The Glass Inheritance
So here we are again. An email lands in my inbox—one of many—from a reader, a guy who's been following me since the Blogger days. He calls me a "damn bastard." He says he hates what I do, but that in some twisted way he appreciates how I slam people into the ground so they'll clean their own wounds afterward. Then he drops the gem, the line that stopped my coffee halfway to my mouth: "Try to be a little more subtle. Sometimes I can't read you in front of my kids."
Dear friend, and everyone who thinks like you: I'm not turning down the volume. If what I write seems too harsh for your kids, the problem isn't my language. It's your fear. Your fear that they'll find out the world isn't a damn padded playground.
The Fraud of Protective Parenting
We're raising a generation of emotional cripples. And no, it isn't the system's fault, or the schools', or the government's. It's yours. The lie that's killing the ambition of the people who come after us is the idea that the world should adapt to the individual, not the other way around.
A couple of decades ago, a mental virus took hold of society: the psychology of constant validation. We teach kids they're "special" just for existing. We hide failure from them as if it were contagious. We filter reality so their supposedly fragile minds never get a scratch.
The result? An army of adults who collapse at the first "no." People who shatter like glass the moment they face the brutal indifference of the job market, or of life itself, because they never grew the psychological calluses it takes to survive. The lie of the modern Eden is the cancer of individual sovereignty.
The Danger of the "Lite" Version
You ask me to be subtle. You suggest I watch my tone. You tell me you give them a "lite" version of reality. Let me tell you something: the "lite" version is an amputation.
When you hide the predatory nature of existence from a child, you're sending him to the slaughterhouse. If you don't teach them that life is competition, that pain is the only teacher who never lies, and that collective morality is often a dog leash for the weak, you're condemning them to be slaves to someone who does understand those truths.
"Subtlety" is the language of cowards who don't want to deal with their kids' hard questions. It's easier to put on a colorful video than to explain why the lion eats the zebra, or why the man sleeping on the street lost the survival game. When you filter reality, you rob them of the chance to develop an instinct for power.
Ambition
Ambition isn't born in comfort. It doesn't bloom in "safe," "subtle" environments. Ambition is a response to emptiness, to scarcity and, above all, to the awareness of your own vulnerability.
If you hand them everything pre-chewed, if you shield their ears from "bad words" or from PRAXMA's raw truths, you're taking away their hunger. And a man without hunger is just cattle waiting to be milked by the system.
The sovereign individual is forged in contrast. Kids need to see blood (metaphorical, and sometimes real) to understand the value of their own strength. They need to know the world owes them absolutely nothing. Not respect, not love, not success. Everything, absolutely everything, has to be wrested from reality by force of will.
Your Responsibility
If you read me, it's because you woke up from the collective anesthesia. So why would you want to put your kids back under? So they'll be "happy"? Happiness built on ignorance is a death sentence for greatness.
Give them the raw version. Let them read me. Better yet, stop being the filter and become the bridge. Teach them that the wounds "I help them heal" are the marks of maturity. Don't raise them to look for safe spaces; raise them to be the reason other people need safe spaces.
The next time you feel my writing is "too harsh," remember this: reality is infinitely more of a son of a bitch than anything I could ever write on this blog. And reality won't apologize before it hits them.
The PRAXMA mindset: Overprotection is the most sophisticated form of child abuse.
To explore further
- Teaching how the world really works Spanish only: explored in depth in Building Happiness, free or for a symbolic price.
- Growing up surrounded by violence Spanish only: explored in depth in The Anatomy of Violence, free or for a symbolic price.
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