We all of us start out as young people!

Young people are frequently targeted for oppression, often by well-meaning and yet misinformed and undischarged adults, including our parents.

They too did not, and maybe still do not know about the essential healing process of discharge, either for themselves or their children. Consequently, our capacity for discharge is repeatedly suppressed meaning that it becomes harder and harder for us to access it.

There is much more to say about this and we’ll keep exploring the ways and means by which oppression (of all sorts) is laid in and, for now, read this recent contribution to an RC World Changers email list that outlines one person’s experience of young people’s oppression.

You are likely to find patterns described here that show up in your life too. Note that a potent way of using writing like the quote below is to take the content to a session and read out the parts that most clearly affect you and discharge on them!

Start of quote : –

SUMMARY:   How does young people’s oppression affect us now as wide world-changers?  

I share my experiences as the eldest child in my family, what “being good” meant to me as a young person, what it means in an oppressive society, and how this early material affects my wide world activism in the present time.

During this time of social upheaval in which system flaws are being exposed like never before during this pandemic, many wide world groups continue organizing for much needed radical changes. The “normal” we had before COVID-19 is not good enough.  If we had not been oppressed as young people, there’s no way we’d tolerate any of the other oppressions or think twice about taking action.  The early discharge work on “being good” has been invaluable in my continued effort and effectiveness.

In any family, the eldest child is like the “test case” for new parents who don’t really know what they’re doing.  In an immigrant family, the eldest is completely on her own.  She is often the first to do many things without much support.   And there are many demands and expectations of her as the eldest.  Historically, in my culture, the survival of the entire family rested on the success of the eldest child.

I was raised in a working-class immigrant family in Canada, we went to church, and I was the eldest daughter of three.  I was supposed to be a role model for my younger siblings and be my parents’ helper in this foreign language from an early age  (At age 10, I was asked to translate the mortgage agreement from English into my first language). I was supposed to work hard to make my parents proud.  I was supposed to fulfill my parents dream of “a better life”.  My life was about duty and obligation, and “being good.”  I did my very best to please my parents.  In the end, there was no place for me or for what I wanted in my life.

As one of my RC counselors put it:  the eldest child doesn’t have many choices in her life, is made to feel responsible for everything, and in the end, is the one blamed if anything goes wrong.  It’s a terrible set-up.  Being the eldest was also where I first learned to hurt others weaker than me (my younger siblings) — that was the beginning of my oppressor patterns.

When I was growing up, I was always told: “Be good!  Be good!” These messages started in my family and it was heavily reinforced by my experiences at school, at church, by my cultural conditioning dating back many generations before (contagion recordings), and in the wider capitalist mainstream western society.

What did “being good” mean for me as a young person?  It meant the following:

–BE OBEDIENT.  Do what you’re told.   DO NOT think for yourself.  Your thinking cannot be trusted.  You don’t know enough.

–BE SILENT.  Don’t make a fuss.  Don’t bring attention to yourself.   DO NOT ask for what you need.  DO NOT ask for help.  DO NOT question or challenge authority.  You risk getting into trouble and inviting more problems.

–FOLLOW THE RULES and fit in.  DO NOT question the rules even if they don’t make sense. DO NOT try to change the rules because that would be hopeless.  You are powerless to do anything.

–BE LIKED by pleasing the people around you.   Do what others expect of you.  Even if it means compromising or giving up on your values or who you are.

–WORK HARD and work some more!  Be useful and achieve measurable results quickly and efficiently.  Even if it means forcing yourself to go beyond your physical limits.  You must give 110% effort in everything you do.  The work is more important than anything else, including your health or your mental/spiritual well-being.  There’s no room to make any mistakes.

As wide world-changers, what does it mean to “be good” within an oppressive society?  What does it mean to “be good” when you’re trying to transform society on a systems level? For one thing, it puts us totally against all of our early conditioning and what it meant to be good in our parents’ eyes.

In order to act and be a wide world changer, I must do the things I was told NOT to do as a young person.  It’s a 180-degree turning upside down of unquestioned assumptions underlying everything I do.

  • To trust my own thinking.
  • To speak up.
  • To ask for help.
  • To take charge.
  • To organize with others to make changes.
  • To have integrity, courage, and compassion.
  • To try new things I’d never done before or take on things I was not good at.
  • To risk making mistakes and failing.
  • To risk not being liked, to risk upsetting people, to risk making messes.
  • To have balance in my life.  To do the work, but also take breaks and have fun!
  • To relax and be myself.  To know that I matter and that I’m enough.

In other words, I had to give up being the “good” child.  That felt very dangerous to do!   Not being (or not being perceived as) good was risking being misunderstood, isolated, humiliated, criticized, or attacked in the present time. But I realized: that was the discharge work!!  When I was functioning inside that chronic distress to be good no matter, I was driven by an irrational need to“prove” my goodness, “prove” my competence, be hyper-vigilant and defended/defensive. I was desperately trying to “make” this other person like me, in the same way I tried to please my parents!  That actually made things worse.  Why?  Because I couldn’t relax and just be myself.  And being fully myself is the most powerful way to be as a world-changer!

End of quote.