Committed to finding ways out of the coercion/self-sacrifice mire of conventional parenting. We are variously critical rationalists, libertarians, home educators, attachment-parents, but we take our ideas where we find them.
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I'm back after a break. Someone askedme to expand on this...
It is a bad idea to believe something because people have believed it for some time. They might all have been wrong. The abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women are the two classic examples of things that were embraced despite long traditions to the contrary. I hope the emancipation of children will someday join that list.
It is a bad idea to believe something because other people tell you to believe it, however expert they may be. They could be wrong. If they can convince you, by using their own grounds for believing the thing, then well and good, but then it is their argument rather than their authority that was persuasive.
It is a bad idea to believe something because you suddenly have a blinding flash of revelation. The connection of the mind to the outside world through the senses is not perfect. We mishear things; we supply unconsciously a lot of what we think we are seeing. Moments of revelation are marvellous - it may be that our minds have been unconsciously churning around something and a solution has popped up. But the results of that revelation should be subjected to the same critical scrutiny as everything else we encounter. What possible rational explanations are there for what we experienced? (the importance of hunger, tiredness, controlled breathing, pain, ritual, semi-consciouness, repetition in stimulating moments of apparent revelation should not be underestimated).
