I wonder if I'm alone in not having been raised to think or to believe any thing in particular. I wasn't raised to be religious, nor to be agnostic, I wasn't rasied to have specific core moral values, nor to think highly, or poorly, of any particular person, people, religion, ideology or anything else I can think of.
Well, don't get me wrong, my mother and father are both socialists, as most people in my country are, to some extent at least. I'm a socialist too, to some extent, but I lean a bit further to the right than my parents do.
They aren't particularly religious, but they're definately not atheists either. They don't pray, don't go regularly to church, and they never told me to confide in, nor to fear, any god. I'm not even baptized, even though both my parents are, because my mother figured that if I want to be baptized, why not be when I'm old enough to remember it? Nonetheless, I was, I guess, unknowingly religious to some extent until I was able to form an educated personal opinion about the world and our place in it.
Once in a while, however, be it on messageboards or weblogs or whatever, someone says they "were raised to", for instance, be a christian, or to cherish freedom, or to have an open and accepting mind, or to show respect, or whatever. Clearly, I'm not a complete disaster of a human being, so my parents must have done something right, but I can't remember them ever sitting down with me and teaching me that "this is right", "this is important", "this is wrong", or anything like that.
My parents weren't neglectful, absolutely not, don't get me wrong, they just never preached to me about what was important and what was not. I learned from their examples, if you know what I mean. My parents taught me not to steal, not to be violent, not to be dishonest and things like that. You know, basic principles which makes it possible to stay out of jail, be a nice guy and be able to keep friends. However, for moral values, beliefs and such, I'd credit most it to influential people other than my parents, because my mind, my ideas, my opinions and my beliefs aren't particularly like those of my parents.
What I'm wondering is if "I was raised to think/believe/do" means that a person has derived moral values directly from his/her parents, if these moral values were explicitly and repeatedly preached, or if this is just an expression to say something completely different? Would you say that you have derived most or many of your moral values from your parents? Did your parents ever explicitly and often tell you why those values are important, anything in particular?
Comments
My parents were just like that - something I am incredibly grateful for. My father votes for the right (M) every election and so does my mother, but they have never talked about politics, religion or any philosophical matters with me - at least not in the way of trying to teach me what is right or wrong.
Comment by Pythagore at 15:25, 26 Feb, 2004 #
What both of you have described must be a typical Swedish upbringing, because I can identify to 100%. It fits with what I know about most of my Swedish friends as well. The values I possess are quite different from my parents', because they never told me what I was supposed to think about the world, and they always respected my choices in life (such as not eating meat, which can be a difficult issue in many families). The only thing I regret is that they never really talked about anything. Sometimes I was left a bit too much with my own thoughts when I could have used some guidance. In that sense, I see my childhood kind of like an example of the famous fear of conflict which is so well-rooted in our social-democratic society. Since my parents didn't want to take a stand, I had to choose my own way. Me and my two siblings turned out very different from each other, and looking back, I think this was a good thing.
Comment by Pat at 19:27, 26 Feb, 2004 #
I think you learn a lot more from your parents than you might give them credit for. I was raised to be an upstanding citizen, with moral codes and respect and all the other typical stuff. But my parents never taught me these things as such. It was more a matter of copying their behaviour. Which I did. Oh, about the political thing, I still don't really know what my parents votes for in the swedish elections. Neither is it important, I think.
Comment by talisyn at 09:06, 27 Feb, 2004 #
Talisyn: Of course, but some people seem to have certain values explicitly preached to them repeatedly by a parent. That's what I'm talking about, as if the parent is giving the child "lessons of life", know what I mean? I didn't get any of those, I'm wondering how common that is.
Comment by Tomas at 11:25, 27 Feb, 2004 #
The discussion has been closed on this entry. Thanks to everybody who participated.