Insights Needles in Their Eyes Priests often undergo extreme training as young children when they are more agreeable and less resistant. The closer we get to adulthood, the more difficult it is to impose sacrifices upon the majority of us. Priests are often chosen by their family or tribe: this one will follow God; this one is my gift to God. In the Old Testament of the Bible, as a thank you for being given a son, that son was sometimes offered into priesthood. Children are impressionable, and though many are wiser than adults, they are too weak to contradict us. I have been disturbed by the maltreatment of children across the world and in our own country, how children are forced into situations that ideally should not even be reserved for adults. I've witnessed how young boys are forced to commit crimes that cause trauma to the communities they live in and cause trauma self inflicted at the influence of adults that hand them guns or bombs. When one first kills, that causes a shock to the psyche. How can this world overcome its traumatized children? What will our future be when many boys are trained like priests with religion and given bullets to kill and maim for honor? I love children from infants to teens. I think children are individually very interesting and it is so wonderful to see them discover new things in themselves and discover their potential in many ways. I am a teacher. I teach math and I get so much out of seeing that light bulb go off above their heads as they discover they can, yes, they can do it, whatever it is, from solving fractions to performing linear algebra. I've noticed how warlike societies train their children. They take them when they're young many years before puberty, fill their minds with images of war and glory, and then train them to be soldiers─not all the children of a society, only those that are expendable: the poor sons of the poor villagers, the less educated children of the inner city families, and children from families scattered across the deserts of places like Pakistan, with no infrastructure to prohibit their indenture into training camps of war. We are responsible for the world. Our insulation from the obvious destruction going on in places like Afghanistan, parts of Africa, Italy, and in some American cities is only an illusion. How can we feel at ease when so many are being cultivated like weeds to cause as much mayhem as they can muster? I'm appalled. We are not alone on this planet. Here's what we can do. Give a kid a chance. Reach out and mentor a child. Campaign against the inhumane treatment of children. Campaign for a peaceful society. Never agree to go into another land and start war. Never agree to bomb families and cities just because they are "over there." And in our own country, recognize that a dollar should not be made by promoting war and crime. Recognize that children are being exploited because at a deeper level, political ideologies are not in line with reason. Children can be compelled to do the unthinkable and the unreasonable. Then, when they reach adulthood, like those with needles in their eyes, they embrace the pain of what is being imposed on them, but what they cannot see. The pain becomes their refuge. I witnessed a young Pakistani man in the service of the Taliban speak of the unspeakable. He spoke of training young boys at the ages of five and beyond to learn the Koran in an unfamiliar language in the atmosphere of armed guards and intimidation. He spoke in a seemingly altered state about how women deserve to be indoors and should never venture out because they are women. But I saw the pain─the needles in his eyes. Was he taken at five, seeking his mother, only to find harshness, murder, abuse, and brutality? And now as a young man his needles become his mother. As a mother I am outraged about this, and about all the young men who went off to fight in Iraq after 9-11 because we had to do something, fight back somehow, and avenge our dead. But wasn't it also that we are a culture of war and at young ages are taught it is acceptable to fight for democracy? And what about those of our children who wind up in gangs, killing their neighbors by spraying bullets blindly into crowds or houses? The world needs healing, and we need to start with our children, or more and more of the insane will rule us and lead us into more insanity. We need to teach our children in love to put peace as a priority, that all men's lives are meaningful and so as a result, is theirs. Vic Mansfield in his book Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics is quoted as saying, "Over three decades of teaching have taught me that instruction is most effective when the teacher is motivated by love for the students and the subject matter. With these twin loves present and reinforcing each other, teaching truly quickens the mind and brings life out of darkness." At an early age, we need to instill in our children a love for peace, directed from our own love for peace and harmony. And therein lies the solution to many of the world's problems. Fewer generals will have been taught insanity as children and more ambassadors will have developed a sense of balance. It will be a slow and painful process to create a population of people that will seek common ground rather than blast each other in disagreement; but until we learn peace and not war, we are doomed by repetitive action to create more and more hells on our ever shrinking planet. |
