HOW (NOT) TO GET ALONG

When your kids are small, you often find your­self dis­cussing par­ent­ing with oth­ers in a sim­i­lar predica­ment. As is my wont (or great fail­ing as many would de­scribe it), I al­ways tried to in­ject a bit of hu­mour into those con­ver­sa­tions that were so se­ri­ous – with your chil­drens’ fu­ture at stake – and a lit­tle tense – in case any­one might think you were a ter­ri­ble fa­ther or mother.

If there’s one life les­son I’d like my kids to learn, I might in­ter­ject ’hi­lar­i­ously’, it is that the only real strat­egy that works is ex­treme phys­i­cal vi­o­lence. The mantra I’ve al­ways tried to ham­mer into my kids, I might quip on an­other oc­ca­sion, is, above all, lie, cheat and steal.

As you might imag­ine, my at­tempts to lighten the mood were rarely re­ceived with ac­tual laugh­ter, but they could elicit a po­lite chuckle or a rolling of eyes, in other words, peo­ple clearly knew I was jok­ing, how­ever poor the joke might be. Of course, no one would ever bring their chil­dren up to be­lieve such things; we all know that the only way for­ward is open dis­cus­sion, de­bate and mu­tual re­spect.

Okay, but look at the world around us; rather than de­bate or mu­tual re­spect the key words seem to be con­flict and di­vi­sion. The Coun­cil on For­eign Re­la­tions’ Global Con­flict Tracker iden­ti­fies 27 on­go­ing con­flicts world­wide, such as the wars in Ukraine, Yemen and Ethiopia. There is also a vi­cious drug war going on in Mex­ico, ten­sions are ris­ing in the East China Sea, the US is po­lit­i­cally and cul­tur­ally di­vided like never be­fore, while Britain can’t bear to share a con­ti­nent with its neigh­bours. And that’s just the tip of the ice­berg.

Which brings us to Cat­alo­nia. The po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion that the coun­try has been mired in over the past sev­eral years, in which a sub­stan­tial pro­por­tion of peo­ple de­sire in­de­pen­dence from Spain, while the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties and po­lit­i­cal par­ties have made it clear they have no in­ten­tion of even dis­cussing, is freely de­scribed as a con­flict in most media out­lets. The near­est thing the two sides have got to talk­ing about the sit­u­a­tion is the process of di­a­logue agreed by the cur­rent Cata­lan and Span­ish gov­ern­ments, which has been stalled from the be­gin­ning and which, in an in­ter­view in this mag­a­zine (p.16), the new head of the ANC pro-in­de­pen­dence or­gan­i­sa­tion, Do­lors Feliu, refers to as a sham. In the ab­sence of any di­a­logue, de­bate or mu­tual re­spect, the only so­lu­tion that Feliu sees to the con­flict is more con­flict in the shape of cit­i­zen ac­tion, with every­day peo­ple stand­ing for par­lia­ment and then tak­ing on the Span­ish state to try and force in­de­pen­dence once and for all.

Whether that would work is any­one’s guess, but per­son­ally I doubt it. There are many rea­sons I doubt it, but one fun­da­men­tal rea­son is that we know that con­flict isn’t the best way to reach so­lu­tions (see above), ac­cord­ing to most par­ents.

So where does all the con­flict come from? Re­spon­si­ble par­ents also know that set­ting a good ex­am­ple is just as im­por­tant in pro­duc­ing re­spect­ful and ca­pa­ble off­spring, and yet the kids can see for them­selves that they’re sur­rounded by con­flict, pre­sum­ably caused by peo­ple that in­clude their par­ents. Or is it some­one else’s fault?

Which makes me think of an­other of my lit­tle ’jokes’ that no one found funny. I would argue that it was okay for me to get drunk and smoke in front of my kids; I wasn’t pro­vid­ing a bad ex­am­ple, rather I was mak­ing a sac­ri­fice, risk­ing my health so that they could learn a les­son about how not to do things.

opin­ion