"Don’t
handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
Robert A. Heinlein
I first read
that quote, or precisely retweeted it, from a dear friend of mine, Endah
Triastuti (@dektitut). I began reading about the person saying it, Heinlein, a
science fiction writer. The themes he raised in his work have been greatly
about non-conformity, liberty, and self-reliance.
I write this
post as a parent, as much as I am a child. And I will begin with how I see
Jakarta’s upwardly mobile middle class society today, of which I am a part.
Let’s begin
with where we live. We live in housing compounds, protected by 24-hour guards.
We build fences around our homes, and have torrents to filter our water.
We take bank
loans to buy private vehicles, because public transportation is so unreliable.
We are the
world’s fourth largest communication technology user. We use it to maintain contact
with people close to us rather than getting to know interesting strangers.
We use them
to take pictures of ourselves, our children, what we eat. We share them with
people who, in our minds, are closest to us.
We have
irrational medicine use. At the first sign of flu, we take three types of
medicine. We ask our doctors to give us antibiotics before giving time for our
bodies to fight the viruses.
All of these
are symptoms. That our environment has become so unsafe, we create a protective
bubble around us.
Now let us
reflect on our children, and more abstract notions.
We vaccinate
our children, in the largest sense of the word. We put them in schools that keep
them away from harm. We hope that one day, if they know all the important
things, these memories can be used as tools to fight off social illnesses.
In our
consciousness, we see the world as a dirty, filthy place. And we try to keep
our children clean.
How has that
been working so far?
I see adults
who never really mature. We were so afraid of infecting our children with
diseases that they never really developed immunity. As adults, most don’t know
exactly how to rely on themselves, and not objects around them, to mentally
process life’s complexities.
And that’s
why we have become such a consumerist society. Why malls are everywhere. We buy
things; accumulate objects to keep our world safe and comfortable. From binging
on food, collecting handbags and shoes, buying the newest gadgets without
really using it to make our lives more efficient.
And how do
we interact in non-consumerist spaces? Outside of malls. How do we interact
online? We do it as consumers.
We collect
likes from friends each time we upload a photo or a status. We collect friends.
We group with those likeminded with us, and ‘other’ people who are too
different from us. When the space has become too dirty, we move on to the next space.
From Friendster (infected with alays),
to Facebook (infected with distant relatives), to Twitter (infected with public
personalities), to Path.
And at this
point, we adults are in fact children who never really grew up. We are the ones
‘handicapped’, because we have had ourselves kept safe, we continue to keep our
children’s world safe, and we come full circle to Heinlein’s quote.
This has
been how we’ve been building our society for the past decades. A huge, safe
bubble that is supported by objects to give a sense of comfort from an
insecure, unreliable world. We have utterly weakened ourselves, and our
children, in the process. How do we raise children to rely on themselves, if we
ourselves have not?
I would
rather not live in a bubble, than live with fear, thinking of how it might
burst one day.
And perhaps,
let it pop while it’s small.
