my least favorite word is 'should'
So, this morning in my Philosophy class (dear God, do I hate that phrase), we were talking about Descartes, because philosophy has a love affair with that loser, and how he wanted psychology to be taught as the basis for everything. Which is an interesting idea, with one main problem that I can see: parents don't like it when their kids think for themselves.
So, I said this, because it's a small class and we just shout out whatever we're thinking, and the professor, who is the liberal of liberals, kind of a weird guy but an interesting guy, I like him, made a crack about, "Yeah, definitely, I know I don't want my kids thinking for themselves" with the implication that, obviously, he does want his kids thinking for themselves. And while I can concede that yeah, this guy is telling the truth, or at least he thinks he is.
A lot of parents will not admit that they want their kids to just be carbon copies of them, or, rather, they won't outright say, "I don't want my kids thinking for themselves," because obviously this particular subset of parents doesn't want their kids just following along with the crowd and doing whatever the crowd does. But they don't want their kids to contradict them. God no, they don't want that.
I was raised to be contradictory, basically; my dad's pretty oppositionally defiant, and also he showed me and my brother the music video to "Another Brick in the Wall" when we were little, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. Me and my siblings disagree with our parents all the time. Constant thing. We don't even think about it, we just talk, and talking sometimes means contradiction. We were at some family Christmas, and my mom's sister, who is definitely the kind of person who would never say she wanted her kids thinking for themselves but definitely does not want her kids to contradict her in any way at all, mentioned that she didn't like the age her daughters were at now, because particularly the younger one had an idea of how to dress that she didn't like, and then she sighed and said, "Well, I guess that's part of the teenage contradiction." Then she looked at me. "You should be past that by now."
My mom, very calmly: "I like my kids to think for themselves."
So I hate the word 'should.' And there's probably some huge privilege thing there or whatever, that my least favorite word is not 'should' instead of a slur or whatever, whatever, moving past it. But I fucking hate it. I get the fact that, yeah, you gotta like, follow laws and stuff, but beyond that, don't tell me what I should be doing. You should do this. You should to that. Fuck off, I'm an adult and I'm not going to do jack shit just because you tell me to.
And not all iterations of the word are equal; I mean, if I'm asking for advice, tell me what I should do. It's when you have that sort of pompous attitude about it, like, "You should be past it by now" is pretty much bullshit. Stop being mad that not everyone tries to squash the individuality out of their kids like you do. That's all 'should' is. It's an attempt to push people onto the mainstream. And if you like the mainstream, whatever, you do that. But if I don't like the mainstream, then I'm going to stay away from it, and don't tell me how I 'should' act. I know how I 'should' act in certain situations. I have a customer service job. It's not like I skew the boundaries of how I should be acting them. But with family, when you're not on the clock? I'm not in danger of losing my 11$/hr, I'm going to act how I please. I won't swear around a little kid, don't worry, but I'm also not going to just bow and kowtow to people just because they had the misfortune of being born years before me.
So, I said this, because it's a small class and we just shout out whatever we're thinking, and the professor, who is the liberal of liberals, kind of a weird guy but an interesting guy, I like him, made a crack about, "Yeah, definitely, I know I don't want my kids thinking for themselves" with the implication that, obviously, he does want his kids thinking for themselves. And while I can concede that yeah, this guy is telling the truth, or at least he thinks he is.
A lot of parents will not admit that they want their kids to just be carbon copies of them, or, rather, they won't outright say, "I don't want my kids thinking for themselves," because obviously this particular subset of parents doesn't want their kids just following along with the crowd and doing whatever the crowd does. But they don't want their kids to contradict them. God no, they don't want that.
I was raised to be contradictory, basically; my dad's pretty oppositionally defiant, and also he showed me and my brother the music video to "Another Brick in the Wall" when we were little, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. Me and my siblings disagree with our parents all the time. Constant thing. We don't even think about it, we just talk, and talking sometimes means contradiction. We were at some family Christmas, and my mom's sister, who is definitely the kind of person who would never say she wanted her kids thinking for themselves but definitely does not want her kids to contradict her in any way at all, mentioned that she didn't like the age her daughters were at now, because particularly the younger one had an idea of how to dress that she didn't like, and then she sighed and said, "Well, I guess that's part of the teenage contradiction." Then she looked at me. "You should be past that by now."
My mom, very calmly: "I like my kids to think for themselves."
So I hate the word 'should.' And there's probably some huge privilege thing there or whatever, that my least favorite word is not 'should' instead of a slur or whatever, whatever, moving past it. But I fucking hate it. I get the fact that, yeah, you gotta like, follow laws and stuff, but beyond that, don't tell me what I should be doing. You should do this. You should to that. Fuck off, I'm an adult and I'm not going to do jack shit just because you tell me to.
And not all iterations of the word are equal; I mean, if I'm asking for advice, tell me what I should do. It's when you have that sort of pompous attitude about it, like, "You should be past it by now" is pretty much bullshit. Stop being mad that not everyone tries to squash the individuality out of their kids like you do. That's all 'should' is. It's an attempt to push people onto the mainstream. And if you like the mainstream, whatever, you do that. But if I don't like the mainstream, then I'm going to stay away from it, and don't tell me how I 'should' act. I know how I 'should' act in certain situations. I have a customer service job. It's not like I skew the boundaries of how I should be acting them. But with family, when you're not on the clock? I'm not in danger of losing my 11$/hr, I'm going to act how I please. I won't swear around a little kid, don't worry, but I'm also not going to just bow and kowtow to people just because they had the misfortune of being born years before me.
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