What beliefs will your children inherit?

My mother is blaming me for not making an effort to teach my son Russian.

“You are depriving him. Look at all the other bilingual families speaking with their children in their mother tongue. ” 

With that in mind, why don’t I make the effort?

Because I will not burden him with any emotional attachment to a nation that refuses to grow up and learn repeated lessons from history. 

My view is that it’s better not to pass on any strong feelings of affiliation with any identity group, unless it is vital for his survival and well-being.

You can be in the group, but not of it, so when the group goes stupid, you are not blind to it or too slow to react.

They say ‘Actions have consequences - choose wisely’. But what are our actions based on? They are based on Feelings that grow out of the substrate called Beliefs. This is the stuffy dark basement that few want to venture into: the questioning of one's own beliefs. The problem is: when beliefs remain unquestioned and unacknowledged, they can have serious real life consequences and cloud critical thinking…

The cost of attachment to an identity based group

WSJ Journalist Evan Gershkovich was born in New Jersey to Russian immigrants. He had a typical American childhood and could have had a great life. Today Evan is in Russian prison on fake charges facing 20 years. He is another lucrative “hostage” for Putin.

The interest of a young man in his rich heritage pulled him into Russia to work for the New York Times in 2018. A warm fuzzy feeling of belonging came over him in Moscow. I can see exactly how it happened,  his love affair with Russia is not uncommon. The conversations are more open and frank than in the West, if you speak the language, the parties are more real, the homey feeling of the Russian banya and dacha gatherings, the soulful songs that suck you in - all these things that could be enjoyed as cultural artifacts and left behind, unless… There is a part of you that believes this group of  people and their aura is who you belong with.

Evan wasn’t a Putin supporter but wasn’t vocal about it, he wanted to help the ordinary Russians by documenting their reality. He did it carefully. But his sense of belonging clouded his decision-making capability. When it was clearly time to leave, he missed the signs and was still there a year after the war started. The naivete that comes with growing up in the West, that if you just bring goodness and truth , you are unlikely to encounter evil, just does not work in certain places. 

The counterbalance to all the above “attractors” in Russia is an underlying cultural and moral rot. It was taking over the majority of the population. Some never got rid of it from the Communist indoctrination days. This was visible on many levels if one would look. Just one example: during the 2014 Crimea occupation there was genuine happiness, joy and a sense of entitlement to that land, also amongst the educated. Now the price of lack of critical thinking and respect for basic human rights is starting to be paid for. Which brings me to an unspoken belief that creeps in on all of us:

Entitlement and it’s various forms

When you live in a democracy with functioning laws, without corruption, excess violence, and stray dog packs, the relative utopia lasting for decades starts feeling like something you are entitled to. It lulls you in the expectation that it will always be like that. You forget the sacrifices it took to get here, and you become blind to the efforts that might be necessary to maintain the order that everyone is used to. The guard goes down and disappointment is big when something shatters the illusion of stability and control.

Passing on feelings of any kind of entitlement to kids, even in a disguised form, has a negative impact on their ability to make sound decisions in the future. This doesn’t seem like an odd statement. However, it does make many people defensive and uncomfortable.

A father who feels cheated by an employer and carries a grudge feels entitled to have been treated differently. A mother who is resentful about her ex-husband, feeling entitled to a lifelong commitment and can’t hide her feelings of resentment from the kids. A family that feels cheated out of property or land and passes on the anger at the dinner table quietly hoping that maybe the kids will get retribution… How many people do you think have a radically honest examination about their hidden biases, allegiances, and attachments? How could all of this impact the future wellbeing and present life of their kids?

Only a very emotionally mature parent really wants nothing from the kid besides them to be happy. All kinds of neediness and expectations are often disguised. How much do we really love our kids unconditionally and how much do we love them if their ideas support our ideologies?

There is no absolute final truth anyone can hold claim to. But not all ideas and cultures are evolutionary and morally equal, just like not all beliefs we pass on to children are equally sound.

“The best argument against moral equivalency is that denying that one culture is better than another entails denying that the future state of one's own culture can be better than the present. It denies the possibility of progress, is hostile to it” – Physicist David Deutsch.

Group allegiance and participation works better if it is based on merit and/or the presence of a clear common goal. It doesn’t work well when it is primarily identity and emotion based.

Want to avoid groupthink and the trap of entitlement? Ideas to ponder:

• Are most of the people in my group interested in the truth and solutions or are they just interested in chit chat and noise?  Or is it the pity, righteousness and camaraderie they get in suffering?

• How have the policies / beliefs / ideas of my group been working for the group so far? How effective have they been over the years? 

• How much bias could I have inherited from them?

• How is what I want to be real impacting my perception of what reality actually is?

• Where and to what do I and my group feel entitled?

If one Really Wants to progress, given the constraints and reality of one's situation - the path is always there. Blame, victimhood, feeling sorry for oneself and feeling entitled to anything - all take you off this path. For individuals or nations, it’s the same…