The mockery of fate
If, dear reader, it once again seems to you that this entire Universe was created for one single purpose - to show you a big fig at the most inopportune moment, then remember these people. This is the one at whom life, or rather death, laughed especially cruelly.
Robert Atkins
One of the most famous nutritionists in the world came up with the “no harm and no suffering” diet. The bottom line was this: no carbohydrates, 20 g per day maximum. You can eat meat, cheese and eggs to your heart's content, but you should not touch bread, vegetables and sugar. Yes, such a diet leads to constipation, but those who dream of losing 10 kilograms in 1 month, what do they do about constipation? That's right, they laugh in their faces!
Since the early 70s and until now, the Atkins diet has not lost its popularity.
And no one cares deeply that the inventor of the miracle diet himself died several years ago from severe obesity.
Charles Darwin
As we all know, Charles Darwin descended from a monkey. And not alone, but together with all of us. Once upon a time, the publication of this fact angered the entire planet, but since then we have gotten used to it and somehow live. And we even wonder why it was necessary to create this boring, tedious theory, when it is enough to go to the zoo for it to become absolutely clear that these are our closest relatives: the family resemblance cannot be hidden.
And even progressive priests, forced by duty to insist that God created man, do not consider it blasphemous to add to themselves: “from a monkey.”
But Darwin himself, by the way, did not think so. Shortly before his death, he publicly repented that he was wrong. What is a miracle like a person, which is immeasurably higher than any animal, is undoubtedly the work of God without the participation of red-bottomed creatures, and the theory of evolution cannot have anything to do with the appearance of homo sapiens.
Lev Tolstoy
One should not think that geniuses are not characterized by minor human weaknesses such as envy, timidity and quiet everyday sadism. Leo Tolstoy was a genius, but he was jealous of another genius - Shakespeare. Nothing else can explain the resentful contempt that the classic of Russian literature felt for the classic of English literature. The Count said that all Shakespearean characters are fictitious, lifeless dolls with unnatural actions and lying stories. Leo Tolstoy especially did not like King Lear. He famously said that “the only things worse than King Lear are other plays by this author.”
When in 1910, a crazy bearded old man, rising from his deathbed, set off on his last journey to the Astapovo station, cursing his family, children, wife and his world, humanity looked in shock at this most dramatic production of King Lear that has ever taken place. " So Shakespeare avenged himself.
Benjamin Spock
Dr. Spock did not like children, and this is not such a surprising phenomenon. Microbiologists also don't have to adore the organisms they work with.
Born into a large Puritan family, Benjamin was raised according to all the rules of the harsh family discipline of New England. Dr. Spock recalled his childhood as a small but high-quality branch of hell. For one attempt to ride along the railings or beg for more dessert, a severe but fair punishment would immediately fall on the head of the culprit (strictly speaking, not only on the head).
As an adult, Spock decided to blow up the patriarchal system of education and revealed to the amazed New England mother that the child, it turns out, was also a person. And even in the name of the Great Regime, you shouldn’t feed him when he doesn’t want to eat, and rip the bottle out of his hands when he screams from hunger. And it’s also worth picking him up and kissing him (well, at least occasionally!).
It was from the “Spock generation” that hippies, pacifists, “flower children” grew up - individualists who considered their “I” no less important than the demands of public benefit...
And Dr. Spock himself died at 91, abandoned by all his descendants. His children not only refused to pay the hospital bills of their father, who was devastated by illnesses, but also did not communicate with him at all.
Tired of the harassment of journalists, his eldest son Michael said that he was sick at the sight of any photograph in which Dr. Spock is depicted hugging children: “He was a despot and a hypocrite! He never kissed me or my brother even once in his life.” , but he didn’t even pat him on the head! When he walked through the house, we tried to hide further away so as not to catch his eye.”
Nietzsche
“God is dead,” Nietzsche said. He managed to communicate a lot more, and then he died himself, but that’s not so bad. It was the irony of fate that the man who created the philosophy that gave the human mind and spirit the greatest greatness possible in this world ended his days deprived of both.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who proclaimed man as God, spent the last eleven years of his life in a home for the mentally ill, unable to even lift a spoon of porridge to his mouth.
Mao Zedong
There were many things in the world that the Chinese dictator did not like. He did not like the bourgeoisie, freedom of morals, European music, sparrows and flies... He also did not like people. About one hundred million Chinese were repressed under the rule of Comrade Mao, which is a lot even for China. But Comrade Mao especially did not like Christians and their church. In the country of the great working people there could only be one Almighty, and Mao was not going to share this chair with anyone. He managed to finally deal with this abomination only in the late 60s, when the detachments of thugs he formed - the Red Guards - staged a great cultural revolution. Bonfires of books, paintings and museum exhibits burned in the squares, doctors, teachers and other wavering intelligentsia were dragged out of their houses, after which the young fighters of the great Mao crushed this human garbage into bloody scraps on the pavement. Golden times had come for Christian priests - a considerable number of them managed to accept the crown of martyrdom for their faith: they were shot, drowned and strangled with particular enthusiasm.
But before his death, the great dictator became afraid. Who knows what's there? What if the Christian scammers weren’t lying after all? The premonition of flaming frying pans haunted Mao. A month before his death, the old man, shaking with fear, asked to find him a Catholic priest. They only found an old nun, who had trouble understanding what was happening and where these good people were dragging her so quickly. Mao converted to Catholicism. This shameful secret was told to the world after his death by his wife Jiang Qingn, who herself was soon sentenced to execution “for connections with conspirators who intended to seize power in the country.”
S. Turchinsky
Source– Russia, Interesting newspaper. Oracle" No. 10 2012
On July 14, 1946, Benjamin Spock's book, Common Sense Child Care, appeared on the shelves of American bookstores. At the dawn of the third millennium, there is hardly a mother who does not know that the child should not be swaddled tightly and does not have to be fed according to a schedule. But in the middle of the 20th century, these “strange” advice from Dr. Spock became a real sensation...
“Child Care in the Spirit of Common Sense” was the name of the book that excited the whole world, and in the United States it took second place in popularity after the Bible and became a reference book for young parents. Over the course of 55 years, “The Child…” has gone through six reprints, been translated into 42 languages, including Urdu (Iran and part of Afghanistan), Thai (Thailand) and Tamil (Sri Lanka), and the total circulation of the book has already exceeded 50 million copies.
The future adviser to all young parents was born in 1903 in New Haven (Connecticut, USA) into the family of a successful lawyer. Spock, a corruption of the Dutch Spaak, is the family name of a family of settlers who settled in the Hudson River Valley. Benjamin's mother Mildred Louise, a strict and domineering woman, accustomed to hiding her feelings, was the embodiment of Puritanism. Dr. John Watson was then considered one of the main authorities on “children’s issues” in America. “Never, never kiss your child,” he strictly punished young parents in the book “Psychological Education of Infants and Children.” Mildred Louise appears to have been a diligent student of Watson's.
Spock pioneered the use of psychoanalysis to understand the needs of children
In addition, the pedagogical arsenal of parents of that time, in the words of the Boston Globe newspaper, consisted of “hard-boiled manuals, judgments inherited from the Victorian era, teachings from grandmothers and well-meaning, but not always competent, advice from neighbors, mothers-in-law and mothers-in-law.” As a sign of protest against the methods of education practiced, in particular, in his family, after leaving his childhood, Benjamin Spock wrote his book.
For most American dads and moms, the new “allowance” seemed to open a window from a stuffy room into a world of smells and colors. Even Mildred Louise, having read her son’s essay, said: “Well, Benny, in my opinion, is very good.” And young mothers read “Child” as a bestseller. “I have a feeling,” one of the readers admitted in a letter to the author, “as if you are talking to me, and most importantly, you consider me a rational being...”
The eldest of six children in the family, Benjamin had to fully learn what a nanny's worries were. “How many diapers have I changed, how many bottles with nipples have I brought!” — he talked about his own childhood. Not surprisingly, Spock sympathized with mothers. And having found himself in the war as a psychiatrist, he was shocked by how cynically she reduced all parental efforts to nothing.
Up to 40 million children born in the 1950s and 1960s were raised “according to Spock.”
In 1943, he began a book on child care "in the spirit of common sense": "Some young parents feel that they must forego all pleasures simply on principle rather than on practical grounds. But too much self-sacrifice will not benefit either you or the child. If parents are too busy only with their child, constantly worrying only about him, they become uninteresting to others and even to each other...”
It is common sense that should become the basis of child upbringing, Dr. Spock argued: “If a child cries, comfort or feed him, even if the feeding schedule is disrupted. But there is no need to rush headlong to the baby as soon as he whines. If a child cannot or does not want to do something, do not force him...”
Admirers of Benjamin Spock argue that Baby and Child Care, written during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, reflected the common sense of Roosevelt's New Deal, which helped America not only survive the difficult trials of the 20th century, but also become the strongest power in the world . Opponents of Spock-style education believed that it shook the Christian foundations of society: “The Bible teaches that man is inherently depraved. Everyone bears the curse of original sin. Spock abandoned the Christian paradigm. The doctor’s upbringing methods were based on allowing the child as much as possible.”
Benjamin Spock himself said that he tried to bring to life the ideas of two major thinkers of the early 20th century - the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, as well as the American philosopher and educator John Dewey, who believed that “it is not at all necessary to drive children into adulthood with the help of disciplinary methods - they may well become adults of their own free will.” Children raised according to the advice of Dr. Spock demonstrated their character already in the 60s by protesting against the Vietnam War. And the doctor himself, from the very first days of the war, began to oppose it. This threatened serious trouble for a respectable physician, but he deliberately took the risk: “There is no point in raising children and then letting them burn alive.” In 1968, Benjamin Spock was found guilty of criminally aiding young men to evade conscription into the United States Armed Forces. The doctor was threatened with two years in prison, but the appeal court overturned the sentence.
In the USSR, Spock's book was published in 1956 and created a real revolution.
In general, maternal upbringing affected the “adult life” of Dr. Spock. “I never kissed my sons,” he said. And the children apparently suffered a lot. The youngest, John, admitted that he felt abandoned. The eldest, Michael, was also not delighted with his father’s pedagogy: “Our Ben always thought in extreme categories. Everything with him was either only bad or only good... And if I did something wrong, I could always fully feel how disapproving my father was of my action.”
The doctor did not have a good relationship with the mother of his children, Jane. According to people close to the Spock family, she was his first assistant in preparing the book, but she always felt underappreciated. Spiritual discomfort resulted in Jane's alcoholism, which completely destroyed the marriage. In 1975, the couple divorced, and soon Mary Morgan, a woman 40 years younger than him, became Spock's companion.
A terrible blow occurred in 1983, when Spock's grandson Peter committed suicide at the age of 22, and all family members felt as if the doctor blamed them for not paying attention to the depression that pushed the guy to take a disastrous step. How Benjamin Spock experienced what happened can be judged by his words: “We need to push work, career into the background, so that business does not come first for us, so that it does not take up so much time, depriving us of the opportunity to communicate with our family...”
Dr. Spock ran for President of the United States in 1972
Benjamin Spock died at his home in San Diego, having shortly before his death suffered a heart attack, stroke and six severe pneumonias. They offered him hospitalization, but Mary, knowing that her husband would not live outside the home for even two weeks, did not agree to this. Home health bills reached $16,000 a month. Considering that the family's annual budget was about 100 thousand dollars, it was not possible to pay such bills. Therefore, Mary Morgan turned to friends and acquaintances for help. When the press reported this, letters and money orders were sent to Benjamin Spock.
“I hate the atmosphere of official funerals with all my soul,” the doctor wrote in his memoirs, Spock on Spock. “I hate a darkened room, people with long faces, silent, whispering or sniffling, assistant managers unsuccessfully trying to portray grief... My ideal is a Negro funeral in the spirit of New Orleans, when friends walk, dancing, like a snake to the sounds of a jazz band.”
529. When small children take other people's things.
This is not theft. They just really want to have this thing. They still do not properly distinguish between what belongs to them and what does not. There is no need to shame them for this and assure them that they did something wrong. The mother should simply tell him that this is Petya’s toy, that he will soon want to play with it himself, and that you have many good toys at home.
530. What does stealing mean at a more conscious age.
When a child 6-12 years old takes someone else's thing, he knows that he is doing something wrong. He will probably do it in secret, hide the stolen goods and deny his guilt.
When a parent or teacher catches a child stealing, they get very upset; their first desire is to attack the child with reproaches and shame him. This is natural: after all, we were all taught that theft is a serious crime. We get scared when our child steals.
It is important that the child firmly knows that his parents do not approve of theft and insist on the immediate return of stolen goods. But on the other hand, it is unwise to bully such a child or pretend that you will never love him again.
For example, a seven-year-old boy, well raised by conscientious parents, who has enough toys and other things and some pocket money, steals. He probably steals small sums of money from his mother or friends, pens from teachers, or pictures from his desk neighbor. Often his theft is completely pointless, because he may have the same thing. Obviously, it's about the child's feelings. He seems to be tormented by a need for something and is trying to satisfy it by taking things from others that he actually doesn’t need at all. What does he need?
Benjamin Spock was the first pediatrician to use psychoanalysis to understand the needs of children and describe the appropriate approach to raising them. In 1946, he published the cult book "Baby and Child Care", which is still one of the biggest bestsellers in US history.
Spock surprised the public with his revolutionary message to parents, claiming: "You know much more than you think." Before him, raising a child was based on the principles of strictness and the development of discipline.The future doctor was born on May 2, 1903 in the family of a lawyer. The father was not particularly sociable, and the mother raised the children in strictness - for any offense she could send them to the corner and never regretted it. After school, Spock entered Yale University to study English philology and literature. But later he transferred to the Yale School of Medicine, and then transferred to Columbia University, from where he graduated as a certified pediatrician in 1929.
In 1928, Spock married Jane Cheney, after which his family life proceeded calmly, surrounded by two sons and his wife.
Benjamin worked as a pediatrician in a clinic, after which he opened a private pediatric practice, which he practiced for 11 years.
As a result of his work, Spock came to the conclusion that most parental complaints about the child’s health are not related to medical problems, but rather to psychological ones: thumb sucking, restless sleep, tantrums, refusal to eat, difficulties with potty training. Interest in these problems prompted the doctor to study child psychology; under the influence of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, he took a course in didactic analysis.
The doctor's ideas were based on the fact that solving children's problems should begin with parental difficulties.
In his book, Spock argued that the most important thing for a child is not a strict regime, careful “hourly” care and upbringing according to the canons, but parental love. The pediatrician believed that if you protect a child from disappointment and create a positive microclimate around him, he will grow up free, calm and confident.
The book “The Child and His Care” literally crushed the traditional education system, Dr. Spock was invited to work first as a consultant in child psychiatry, then at the University of Minnesota he became an associate professor, and for about 4 years he was the head of the department of child psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.
Quite soon, Spock discovered that because of his book, parents had gone to extremes, taking his postulates too literally, as a result, their children were given complete freedom.
Up to 40 million children born in the 1950s and 1960s were raised “according to Spock.” Later, the doctor was accused of being responsible for creating a generation of long-haired hippies who grew up in an atmosphere of permissiveness.
In the second, revised edition of his book (1957), Spock emphasized parental authority in education, and in the third he emphasized discipline and reasonable limits of behavior that parents should establish for a child.
Spock argued that the most important thing for a child is not a strict regime, careful “hourly” care and upbringing according to the canons, but parental love. Photo: www.globallookpress.com
It is still surprising that Benjamin Spock, who grew up, in his own words, in fear of his parents, and then of everyone in general, in his books proposed to millions of parents a way of raising children that is exactly the opposite of the way he was raised. He was often reproached for a sharp change of views, although he himself claimed that he never abandoned the principles of humanism and love for children.
Later events almost led to the exposure of the “Dr. Spock system.” Divorce from his wife, new marriage, confessions from his sons, and even from the pediatrician himself did not play the best role in the doctor’s career. He once recalled that he "never kissed them [his sons] when they were little."
Spock died on March 15, 1998 at the age of 94. He remains in history as a world-famous pediatrician, public figure, pacifist and active participant in the anti-war movement in the United States, the author of 13 books, an Olympic champion in rowing, and also a man who ran for the presidency of the United States in 1972.
Anna Khnykina, psychologist, head of the psychological center “SoDeystvie”:
Dr. Spock's ideas are certainly relevant to this day. The main idea that he discovered for our society: a mother should be able to feel and hear her child, since they have a connection. Moreover, the mother can think and make decisions on her own. An important and new idea at the time of the publication of his first book in the USSR was that the gender of the parent is not so important. It was Dr. Spock who brought us the idea that both mother and father are equally important for a child, and at the same time it is about love, and not about strictness and adherence to rules.
At the same time, there is no point in weighing your child every day, and you can throw away the bathing thermometer - just test the water temperature with your elbow.
The main controversial points are that a child is just a person, he does not need anything special, except the same thing that we adults need every day of our lives. Maybe he just needs a little more attention. And in general, education is not a routine, but more love and pleasure. But the problem is that many people interpret these principles of education as the idea “rules are not needed.” This is not true at all, and this confusion is the main “minus” of Benjamin Spock’s books.
The second point is breastfeeding. This topic became Dr. Spock's “red rag.” By relieving the anxiety of mothers with breastfeeding problems, it left some readers with the feeling that "you don't have to breastfeed at all."
Another postulate is that the pediatrician is not the only and main authority, and after him the teacher, by the way, is also quite controversial and ambiguous.At the same time, he goes too far with the behavioral-cognitive approach in infancy. “If your baby is already a month old and he asks for milk at night, I would not rush to approach him,” is the doctor’s most important misconception in this phrase. He believes that by satisfying the basic needs of a child, he can be spoiled. This is partly due to the fact that in the 40s in America it was believed that feeding “out of hours” could cause stomach diseases. Today they say that this is a fallacy.
At the same time, reading parents find the “disadvantage” of Spock’s education system to be permissive and unsystematic. The point is that exceptional severity and harsh discipline in a child’s life are manifestations of violence towards him. Here's a simple example: all near-medical procedures (examinations, enemas, measurements, injections) are perceived by the child's psyche as violence. But we cannot completely protect the child from doctors and everything connected with them. We somehow soften all this and continue to do so. It is important to be able to combine gentleness and discipline, to cultivate in a child a sense of internal and external personal boundaries and dignity. How to find a balance between love and severity? This is evidenced by many theories of education that exist today.
But the most important thing in which Dr. Spock was once a pioneer for us: raising a child is, first of all, attention to him and close contact with him. Everything else comes later. No strict measures, no golden discipline will bring anything good if the child has no one to talk to about his fantasies.
