Helicopter Parents and Snowflake Children: A Teacher’s Bitcoin Perspective
I believe most of these are a by-product of living in a fiat system. If you have a system that allows people to control the money supply, it causes them to put their morality on that money supply. Regardless of their intentions, the resulting societal by-product is a tug-of-war, with each side offering to solve more and more problems for its constituents. This leads to a paternal dynamic between the powerful and the powerless classes.
Politicians trying to gain more control do so by fighting “the battles of their children” or the battles of the powerless. They “coach their trainers” by making further demands of the workplace. They “keep their children on a short leash” by constantly trying to restrict freedoms. They “don’t let their children fail” by providing too many safety nets, leading to a decrease in healthy risk-taking and an increase in complacency. This modeling of the helicopter flight by Big Daddy becomes a learned behavior of the low masses, which they in turn model for their children, creating a vicious cycle of dependency.
<figcaption><em>Quelle</em></figcaption>
</figure><p>Helikoptererziehung führt zu Schneeflockenkindern. Tifa Ong beschreibt Schneeflockenkinder als übermäßig emotional, sensibel und berechtigt. Meine Meinung zu übermäßig emotionalen und sensiblen Kindern ist einfach, dass sie anscheinend nicht genug Gelegenheit hatten, ihre eigenen Kämpfe zu führen und sich im schlimmsten Fall an den Prozess zu gewöhnen und bestenfalls daraus zu lernen.
In my class I teach (as do many of my peers) Failing Forward, which encourages students to take risks in order to learn from them and develop the good habit of being a lifelong learner. It’s like preparing for a musical performance… many students speak of nervousness or stage fright. My standard answer is that the only way to get over it is to do it over and over again until that feeling becomes familiar; the unfamiliarity of feeling is the source of fear.
Unfortunately, students spend only a fraction of their time practicing the forward failure. It’s fairly easy to see which students have had the opportunity to take risks and which have not. I believe the ones who don’t yet have these skills are the children of helicopter parents, the parents who are more affected by systemic fiat externalities. When too many guard rails are implemented, children become not only unwilling but also unable to take risks. They feel they should be given everything life has to offer without having to work for it. I believe this sense of entitlement is the effect of seeping through the unintended consequences of fiat.
Fiat systems allow for a top-down system of control that encourages mature adults to suckle at the teats of those in power, reducing their own authority and agency, resulting in a hierarchy where the top end of the structure is expected to be the lower end takes care of it, resulting in eligible children with no proper role models to show them how to take care of themselves. The end result is a pattern of learned helplessness that results from outsourcing our autonomy via our monetary system to equally fallible humans.
If only there were a monetary system that behaved like a globally connected, permissionless ledger – a ledger controlled by no one and accessible to all. One that does not enforce moralistic hierarchies but encourages voluntary collaboration. If only…
The proof is in the pudding
<figcaption><em>Quelle</em></figcaption>
</figure><p>In meinen kurzen fünf Jahren bei Bitcoin habe ich eine völlige Veränderung in der Art und Weise bemerkt, wie ich Eltern bin. Truth Street: In den prägenden Jahren meiner Kinder war ich ein Helikopter-Elternteil. Obwohl ich vielleicht nicht so weit außerhalb des Spektrums lag wie manche, war ich für viele der zuvor besprochenen Merkmale anfällig. Ich war schnell dabei, ihre Schlachten zu schlagen, sie an der kurzen Leine zu halten, zu sicher zu gehen und sie nicht scheitern zu lassen.
But that all changed when I started studying bitcoin (note I didn’t say “buy bitcoin”). Developing a lower time preference led me to see the benefit of allowing my children to learn from their mistakes; it wasn’t so much about how they were feeling in the here and now as how they would be able to deal with future struggles after they had the opportunity to experience conflict…assuming there was the right support. I developed a greater sense of control over my own autonomy, which provided a role model for my children to grow into the best versions of themselves. This is decidedly better than having instructions dictated to oneself and thus becoming dependent on a disconnected democracy.
The more we subdue our decision-making and willpower, the less of each we will have to guide future generations. Bitcoin allows all willing participants to break away from the nonsense we have become accustomed to. Bitcoin gives us an incentive to work hard toward long-term goals, respect each other’s self-sovereignty, take calculated risks, and normalize efforts in the face of potential failure. Bitcoin encourages rationality and logical thinking and prevents excessive emotionalism and hypersensitivity. By choosing to live in a system that respects value over time and value for value, Bitcoin erases the concept of entitlement. Granted, there are many other factors that contribute to all of this, but money touches every aspect of society. The lifestyle associated with Bitcoin is ideal for developing along Maslow’s hierarchy of needs towards self-realization. The Fiat mindset is just elementary by comparison.
This is a guest post by Tim Niemeyer. The opinions expressed are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Source: Crypto News Deutsch
