h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I recently mentioned this book on a thread..which is all about use of language..well specifically the modern English language in the context of his book.

This quote is to do with childhood, something I've also written about on a thread.


'..It is our duty to bring up our children to love,

honour and obey us.

If they don’t they must be punished,

otherwise we would not be doing our duty.



If they grow up to love, honour and obey us

either we have brought them up properly

or we have not:

if we have

there must be something the matter with them;

if we have not

there is something the matter with us.



(Knots - R. D. Laing, (1970) Knots. London: Penguin.)

Excerpt taken from,

http://www.oikos.org/knotsen1.htm

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If you are at all interested in the way the English language can be used and abused in relationships it is well worth a read.

Of course poetry plays with it, hence the richness of that tradition here, but literature is a context where that is all in the open and is openly playful..it does not have the sinister aspect of the destruction that can be wrought in families, when you can be mentally tied up in knots..

Children are very vulnerable psychologically.

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More about Laing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing