Positive Brainwashing

Thoreau

Thoreau

Valued Senior Member
Forgive any typo's that I may miss throughout the following text; I am currently physically and mentally exhausted. However, I wanted to throw this inquiry out there before I rest.

The basic question is this: Is it immoral or unethical to brainwash a child?

Now, there are essentially three types of "brainwashing" that one can do that will thus result in three different behavioral effects. Below, I will post the three followed by an example of the titled type.

1) Positive brainwashing: Convincing a child that he/she must shower daily out of fear of and to avoid germinal, bacterial or viral contamination and infection.

2) Negative brainwashing: Convincing a child that he/she must hold and obey certain ideologies throughout his life, such as extreme political or religious beliefs. These teachings typically inspire fear and promote the submission of ones free will in order to further their learned ideologies so that they may somehow escape a negative end result. Many are taught that by being aggressive and condemning others for their difference will in turn help them achieve a higher state.

3) Neutral brainwashing: Convincing a child that that the sky is green and not blue. This really has very little effect in the childs behavior.


But in the case of #1 (Positive brainwashing), it may also inspire a fear and a level of un-needed stress in their life. Though we teach children such behaviors to promote their longevity, is it necessary ethical to do so? I know this can be viewed as a very broad question, and I don't expect the answers to be exactly precise in reply. This is merely a topic of discussion.

The end point is that though the positive brainwashing can be "good", we are still influencing the mind of the child by seemingly threatening a negative result if they don't abide by our commands. Is it ethical to influence (and intrude on) the mentality of a child in such a manner?
 
MZ3Boy84 said:
Forgive any typo's that I may miss throughout the following text; I am currently physically and mentally exhausted.
Click to expand...

No problem

The basic question is this: Is it immoral or unethical to brainwash a child?

Now, there are essentially three types of "brainwashing" that one can do that will thus result in three different behavioral effects. Below, I will post the three followed by an example of the titled type.

1) Positive brainwashing: Convincing a child that he/she must shower daily out of fear of and to avoid germinal, bacterial or viral contamination and infection.
Click to expand...

Lets begin at #1.

How in the world is this brainwashing?
 
John; a better, though far different, example is this:

You are learning to cook, or at least trying to learn. Your mother comes in and says, "Here, let me handle that. You're going to burn yourself."

Automatically she is telling you that you will fail. But yet, at the same time, she is looking out for your own interest.
 
Sorry dude...not brainwashing. Although i dont know about how you worded it there with the daily shower to avoid contamination part but teaching good hygrnic practices is not brainwashing. Besides later in life they make their own determination to be clean or not.

Although i am not an expert on specifics of brainwashing 'cause i always been free to make my own decisions.
 
MZ3Boy84 said:
John; a better, though far different, example is this:

You are learning to cook, or at least trying to learn. Your mother comes in and says, "Here, let me handle that. You're going to burn yourself."

Automatically she is telling you that you will fail. But yet, at the same time, she is looking out for your own interest.
Click to expand...

Still not brainwashing and universally accepted as good advice.
 
Since this thread is going nowhere, literally, hey look everyone! I'm going to troll for my 2,900th post!!!!!!!

(Please disregard this message).

:)
 
Sorry about first post-I hit reply by accident.

Okay, does "brainwashing" equal "reprogramming?" Because in order to reprogram someone, they had to have been initially programmed.

A child is being programmed for the first time.
That having been said, it's an easily-messed-up procedure. And it's important a parent try to do their very best to program the kids correctly-a lot rides on it.

I'm going to take John's example:
You are learning to cook, or at least trying to learn. Your mother comes in and says, "Here, let me handle that. You're going to burn yourself."
Click to expand...

So your mom's protected you, but she's handed you (a) a negative prediction, making it more likely you'll burn yourself the next time you approach a stove, and (b) taught you that you have a lack of agency in this area-you aren't going to be competent around a stove.
Your mom could have said: "Here, I want you to watch me before you do that, so you'll know how to do it right..." and then just as neatly gotten you away from the stove. Without making you feel like you can't learn to cook.

At least saying it the first way would have reinforced incompetence for me.
I was an eerily reflective child, and very easily internalized messages.

My mom kept telling me," You'll hurt yourself on a bicycle!" This protected me pretty darn effectively from hurting myself as a child on a bicycle...because I didn't learn to ride one until I was 24...at which point I developed a spectacular set of bruises and road rashes achieving mastery of it.

Would have healed much faster as a kid. Thanks, mom. :rolleyes:

I would say that it's not good, and therefore not very ethical, to negatively program a child...but to really screw up your child royally you need to at least be verbally abusive, and adding physical abuse to the verbal abuse sets the programming in much harder.
 
The definition I gave in post 8 would cover "programming" a child for the first time (albeit loosely).
I.e. you're turning the little brat sweet child into someone capable of operating in society instead of the largely self-centred hobgoblin person that it previously was.
 
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