Monday, January 25, 2016

A Bookshelf for Families with Children

If your children don't have electronic gadgets or you strictly regulate their usage, most intelligent kids will start reading your bookshelf books out of curiosity or boredom, providing a way for you to indirectly influence your children.

For young children:
  1. the better Christian children's books. Even if nonreligious, your children should gain familiarity with a little bit of Christian culture.
  2. non-ideological childrens' books, so your children will develop reading skills. Older books from second hand stores are less infected with the poorly reasoned propaganda of cultural Marxism.
For older children:
  1. logic and consequentialist ethics books. Look hard for books not filled with cultural Marxism.
  2. ethnoracial fact facing books, including Race, Evolution, and Behavior by JP Rushton. Dysgenics by Richard Lynn. Paved with Good Intentions by Jared Taylor. Future Human Evolution by John Glad. The Perils of Diversity by Byron Roth. 
  3. biology and physical anthropology, including The 10,000 Year Explosion by Cochran and Harpending. Sociobiology by EO Wilson. Signals by Timothy Perper.
  4. up close accounts of war and past times to discourage the self-pity and self-absorption teenagers have. Other examples include Go Ask Alice and The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!
  5. photo albums
  6. some books on blue collar activities, so your children don't see the college prep track as the only alternative, so they develop some handy man or handy woman skills.
  7. prepping
  8. books on various other policy issues, including secession, economics, democracy, corruption, and the environment.
  9. body language and general psychology, The Nurture Assumption is especially helpful because teenagers get bombarded with Freudian and psychobabble ideas blaming parental practices for things teens don't like, including things they don't like about themselves.
  10. a guide to manners and etiquette. Even if someone plans on breaking rules, it is good to know the rules.
Print worthwhile articles and throw them into three ring binders, especially when it comes to logic, ethics, prepping, and public policies. Individuals need much practice at fallacy recognition.

If your children are permitted to use electronics, downloading materials to a family e-reader and to the desktop of a family computer is also a good idea.

Yes, these books are hard core. But there is no evidence that reading harsh facts harms development. Kids benefit from street smarts. If your children have grown up in a diverse neighborhood, they have already experience harsh realities. Kids feel confused, alienated or pressured by the behaviors of their peers. If kids grow up sheltered, they end up easily exploited in schools and workplaces. Ideological vacuums tend to get filled. If your children aren't thinking well and forming their own belief systems, with indirect assistance from yourself, they will fall for the nihilism, hedonism, cultural Marxism, and additional fanaticisms peddled by others.

But what if visitors see these books? The books could open the door to fruitful discussions. But what if a boss or gossipy coworker sees them? Then you should probably put sensitive books in your bedroom, then keep visitors out of the bedroom, so you don't get doxed or worse.

Nurture assumption alert: attempts to directly encourage your children to read your books might backfire, especially if you have children who reflexively recoil at suggestions made by mom or dad.

Why not mass culture books? First, they're rotten. Second, your children will be exposed to massive amounts of mass culture BS from outside sources, so it is not as if they will be exposed to only the worldviews of your bookshelf.

Remember to punish your children should they call anyone ethnoracial slurs and explain why it is wrong to use slurs. You can't directly influence your children once they are out of your sight, but you can prevent them from influencing siblings and peers with slurs in your presence.

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