From where does character come?

From where does character come?

We teach our children to tell the truth, to be fair and just, and not to hurt anyone. No fighting, no bullying, no bad talking about others. We spend years investing in their moral formation, but we often find ourselves in competition with the news, the entertainment industry, and the culture.

Little is learned by words, we've discovered, unless accompanied by actions children can watch or perhaps do themselves.

An interesting study some years ago was inquiring into how children learn. For a group of preschool kids, they showed a brief video of a child punching a stuffed animal. Upon return to the playroom, children found a similar stuffed animal and began to hit it, even using other toys as bludgeons.

We'd like to think that the things on which we spend so much time (TV, movies, ...) have little effect on our behavior and choices. Perhaps that’s naive.

A culture is the sum of it's contents; things we see among us and acknowledge as our own. For instance:
Women often learn their place by experience. Unless it's challenged, it'll stick for a lifetime.

There are so many battles our children will fight. Right thinking about love, life, faith, wealth, generosity, luxury, sacrifice, compassion, violence, ... While they're young, we control what they see and do. And learn. We have the upper hand in their character formation.

And in our own. The choices we're making are still forming ours.
Hmmmmm.

Hard work

I spent evenings sitting with men in western Africa.  They would brainstorm about what 'little business' might succeed.  They built and stocked kiosk stands beside the road, they tried to rebuild a wrecked taxi and return it to service, they transported produce from the countryside to the town market to sell ...  because good jobs don't exist for them.  Even for those who completed public school, there aren't enough jobs at entry level or any level.  All of them work harder than I do or you do, all day, every day.  Their lives are harder, shorter, and their children face near-impossible impediments to escaping poverty.  Jobs are reserved for the privileged and favored.  If you're from the wrong tribe, the wrong family, the wrong race or ethnicity, it's harder.  That's how discrimination works in every culture and country.  Even ours, today.  That's the way it works.

My conservative friends sometimes quote the Rush Limbaugh-esque solution, "they just need to get a job and work hard like we did."  It's embarrassing to have to explain real life.

Character and Impact

Click to see the physiology/sociology/psychology path.  Cross reference that with what you know.

Walking down main street with my dad, we were talking about good and bad people. We happened to be in front of the bank, so dad said, "What if a fellow walking by here has to fight for all he's worth to NOT rob the bank; it's hard, but he manages. Among us, which is the hero?"

No two of us are the same, of course. No two are equally equipped, no two are equally complete or prepared, equally weak or strong. Every encounter is unique. We get to choose, but even that labor is ours alone.

It's worth the labor to understand that I and my  adversary have arrived here by different paths.  It's likely that neither was a perfectly noble journey, and equally likely that there were perhaps moments of magnificence for both.  

There's probably a reason he told us that.

Shall I then judge the one with whom I might walk as somehow inferior because he hasn't seen what I've seen and reached the same conclusions?   

We can ignore this concept and move on, of course.  And waste a few more years before we consider it again.  We do that.  It's a shame, but we do.  We make excuses and stay angry ... or we make progress and change.