Think for yourself, question authority How it affects children

I grew up in a household in which the motto "Think for yourself, question authority" was uttered or implied in some form or another on a regular basis. It was a cornerstone of my relationship with my father, who could be often heard telling myself and my two brothers to both listen to him without question AND simultaneously to never trust everything we hear (even what he tells us) without first considering and investigating the truth of it ourselves. It was, I'm sure you'll appreciate, pretty damn confusing for us as little elementary school-aged boys.

During those formative years, I thought of myself as somewhat of a renegade. I went against the grain; a rebel, and proud of it. Every time I was confronted with some kind of authoritative figure - a teacher, a policeman, any adult at all for that matter - I would rebel against them. Even if I didn't overtly display this rebellion, I was silently internally rebelling. "Dad would approve," I was sure.

It took me until the age of about 35 before I realised the massively detrimental effect this had had on the course of my life.  I had barely finished high school due, in no small part, to being completely against the idea of mandatory education; "Why should I sit here all day and listen to these teachers tell me what to do and think?" I, therefore, was unable to enter university and thus never acquired a university degree of any kind. And I had (and have to this day) never had a single full-time job; "Who wants to work for 'the man'?" with a resounding response of, "No, thank you!"

Of course, everything above happened for a variety of reasons, including anything-but-incidental health issues as a teen, but I believe quite strongly that my anti-authority attitude contributed significantly to all of them. This attitude pushed me away from society, away from the establishment, and towards a relatively withdrawn and isolated life of near-total independence. I'm not saying that I am unhappy in my current life - on the contrary, I'm very happy and fulfilled (see: two beautiful kids, loving marriage, self-employed, comfortable life) - but I am saying that I did fail to make many of the life choices that the majority of my generation have been able to make in my home country (Australia), and I blame a sizable amount of this on my father's anti-authority way of raising me.

--- this post is unfinished. Will come back to it.


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