This is http://www.essayz.com/a9712222.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %YOUNG CHILDREN PEOPLE ADOLESCENTS DISCERN COLLUDE+971222 %DOUBLE BIND PRISON LIBERATE RESPECT POWER CORRUPT 971222 Young people are perceptive and able to discern when adults are participating in collusive games of mutual self-deception. Respecting adults who are recognized as participating in games of mutual self-deception are clearly absurd. The young person's dilemma is to discern how to respond to such dishonest people without themselves becoming dishonest like the people whom they cannot respect. 1. If young people expose the collusive games of mutual self-deception, which powerful adults (parents, teachers, religious leaders, employers, politicians, etc.) play --- their own personal and communal integrities will be threatened, if not totally undermined by the powerful people whose dishonest has been exposed. 2. If young people behave "prudently" and do not expose the collusive games of mutual self-deception, how are they to avoid becoming participants in the very games which they cannot respect? a. Keep completely quiet and not talk with anybody about what they have seen? That is itself very characteristic of colluders. To take that route is to surrender and become a colluder. b. Be very prudent about whom to talk to about what has been seen? How is a young person to be wise enough to know which people can be trusted? Old people? Young people? Children? Religious people? Family members? Teachers? None of the labels serves as a reliable guide. c. Intuition? Most people tend to put more trust in logic, reasoning, systematic procedures, science, authorities, etc. How is a child to put ultimate trust in intuition? d. God? What kind of God? A god who is like the collusive adults? Absurd! e. What if a child has not experienced a close relationship with adults who are not participants in collusive games of mutual self-deception? How then is a child to be liberated from the prisons of collusive behaviors, heal, and become involved in healthy intimate relationships where true security can be known as the freedom to be safely vulnerable in open and honest dialogue? It would truly be a miracle for a child to transcend the dilemma. Has it ever happened? (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================