I became a lame eco-terrorist

This text is part of: "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)

Freedom of thought

Homeschooling and unschooling are exploding in popularity in the US. In proportion, concerns associated with the concept of learning at home keep diminishing. However, the fear of parallel societies or individuals questioning the social contract are still there. Those fears need to be addressed before kids can expand their rights and freedoms in the area of education (see: Ban on homeschooling).

While we universality agree that creativity and passion are welcome characteristics of the human mind, few people realize that the same characteristics can pose serious threats to society. If you take a young creative mind and impose limits on freedom, or limits on access to information, or upset any youthful sensitivity, the same creative force can be used against common human goals.

A passionate mind is like an explosive, it can be used for construction or for destruction. If that mind is highly creative, it is more likely to achieve its goals: good or bad. Luckily, knowledge is good and passionate creative minds turn out good on average. We need to remember though that freedom and justice are essential for such positive outcomes.

I am particularly sympathetic to the concerns about the impact of freedom on youth. In the era of terrorism, I have a particularly useful insight into the problem. In my youth, my own mind took a short-lasting detour into a dangerous area. I was a young amateur organizer of a quasi-terrorist organization that took shape in real life and actually ended up committing acts of mini-"terror". The good news is that no one was hurt. The total damage was an estimated 7 light bulbs and 4 broken windows.

I speak openly about the subject because I think it illustrates incredible dangers of limits on access to information and poor communication in families. If we want to expand educational freedoms to wider groups of society, we need to be aware of the risks associated with the skewed thought process that can develop in an immature mind (see: Radicalization myth).

Love of nature

Personal anecdote. Why use anecdotes?

The story of a young terrorist begins in a benign manner. It was probably the year 1971-1972. I was 9-10 years old. Our Polish TV had recently celebrated the addition of a second channel. The whole family and all neighbors tuned in to the first broadcast in 1970. It was probably Channel 2 that presented a longer series about animals in their natural environment.

Figure: Second channel of Polish TV started broadcasting in 1970. Even a great documentary devoted to the environment can have a corrupting impact on a young mind. True information can form a falsity vector.

My knowledge and maturity of that time can be illustrated by the fact that each time I heard "We now present the next episode in the series...", I knew it was my favorite animal series without understanding that this might be an intro to an infinite number of unrelated programs. I bet it was my mom who would help me tune in at the right time. I am sure her reasoning was: "Good education. If the kid is interested, let him soak in knowledge". The problem with that education was that it was extremely monothematic and one sided. The series often touched upon the problem of the damage humanity causes to ecosystems. It did not take long for me to conclude that humans are a major threat to natural environment. I could not stand those pieces of dirt and garbage floating in polluted waters. Those clouds of smoke billowing into the air we breathe. Those monstrous industrial structures devouring pristine swathes of forest. My thinking was that without human civilization the world would be far more beautiful.

There were also other influences coming from TV. A program called "Invisible hand" showed how kids could sneak around and surprise others with their good deeds. An excellent premise: your granny wakes up in the morning to see all yard cleaned up. However, for me, the concept of "sneaking around" was more appealing than the good deed part

Olsen Gang

Personal anecdote. Why use anecdotes?

Initially, I had a fantasy of living all by myself in the woods and fighting for the "liberation of nature". Ted Kaczynski moved to a cabin in Montana at just about the same time. He crafted his cabin himself, while my dream was just a 2-meters-long shack made of branches. He was 20 years older, educated, and well-organized. I was just a kid who loved the woods, forest maps, and foraging for food. However, soon a different approach germinated in my head. Perhaps I could form a gang. Teamwork would get me further. I was interested in the concept of scouting and the lifestyle of Indians. Those combined into an interest in forming teams that could collectively accomplish great deeds. This lead to a few attempts of forming organized kid groups with various secretive and "lofty" goals. One group was named "The Association of the United Defenders of Nature (STEM)" (in Polish: "Towarzyski Ruch Zjednoczonych Obroncow Natury" (TRZON)). I have few memories of that association. However, the fancy name alone is scary if you recall the self-chosen title of "Justiciar Knight Commander for Knights Templar Europe and one of several leaders of the National and pan-European Patriotic Resistance Movement" (Anders Breivik).

The last of those organized group, which I called "The Secret Gang: Bison" dates to the fourth grade. I was 10 years old. I started from writing down the regulations, which survived to this day. The intent was both good and sinister at the same time. The ultimate goal was the "destruction of civilization" (without hurting nature). Most of the rules revolved about not hurting anyone in the process. The membership required impeccable conduct all around. I never showed any traces of anger or hate. I would never contemplate a bomb. However, those unbelievable words are true: "destruction of civilization". It was not difficult to recruit 4 of my closest friends: Jacek, Piotr, Jarek and Lech. I lectured the team on my ideology. However, my friends were eager to join just for the fun of it. I doubt we ever had a serious conversation about the importance of environmental causes. Our christening would occur via our first "terrorist act", which was to destroy all light bulbs in the cellar of the block in which Jacek lived. I sketched a diagram of the cellar, location of bulbs, surveillance, countermeasures, and the like. On Sunday morning, we all got up before dawn to commit "the act". Few things went according to the plan, however, the damage was done. If you ever see an act of senseless devastation and think of young hooligans with no sense of direction, remember that kids are a bit more complex. Sometimes, there is a bigger story behind a broken window.

Our gang was never "successful". Personal frictions surfaced fast. I was intolerant of lax discipline in the team, violations of the rules, etc. The penalty for disobedience was "torture". This quickly lead to the disintegration of the gang and ultimately contributed to my being thrown away from the school and into an entirely new, better environment that ultimately righted the course of my life

Origins of radical thinking

Personal anecdote. Why use anecdotes?

The important question to ponder is how an otherwise good-hearted kid could arrive at an idea that destroying civilization might be a good thing? Could a radical response from authorities to some innocent act result in further radicalization? I believe my brain would need to be irreversibly changed for that bad turn to be possible. In my case, the starting trigger for the problem was limited access to biased information: highly educational and yet one-sided TV program tackling the issues of environmental pollution. Four decades later, most kids have all information at their fingertips, however, they could still linger in monothematic chatrooms and other social media settings. Easy access to information would reduce the chances of biased knowledge in my case, but it also leads many to monothematic obsessions and radicalism.

In a homeschooling setting, there is a vital corrector in place: an adult partner in the educational process - usually a parent. Like in an object flying at high speed in space, kids need only minor nudges to their trajectory to dramatically change the outcomes. A short conversation, e.g. about an environmental program, would quickly help clear up the fog and correct misconceptions.

Why it did not work in my case? My best tutor and supervisor was my older brother. However, at that time he already begun his work as a forest inspector and left for a tiny outpost in a tiny village in northern Poland. Additionally, me and my brother started having our differences that made communication harder.

The person who should have stepped in was my mom. However, by that time she has lost my respect as a partner for "serious talk". She was a bit too authoritarian in early childhood, and this inevitably leads to a loss of authority. My problem was her religious views, which I considered anachronic and not worth my time. I was raised in a Roman Catholic family. However, my interests in evolution quickly made me realize that what I was being told in catechesis (religious education) was not credible. I tested the knowledge of my priest in what I considered to be the "ABC of biology". He failed. I protested and rebelled against the attendance in his class. Amazingly, there was little opposition in the family. Perhaps a disrespectful rebel could bring more disrepute to family? It was easier to silently accept my choice? At the age of 10, I became a committed atheist. This automatically classified my mom as a "backward Bible thumper". My love was undiminished, but my respect and serious conversations were over. All my "terrorist" activities occurred under the radar. There was still my cheerful 86-year-old granny and my loving sister. However, all we had in common was love, dinner conversations, and occasional chat about "is homework done?". Our apartment was big enough, my mom and sis were at work, my granny would bustle in the kitchen, while me and my gang planned to "destroy civilization".

In less than a decade, my focus changed from destruction to the betterment of mankind! In my deschooling narrative, there is a crack: one of the main contributors to correcting my trajectory was a school teacher! One smart, knowledgeable, smiling, loving and incredibly patient Ms Kaczmarek, the teacher of chemistry, who I never had a chance to thank (School #30 in Poznan, 1976)(see: Great teachers change the world). I google her name from time to time and always come back to busy life thinking "one day I will..."

Conclusion

At the preview reading of the above text, one of my colleagues remarked that my "terrorist gang" was so embarrassingly harmless that I should not even mention it: "you were just a snot who knew very little about the world". I disagree. Those seeds of bad ideas rooted in ignorance may lead to the emergence of future Hitlers. It is all a matter of temperament and a learning trajectory. Take a hateful personality and a formula for disaster might be brewing in a neighboring household. In case of Hitler, hate was born from authoritarian parenting, and an injury to self-esteem that happens so often in schools around the world. Hitler was scarred for life with a falsity vector that biased all his thinking.

Could my terrorist organization be dangerous if more successful? I cannot see how. There was no clear reward in destruction. It would always be far removed form the ultimate goal with multiple uncertainties. Organizing a team and planning seem to have been my key rewards. It is that anti-entropy quest that drove the effort. This might have turned out differently for a kid with a different personality (e.g. self-esteem injury).

My derailed thinking should never happen in a young mind raised in a good family. We need to understand the causes. The more I open about the subject, the more I realize that I am not unique. More and more people came up with similar confessions. This fact alone should favor openness and documenting all cases. After a couple of exchanges I came to understand that this type of young man's reasoning is far more prevalent than we popularly believe. I used to speak about those events mostly in terms of a joke. Only a more detailed analysis makes it all pretty scary. A potential for a disastrous outcome of "ignorant creativity out of control" is huge. This might be happening in young minds all around you!

Passion and creativity can be dangerous. They can best be defused with freedom and justice

Follow up

Before this text was finished I received some feedback which illustrates that my case is not unique. A friend wrote:

I was in an online echo chamber of people claiming the collapse of civilization, but I was slow to leave because of a diminished learning rate resulting from the bad habits from school. For example, I didn't want to read the actual science which would debunk many of their claims because I thought it would take way longer than it actually would. My intuitions about how long learning takes were badly skewed

Another friend noticed that treating kids with respect would be very helpful. However, in my case, disrespect was not a factor. Some traces of authoritarian parenting might have reduced mom's corrective role. Adult listening would not help because I would not share my "concerns":

Wanting to destroy civilization is not new. Most young people will have a phase of high criticism, which is fine considering they have little freedom and are treated like s[..]t. The best solution is probably just to treat kids with respect, listen to their concerns, and provide a counterpoint when they are wrong

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For more texts on memory, learning, sleep, creativity, and problem solving, see Super Memory Guru