Virtual Connection

After the age of 12-13, children mature. Should parents begin to treat their children as adults?

The attitude of adults toward children depends on the development of society. What things were like 2,000 years ago, or what they will be like 200 years from now, we do not know. In any case, it is precisely at this age that children undergo major psychological and physiological changes. We received this age boundary from Nature as the beginning of full maturation. But there are particular phenomena in physiological maturation that we must pay attention to.

In past generations, the time of puberty was naturally accompanied by psychological maturation, since children were not so cut off from life by school and family. For the most part, people lived in villages together with animals, and all the children had household duties. Today, preparation for adult life exists on the side of Nature, but preparation on the side of society lags behind. If the environment supplied children with the knowledge that modern society is obligated to give to this age group, the situation would be different.

Do you mean knowledge about oneself?

About oneself, the world, and society. At such an age a child must receive knowledge, like any citizen. After all, every person, even if he does not finish an educational institution, by the age of 20 possesses a sum of knowledge about life. An adolescent of 12-13 ought to have this knowledge. So as not to make mistakes, he must receive explanations while studying life. But we confine children within a backward system — school, television — and they simply copy behavioral norms from films.

Yes, they are constantly playing some role or another.

This happens because we do not give them an alternative. We build their environment, and we are guilty of the fact that the form of the environment we create for them is so distorted that it shapes a corrupted person.

If I understood correctly, you consider the absence of any desire to learn and the loss of interest in school — and children today simply do not want to be there — to be a natural phenomenon?

I would completely tear down the system created by adults for children, both on the side of Hollywood series and on the side of school. Both are terrible. We are destroying our children without understanding the extent of the harm we do to them. The trouble is that, for now, people do not know what to do.

At this age a great pull toward virtual connection appears.

Establishing virtual connection advances them. Studies say that in this process creative qualities appear in children. It is too early to speak of creation, though everything is in development: a static state is not characteristic of a human being. Therefore, here too, as in any phenomenon, there is an incubation period, after which it bursts out in its true form. I think the fascination with various social networks will pass, and the desire for connection will take on a different form. In the end, they will manage to make virtual space good. We will be able to manage the virtual world, removing those who profit from selling our children everything harmful. And just as we moved from a physical society to a virtual community, so from a virtual community we will rise to an integral community.

That is, right now they are in an intermediate state of transition to a true virtual society, from which the ascent to a higher degree will take place?

Yes. They will want integral communication, and virtual society will serve them as a springboard for attaining such unity.

So it only seems to us that they are busying themselves with nonsense, texting one another, while in reality profound processes stand behind this?

For now we are living through a transitional period, when children do not yet know how to use this tool, and the tool itself is faulty: it provides possibilities, but these possibilities are "empty."

Parents are often troubled by another question: doesn't this interfere with ordinary communication, since children sit at the computer for hours? Before, they played soccer, gathered in the yard, and today there is far less of such communication and physical movement.

We do not understand that this is the demand of the times. They need a different, more inner level of connection. Parents must understand the particulars of development and help their children, rather than going against the times. Personally, I place great hopes on virtual communication. Of course, I do not agree with its present form, but I value the possibility of connecting with any person in the world, regardless of physical contact. In these networks one can establish connections that you would never allow yourself on the ordinary level. And if we know how to correctly direct the possibilities provided by the Internet and the social networks created within it, then we will be able to raise and develop good people.

To take the concept of connection from there and teach how to use it correctly?

We cannot force a child to communicate where he does not want to, and therefore we must take care to create a good virtual environment for him. The Internet must move toward clear and serious legislation. After all, as the Internet is, so is the young generation.

Should access to certain topics be restricted?

First of all, we must give something in exchange, since restricting is no difficult matter. We restrict — and what next? The problem is to create for them an environment that they will want. Then one can gradually close off the areas that cause harm.

Will they accept something new? What exactly? A deeper, inner communication, since today's connection is superficial and fleeting.

It all depends on the motivation and the program. One can include educational elements in those very survival games.

There is an interesting study on this subject: viewers of the YouTube channel were invited to write something on their palm and photograph it. The clip assembled from these shots became the most popular. As a rule, people wrote: "I love you," "I believe in you," "We are one whole," and so on. This speaks of the need for connection. People want a true connection, but do not know how to achieve it.

And how does the pull toward connection express itself in relationships between boys and girls? How can we teach them to look for a partner?

By speaking openly about the body's physiology, love, connection. By separating one from the other. By speaking with adolescents about the essence of a human being, his psychology, by explaining love. One does not catch fire with love — one builds it. It is worth devoting a great deal of time to such explanations, so that a person learns to look at himself critically, and also to understand that proper relationships require a large investment.

Young people learn to relate themselves to all of Nature, and also to look at themselves from above.

This lowers the tension and adds reason to feeling.

The inclusion of logic in this process is, without a doubt, very useful, but the task of finding a partner still remains.

But now a young person relates differently to the task of determining a suitable companion in life. He does not tie his search to a temporary infatuation, which inflames him for a while and then dies down. He understands which qualities exactly make people partners suited to one another. After all, in our lessons he learns and discusses that all of Nature is built on the law of equivalence of qualities, and therefore partners must be similar — in character, upbringing, culture, habits, inner qualities. All of this we know and understand, but it must be explained to young men and women so that they will search for a partner in precisely this way. If we raise parents in such a spirit, then the examples of their relationships will be taken in by their children in the future.

He looks at external signs, while the similarity should be inner.

We must engage in this process, explaining to parents through the media and to children through school. The task is difficult, but entirely achievable. Investment in upbringing is a matter of the utmost importance, and humanity does not understand this. Upbringing is more important than health care or defense, because it builds life. The formation of a happy person must be the main goal of society.

What makes a person happy?

First of all, knowing what he lives for and what he must accomplish in life: not how to overcome difficulties, but how to build a happy life.

Can it be said that if a child manages to realize himself at all the stages of growth and to attain that inner form we spoke about with respect to the ages of 3, 6, 9, 12-13, and 20, then he will be happy?

Happy is the person who knows what is happening to him and is able to realize himself. Around him there must be an environment that also understands this and interacts with him. Understanding and sensing the purpose of life leads to happiness. In the answers to the questions of why this is happening to me, how to build life while receiving the correct reaction from the environment, how to turn to the environment — this knowledge creates within a person a stable support, pushing off from which he can go further.

In modern psychology a new direction has appeared, called "positive psychology" or "the science of happiness." Psychologists study the phenomena that make a person happy. So far there are many questions there, but few proposals.

They propose breathing in a special way, concentrating on one's positive qualities, and so on. Incidentally, the course of these lectures is the most popular one.

That is understandable, since unhappiness is the root of all illnesses, and depression is engulfing the whole world. But they will not find a solution, for today a person dwells in depression because he does not see what is worth living for.

In my practice I often hear from young people the accusation that adults built a bad life, and therefore it is not worth joining in it. There is nothing to be done — they join in and live. But they say that one can and must be happy. They say this out of hopelessness, but they do not offer a solution.

You see the problem not in the young generation, but in the fact that we, the parents, do not show children the way, and this is an entirely different approach. — Absolutely. After all, usually children are scolded: what a bad generation!

We devoted several talks to the age of 9-13, since it is a very important period. It is said that if by the age of 13 we have not set a direction for the child, have not managed to instill in him a scale of values, then afterward it is already impossible to do so. What goals must be set before a child at this age, so that upon achieving them he will feel happy? What inner requirements must he realize? What state must he be in?

At this age children are in a difficult situation, experiencing great pressure from the fact that they do not know how the world and society are arranged, on what relationships between people are based. They build artificial connections among themselves according to their own desire or according to utterly unreal examples taken from films. Getting used to these standards, they then cannot rid themselves of them. This imitation is very dangerous, since it substitutes a game of life for life itself. Such an approach must be uprooted, and in counterbalance to it we must give the most open and simple explanation of all spheres of life. Children must visit everywhere: from the place where a person is born to the place where he is buried. They must know what a university, a factory, a hospital, a bank are — everything created by our civilization — receiving real examples. We must be so open that they can talk with us about anything, without any taboos. They must also be allowed to establish direct virtual connection among themselves, but we must take care to create proper virtual communication among them.

I have nothing to add to this summing-up, except that virtual connection is a springboard to integral connection and a new reality.

This is precisely what they want, sensing an inner need. Their despair and disdain is an expression of the emptiness that they cannot fill with anything.

Proper upbringing and an explanation of that part of reality which is unfamiliar to them can solve this problem.