"You Have to be Carefully Taught
> When I was little, my parents listened to a lot of music (consequently, so did I). One song from the musical "South Pacific" for some reason always struck a chord with me - no pun intended. In the musical, Lt. Cable, who falls in love with a native girl on the island and is forced to confront the fact that he is himself prejudiced, sings a song about just that. It's calledRhetorical question, that; it is now affirmed that, the only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.
> "You've Got to be Carefully Taught".
>
> You've got to be taught to hate and fear
> You've got to be taught from year to year
> It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear.
> You've got to be carefully taught.
>
> You've got to be taught to be afraid
> Of people whose eyes are oddly made
> and people whose skin is a different shade
> You've got to be carefully taught.
>
> You've got to be taught
> before it's too late
> before you are six or seven or eight
> To hate all the people your relatives hate
> You've got to be carefully taught.
>
> South Pacific was released as a movie in 1958. Haven't we learned anything since then?
Author probably Googleable.
[BTW - R & H made it a contract condition; if you wanted to do a production of South Pacific, you could not omit this song.]
Inculcation of Children.
This is the means and it is the means of every religion. 'Causality' is a cute concept, rarely discoverable re homo-saps, but handy in physics.. if you don't try to cover more than about two bodies at a time.
Childhood inculcation is the regular means of corrupting the innocent with Corporate Religio-speak - as if it were unthinkable to live without the local flavor of assorted and selected tenets, almost every one of which collection begins (or ends) with a form of,
Our Clan is Superior because We Believe ___.
The message that it is somehow 'normal' to hate The Other Who is Not Me/Mine is drilled into an impressionable mind; often in direct words, augmented by an observation of 'adult' actual behavior. Nobody has said it more concisely than Rogers and Hammerstein IMO, and in most-contemporary argot.
The next stage of tedious argument must enter into the archetypes and hoary formulations of Jungian or {ugh} pop 'psych', and on towards the metaphysical. I rest case prior to that drudgery.
I Who Be
