Anti-property goofs in control of classrooms (again)

Zo vot else is noo?

Teachers at a Seattle pre-school are indoctrinating kids against property.

I realize this has been bouncing all over the nets this week, but I haven't had much of an opportunity to think much on this, until now. My first response was much like that of a commenter on one of the many blogs I'd surfed through: the irony! a hugely expensive private school is teaching babies to fight against capitalism.


I'm an artist. Not the most successful one, of course, but I still grew up as a bit of an outsider. When I was young, I'd have given my eyeteeth to have been included in the popular circles. And, yet, I could never bring myself to wear the uniform of the day, the disco dress. I couldn't spray my hair into a Dorothy-Hamill-mushroom-helmet or the flippy Farrah-Fawcett-pointy-curled-neck-armor, and blue eye shadow was, in my mind, a worse spread over the eyelids than were I to follow my dog for a sample of his leavings to adorn my face. I chose to dress and act differently from the others. I suffered socially and emotionally for it, but, ultimately, I was a free woman for my decision.

Over the years, I've made plenty of other choices, as well. I traded things for other things, to make my life what it is. Most of the choices have not resulted in my being happy, or rich, or famous, or even healthy. But again, they were my own decisions. I own them, as I own myself.

Now, I have three siblings. Each one of them started out with pretty much the same stuff I did. Our parents raised us well. We had equal opportunities for education, we had comparable health issues (physical and mental). We are all four equally talented on a number of fronts, and test out with comparable IQs. And, yet, my siblings are very successful financially, maritally, and, yes, in health, while I am pretty much a wreck.

Hey, their houses are nicer than mine! They all own their own cars! They have stuff I don't have. They even dress better than I do (well, my sisters do, anyway).

Should I have the right to take, from each and all, a part of what they've earned, just to balance the outcome of our lives? I don't think so. That's theft.

When our parents are gone, do I get to claim everything because I'm poor and nobody else in the family is? I don't think so. That's greed.

I made my choices. I live with my results. They made their choices, and get to live with the results therein. That's the true equalizer.


But there's more to it than simply fighting capitalism, regardless of what these teachers have been taught in their Church of Socialism. This program they're aiming at would squelch all individuality, all individualism, and therefore all humanity.

Destroying the tendency toward selfishness isn't always a good thing, no matter what the nice people say. If it were not for selfishness, art would not have developed. It is the mind of the individual, stressing its own selfish need to express itself, which has given us the greatest inspirational works in the history of the world. We lose ourselves in the moment, as we view Michelangelo's Pietà. But Michelangelo would not have created that magnificent work, had he, as a lad, done the selfless thing and worked as a simple quarryman beside his father. He selfishly sought to expand his own skills, expand his own abilities to shape stone into more than blocks.

Without selfishness, without ego, there would have been no ancient pyramids, no Sphinx, no Roman Colosseum. Without selfishness, there would have been no Declaration of Independence, no Bill of Rights, no Constitution., no settling the New World (not even in the earliest Asian migrations -- the predecessors of the people we called the Indians). We'd have no need for the new lands, because everybody would be happily living -- or dying -- in treetops back at the point of origin. One little forest fire and we'd be a paleontological footnote.

So selfishness is a survival tool, as well.

We develop communities, tribes, so that we can offset the downside to selfishness -- loneliness and a loss of opportunities to propagate. But the communities can not supplant the individual. Just as one can not breed by committee, one can not truly create anything new, vibrant, and inspirational by that committee. Thus, the moderately selfish individual is essential. Killing him dooms us all.

And "teaching" him into a coma is a crime against humanity.