Rules for Life

                Families, communities, and nations are strengthened when we teach the rising generation the basic rules of life.  We must teach the young people proper behavior and give them understanding as to what is expected of them.  When we have high expectations, young people rise to meet those expectations, but when we keep our expectations low, the rising generation does not rise at all.  My father taught his children that each generation should be better than the previous one, and my children are much better than me.  I believe that their children will continue the trend because of what I see in their homes.

                There is a list of rules for high school students flying around the Internet, which have been attributed to Bill Gates.  While Bill Gates is a very intelligent and successful business man, he did not write these rules.  In fact, he is not even the first to quote the rules.  According to Snopes dot come,  Ann Landers printed the first ten rules (uncredited) several times, and radio commentator, Paul Harvey, read the list on his program.

                Snopes claims that the list was created by Charles J. Sykes, author of the 1996 book entitled Dumbing Down Our Kids:  Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add.  Sykes also wrote 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School:  Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education in 2007.

These rules remind me very much of what I taught my children.  When they were out of school for a day, a week, or the summer, they would complain when I gave them assignments.  “We’re on vacation!”  My reply was, “You are on vacation from school but not life.  Get to work!”  Sykes’ rules would make a good foundation for New Year’s resolutions.  I suggest that parents at least read the following rules from Sykes to their children at least annually.  Parents must act like adults in order to help the rising generation.

Rule No. 1:  Life is not fair.  Get used to it.  The average teen-ager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day.  You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever.  When they started hearing it from their own kids, they realized Rule No. 1.

Rule No. 2:  The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does.  It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.  This may come as a shock.  Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair.  (See Rule No. 1.)

Rule No. 3:  Sorry, you won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school.  And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either.  You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.

Rule No. 4:  If you think your teacher is tough, wait ‘til you get a boss.  He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier.  When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.

Rule No. 5:  Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.  Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping.  They called it opportunity.  They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either.  They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

Rule No. 6:  It’s not your parents’ fault.  If you screw up, you are responsible.  This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation.  When you turn 18, it’s on your dime.  Don’t whine about it, or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.

Rule No. 7:  Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now.  They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are.  And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

Rule No. 8:  Your school may have done away with winners and losers.  Life hasn’t.  In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer.  Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone’s feelings be hurt.  Effort is as important as results.  This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.  (See Rule No. 1, Rule No. 2 and Rule No. 4.)

Rule No. 9:  Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off.  Not even Easter break.  They expect you to show up every day.  For eight hours.  And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks.  It just goes on and on.  While we’re at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering our self-expression or helping you find yourself.  Fewer still lead to self-realization.  (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)

Rule No. 10:  Television is not real life.  Your life is not a sitcom.  Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials.  In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs.  Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.

Rule No. 11:  Be nice to nerds.  You may end up working for them.  We all could.

Rule No. 12:  Smoking does not make you look cool.  It makes you look moronic.  Next time you’re cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth.  That’s what you look like to anyone over 20.  Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule No. 13:  You are not immortal.  (See Rule No. 12.)  If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule No. 14:  Enjoy this while you can.  Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing.  But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid.  Maybe you should start now.  You’re welcome.

Rules for Radicals

I finally slogged my way through Rules for Radicals - A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky. He was born in 1909, began organizing communities in the 1930s, and died in 1972. The effects of his evil teachings continue today.

Reading this book was a real chore for me because the author's thinking is so different from mine. I can see better why liberalism has been called a mental illness. One thing that I now understand is that "organizing communities" means to agitate communities until they are so angry that they will follow anyone who shows them a way to be heard.

I want to share Salinsky's rules for power tactics (pp 127-132) from his chapter called "Tactics" in order that you can understand some of the things that are currently happening in our nation and be prepared for more of the same in the future. Salinsky quoted Hannibal as saying: "We will either find a way or make one" and then wrote: "Tactics means doing what you can with what you have" (126).

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." 

2. "Never go outside the experience of your people." Going outside a person's experience brings confusion, fear, retreat, and a break down of communication. 

3. "Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy." An example given for this rule was that of General William T. Sherman when he caused a "frenzy" on his march through the South without front lines or rear supply lines, something that was completely foreign to the Southerners. 

4. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." In other words, if people claim to be Christians, make them act like Christians. 

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." We must not let their ridicule cause us to react. 

6. "A good tactic is one that your people enjoy." The people involved must be having fun. 

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." In other words, militant interest can be sustained only so long, and it is to our advantage to stretch issues out. We must also make sure that we stay strong for the entire battle. 

8. "Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose." This explains why so many things have been changed in our country in just a few months - the automobile companies, the banks, health care, etc. 

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." 

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. The pressure produces the reaction, and constant pressure sustains action." 

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counter side; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative." 

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand." 

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it…. If an organization permits responsibility to be diffused and distributed in a number of areas, attack becomes impossible." 
Could this be the reason that the Obama Administration has zeroed in on Fox News? 

"The real action is in the enemy's reaction. The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength. Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action" (136). 

"It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it. You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him. This causes an irrational anger" (137-138). 

It is critical that we develop tough enough skins that we can be ridiculed and made fun of in order to think clearly enough to act instead of react. He described some tactics that he had used to take the enemy out of their experience: feeding a crowd of agitators a bunch of baked beans before taking them to a concert or using a crowd to block restrooms in an airport or other large crowd areas - and then letting the natural functions of the human body cause a crisis. Remember, radicals don't let any crisis go to waste!   "Power is not static; … it must grow or die" (149). 

Rules for Radicals is not an easy book to read if you are an average-thinking, Constitution-loving American citizen. The only people who could understand the need for these kinds of behaviors are those who have a "victim mentality." Please don't be a victim or even a survivor. Be a hero because heroes do the right thing for the right reason!