{"id":518833,"date":"2017-11-23T02:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T07:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mereja.com\/amharic\/?guid=1350d7d7744ac0deafa1ad663bb7fbcf"},"modified":"2017-11-23T02:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T07:16:00","slug":"what-if-we-were-raised-with-an-authoritarian-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.net\/amharic\/518833","title":{"rendered":"What if We Were Raised with an \u2018Authoritarian Personality\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We less often discuss personalities that are fertile grounds either to be ruled by authoritarians or to be one of them. But, I think, it is important to look what is in them as it looks like we dont basically change from the way our parents have raised us. Our ancestors were either members of the oppressors or the majority (the oppressed) in the past, so are we. It happens to be we use that same privilege inherited from our parents to advance others; or, to remain underprivileged. History proves it is most probable that off springs follow their ancestors footsteps. Chances are big that children of the poor will remain poor; children of farmers remain farmer; children of democratic societies will remain democrat and etc. And, all this is until the quagmire breaks at some point. What’s keeping us a conformist? And, how can we break it?<\/div>\n
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I was reading a book titled “Between the World and Me” authored by Ta-Nehisi Coates and found some childhood experiences were shared between his world and mine. He wrote his father used to beat him out of fear, “My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that’s exactly what was happening all around us. Everyone had lost a child, somehow, to the streets, to jail, to drugs, to guns.” Thousands of miles away to Coates’ place, my mother had felt similar fear. My mother used to mention youngsters from my neighborhood and say I should not be like  them. By beating me, she thought she was protecting me. <\/div>\n
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Until the age of 11, our father used to live far from us. Therefore, all the burden of raising us (the children) was laid on our mother’s shoulders. And, she was always worried that we may be called woman’s children”, negatively perceived saying to mean ‘undisciplined’. As a child, all I remember was that she always beat me for every little mistakes I made and sometimes to the possible mistakes I could have done. Our mother still believe she has done right and makes pride out of it claiming that we (her children) are well disciplined because she shaped us in terms of physical punishment. <\/div>\n
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I was also beaten in Maekelawi, Ethiopia’s torture chamber for the past three regimes. I have always asked what the people who do tortures (as a job) there feel about it. I’m sure they tell themselves an excuse to do that. They may be feeling they have to do it for the wellbeing of the country, or of the people. Basically, the excuses do not have essential difference as to why our parents and teachers beat us while we were children. They want to protect us from ourselves, from our environment and from the world we live in. <\/div>\n
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The discovery of ‘Authoritarian Personality’<\/b><\/div>\n
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Based on nature-nurture influence, psychologists define personalities in many categories. But, the so-called ‘Authoritarian Personality’ is discovered following the holocaust in the Second World War. Psychologists asked how a lot of people could accept it, and a group of American based social scientists, led by Theodor Adorno, came up with a researched answer in a book titled  ‘Authoritarian Personality’ (published in 1950). According to their findings, people with an ‘Authoritarian Personality’ tended to be<\/a>:<\/div>\n
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