Thank You for Not Thinking

Wow. It never ceases to amaze me...the depths to which the public, and more specifically the policy makers, believe they can control thought, action and decision making based on often loosely related criteria. A few weeks ago, I blogged about a movie called This Film Is Not Yet Rated, and in that blog looked at the often vague and contradictory actions taken by the MPAA when rating movies.

Today, I turn to CNN for my daily dose of the world's most overhyped news (always centered around America, of course), and found the following article on the new MPAA regulations regarding the smoking of cigarettes in movies.

And let me tell you something: I'm smoking at the mouth! You'd think by this point in human evolution we'd understand that people, especially growing children, are going to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and nothing you yell at them or hide them from seeing is going to stop them. Ok, you want to shield them from the ills of cigarettes by aggressively rating movies for excessive smoking. You're overlooking the fact that it's more than likely someone in their peer group smokes, and highly likely that if they want to try it, they will.

I heard a cuss word from a friend when I was a kid long before I heard one in a movie, and started using them then, simply because I could.

I think the DARE program is a great example of this. In most cases, the tying of marijuana to other drugs, and the necessary conclusion that all drugs are bad clearly oversimplifies the role of drugs in our culture and in the lives of children. Sure, I knew some kids that never tried a drug because of the DARE program. I also know many who, despite the fear and lessons imparted by the program, still went on to smoke or try other drugs.

Scaring kids, telling kids not to do something, hiding it from them with tv guidelines, radio censorship and movie ratings, is not going to stop anything.

When are parents going to learn (and amazing that I can say this without being a parent), but when will they learn that the best protection they can offer their kids is direct and honest conversation that addresses the issue at hand and teaches them the value of thinking for themselves and evaluating decisions before they take action?

A kid won't not smoke just because it's not in a movie or their parents told them it was wrong. If their friend says it's good, they'll try it. However, a kid might not smoke if the parents speak with the kid about the dangers associated with smoking from a social and medical aspect, present them the facts, and arm them with the ability to think for themselves that might actually help them when a friend offers them something that they know they don't want to try, not because parents or teachers say it's bad, but rather because they've thought of the consequences and have decided for themselves. We often give children and especially adolescents too little credit when it comes to the ability to look at points in an argument and understand them, if not always making the right choice in the end.

My point is this: let's stop lying, hiding, misrepresenting and sweeping under the rug those things that might be less than desirable for a child to see in our society. Instead, let's focus on honesty, direct communication and thoughtful conversation on the subjects that we wish to protect our children from. Because, in the end, do we want a generation of people who hide their heads in the sand over moral issues that they've been force fed throughout their life, or perhaps a generation able to rationalize, produce and think for themselves based on available information and the truth?

In the end, we won't be able to congratulate people and say, "thank you for not smoking." Instead, we're going to be patting them on the head as they go around lambasting things they've never tried and say to them, "thank you for not thinking."