The number one factor which determines who one becomes as an adult is, and it's not really a shocker... drumroll... "how one was raised". Good parenting has always and will always be of pinnacle importance when talking about the future of humanity. Parenting styles are behaviors that parents use to discipline and raise their children. They are so crucial because they affect everything – from the way a child sees themselves, and their interactions to other people. Affecting not only later adolescence but all the way into adulthood. Ideally, these styles support healthy growth and development because they will greatly influence a child’s behavior and personality for the rest of their life.
Whether you had one parent, or multiple parents, or multiple paternal like figures. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, were adopted, it can be a mixed bag for many. Let's say your mother isn't exclusively the woman whose ovaries you grew inside of and then who birthed you, but instead more the woman who raised you. Which is usually but not always the same person. Same with your father, it's not just the sack you were once swimming around in during your tadpole form but the man who raised you. We have a buddy who, in junior high school his parents separated and eventually each remarried. Then in high school found out he was the product of a sperm donor. So technically he has three dads. A donor dad, a step dad, and the dad who raised him and he considers the dad who raised him, his primary dad. So however the chessboard of your adolescence was structured, you certainly had older feminine and masculine influences.
There are multiple parenting styles. Such as authoritative, uninvolved, permissive, or authoritarian. Most little people growing up are raised in a somewhat mix of these. Ideally, they would be by far raised in mostly an authoritative style - which is based on the largest amount of love. In which parents are teachers that provide a living environment while also helping their little person or people face and overcome challenges. Enforcing rules and consequences while considering their child’s feelings. Explaining the reasons behind the rules they established and putting a lot of effort into creating and maintaining a positive parent-child relationship. This is also characterized by an openness to new experiences and by creativity and experimentation. Then there is an uninvolved style, consisting of being absent. Which can happen because a parent is crap and just doesn't care but more likely does involve loving parents or more likely a single parent who is just having to work their ass off and just isn't around that much. They are thus not as directly involved or knowledgeable about their child's life. Then you've got a permissive parenting style. Which can come from a loving parent but to a lukewarm degree and is frankly, overly lazy. Resulting in an overly lax attitude, with a more or less do whatever the child wants, with minimal parental interference, in which rules are loosely set but never reinforced. We know a single parent whose child is an absolute pain and a drain which we can barely stand. They basically let their offspring continue its established patterns of being very reactionary, crass, and selfish without trying to adjust those negative traits. So we suspect this child is already on their way to being rubbish into their adulthood.
Finally we have the worst parenting style, and why this is round four in our pro-democracy political philosophy series. Which is an authoritarian parenting style that causes the most pain and societal damage. Most of the time, authoritarian parents take little to no consideration for their child's feelings. When it comes to discipline and rules, they believe that there are no other rules, but theirs. Most of the time, the child’s sentiments and good behaviors are not seen or heard. This crap style focuses on obedience, with little to no interest in negotiation, and punishment over discipline. Often teaching children that they are the problem, to feel sorry for their inevitable mistakes, while the parents themselves are said to be infallible, instead of highlighting what both the parent and child do correctly along with what they can each improve. There is little to no gray area, instead only starkness of black and white, wrong, and right - all from the authorities point of view.
Within families, there is usually a blending of these styles. While there's also often a mix of these blended styles from multiple older influences - parental or societal. Gotten either directly in the household, or via the tribe or community, or lack of community. Regardless of being scientifically based, or religious based, or mix of the two, these styles can still stand. However the first three allow for more capacity for self-criticism, recognition of complexity, and tentativeness in the expression of beliefs. While the last one is unquestioned, and unreflective and is thereby where intolerance, prejudice, and dogmatism typically thrive.
Within a family or tribe, regardless of the cultural configuration, there is inevitably a hierarchy - Meaning a system in which people or things are put at various levels or ranks according to their power and importance. Led by the head of the household, either the matriarch or patriarch or if most balanced, both. And the hierarchy of influence comes down from there. If one has a grandmother, mother, aunts, and sisters, that is the primarily feminine side of the family. If grandma has become very elderly, the leadership role and matriarch is the mother. If one has a grandfather, father, uncles, and brothers, that is the primarily masculine side of the family. If grandpa has become very elderly, the leadership role and patriarch is the father. This is standard operating procedure within humans and other mammals like elephants. As a mother elephant will be the one who makes the decisions on behalf of an elephant tribe in regards to where they search in the height of summer for the watering holes. A crucial leadership decision which can literally mean death or life for the tribe.
We have spoken elsewhere on hierarchy and how it does very much exist within nature. A small portion of any group are the tallest, smartest, and yes, more the most creative or talented. Yet, one's development and attitude toward both hierarchy and authority is a crucial factor for how someone ends up either being more pro-democratic vs more pro-authoritarian into their adulthood.
Referencing our previous essay at this point, "Gender and Sexuality Balance," we are going to focus specifically on the patriarchal dynamics within how one was raised within the family - specifically relating to being off balanced with the masculine hierarchy. For it's one thing to teach a little person to respect others, especially their elders, of both sexes. In more authoritarian parenting styles, it's the father who is the one in charge at the top of the hierarchy and gets the most respect, because they are the unquestioned authority that instills fear. And often transfers down a very tough love at best or, chauvinist, macho, or even mentally or physically abusive behavior at worst from grandfather, to father, to sons within the authoritarian parenting style. This is the power and control over the family dynamic. Giving "power dad downloads" from father to son.
In authoritative parenting styles there is usually not only a respect for elders taught, with some respect for hierarchy, but a more balanced dynamic being taught which also allows for questioning the hierarchy and even being very skeptical of aspects of authority. This is a more balanced, open minded, and growth based mindset which allows for looking more deeply at life. Because as one gets older, when they look past the facades and peel back the curtain of power, the authorities often look not only unimpressive but morally bankrupt. But in the authoritarian household they are about indoctrination into unquestionable subservience into the higher masculine authority. With a playbook to continually naturalize power and existing entrenched forms of authority. With "authority" being defined as "Legal power, or a right to command or to act; as the authority of a prince over subjects, and of parents over children. Power; rule; sway". Which in their minds is to be revered and rarely questioned.
Now, if one gets indoctrinated in the first 7 years, or 14 years, or 21 years of their life into authoritarian parenting, it's likely that the fathering style is not only hard installed but mostly or completely loveless. Loving people produce other loving people. But hurt people also have a higher ratio of producing other hurt people. If one is primarily loving, there's a good chance their child or children will be primarily loving. If they lack love to others in their family there is a strong chance their children will lack love to both others in society and their eventual children. Either the masculine or feminine side can be more the problem, but typically if one parent is really loving, and the other is very cold tough love, or no love, or straight up physically or verbally abusive, there's a chance their children can turn out okay, but it's certainly less likely than if both are loving and nurturing. If both parents lack love, it's almost guaranteed their offspring will be the same because physically and mentally abusive parents produce physically and mentally abusive children the majority of the time. Ask any school teacher, counselor, superintendent, or principal, they will tell you that when a kid is a bully at school, it's almost certain one of the parents is a bully at home. This very sadly and unfortunately cascades down through the generations. If one has one parent who's authoritative, and one who's more authoritarian, it's likely the little person can still turn out okay and be authoritative into adulthood and their own parenting. But if both parents are authoritarian, it's much more
likely the child will grow up to be authoritarian. On rare occasions where someone does grow up with multiple authoritarian parents and then still turns out to be mostly authoritative in their parenting, we should all have infinite respect for those whose parental influences were all loveless but turned out loving to others and didn't continue the cycle of pain down to their children. Which can only happen frankly through a great deal of personal self development.
The feminine side is typically more nurturing, which is a built in operating system dynamic that is designed for child raising, and that has to be heavily reduced or removed in authoritarian parenting. Because it's more heart, and they must make one heartless, usually under the guise of being strong. A fighter. A man's man. A super ultra alpha. So you guessed correctly where this is going - A main determinant of democratic vs authoritarian leanings is due to your relationship, or lack thereof, with your father. If you didn't have a father, or a shit father, or a mentally or physically abusive father, or no father with a mentally or physically abusive masculinized mother, not only is one much more prone to violence externally but internally are much more prone to looking to sky daddy as your father. Specifically within the Christian menu - sky daddy, and sky daddy son. We can always tell this is the case when someone puts God or Jesus or Allah very front and center in their speech, they are speaking about their father figure they never had and always wished they had from their youth. For they claim one can only have love through God. No other way. Ask any secular, well educated person who grew up with loving parents what they think of these types of comments, and it's usually answered with eye rolls.
Now we are about to make a major declaration here. And say that we have honestly, hand on heart, a support for the real core of religion. What we call the esoteric core. We've said this before numerous times in our work and we say it again now and will always stand by this. For we are not blanketly hostile to all religion, or irreligious, or what crazy extreme religious people would call a heathen who needs to repent. Remember, Sturgeon's law, which we've also spoken over many times before, says that "ninety percent of everything is crap". However, 90% of nature and its creations are not crap. So we would modify that a bit to say that ninety percent of everything within modern society and culture is crap - because the primary goal of the majority of modern society and culture is just about making money. 90% of bee keeping is crap because it's commercialized. 90% of fishing is crap because it's commercial fishing. 90% of music is crap because it's commercial music. And 90% of religion is crap because it's commercial religion. Which is not from the spiritual, it is a man made attempt of trying to create menus for the spiritual. So time and time again, we will continue to always give religion credit for the 10% it does well. And that is what we call the esoteric core. Which one can think of as the small two circles in the center of the dart board.
In a future essay in this series we will give a itemized whole list of each factor that separates what we call the esoteric, and thus spiritual core of religion, and the crap garbage that makes up the religions of empire, which thrive in authoritarianism, but one of which is an underlying dynamic in how the religion chooses to raise its children. Which then extends into children being loving and thus loving adults, or hateful, and thus hateful adults. And this dynamic is how they answer the age-old question... Are people, (human beings, the human race) fundamentally good or fundamentally bad?
If one looks into how Western religious denominations such as the Amish, Anglican, Baptist, Calvary Chapel, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Messianic, New Apostle, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Reformed, Salvation, or Seventh Day Adventists, etc... aim to answer this question, it is that the human species is in depravity, corrupt, sinful, and primarily bad or evil. Unless one does what they call repentance. Which in theology can be said to be confessing to the pain, regret or affliction which a person feels on account of their past conduct.
Always trying to improve past bad behavior is good, but the problem here and why things derail at this point into fake commercialized religion is due to a misinterpreted concept called original sin. This Judeo-Christian concept of original sin, also described as ancestral sin, is a view of the nature of sin in which humanity has existed since the fall of man. Which is said to have arisen from Adam and Eve's transgression in Eden, the supposed sin of disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Original sin can be said to be explained as “that sin and its effects that we all possess in God’s, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster's, meatball eyes as a direct result of Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden.”
So what is meant by sin here? What should be meant, and what the genesis story is saying, is something the esoteric core of spirituality can properly decode. Which is an alchemical metaphor about how humanity is not at its highest state. It indeed had a fall, otherwise known alchemically as a separation / putrefaction, in which it lost its real initiatory lineage. That doesn't mean everyone is bad, quite the opposite is true, it just means all of humanity has gone from singular unity down into the binary material to learn from the polarity of binary mechanics. The vast majority of despiritualized theocrats have lost their real initiatory lineage and thereby dont know how to decode the good parts of their own religious texts. So what they offer instead is a commercial solution. For what exoteric outer religion does with original sin has been the marketing job of all marketing jobs. Which is that everyone is sinful or bad, from birth, and the only way to become not that way is to buy what they are selling. So what the fake aspects of commercial religion do with the concept of sin is interpret it as humans are sinful, meaning bad, and unless they do things subservient to the religious system's top of the hierarchy - the authority, such as repent and serve sky daddy, which is then said to be the only path to provide that past missing love. And your supposed free will option he has given you is a false binary to either love him or burn in hell. Worship him or be tortured forever. Which is not a loving dynamic but a hateful and thus fearful one in which you risk banishment to an out group. By being in this culty system of authority, including, surprise surprise, the requirement to give it money, and be subservient to it, only then can you find love from sky daddy, and sky daddies son, both who are said to be your only path of love. This type of agreement is very appealing to those who grew up in authoritarian households because it supposedly provides missing love while not violating the authoritarian contract of being subservient to authority.
Now this could also lead to a much deeper and philosophical conversation about both ethics and morality, which we may touch on at a later time in this series. As morality can be said to be an intrinsic quality of things, as neither is beauty or any other quality that is relative to the subject in a relationship with an object. If one watches a video on one of the more scuzzy corners of the internet of one person bashing another person's skull in, murdering them violently, you could say the person doing the bashing is bad. But then one could watch a nature video of an alligator ripping the side of a zebra's torso open, spilling its guts out. Which is just as violent. Does that mean the alligator is bad? The Native Americans very much understood this concept. As being part of the food chain in nature, at times does involve violent actions, and even the occurrence of injury or loss. Yet when they would hunt and kill an animal, they wouldn't hate and fear the animal but instead love it and appreciate the animal during this process. And during its death thank it and honor its spirit which would live on.
If one traveled all over the world, and spoke to most people on the planet, they would see a similar dynamic full spectrum of incredible, too beautiful to horrendous and awful. But in the realm of Earth, even though terrible things happen every day, produced by our species, far more good things happen every day than bad, also produced by our species. So if one talked to the majority of the people, the ones not in cults, in either more free democratic societies or even in more authoritarian societies who have come to realize their authoritarian leaders are garbage, one would find that they are all for the most part good people. The main reason why humanity is in a hot mess at this point is not because people are foundationally bad, especially in the middle or lower parts of the hierarchy, but because we are commodifying the elements of nature because of the greed of the top of the hierarchy.
Saying that people are fundamentally evil and bad is also a way to keep the flock, be that it their offspring or cult members, under their wing, and very fearful and thus untraveled and insular. What very theocratic people who have never owned a passport do to denigrate travel and experience with other cultures is use words like "worldly". Which is used not as an obvious, "hey this person has gotten out there and seen the world" but instead that their someone only concerned with the mundane of the world and not the fake cult.
The only way one can unite and not divide, is by including everyone. Which also brings us to our foundational dynamic of a real faith. Is it based in love, or has it been perverted to be based in hate? Which is really just fear. Does it lovingly support all of the hierarchy of power and control, especially the very bottom of it, instead of supporting just the top? The Real spiritual core of multi faith religion, including real Christianity, Judaism, and Islam will
teach love and that the vast majority of humanity is foundationally good. Most religious people of faith throughout the world are sincerely devoted to a good and loving life. In fact, this is exactly the ground where the secular and the spiritual stand together. Since we are in the West, this is where we can safely make an initial statement that a real Pastafarian Judeo-Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ and actually loves thy neighbor (regardless of where that neighbor is in the socio economic hierarchy) over hating anyone not in their cult. One of the spiritual reasons to back that up, is that the divine is pure love. It is not pure hate. And love is really the name of the game. Real spirituality, and then one aspect of it, a man made aspect of it, which are the formal official menu subscription systems of religion, should unite and not divide. If they are uniting, they are doing their job of moving each individual closer to the divine. If they are dividing and conquering, to protect entrenched authority, that is imperial dark sorcery. So a simplified way to look at good and bad can instead be to always ask what is spreading love and thus unity and what is spreading hate, and thus division.
So if one comes from an authoritarian household which also advocates an extreme authoritarian based religious dogma, supporting the concept of original sin and that humans are bad, and this also applies to communism by the way, which becomes authoritarian state religion, you've got a toxic combination in terms of politics. If you are forward thinking in politics and have always been baffled why certain other people think so opposite from you on virtually every single political policy, this is why. Because you know people are fundamentally good, and the other side of the spectrum who boggles your mind have been indoctrinated into thinking they are fundamentally bad. And at that point on, you will disagree on virtually every single political policy. This is why Niles has constantly been highlighting the negative aspect of what we are going to continue to call commercial fake religion in this unapologetically pro democracy political philosophy series.
If you see value in and have some care for all of your fellow patriotic countrymen, and neighboring countrymen, and even all humans throughout Earth. You want them to have healthcare as a right and not a privilege, and you value governmental systems of social uplift. However, the authoritarian thinks nobody is good, thereby thinks no one should have any right towards anything without proving their goodness by rising up the socio-economic hierarchy to becoming rich and powerful, or being part of the in group which props up that power, which is really a cult, which are actually nested cults - their faith cult, and their party cult, and their fake patriotic cult, that we'll get into later, and all they think the shared political contract of government is useful for is ultimately backed not by mutual relations of love and assistance but violence. Hence their most value is put into patriarchal military might, which uses blood spilling to achieve its goals. Because that's from the alpha macho male side of the parental hierarchy. They don't value those mother nurturing programs of social uplift, they only value the force and violence of their fake authoritarian father. With Propensity to victim blame, aggression, hate, and violence. This is why the Afghan Taliban drive around with their flags and Kalashnikovs out in truck trains and why the American Taliban drive around with their flags and AR-15s out in truck trains. Because they are foundationally based in fake religious cults. Only supporting their own cult members. Because in their tiny rotten brains everyone else who is not like them is considered bad and are then more pro-authoritarian in their political politics.
Jeff Sharlet, has written two books called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. Books which the docuseries The Family, is based after. It focuses on an organization that pretends to have something to do with spirituality but is really led by dark imperial agents called - The Fellowship, or The Family, or the International Foundation. We will also get into the dark tentacles influencing the halls of power later in this pro-democracy series but this organization is one of them. Amongst other things, it hosts an event in the United States called the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event attended at least once by every sitting president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is sponsored by the Fellowship, and brings thousands of leaders and influencers from around the world to Washington, D.C. every February. The group's known participants include ranking United States government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and supposed humanitarian aid organizations, and ambassadors and high-ranking politicians from across the world. If you read the books or watch the series you’ll be able to see the pattern which we've been decoding here. Which is not the reality that each human is a direct conduit to the divine, but instead the opposite dark sorcery view that the divine only speaks through people of influence and power - the authority. Who are always attempting to influence policy through back channels.
Raising children to be self-educated, critical thinking, as well as sympathy, kindness, and respect for others of all ages in secular households along with non-culty, real spirituality including, indigenous, pegan, multi faith practices, as well as formal religious menus, should all love thy neighbor. So if you are educated, including sexually educated and not repressed, secular or faith based people who question authority, and spread love for both sexes and know they are both foundationally good? Then you are pro-democratic. But if you grew up with no love, lack of love, or extreme tough love and were indoctrinated to be subservient to authority and then strive to become the authority with power over others, regardless of your education level or travel level, there is a near guarantee you will be regressive in your politics and a pro authoritarian cold bastard who looks to scumbag strong men as your leaders. Whether that person is living alone in a cabin in the woods with zero standing in the hierarchy, or a board member and / or CEO of a mega corporation or a dictator at the top of a hierarchy, we promise you they got that way growing up with a lack of love, being forced to fear and not question patriarchal authority, and also with one other major factor that we will dive into in the next essay - which is due to the mass psychology of sexual repression.