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              %PATERNAL STEALING RESPONSIBLE BURDEN 870114

     Paternalism is the stealing of the burden of personal
responsibility  from people who need to learn how to carry
it  with dignity and integrity.   The natural reaction  to
paternalism is to resent such a deprivation of dignity and
the resultant disintegration to which it leads.  It is not
easy  to get to the roots of paternalism in an integrative
way.

     Paternalists seem  to  want to protect  people,   but
mostly they want to  protect  themselves  from  a sense of
irresponsibility.   They  believe that they can  work  out
their  own salvation by working to save others  from  what
others do not save themselves.   Paternalists believe that
they have the power to do for others what others do not do
for  themselves.    Paternalism has to do with having  and
using power,  with paternalists having and exercising more
power than their children.   Paternalists do not promote a
system of checks and  balances  to  avoid  the  corruption
which characterizes unbalanced power.

     Paternalism is perverse because it is the  perversion
of noble and powerful paternal instincts.   The  instincts
which drive people to engage in paternalistic behavior are
instincts  which  are  more  deeply  rooted  than verbally
defined  responsibilities;   yet they are instincts  which
have  been  diverted  from their proper course  by  verbal
confusion over unrecognized differences.

     Paternalists  covet power and the sense of fulfilling
their  responsibility,  but they can not effectively share
that  power  and responsibility with those who  have  less
power and responsibility.   They selfishly do not want  to
burden  those whom  they seek to serve with they burden of
responsibility and power,  and the  risks of failing to be
responsible with power.

     When  people  are not expected to do  for  themselves
what is normal for people to do for themselves they become
dependent rather than interdependent.   Paternalism  leads
people   to  become  resentfully  dependent  rather   than
appreciatively interdependent in mature ways.  Paternalism
leads  to addictions to dependent behavior patterns within
which people do not have  the  power  to fulfill their own
responsibilities to take good care of themselves.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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