Paradocracy

Wherever any individual condones or advocates for spanking or any form of corporal punishment in the household — indeed, any physical force not limited purely to restraining or redirecting a child — it is not only morally objectionable but almost always the consequence of a complete misreading of a situation which likely has its roots somewhere in some kind of poor parenting: whether it be in the modeling of poor behavior, the mistreatment or neglect of any of the children, the mishandling of conflicts or disputes, a distinct lack of self-knowledge, self-awareness, or self-control, or the mere fact that the parents are uninvolved or uninteresting, the ‘remedy’ all too often considered — spanking or any kind of violence — often follows not only a complete misunderstanding of the causes but also their indifference to peaceful alternatives. 

What’s more, their preferred ‘remedy’ — which all too often serves as a pressure relief valve rather than to edify, to instruct, or to constructively resolve behavioral problems — tends to establish violence as a default method for managing conflict, not only by parents but, in the eyes of the children, by any and all who wish to assert their authority. 

It is in this way that their ‘remedy’ perpetuates the kind of harmful practices which regrettably form the basis of future parenting — children eventually growing up and, as parents, treating their own children in just the same way — and, by extension, the basis of all of society. 

Then there are the kinds of people who not only practice this kind of violence in their homes, but who also advocate that others do the same. To them, it is not enough to physically aggress against their own children; they must also manufacture a cause or a purpose which justifies it and encourages others to do the same. 

Of course, so far as the advocates and their followers are even capable of reasoning, they are soon to discover the truth in the remainder of this article. It is found here in the fact that, despite their ramblings, their actions reveal the truth of their own upbringings, and their true opinions on the irredeemable human condition: that, according to them, violence is not just the only way, it is the preferred way; that the judgments of parents come not from any standards of morality, but through their open hands or closed fists; and that, ultimately, it is altogether likely that — because of neglect or abuse — their children just don’t like them. In this case, the children are justified not just on the basis of self-defense, but (perhaps by instinct) through recognizing the hypocrisy and logical inconsistencies of violent parents who can’t answer the following:

When one has not merely accepted but come to endorse spanking and violence as justified means to correcting or responding to child misbehavior (however defined and whatever the cause), one must be able to rationalize the forms and limits of that ‘justified’ violence, and for practical as well as moral reasons he must task himself with identifying the cause of the behavior and determining whether violence (i.e. spanking or ‘bopping’) is warranted and likely to correct the behavior over the long term — or whether the ‘disciplinary action’ is more likely to hold the child accountable to fear, as opposed to repeatable standards of good conduct. 

In administering this policy, the parent must be almost perfectly capable of determining the following: by what standards he (and others) can positively ascertain that the behaviors call for the prescribed disciplinarian action; how or at what extreme of violence he (and others) will know that the ‘disciplinarian action’ has crossed the line; how he (and others) will know when that ‘disciplinarian action’ has proven excessive or ineffective, or (which is so often the case) merely self-serving; how he will know that his endorsement of his preferred policy has exceeded the bounds of any of the prescribed limits; and how we will know that the policy, once applied or universalized, has (in practice) proved a failure (per Popper’s falsifiability principle). 

Assuming that the limits are not in such cases defined by morality — given the advocate’s belief in subjective morality, whether expressed or implied — we must deal with the fact, perhaps the inevitability, that such a policy met with subjective judgments will reinforce a propensity of violence and abuse to an extent neither intended nor imagined; that, contrary to the policy of ‘peaceful parenting’, raw instinct (instilled or affirmed through one’s own mistreatment as a child) is thereby likely to inflict all kinds of suffering on children — becoming a primary method of parenting, instead of the last resort in extreme cases — with a further benefit to the abuser’s conscience, so far as the abuser has come to see some greater ideological or cultural purpose in it. 

This is the real risk run — not only by privately harboring these views but especially by publicly advocating for them.

Whereas with ‘peaceful parenting’ the prescription calls for parents to contest their baser instincts and to more carefully consider the manner in which they interact with their children and thoughtfully respond (not just react) to their misbehaviors, any policy or prescription so brazen as to advocate — not just tolerate, but advocate — for physical violence as a means to resolving disputes or misbehaviors will inevitably be transmitted to parents (and societies) already equipped with that instinct yet infinitely lacking the requisite skills of wisdom, self-knowledge, and self-control which would, in theory, be necessary to execute or promote the policy, let alone to universalize it; to be sure, an extremely unrealistic set of assumptions for what is truly a preposterous theory. After all, there is little to indicate that any parent possessing those skills, and implementing them, would have any such cause for this kind of ‘disciplinary action.’

The beauty in ‘peaceful parenting’, on the other hand, is that it promotes a policy founded on universal and universalizable objective morality; that it begets trust and respect between parents and children, whereby children are more likely to enjoy their parents’ company, to love and admire their parents, to respect their parents’ judgment, and to know what it means to truly love and honor each other; it promotes non-violent means to resolving conflicts and disputes, and it promotes a vision and a culture for a civilization worth preserving — a civilization guided not merely by fear, nor for the mere sake of survival, but by morality and thus the principles that truly define and distinguish that which we call ‘culture’. In the case of ‘peaceful parenting’, it is a culture that knows how to truly honor such objects as life, liberty, and property. It is a culture worth adopting within our families, and one worth preserving for our heirs.