Parrhesia denotes the only Cynic virtue: to realize oneself instead of trying to improve oneself somehow. Relation ship instead of education: Parrhesia is not only a claim to self-realization, but also not wanting to improve other people or the world.
Watch out, the do-gooders are coming
The do-gooders want to make the world a better place. Improving the world sounds good. But from our point of view, it is one of the most evil things you can undertake. Because we believe with Leibniz that we already live in the best of all possible worlds.
The Lisbon earthquake, in which so many supposedly pious Christian Portuguese died, led intellectuals of the time to abandon this conviction and was a major impetus for the terrible Enlightenment, in which only the name sounds beautiful. With the Enlightenment came the do-gooders and they brought the desert and terror into the world.
“The desert grows, and woe to him who conceals the desert within him…” Nietzsche laments, referring to the nihilism of the do-gooders. The desert has now become global. But it starts with the enlightenment. The Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau is rightly considered the inventor of childhood. The child must now be educated, above all it must be protected from the evil world. Since then, you can not just be in a relation with a child, it is unthinkable, because instead it needs education as a matter of course as we all need the air to breathe.
All left-wing and right-wing ideological programs focus on the new man, created by appropriate education. While in socialist Germany children were taught to cooperate, in the state-capitalist West we were taught to see classmates not as friends but as competitors.
Antipedagogy should finally overcome education.
In 1975, the educationalist Ekkehard von Braunmühl wrote his book Antipädagogik (Antipedagogy). I got to know it in 1976 through my first girlfriend, Hannelore Prieb, a Carl Rogers student. And we were all immediately convinced that this man had found the key to improving the world. The irony is, of course, intentional.
While we were all friends at the beginning, Ekkehard v. Braunmühl, Hannelore and Hubertus von Schönebeck, who lives for this idea to this day and is often (mis)understood as a cult guru, we soon parted ways at precisely this crucial breaking point: Braunmühl wanted to improve the world by educating parents that educating children is not good. He didn’t understand the contradiction.
v.Braunmühl represented with his desired introduction of “children’s rights” questionable developments, which currently lead to more biopolitics of the state in Germany and to the destruction of families. Thus children from the age of 14 are soon to be given the right to freely choose their gender and to change their name accordingly. It is even to be punishable if others continue to address them by their natural gender. Braunmühl denies parents any right to know what is good for the future of their children better than the children themselves. He was also a member, as I learned just the other day, in the 80s of a pedophile association that demanded the right for children to freely determine their place of residence as well, and to live with their pedophile adult friends against the will of their parents.
The urgency of our motto: Just mights, no rights should become clear here.
And Hubertus is quite strict about enforcing his own ways to the “Kingdom of Heaven”, even if, after night-long discussions with Hannelore and me, he cleverly disguises his missionary path rhetorically and meanwhile claims that he does not know whether his education-free path is better. Everyone should decide for himself. And in case of doubt, he himself decides to simply enforce his will. When he once visited me with his kindergarten-aged children, and they were eager to stay with my family for a while, he just laughed and forced them to come with him. While in contrast, when my daughter at only 5 months! once wanted to go to a friend of ours, which didn’t really suit us, we allowed her.
So while the two pioneers of anti-pedagogy became famous with their books and lectures, we simply stopped educating our children and just had a normal friendly relationship with them. Typical for cynics, already since Socrates. He too did not write books, but acted according to his philosophy. Diogenes also did not try to educate others. It is therefore also Plato and Aristotle, who remained as alleged successors of the Sokrates of the posterity. They founded schools! Cynics do not do such a thing. And I am convinced that only when I allow the erotic capital of children to disturb my adult domination are full friendships with children really possible. Thus, just as a homophobic man in doubt would rather cry and seek comfort with a woman than with another man, an adult/child friendship with blocked eroticism can never be equivalent to a relationship in which eroticism is not taboo.
We don’t need no Education
In 1979, a song by Pink Floyd came out that appealed to many people at the time. And this simple message, that children don’t need education, thus little as your wife, I still share today. The comparison with the wife has a deeper meaning. Because I sometimes recommend people who think they treat their children quite “equally” to repeat sentences they say about their children, but this time instead of “children” use “wives”.
Let’s take the following statement: “I really give my children the greatest possible freedom. I also let them decide a lot of things. But children also need boundaries. These must also be clearly shown to them.”
Translated this would mean:
“I really give my wife the greatest possible freedom. I also let her decide a lot of things. But women also need boundaries. You also have to show them these clearly.”
At least in the West today, most women would be very indignant if men spoke thus about them. Children, as long as they haven’t given up yet, are too. They just often lack the power to successfully defend themselves against such slights.
“By the way, I educate women in an anti-authoritarian way. They have to learn to say no. At our Summerhill boarding school, they are even allowed to make up all the house rules themselves. Without any pressure from us men.”
II hope it was immediately clear to you that the sentence about anti-authoritarian education was addressed to children. Immediately it becomes clear that renunciation of education can be neither anti-authoritarian nor libertarian education, nor peace education, etc.. Always children must be improved.
Why don’t I treat children differently from adults, if I don’t have the goal that children (or adults) must learn from me to achieve eudaimonia? Education instead of relationship would be much less offensive in society. It remains with the only virtue we Cynics know: Parrhesia — telling and living the truth about ourselves. The rest is none of our business. And educating children, that’s just become completely strange to me for decades.