What Are We Being Taught?

We are being taught.

From early days, stories, news pieces, TV programs, children's books, Internet sites all teach us how to think.  I didn't mention school.  We may or may not learn how to think in school.  If we are, usually we learn from what our peers and talking about, emoting about, and getting angry about.

We are taught to expect conflict.  The interesting stories are the ones with conflict.  If there is not conflict inherent in the story, teenagers will make conflict up.  It is not simply teenagers who make things up.  A friend went to a counselor to try to sort out some problems.  This lady counselor tried to get her to talk about the terrible things her parents had done to her.  As she told it after the session, "My parents were great!  My problems were not with them.  They were with peer relationships, and with myself." 

The counselor tried to "invent" conflict where there was no conflict.  She had been taught, simply by the media and by her own expectations, to find conflict, even where it does not exist.

One of the worst insults you can give a person is to call her or him "bland".  Bland means an absence of conflict, or the ability to deal with conflict and not become a "drama queen" or "drama king" about it.  Handle it and move ahead or sideways or wherever one wants to go.

We are being taught to expect conflict, and, if there is none present, to create it.

What do you think?  What have you experienced along this line?  Leave a comment and let us know.