If most parents have taught their children to avoid the mistakes they made, why haven't we gradually.....?

Question

....created the perfect generation of people? That is, they do not make the mistakes people make, and are well disciplined and selfless. Could this mean that human beings are by nature curious for the harmful, selfish and generally bad?

Answer 1

The problem is with your premise.

Most parents HAVE NOT taught their children to avoid the mistakes they made. There is a lot going on here. Many refuse to admit they even made mistakes. Many are not aware of their mistakes. Many think that the 12 years of school is all the "teaching" they need. Many in fact "teach" their children to make worse mistakes. I have personally seen many examples of this. Children shoplifting with parents in the 1992 L.A. riots. A parent walking in the middle of the tennis courts with his daughter because "he had the right" to use the court in lieu of a city class we all payed for even though a sign stating classes had priority were clearly posted. A parent giving their child illegal street drugs because "you're going to get it anyway, you might as well get it from me". A grandmother spending an hour screaming at their grandchild at every single thing they did, whose only crime was doing what all 2 year old's do. This is only a small part of what I personally have seen. When we REALLY learn to teach our children better, then we will be much closer to perfection.

Answer 2

the mistake most parents make is that they try to make their children learn through the mistakes they have made in their own life but what they dont understand is that sometimes, you dont learn anything unless you make the mistake and learn from it all on your own. Its sort of like the american dream, where the parents want you to be better and richer than they were but only different, in the sense that you want the same thing but cant get there without messing up along the way. Mistakes are part of life, those mistakes are often confused as harmless, selfish and generally bad behaviour. Well. thats what i think anyway.

Answer 3

Most people don't learn from their mistakes and therefore cannot pass on any knowledge about those mistakes.


Furthermore, Americans are taught to blame everyone but themself. The government, their parents, their teachers, their socio-economic background, and everything else that is offered up as an excuse for poor decision making, laziness, and lack of motivation for a better life earned independently.

Answer 4

If your premise is true (and I'm not sure that it is) there's still a flaw in the logic.

If I teach my son not to make the same mistakes I have -- and let's say he actually doesn't make them -- that still leaves a whole lot of other mistakes for him to make.

Then when he has a child of his own, he will only teach his child not to make the mistakes he made. He will not teach the child about my mistakes, since he did not make them himself. Thus, my mistakes go right back into the "learn from your own experience" pot for the next generation.

And so on, and so on...

Answer 5

Because for the most part, we make the same mistakes our parents made-it's what we know. So our children have a tendancy to repeat our mistakes. It takes a tremendous amount of effort and diligence to avoid repeating our parents mistakes, and that's when we recognize them. After all, if you are raised to believe something is true, it is your truth.

Answer 6

I think you can point to some real inroads toward a healthier, happier human race. Medical advances have virtually irradicated many deadly diseases, literacy rates have improved world-wide, agricultural techniques improve productivity, steps are being made (poorly here) to ease polution.
But your question is more about human nature. Parents pass on more than the positive stuff (selflessness, charity, compassion, empathy, love of learning) but also plenty of negative stuff too (repression of women, prejudices, tribal loyalties, cultural and ethnic injustice and hatred). I believe people make terrible decisions, personally and socially, because of fear. We are all selfish beings, even charitable an compassionate work gives us a sense of well being, therefore serving our own interests. When as a group we are afraid that something or someone will threaten our own selfish ends, we will react violently if we are afraid enough. Fear is the enemy.

Answer 7

Because A) not all children have stable family lives, or even live with their parents, B) parents don't always teach children correctly, C) even when they try, the kids' peers teach them the wrong things more effectively (with the help of corrupt adults within the media, schools and government).

One axiom I'll never forget is that every generation of humans has to re-learn absolutely everything within the realm of acquired knowledge. That becomes more and more daunting with each passing generation.

Answer 8

You can give someone advice to avoid making a mistake. But they'll only learn by making their own mistakes.

Answer 9

Either that or as we advance, we learn how to make new mistakes. Like our parents couldn't have taught us how to not go deaf from using our ipods.

Answer 10

Because we are human. Humans are not perfect. There aren't any perfect species on this planet. Every species lives and learns with and or from errors. As long as the errors do not kill you or someone else, they are good - they're a learning experience.