Restoring Justis
Yeah. The title is meant to be ironic. It’s ironic that my last name is Justis. I’m certainly not justice-oriented. The world has never been fair and it never will be. By trying to make it fair, we just cripple everyone.
No, I’m not trying to restore justice. I’m trying to restore curiosity. I’m trying to restore creativity. I’m trying to restore human nature. It is not our nature to be caged. It is not our nature to follow orders and deny our bodies movement, or to hold our waste until the bell rings. It is not our nature to only learn what we’re forced to learn, to do as little as we can get away with, to only look out for ourselves, to be apathetic.
We’ve been reprogrammed. Humans are social creatures, wired to contribute to a community. Our bodies reward us with feel-good hormones when we behave in a way that supports the greater good. It should feel good to parent. It should feel good to learn. It should feel good to contribute. It does when we haven’t been reprogrammed with external drivers, rewards and punishments, prestige and shame.
I don’t believe in good and evil, I only believe that we are social creatures by nature. When someone is acting in a way that is not socially acceptable, it’s because they have a need that is not being met. What do we do in our culture when that happens? Typically, we punish the behavior. What would happen if we attempted to find out what was going on for that person and tried to meet their needs rather than impose consequences? Can you imagine what a different world that would be?
But instead, we’ve become a culture of control. We lack the skills to effectively communicate, so we forcefully impose our will on others. And children get the worst of it. They have less freedom during the school day than prisoners. Many of our schools even resemble prisons with guards and weapon detectors. It’s no wonder we’re suspicious of children when we treat them like criminals.
Then we expect them to suddenly be able to direct their own lives at 18?! Is this logical? It seems so obvious to me that childhood these days does not support self-directed, functioning adults that know how to create satisfying and meaningful lives. Satisfying and meaningful lives. Is that really too much to hope for? What a different world it would be if more of us were living satisfying and meaningful lives.
This is what we need to restore. And I think it’s human nature to create satisfying and meaningful lives, if only we allow our children to develop as they naturally would. Unfortunately, it may be too much to hope for. The adults that would be modeling such lives are few and far between. Most adults think they’re supposed to control kids. Make them “get in line.” Teach them to sit still and raise their hands when they want to contribute. Teach them to tolerate tedium. Teach them mistakes are bad.
If you want to change a culture, you take the kids. It’s what they did with our modern day school system. We like to call it “education” but really it’s “schooling.” We’ve been schooled into believing we’re providing our children with the knowledge they need to be “successful” but really we’re just programming them to be mindless consumers.
But maybe if we stopped schooling our kids and were just there as supportive adults, resources and models of stewardship, we could restore human nature. Maybe if we let them learn instead of coerce them to cram content, we’d restore their natural tendencies to explore, discover, create, and contribute.
Who knows? Maybe those kids could even save the world.
Restoring Justis 