is at the forefront of everybody’s minds all the time in some form or another. With our basic needs taken care of and survival no longer an issue, the human will be able to learn, express, grow and develop without fear and unconditionally of outside influence that may limit them. Our competition, spitefulness and fear towards each other will cease as a new way of life for the human emerge. Who would we be if we lived and expressed ourselves without fear? What would we do and how would our accomplishments fair if they were not driven by desires that were based in fears? Would we as adults, remain as children do in a peaceful state of mind if we were no longer taught the fear of survival and the drive for success?
From years of research and first hand investigation in the classroom, I can assuredly answer: YES.
To learn more about how we are able to create a value system that is based in equality where everyone’s basic needs are taken care of, visit equalmoney.org
In part 2 of this blog I will be doing self forgiveness and self corrective statements on the educational system we have created that does not serve our children’s best interest.
An Alpha Male's Journey To Life 