Oren: Hello and thanks for joining us for the New Life educational series with Dr. Michael Laitman. Hello.
Rav: Hello.
Oren: Hello, Nitzah Mazuz.
Nitzah: Hello.
Oren: Today in the studio, we want to learn how to take our life to a better place, a new place. We want to learn the way in which we understand our life better, in which we feel the right thing to do, how to operate in the best possible way through our development as human beings? And the direction we’ll talk today will be like a series of talks for parents. Each one of us was a child and had parents and is either currently in a relationship where he has kids or you are already grandparents, but there are things that you just have to know, today. Today, as parents, we would like to learn how to correctly teach our children from the youngest age about our development as human beings, about male and female sexual education and all that relates to this in our world in order to know how to cope with this topic in the best possible way. Nitzah, please.
Nitzah: O.K. First of all, as parents, the topic surrounding sexual education from the youngest age is a realm that is really missing. I feel a lack of information, means, books, actually knowledge of how to correctly convey sexual education to children from the youngest age. What they teach to older kids in school and what we’ve learned is more or less to do with the biological changes, the physical changes that a body undergoes or how to prevent an unwanted pregnancy and so on. What is the right level of intimacy that has to build; what is the right process that leads to sex? All that is missing. As a parent, I know that if something that is lacking in a certain realm, I am perplexed, and I don’t know how to talk about it, what to say, and what not to say. Then many parents many times, simply don’t talk about this, and the child naturally grows, and the need develops in him, and he starts looking for information about it. Then usually, he stumbles upon different bits of information that aren’t necessarily the correct, the best information; therefore, I’d like to take it into our hands as parents, the sexual education and to gradually start seeing how we should explain this, and pass this on so that it can correctly help us help our children?
Rav: I have a question. How could it be that in the twenty-first century, we that went through the history of tens of thousands of years, suddenly think that we are lacking sexual education for children when there is nothing more natural than that? Can you explain that?
Nitzah: That’s a very interesting question. I think we have prepared ourselves for a show for this question, but I ask myself a lot what’s going on here, what happened, and what happened to humanity.
Rav: Right.
Nitzah: And I felt that there were different perceptions about taboo in everything that has to do with sex and sexuality, and religions where you don’t talk about it at all; it’s like a sin and there are the myths about it. It remains like a place in the dark. Today in the west, when I tried to look for books about it, I discovered that only in 1969, there came the first book in the U.S. that was called, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).” It was the very first time it was opened. So the info was lacking, the right attitude. Therefore, I really would like to hear from you what the right approach, natural approach to teach our kids, maybe first of all about the differences between the sexes and only then about the way to connect between them. I really don’t know how to begin this. What is right?
Rav: You with all your life experience of being a Mom and soon a Grandma, what’s happening?
Nitzah: This is what I said many times, because you don’t know how to begin, you either don’t talk about it at all or you wait for the child to ask something, and you try to answer something and you are not sure.
Rav: We don’t have the right approach, attitude, the philosophical basis. With regards to ourselves, we don’t know what sex is, what love is, what the male part is, what the female part is, what the common part is. Where are the parents with respect to the kids, and from which age range is everything supposed to be? This entire realm has one big question mark around it. And here we can say that no one, no one is sure, because in all other areas, we have those that understand what to do. They are certain of themselves, and here we see that no one knows and everyone fails. That’s what’s interesting. Everyone, meaning, in all cultures, in all nations. I am talking about modern times scrutinizing all the big mess and problem that we have in all of humanity in general crisis. So, here the crisis is the deepest and most fundamental. And that’s because this is the basis of our life. If we don’t understand this, then what follows is that we don’t understand and can’t arrange our whole life. It’s like at home, in a family; if there is no connection, if the spouses don’t match mentally, sexually, husband, and wife, if there is no match, nothing will help. Money, conditions, nothing. Whatever, it won’t help. They won’t get along. Meaning, love and sex is very fundamental: the balance between them, the connection between them, and the right balances between them, dosage, there is habit that has to do with social consent, and the pressure from the environment. This is the source of life and the basis of our existence. And accordingly we must say that all of a child’s education is the education that starts around him. The child that starts suckling his mother, he understands that there is a mother, and he came out of her and suckles from her. And there is Dad who is on the side in some kind of a role that is a bit more distant. I’d say that what was good in ancient times where everything was natural, the sons up to the age of 2-3 were on the woman side, then they went to the man side, and they become men. They used to go to Mom for something. They will be taken care in some way, but form a certain age and on, the parents, the parents in general, were divided into two parts: women here, men here, girls were always with women, boys, came from under the mother and moved on to the father. All the men were there, and everything was natural. All the relations between a man and a woman were relatively open, natural, such that people didn’t really attribute any importance, significant importance to it. I remember times that, in the same room, lived the parents, and the young couple, and the young children, and the grandchildren. Meaning, the grandmother and the grandparents, their children, and even the younger generation were in one room. They did not think that there should be another room. It was normal. It was clear. It was so, I don’t know how to put it. Both the the times and the attention to sex, the relations between him and her, they did not take up that much place. First of all, it wasn’t that developed. Besides the elites where somehow it was something to consider, in all the other layers of the population, it was pretty simple. It was limited. People used to get married with their own kind, meaning, according to their social position, same city, same village, and rate. Neighbors used to make the decision about the relations between a boy and a girl. The parents used to make the decision about this. You had to pay for a woman. Different things. It was like property in short. They did not describe it like emotions; they did not let young the boys and young girls or young men and young women make this kind of connection between them. It was up to, really, one hundred fifty, maximum two hundred years ago. The problem is the more we advanced towards the twentieth century, we started seeing how these emotions and feelings between man and woman become more conspicuous. People start paying attention to it; these emotions start developing. Sex against sex. Earlier it was because there was nothing better to do, and only the elites were engaged in this, and people that did not know what to do in life. And really so. Simple people used to live in order to make money, make children, have a home. Everything was simpler. We didn’t pay attention to it. It was understood that this is just how it has to be. Advance and live. There was a very simple philosophy to life; I need a woman suitable for me who is healthy, can have children and keep the house, she looks like this, or looks like that. There was no demand; there were no standards. If she would take off twenty kilos, I’ll marry her; if she won’t, I won’t. On the contrary, they looked at a woman who had plus twenty kilos and not minus twenty kilos. There was a completely different direction. And here with the general crisis, we also went into this crisis where there are big needs. Suddenly the sex popped up, which is actually the basis, our foundation on the one hand. On the other hand, it was the natural foundation. It became artificial when we started connecting it with fashion and culture, when it started revolving around this. I don’t know. People were more interested in nature, in other things. Today it’s in a more hidden way; sex is everywhere but in a more concealed fashion. However you look at it. An example is the way a new model for a car is designed; it’s done with a sexy approach. A home, a picture, furniture, whatever, everything has to be, so called, sexy. And this is development. We cannot say that it’s right or wrong. Whether we like it or not, it suits us. But it is a direction, the direction we’ve developed into, and we have find the balance in this, because in this, a person is actually between all these forces which develop him from right and from left, and there is the middle line between them. He has to take all these trends, all these urges into his hands and balance them, bring them to some kind of an equilibrium, to a good rational conclusion which is good, rational, and calm. By that, he grows by taking all the powers of nature correctly, seeing them correctly. Here I’d really say that we are falling behind by at least dozens of years. In my eyes, it’s not even dozens of years but a few hundreds of years. Let’s say two hundred years where we really didn’t pay attention to all these things. We followed the development where we suddenly connected sex to democracy and different political and social processes. We didn’t determine it, define it. Because sex is so basic, we’ve connected it to different places so that we hid it under sociology, and psychology, and pedagogies. It’s everywhere; it’s as if it’s everywhere but itself does not exist. It’s even in education for sure, and in culture, somehow externally. Where it is present is in the media, of course, in the movies, television, internet, in literature. And in everything else, we use it in a hidden way. Accordingly, we want to let it appear in the educational system only in a very limited way. Like you said, it’s either with respect to different sexually transmitted illnesses, different deviations, and so on, but it doesn’t have anything to do with sex itself, because we are not operating like animals where sex works only according to hormones. Were it so, then according to the scent, to something, I’d recognize her suitable, I’d mate with her and finish with the whole sex issue. And same on behalf of the woman with respect to the man. Animals have a whole laboratory in their nose, and mouth, and accordingly, they get along. They don’t need any matchmakers, any processes, but it’s like they don’t eat something which is bad for them. It’s the same way; they will not connect with someone who is not good for them to continue the generation with. For them, that’s what sex is. Therefore, it comes in a certain season or a certain period, and later on, they don’t know each other. There is like this inner program that is operated; they connect and drift apart. Is it sex or not? Or is that specifically sex and everything else doesn’t have anything to do with that. You have to understand why we, as opposed to animals, are connected to each other. We’re going to be connected to each other all lifelong. At the moment when he becomes a man, an adult, then, from this moment on, he, as a male, has to connect himself to the female species for life. It’s something very different from animals. We see that it’s not because of culture, education, or something, but naturally from generations back. That’s how it is in human society with everyone, with everything, however it is. It could be Indians, and South Americans, or Japanese, and somewhere in the far north, or in Africa, or Australia, and so on. Meaning, this is human nature; this is rooted in human nature, the lengthy connection between the sexes, between the male and the female. Therefore, here there has to be an addition, a very interesting addition that we did not have passed down through our heritage. What I mean is, we are developing from one generation to the next, and each generation actually needs special education of its own, culture of its own, new relations between people, and accordingly, new relations between species. If we’ve developed this way throughout the years, where each one of us changes are the relations between us changed? Are these relations between us, between each and every one, between male and female, in each and every generation, and generation, generation, generation, and the relations between the male and the female of the various generations changed? Do they change naturally, and we don’t have to pay attention to it? Or from one generation to the next, we need to pass on these new relations like we do with science, culture, education? And if we don’t pass it on, then the next generation won’t know? What’s going on here? It’s passed on naturally according to the inner development, both in the male and the female. Then they know that this is how they have to behave. Or we got this from Mom and Dad, mine and hers, and we have to behave this way? So, here is the question.