It's Provincial

 

I often wonder how people exist not knowing what is outside their little circle(s). Some haven’t read a news article fully in years. Some say it triggers them. Some say they can’t be bothered. Some claim that they have ‘no time’ to read. Some state they don’t believe anything. Others claim religion is their news. Or that they only read fiction works. My response to all this is, grow up. And this lack of reading from a variety of sources I’ve found, leads to tribalism and various forms of coercion and brainwashing. By the way, the rate of men reading for leisure dropped 40% in this country in the past 20 years.

Tribalism is quite similar to having a provincial mindset. And as a society it is unhealthy. Too, as an individual it stymies growth. My husband and I had decided long ago that it was not intelligent to indoctrinate our children in any particular religion. I would have them study religion yet not push them into attending any services with any regularity. We’d let them choose their future. It is not an easy way to raise children, but at the end of it all, it was best.

The guidelines I’d constructed for over a decade were geared towards understanding others. Knowing right from wrong. Understanding consequences and being able to explore all possibilities of living in this life as human.

Three areas I knew were essential. They were: Religious guidelines-Law, Their Rights as US Citizens-The Constitution, and The Human Body. Encouraged was to Read everything, even things we may not agree with, nor completely understand. Yet giving it our attention and having open discussion and debate on whatever it may be. Still not easy, as I believed in prayer, yet also science. My husband was more science oriented; however, he knew that praying may just be a good idea.

We knew that our children would question practically everything, as they should. And I can say at a very young age they had. I started these studies before school four days per week since just before our eldest’s’ eighth birthday. It was after I’d realized her reading abilities had skyrocketed. So, instead of having her read only the fiction she’d enjoyed and the reading the school expected her to do; I started my own morning classes of five minutes on each subject before breakfast before school and before my work for over a decade for both our children. Now I no longer read to them, they read, and I’d help them with words when they couldn’t be at a certain level for the material.

Our oldest thought believing in something that wasn’t physically tangible was bogus. I remember that evening at the dinner table, about a decade ago. “Why would I believe in something that appears imaginary?”  She’d asked us as she was twelve at the time. I looked at my husband, he was quick to respond. “Because there are times when we need hope. When everything you knew has felt as if it has left you. It’s a backup system to help you get through the darkest of times.” I nodded to my husband. I remarked, “Yeah. When you feel alone and hopeless.” She still wasn’t completely sure of a belief in hope could change that. Yet, at the same time, she at age twelve was already a teenager. She was feeling her oats.

Another time just two years prior, our youngest then at age eight asked at the breakfast table before school, “Mom? Two men can’t get married. That’s ridiculous.” I readily turned to her and said, “Yes they can.” She came back with, “That’s weird.” I answered, “To you it may be. You’re used to Mommy and Daddy’s heterosexual relationship. That’s all you know. You can’t judge nor condemn what someone else has if you haven’t experienced it. Most people around here are married like Mommy and Daddy, that’s your norm. Not everyone’s. You can’t judge what you don’t know of.”

Yes, every morning for majority of those years we read out loud the “Five Books of Moses”. Then in the final two years we graduated to Christianity, then to Daoism and some Buddhism. Although I’d read a good portion of the Bhagavad Gita in the past a few times, I explained some to them overtime. I was taught by an Iraqi soldier about Islam years ago. I befriended Iraqi brothers who’d fought for Saddam Hussein. I’d witnessed their kindness and had open discussions with two of the three men.

 In our home when you first enter, you see a big hutch filled with some nic’nacks or tchotchkes and tons of books, one being the Quaran.  Between the various religious books are also philosophical books to boot; then historical, then fiction. Of our morning lessons the second five minutes were on the human body, we’d first focused on “The Body Electric”, written by Robert Becker, M.D., then after over a year we switched to “The Microbiome Solution” by Robyn Chutkah, M.D., “Brain Maker” by David Perlmutter, M.D., then a book on podiatry that was published before Grete Waitz raced a marathon under two hours and thirty minutes.

I explained to our children that women were stronger than stated in the podiatry medical book written by a white, male medical doctor who was indeed biased. I told them the story of Germany’s one-time long-distance women’s champion, Christa Vahlensieck’s coach who’d written a book on long-distance running. He stated in the mid-1970s that women would never run under two hours and thirty minutes for a marathon (26.2 miles). I told our daughters that in their lifetimes women will surpass men in that event.

Our oldest laughed three-quarters of the way through our reading the podiatry book when I remarked that the doctor who was a podiatrist really didn’t know feet, nor women. She asked, “Then why did you have us read it?” I replied, “You need to know that doctors are human and make mistakes. They can be bigoted towards anyone or anything that is unlike what they came from, because they are human. Especially since our medical field is geared in their scientific data that they’ve accumulated on mostly white men. So, you need to understand that this bias has and does exist even in medicine. It is in every facet of our world.”

The problems America has faced and faces every second of everyday is provincial thinking. It even boils down to individuals within towns; within religious settings, churches, mosques, synagogues and the like. Little by little many people settle into a comfort zone. They become so intolerant of anything different that they exclude the truth. And this increases the systemic racism that has already existed in this country. It is because we Americans for the most part are provincial.---Jody-Lynn Reicher