Adult Irony

The most deplorable thing about the adult is their love of all things ironic. It's the adult equivalent to a small child's egotism in its annoyance and almost as ubiquitous. Television is littered with examples. Adults love an unexpected pairing or an incongruous situation, and one of the most prevalent is the pairing of a child in a context that adults have reserved for themselves. There's the classic example of a child stumbling onto his parents making love (where a child is supposed to represent "innocence" and "ignorance," and the sex act is supposed to represent the "dirty little secret" that only adults know). Adults love to revel in their so-called advanced experience with the world, and parade it in front of children's ignorance as if gloating the old "I know something you don't know."

Arguably, this phenomenon can be tied to the same egotism that causes the child to believe that every object of their desire is ultimately theirs, even under circumstances where it is in the obvious possession of a peer. Adults want to feel important, as is human, and because they have the power to do whatever they want, they have the ability to exert these desires in larger social domains (like television for instance). The problem is, just as it is with children, the broad majority lack the insight into why they enjoy feeling better and smarter than children. This makes them as childish.

In the same way that a toy doesn't belong to our proverbial child simply because they want it, the truth about the world (and all those dirty little secrets) doesn't "belong to adults" simply because they will it to be. Adults don't know anything a child should be kept from knowing just to preserve the little "smarter than you" game. Everything should be on the table because everything is on the table. We need honesty, not irony.

The Good Samaritan

How often do we hear that because human nature prevents most people from being truly charitable, selfless, progressive, useful, on their own, that it is the function of bureaucracy, law, government, and other legislation to ensure that a series of incentives or imperatives are in place to govern human behavior on behalf of human beings? It would seem plausible, as the system might be capable of doing what most common people can't. If they can't be the Good Samaritan and help their fellow citizen in jeopardy on the street, then a law must be fashioned to ensure their heroic compliance. Nowhere are these compulsory measures applied more than in our dealings with children and youth. In our society, apathy seems to be an easier path after all, in fact, in many cases involving children, it seems to be actively encouraged.

The problem with the regulation of human behavior in cases regarding the flexing of our better natures is in its initial assumption (even if it's effective at getting the otherwise apathetic to participate in what should be the human race). The idea is that people can't or won't be good citizens on their own and have to be told. But however true this may be in general, doesn't it seem problematic that this initial, fatalistic assumption about human nature actually discredits those who would be Good Samaritans on their own? Legislation then opens the one and only avenue for which those who mean well by children can exercise their good intent, and subsequently closes the pathways that individuals had once chosen on their own.

No one expects an adult now to assist a child (that is not theirs) out of a problem by their own good nature, because such a thing these days seems to require a plethora of forms, permission slips, background checks, and placement services in order to be rendered to specifications pre-established by the organization overseeing that that "good deed" gets done. Not that this really matters, seeing as a good deed is a good deed nonetheless, but the hoops may also actively prevent a person from carrying out the good deed to begin with. The good intent to be proactive with outreach to children that has been turned away due to bureaucratic limitations, is no good for anyone. Society has all the bases covered as far as good deeds are concerned, as it has an army of specially trained agents to make sure those good deeds get done--no assistance is necessary from the likes of those who may simply want to do something good for a child on their own will.

We can't let the apathy of society, accustomed to legislative might enforcing their good will, undermine or even disallow the good works of the average person choosing to do so on their own--whether they be child or adult. We can't let it control our thinking as to who can be the Good Samaritan and who can not.

Someday at Christmas

Someday at Christmas men won't be boys
Playing with [kids] like kids play with toys
One warm December our hearts will see
A world where [love] is free.

Someday at Christmas there'll be no [culture wars]
When we have learned what Christmas is for.
When we have found what life's really worth
There'll be peace on earth.

Someday at Christmas we'll see a land
With no hungry children, no empty hand.
One happy morning people will share
a world where people care.

Someday at Christmas there'll be no tears,
Where [all ages] are equal and no one has fears.
One shining moment, one prayer away
From our world today.

Someday at Christmas man will not fail,
Hate will be gone and love will prevail,
Someday a new world that we can start
With hope in every heart.

Someday all our dreams will come to be,
Someday in a world where [all] are free,
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime.

Spoiled Into Submission

Sometimes you can beat a child into a fury and spoil a child into submission, injure them with kindness and strengthen them with sternness, build resilience by letting them subsist and entitlement by giving them everything they want. Sometimes carefully structuring a child's environment to work exactly to their developmental mindset only weakens their ability to grow beyond it. The point to any interaction between an adult and a child is not to gratify the child's strengths, but to challenge them.

This is hardly revolutionary--Lev Vygotsky wrote on the Zone of Proximal Development and defined it thus:

"...The distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygostsky, Mind in Society 86).

Because we can not count on the "line in the sand" age-limit legal definitions, which automatically render all children regardless of maturity or skill incapable and therefore useless, we (you, me, and society at large--parents, teachers, coaches, adult friends, children themselves) have to be that "more capable peer" who dares challenge a child. We all have to take personal responsibility to ensure that children and youth in general are actually prepared for life at the ages the law arbitrarily sets for those milestones.

The line in the sand age limits imposed on minors, if they are never going away, are NOT the time to begin teaching children how to live, they are benchmarks for all progress up to that point--not the first opportunity to teach a youth a thing or two, but the last. The mythology or "magic" that the law bases its reasoning on as to how children develop into adults (based on their date of manufacture alone) certainly isn't going to do it for us.

If we do expect the law to determine how and when we decide to teach children about how to live in the world--that is, if we wait until their 18th birthday before we decide to stop spoiling them with ignorance and politically correct entitlements--how can we expect them to actually be able to do what is their right to do, and have responsibility for the things they are then responsible for? If we give them no adversarial situations, how do we expect them to handle conflict constructively? Childhood is supposed to be a living, challenging time of life, not a paradise, and the more adults try to make it a paradise, the less livable it becomes.

The law can not raise kids for us, it is too busy harming those who didn't develop properly.

Include the Kids

Society believes the best interaction between an adult and child ought to render the adult a designated mentor, care-taker, teacher, parent, doctor, or social worker of some sort, and the child a receptacle for their services. If the child is maintained, repaired, upgraded, or serviced appropriately by the designated individual, then society deems the partnership successful and they part ways. Children are not expected to do anything but absorb or allow rendered whatever service on them is being given, accept the upgrade for their sake, and carry on. In some instances, such as between a teacher and child, some dialogue or input from the child is necessary to complete the transaction, but that is in the context of their compulsory education. Society expects nothing from children for their own sake, even it also regards them to super-human heights of holiness for its sake.

I don't want to see the system crumble, I just want alternative (as in, non-bureaucratic) practices in child guidance become more socially acceptable and less of a target of scorn. This is to say, an ideal society would be one where so-called traditional, social, "cradle to grave" methods for bringing children up in the world coexist peacefully with individuals doing good works for others on their own volition. The only difference between the two is that the traditional structures treat children like potted plants who are just expected to sit there and receive their water and sunlight, and these Childlove "good works" practices I describe accept that a child, while being "protected" and "saved" and "taught" and "mentored," may also want to be the one giving, protecting, teaching, and mentoring sometimes, for a change.

Childlove does not expect a child to want to reciprocate the love that goes into them, because it expects nothing from children that one wouldn't expect from any other personal friend, but it won't stop them from reaching out if they desire it. Childlove is not out to "protect" or to "mentor" or to render a specific service in exchange for payment or some other motivation--the motivation for the Childlover is the protecting, is the mentoring, in and of itself. Children are not a means to an ends, they are an ends in and of themselves, and it takes a non-market based, non-bureaucratic, free individual in order to allow them to be. In this case, Childlove is about adults being there for children, but it's also about children being there for adults, or other children. It just requires the adult to be more honest and personal than they would be if they were fulfilling a professional service on behalf of the child--where their presence would just be a physical extension of their all-important title and nothing more.

Because kids know the difference. They know when you're there for them and when you're there because it's your job to be there. It doesn't necessarily have to affect their judgement of you, and certainly you can reach a child on a personal level even if it is your job to be there for them, but the quality of the interaction necessarily suffers from the compulsory, mandatory, or the "on behalf of X" context of the meeting. Officialdom always cuts the heart out of human interaction. If the child chooses their mentor and the mentor is not a fit with the child, or if the mentor chooses the child and the child isn't a fit, then the quality of the interaction suffers somewhat. If the child and the adult choose each other, or the child and the child choose each other, then the interaction is blessed for as long as it lasts. Kids don't want everything done for their sake, on their behalf, for their own good--nobody does--and will almost always see this kind of treatment as just another form of authority regardless of how friendly and "happy" it comes off. Some people will kill you with happiness, after all.

No. Kids don't want happy smiling faces telling them to sit still and receive the service against their will "for their own good," "on their behalf," or "for their sake." Kids are human beings too, and no human who hasn't been tampered with in some way will tacitly accept such condescension without either a flare of protest or silent withdrawal. Children shouldn't be expected to be any different. They want real people who are open and honest about their agendas. They want a person who can honestly answer the question, "Why the hell do you like working with kids?" If you answer with something along the lines of the "joy and wonder," then you've already lost all hope of connection, because the small ones won't get it and the older ones won't buy it.

A child is anything but "joy and wonder." A child is human--all that, the good, bad, and ugly. 

There are times when a child has to be a receptacle for services, just like anyone, but there should also be times when a child can be the one reaching out and reciprocating. In a relationship, human beings can say no if they are being infringed on by another. In a top-down interaction between "mentor" and "protege," there is no consent or dissent. If the kids can't be included, it is just another doctor's visit, it's just another timed test--it's not a relationship. Child-centrism is just as vile as adult-centrism, because tossing children into darkness is just as disgusting as blinding them in the spotlight.

Thought-Stopping Cliches

Our typical human overhears the cultural media pulpit repetitively spouting thought-stopping cliches about predators day in and out, takes them at face value and then perhaps turns around and criticizes those who practice religion. There is no difference. If religion is said to become anxious at the idea of critical analysis and receives criticism for it, then our media pulpit should be spared no less the same. The only thing that is necessary to say to render null all arguments for justifying our opinions based on reason alone is wrapped up in the confused media-fed jargon of the expression, "predators targeting innocent children." No one can contest paranoia like this without looking like they support the "predators," so it becomes truth regardless of its truth.

"The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis."
(Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism 429)

Childhood innocence is a cultural designation for which there is no evidence--sure children exist inside a different developmental stage from adults, but there is no reason to believe they are any more "innocent," "pure," or "angelic" as a result than your average adult given their own developmental state. Another is the purely cultural detestation for "pedophilia," where ignorance has produced in the mainstream its 1 to 1 correlation with "child molestation." Such a 1 to 1 correlation has no evidence, and even runs counter to evidence suggesting that not all pedophiles necessarily commit the crimes of child molestation and possession of child porn. But put these two words together in the same sentence, "innocent child" and "pedophile," and all analysis stops. If you contest the jargon, you're in support of the perpetrator. In the past, such an ability to think beyond the words would doom your soul to hellfire, these days, it dooms our society to ignorance and illusion servitude.

Play Spaces

It's true, the play space is where kids plot out their method for world domination. These methods won't be taking effect immediately, but at some point, the children alive today, who you see out playing, will take over the world, and the kind of space they have to practice out their methods now makes all the difference over whether they chose to simply replace us, or take us out by force and demand something better. The powerful and the downpresser would prefer a gentle replacement that benefits them unto and beyond the end, but the powerless want their children to be a force onto themselves, bold enough to fix what does not work, stand up for what is good and just, and throw those benefiting from the broken system into the ground as fast as possible. At least, that is how the adults have decided to use children.

The economic engines of our society have attempted to create a generation contented on its own gluttony and self-absorbsion, and it's not so much a conspiracy as it is just good business practice. If you want future customers or constituents, you only tell the incoming generation to challenge authority if you intend on being the authority, otherwise, you close and limit their play spaces, and distract them with your gadgets so they never have to leave a parent's sight. But then when that technology expands their new insular play worlds to the largely unregulated spheres of play found online, a problem develops, for they become "beyond control" once again, and therefore a threat to power. The powerful then endeavor to turn even their newly formed online play spaces into havens of corruption. Simply put, adults don't want kids playing in or outside the box, not behind the shed, not in the house, not in their room, not stuck to their computer--they don't want them playing here or there, they don't want them playing anywhere!

A child caught walking the public streets could easily find themselves in the back of a police car. A group of kids playing in the woods could find themselves branded as hoodlums and once again thrown in the back of a police car. Gone are the days when the cop would tell them to "get on home." Now the message they're given, should they choose to accept it, is that either their home is the shopping plaza, their own backyard, or if not, it's the hold up at the police station. Simply put, adults don't want their children in this day in age to play in the uncouth, unstructured, unsupervised ways in which a child seems naturally drawn. Most parents, most townships, most police, don't want children learning too much about what it means to be a free individual because a free individual is encouraged by a free, wide open to roam place space to think free thoughts--thoughts that threaten those who stand to gain from a broken world. They want the next generation to be "good little goobers" now, and forever.

One play space is really no more or less superior than another for children to learn about the workings of the world and other people, whether it is online or out in the neighborhoods of the sticks and concrete jungles alike. They will naturally test out their strengths and weaknesses, socialize, and grow fond of each other in these social spheres, regardless of what any adult tries to do to stop them. They carve out their own decadence in a world that adults wish to fashion for themselves alone, and that's why it is discouraged. But the adults are fighting the losing battle, for it is just a fact of nature that the children, regardless of what is put into them now, will someday rule the world, it is only a question of time.

We didn't really have what the kids growing up in this day in age have, we of the generation Y. We were in the unfortunate position of having our physical play spaces limited by the PC "don't let the kids ever get hurt" parenting, and at the same time, didn't have the boundless internet where we could replace that missing play space. We had no acceptable place where we could be truly beyond the eyes of our overlords, and because of that lack of opportunity to direct our own purpose, we were grown spineless. Due to the internet, we can't expect the same from generation Z, who grew up in a world divorced from many adult's understanding. The internet has become our mode of cultural rebellion, it is our play space--for now at least, so let the revolution commence.

We are Anonymous, legion.

Love Never Harms

Having exhausted myself drawing the lines between the lifestyle of the CL and the dominant culture, I'd like to focus for a time on the places where there is agreement, or at least where there should be agreement. The place we find the most agreement is over the idea that children should never come to needless harm inflicted on them by selfish people of any sort--be them child molesters, anti-pedo vigilante crusaders (who would put children in jeopardy to destroy personal enemies), or just plain old abusive parents. Anyone who harms another human being for selfish reasons, whether they be child or adult, is unfit to parade around under any banner of morality or love.

Harm put upon anyone is never the outcome of love. If harm is ever put upon a child, that action is done out of either hatred, selfishness, and/or necessity, but never out of love. A loving person does not harm the person they love directly or indirectly out of love by itself--such action is always primarily motivated by another drive. A loving person may find it necessary to subject their children to harm for their own benefit (ie. discipline...etc), but the part of them that loves the child should feel a sense of remorse even as they know the harm they are instituting is ultimately for the child's benefit (the learning experience).

In this way, it was the sense of necessity that harmed the child, not love--the sense of love felt the sting of remorse for the child's suffering when they came to harm. So anyone, in the event a child being harmed, who has that sense of necessity without the sting of remorse does not love the child. They are instead sociopaths either without a conscience or with a warped one.

What the vigilante or child molester may reason out to be love and what that extension of oneself really is are two entirely different things. The vigilante, the child molester, the abusive parent--they all may have what they see as "good intentions" and they all could be said to be acting on them. After all, they too are "taking responsibility" for the welfare of others, taking it into their own hands, just I believe individuals ought to. That's why I champion personal choice, volunteerism, and charity as much as I do. But because what they perceive to be their love is actually motivated selfishly, by hatred, or by inaccurate ideas about what is necessary for children, these ulterior motives cloud their ability to truly be a force of good in the world, for kids or for anyone.

Vigilantes--though they may seem to be taking an active lead in pursuing society's enemies while all others wouldn't bother--are primarily motivated selfishly. The vigilante doesn't care about children, as their focus is on turning alleged perpetrators into victims--they do not want to see anyone become stronger, they simply want to create more victims. They care more about gratifying their desire to take an active lead in cutting people down--anyone who would stand in their way, no matter who must be harmed in the process. This is not an act of love, or passion to improve the lives of others--this is a selfish act to circumvent or "pervert" justice to destroy others in order to reap the reward (as Perverted Justice does, handsomely).

Likewise, child molesters themselves can not argue that they do what they do out of love, even if they believe to themselves that the child "necessitates" the harm, because their prime motivation--if they were honest with themselves--is their own selfish gratification. Parents who abuse their children under the delusion that their ritualistic beatings or assaults on their own kids count as discipline also can not make the claim that they do what they out of love. In the moment when their hands or belts come in contact with the child's flesh--if they were honest with themselves--they couldn't deny feeling gratified. It is a stress-reliever. They take their own anger out on human beings percieved to be weaker that reside in their own home, and there's no question that such an action is the very antithesis of love.

How easy it is to get sidetracked by one's personal demons enough to cultivate a distorted love. 

Society believes actions that are beneficial to children ought to be performed selflessly--for the child's benefit, and so do I. However, I'm not naive enough to believe that true selflessness exists outside of pure altruistic knee-jerk situations of heroism (which are rare). For the everyday person, the only "benefit" one gains from loving a child--extending a bit of charity, some act of volunteerism, or perhaps just by raising a child if one is a parent or a guardian--is the "good feeling" that comes from knowing that one's selflessness has done good for another human being. It's arguably the only benefit you can gain from charitable work on your own accord that doesn't harm the child you want to be there for, or the society you want to make better, and ultimately, that lack of harm is what love is.

Slaying the Dragon

In the town of Silene there was a large lake that housed a monstrous dragon that cast a shadow of fear on the community. In order to subdue the dragon, the townspeople began setting loose two sheep a day on its territory, and when they ran out of sheep, they began giving it their children. Every child was put onto a lottery to be sacrificed, just to keep the dragon appeased, and therefore, non-threatening. This happened until the lot fell down on the king's daughter, and though he bargained his riches and his kingdom in exchange for her to be spared, the townspeople revolted, and had her sent out to be sacrificed like all the others.

At that time, St. George was passing through, and he heard her cries. With her help, he was able to bind the dragon and bring it back to the town. He'd kill it if they converted to Christianity, and they promptly agreed, so he raised his sword Ascalon, and killed the dragon in one blow. This is the story of St. George and the Dragon.

I just can't help but be moved by how similar this story is to the situation we find ourselves in, even with the hint at a possible redemptive end. If we frame this story through the perspective of CL, the independent volunteer could be said to be represented by St. George--the outsider who took interest in the girl's plight when all of society had sent her out to be killed. The girl obviously represents children, boys and girls, who are the unwitting pawns of society's fear, cultural oppression, and bureaucracy.

The dragon represents that hysteria to which we see parents willingly "give their children up" to appease (and thus turn the laws made to protect children on the children themselves) if only to douse the fear they've been filled with. How many times have we heard the "protect kids at any cost" line, only to be let down by the fact that part of the cost is the security and happiness of the children themselves? This is what could be meant by the townsfolk and their willingness to feed their children to the dragon to subdue it.

Ultimately though, the outsider prevails, even if it's just in the life of the one child they've made a positive connection with, and in doing so, they slay the "fear society" with their own version of the sword Ascalon... genuine love. The CL does not get the same heroic status as St. George for accomplishing the same feat, but it could be said that even just one out making a child's life genuinely better through genuine actions is a "small victory" over the dragon that is our fear-fed society.

The part about conversion is admittedly the only part that doesn't fit, because it is too idealistic to say that independent CLs will actually end up swaying our culture off its self-destructive fear--our victory isn't something instantly attainable, it's a continual process of good works and charity working parallel to the destructive elements of society. The way I see it, once you decide to be a force for good in the world, that's one small victory against the "dragon."

Research Limits

The bulk of knowledge attainable from research in general is limited to the kinds of questions that have been asked. In the social sciences, the questions that are being asked are the ones our culture permits us to ask. In this case, culture informs objectivity. If culture assumes that children are being harmed by something, then the questions for research become: "What groups of kids are being harmed the most? Who does the harm affect the most? Who/What is doing the harm? and What can be done to stop the harm from happening?" No one comes forth to pose the question: is the cultural assumption even right to begin with?

If the culture says that X, then research asks, "given X, how does X affect Y?" If it would be culturally inappropriate to question X, then X is not questioned.

However, the social sciences are not uniformly like this. There are numerous examples of research and researchers who have pushed boundaries and ultimately changed cultural perspectives to align more with the reality of the world, but notice it only seems to work that way with questions that, even if controversial, are still within the boundaries of acceptability. The level of attention a particular research question receives is proportional to its level of cultural acceptability. So given this, it's a wonder anyone can regard the social sciences without skepticism at the least. For instance, it seems obvious the increase in interest in questions about homosexuality outside the strict context of "pathological abnormality" has more to do with our culture's growing tolerance of the gay lifestyle than it does the researchers' objective "thirst for knowledge."

One question that seems to be outside the boundaries of our culture, and therefore shut off from objective investigation, is "when are children capable of giving meaningful consent?" This is because culture tells us they are never capable until they are [16, 17, 18, 21...pick a number]. Scientific investigation takes this as a given, and then asks "because we all know kids can not consent, how are they being harmed by X?" Who among us is brave enough to ask "is this man-made, superstitious, legal construct wrong about a child's objective ability to consent?"  Don't hold your breath.

Victimology research feeds off of cultural limitations.

Babylon

What is Babylon? The Mesopotamian city-state once bearing that name has been used as a symbol for human folly, oppression, material worship, corruption, and moral depravity throughout history. It may have been the site of the infamous Tower of Babel, where mankind exercised the height of hubris and was securely humbled, at least according to tradition. The name "Babylon" has thus been appropriated to many lands that have fit these symbolic descriptors, including Rome, Europe, and the Americas--all places assumed at one point to have flown too close to the sun as Icarus only to burn in their own shame instead.

Probably the most severe charge leveled against this mythic pinnacle of human endeavor is that the people who inhabited it were not just morally bankrupt in their deeds, but the deeds and practices partook within its walls were contrary to nature itself. It is for these abominations that Babylon was torn asunder like Sodom and Gomorrah, and Rome in the following epoch, and perhaps our own high flying civilization in the near future. The western world, it could be argued, has decided to run its course contrary to nature in a multitude of ways, in clear defiance brought on by timeless human arrogance, but for the purposes of this dialogue, the most pressing appears to be the way it has decided to raise its children.

We are living in the midst of a new Babylon resurrected in the modern age to reclaim the same historical legacy. Our society has been gripped by an unnatural bureaucratic regime that imposes a skeletal will of its own on how children are to be dealt with in our age. For our purposes, we see this in the rise of "nanny state" politics, public education, and the Child Protective Services, to name a few sources. From these sources we observe widespread alienation in both society and it's children, and between society and children born from the paper trails and false pretenses strewn amok in the world. In this new Babylon a child becomes free to be secured so adults may not have to look at them, and little else, and it has ignored how nature has gifted them two arms and legs to go where they please. Babylon has forbade a child from bruising a knee where nature has equipped them capable of healing. This is an abomination.

From these sources we see how bold-faced corruption at the hands of the trusted few carries no horrified weight in the public heart when compared to the muted love felt by those the system deems superficially undesirable--the non-parents. The irony is that Babylon asserts Childlove is contrary to nature, when everything our society does in the raising of children at the "official" level can scarcely be found in the natural world. If Childlove is unnatural, then where does that leave the Child Protective Services? When was the last time you saw an animal, a mother tigress, have her offspring carried away to be wards of the animal state? In this confusion over what is natural and what isn't, Babylon creates a daily abomination out of what it calls modern childhood, and then goes on the hunt to purge that which is natural (loving adult/child bonds) by singling them out as abominations! To live in Babylon is to be an unwilling or unwitting slave to such illusion. That is an abomination.

We see bold-faced media moral depravity over children as we fret about outside sources of contamination on their so-called weaker minds. We see bold-faced consumerism regard children as personal corporate pawns to extort money from adults, and the constant bombardment of the developing mind with worshipful imagery of "me-first" gratification--an economically necessary self-actualization through material pursuits that has to "take root early" to grow as its planters desire. Within Babylon, children are not considered competent to resist the forces that seek to dominate them, cultivate them, and nurture them to fruition for the dreams of the powerful, so they are expected to be tame, passive, and to define their self worth and the worth of others through material things. Childlove is of nature because it teaches us to use things and love people. Babylon teaches our children to use people and love things. That is an abomination.

But because not all children are tame, they are subjugated where they deviate from what is expected of them from the corrupt culture. Within Babylon, they are expected to be sedated. They are expected to live an "ideal happy childhood" at all cost to their actual living human dignity. They are to be put under arrest for being young at the wrong place and wrong time (the definition of the "status offense" in juvenile law). They are expected to lay low in their bedrooms playing on their computers, buying into what is profitable for someone else, rather than out being human beings themselves, because home is where they can be easily monitored, easily controlled, and easily converted. Babylon is the residence of the downpresser. That is an abomination.

Babylon is wherever the soul has lost its way in its own arrogance and decadence. It is a metaphor for human folly--the slow destruction of the human being and spirit when its true passionate nature has been perverted, distorted, and separated from it. The modern world claims not only its children, but all those who choke up whenever it requires them to, who feel hatred for whom it orders them to feel hatred for, and sympathy for whom it reserves sympathy must be given. The modern Babylon controls its subjects (child and adult alike) through the subtle mind control of sentimentalism, inflated at ten times its natural size, until society can not tell what has been sensationalized from what is truth. In Babylon, phantom children (the idealized ones) take precedence over the real ones with faces and names, and whenever you have a civilization where imaginary child victims take precedence over the less visceral living and breathing ones, we have a civilization that has turned its back on nature.

We can save our society one child at a time, one person at a time, by reinstating the primitive values of personal responsibility, charity, and above all else, human-to-human love bonds--such things Babylon had no use for in its self-absorbed quest to build its towers to God. Who needs to worship children when you can simply respect them as human beings? Who needs a three-story chain link fence to keep our children safe in a world where children and adults were allowed to personally look out for one another? Who needs an all-consuming, expensive tower to God when we can bring Him to earth with just a friendly nod, or a loving embrace?

To get there, Babylon must first devour itself from the inside out, as it has before and will again.

Seven Curses on Molestation

Today I think for the first time I felt that "genuine sense of revulsion toward the abuser" that all of society seems to fall back on. I'm not usually one easily swayed by sensationalism, but this deeply disturbed me. I saw this child screaming and something just kicked inside. I stomped my foot on impulse and practically broke into tears. I am human after all.

There's something wrong with a society that is panicked over child molestation who will willingly sit back and not bat an eyelash at a child screaming "stop touching me!" and clamoring to get away as they're effectively "groped" in full view of their parents. In the natural world, when something preys upon the young of an animal, they're supposed to react, the child's evolutionary response to clamor to a parent who they "expect" is going to protect them. But when said parent is rendered incapable of stopping the predator from preying upon the child, parent/child protective bond is severed. The severing of the parent/child bond is nothing new to Babylon--modern society has been finding ways of doing it for decades.

It's against nature, I say, to do this to children boarding a plane. I wouldn't be surprised if that kid shows all the signs of a victim of true sexual molestation following this episode. This child has done nothing wrong, and has essentially been violated against her will. I don't blame the parent, I don't blame this particular TSA worker. What is to blame is the system that has allowed such downpressers to flourish without reproach. For any service that can make the media justify its sensationalism must truly be a product of evil.

A parent, or any adult who has purchased a ticket for a plane, can at least say "I agree to accept the pat down because I want to avail myself of your transportation services in return," and that is on the surface fine, seeing as it is a consensual interaction. There's the key word, consent! If without consent, the groping of a human being is indeed "molestation," then what has transpired here with this three year old IS nothing but. In her view, she simply rose up that morning, went wherever the adults told her, and was subsequently violated.

And if it was sexual, and not a TSA search, though they yield the same result, people would suddenly care about what she felt as a consequence of this non-consensual violation. They'd officially ordain that child a "victim" and have her in therapy. They'd lynch mob the house of the offender in the twilight. They would feel the utter disgust I felt while watching this unfold, as should be their nature. But because it's a TSA search, it's business as usual. The public has been desensitized to child molestation when it is carried out by sources they are instructed to trust, and only notices it when it is carried out by sources they are instructed to hate.

These be seven curses on downpressers both rogue and institutional:
That one doctor will not save them. That two healers will not heal them. That three eyes will not see them. That four ears will not hear them. That five walls will not hide them. That six diggers will not bury them. And that seven deaths will never kill them

Aphorisms for Hypocrisy

Those who fear the child predator ignore the child marketer. Those who fear the child predator ignore the army recruiter. Those who fear the child predator on the news, the sex offender living down the street, or their child's freedom online...ignore police arrests of 8 year olds, corrupt CPS child removals, and the ethnic, racial, and gender disenfranchisement in many public schools.

Those who feel an innate sense of disgust at one form of child destruction, do not bat an eyelash at the "socially acceptable" forms of it. It doesn't matter if the 8 year old arrest was simply a kid guilty of the crime of walking to school in a predator-panicked district, or if the never-liable CPS worker had no evidence of abuse or neglect in their decision to abduct children for funding, and it certainly doesn't cause anyone to lash out with such displays of righteous indignation (at least not to the "lynch mob" status given to solitary perverts) over what happens to the African American boy in an under-performing school. Where are the bands of concerned citizens gathering to defend him, and why are they rallying to kill the television pervert instead?

Those who believe they have done the children of the world a service by hating on the one teacher caught with child pornography, do not even shutter at the fact that the common airport terminal has been turned into the largest creator of child pornography in the world, and its operators into the biggest collection of child groomers. These same people certainly don't mind sending their children through the chambers to be pictured naked for a trained onlooker, patted down by strangers, or strip searched in public, in order to board a plane--after all, the parents already paid for the ticket.

What is sanctioned by culture is never illegal, no matter how wrong, but what is illegal is sanctioned rarely, no matter how just. Illusion becomes real, and reality becomes ignored. What is true is obliterated, no matter how right, and what is sensational is preserved, no matter how evil. The innocence of children must be preserved as long as it is profitable.

"All this righteous indignation about predators... This whole country is trying to get into your kid's pants, because that's where he keeps his wallet."
--Bill Maher

Three Theories

The first I call, Developmental Ageism, which is just as it’s name implies, a prejudice against certain individuals on the basis of their developmental state. This is the view that suggests children ought to be barred from certain activities completely until a specifically determined age at which they should be able to demonstrate complete competence.

This view holds that children and adults exist along two separate planes, and that the child plane dies out and is replaced by the adult plane through physical and cognitive maturation. And lastly, this view holds that full “adult” maturity is a child’s teleological path. This view is bigoted and leaves no room for a child to actually do the very all-important transformation from "child" to "adult" in any meaningful way, despite best intentions. In seeking to protect children, it starves them. Children and adults are not two separate species, either.

The second I call, Developmental Egalitarianism, which is commonly called the “children are little adults” rationale. This is widely denounced in the modern world simply because it is has been largely scientifically discredited with the movements of Empiricism, Darwinism, and countless developmental studies into human physical and psychological growth over the past 200 years.

Proponents make the supposition that child development is stalled by social or cultural expectations, and that children are naturally able to do adult tasks long before they are said to be developmentally capable, and therefore argue that only through full incorporation into "adult" society can children develop in a natural way. This view is ignorant and also leaves no room for a child to fit into an adult world made for other adults, and therefore become systemically disenfranchised, despite its best intentions. As you can observe, it is just as bigoted to ignore a child's unique developmental characteristics as it is to limit a child by them.

The third I call, Developmental Relativism, which I personally believe to be the right way of looking at human development, if not the correct manifestation itself. Unlike Developmental Ageism, this theory posits that the developmental plane between children and adults exists along the same continuum, and therefore behaviors carried out along the continuum are the same behaviors as they would be at any stage in human development, only expressed in ways appropriate, physically and cognitively, for that developmental stage.

Unlike Developmental Egalitarianism, this theory posits that children are not capable of certain adult tasks, but may be capable of adult tasks that take into account the unique developmental differences that impair a child from performing certain tasks. Therefore, it is the view that forbidding a child from participating in an adult activity (as in Developmental Ageism) should not be necessary so long as the level of participation is appropriate for the ability of the child. Children and adults are the same species, just express the same human strengths and weaknesses relative to one another.

Sexuality Supermarket

Loosening sexual mores allow for tolerance, but also provide impetus for individuals in governments or corporations to create in their future customers or constituents any sexual appetite most fitting with whatever social message or piece of merchandise they wish to peddle. Fetishism is a natural evolutionary function of sexuality that social engineers would love to exploit, and with increasing tolerance for alternative sexual appetites comes unprecedented ability to construct markets out of them. Advertisers know how to play this game, and the motto is as it always was: "get 'em while they're young."

Beyond their consent, like it or not, children are raised and sexualized by the increasingly accessible media. This is not so much a bad thing in and of itself, but at the same time their sexuality is being shaped by the media and other companies, they are not given the sexual nurturing they need because people don't want to be "seen" as en-culturing a child into functional sexuality. It should be no doubt then, where sexual dis-functionality stems. The panic over whether a company is exposing children to a sexual lifestyles before they can comprehend such things is another distraction, because it should be no news that a corporation is not in it for Junior to begin with.

If there should be concern, it rests squarely with the culture that hasn't allowed the people in Junior's life (who are, or should be, the ones "in it" for him) to be the ones to nurture his developing sexuality as they would his ability to read. Time and time again though, that responsibility is taken away from the adults in his life, and given over to the television and the internet by a culture made too squeamish or paranoid about appearing to be "too involved" with kids.

More disturbing is the mechanism where future generations can be made to love the egotism and material servitude it takes to power our economic engine, by influencing their sexual development to correspond to what best suits the interests of those who have a hand in shaping that culture. How many little boys will grow up with a sexually driven inferiority complex to females after spending their formative years sexualized by a media that obviously finds greater value in its female customers? The idea behind this social engineering is to designate what populations buy and what populations don't, take the ones that do and create in them this belief of superiority as instinctive and unstoppable as a biological necessity (like their sexuality). Then take the ones that don't and create the opposite with theirs--an inferiority complex--so they accept their place or at least don't take issue with their depictions and social devaluation in the media for being what it cultured them to be, because they will be so busy getting off on it.

Abominations as such that would never be allowed by a stranger passing a child on the street are permitted and perpetuated on a daily basis by strangers who just so happen to be further away from the kids in question, but wield the same influence. Given the choice between a person who loves your child and a person who wants to make money off your child, the parent will side with the profiteer. So the marketing exec goes to work every day, makes his pay and feeds his family on the idea of stealing children away from their parents. The stranger on the street just wants to model the daily "how do you do?" for your kid, and yet he is made the villain--no doubt by who.

Any media-backed morality is innately immoral, especially if it's presented as "counter-culture." There is no such thing. That which is truly counter-culture, is that which can not be marketed.

Ignorance on Display

I found this statement online. How wrong, ignorant, or just plain sexist is it? Shall we count the ways?

And I have to say that maybe if you're a man, you might not quite get the instinctive caution or even revulsion felt when it looks like an adult male is too involved with a child.

The writer is implying that men "may or may not" be capable of feeling empathy for victims of abuse or revulsion towards abusers, or even caution at a child who appears to be slipping into a hazardous situation. Lord help me from slipping into the same trap of sexist ignorance this female commenter has fallen into, and jump to the conclusion that all females are incapable of telling the difference between child abuse and an adult male and child simply spending quality time together. Are not fathers, for instance, supposed to be "involved" with their children? Are they not too "adult males?" Obviously not all females are as ignorant as the ignorant among them imply all "adult males" of being.

And how shall we quantify when an adult male is "too involved" with a child? What precisely is the boundary that causes such revulsion in females who apparently are so adept at deciphering it? If we are talking about real physical, emotional, or any other form of abuse in such a way that there is physical harm, jeopardy, or any kind of marked impairment in the child as a result, then we have something to base our revulsion on for sure--whether or not "feeling revulsion" for the abuser will do any good for the child is another story. If we are talking about a child and an adult male spending a mutually appreciated, non-harmful, parental consented "fun filled" afternoon together, then as the saying goes, "the boredom under peace will spread its own evil" in the popular imagination. Knee-jerked "revulsion" on cue in such a situation will only cause harm, not just to the child, but to everyone involved, and those ripples of negativity will spread throughout society.

Society can either be held together on a platform of trust and responsibility, or it can be held together on one of fear and knee-jerk assumptions. Each of us have to make that choice, and society will either benefit or suffer for it.

And how shall we quantify what is meant by "child," anyway? Are we speaking of a 17 year old, or a 4 year old? What are the circumstances of these encounters? These are all questions that need to be posed and answered before you should be expecting anyone to feel "revulsion" on cue at the mere suggestion of an adult male and a child spending time together. Blanket statements requiring our revulsion toward phantom child molesters and sympathy for phantom child victims do nothing to help real child victims and deter real child molesters. If anything, it hinders our ability to feel empathic or even "cautious" in real life situations, because so much of our emotional fortitude is distracted and divested to feeling "revulsion" or "sympathy" for the shadows in our heads.

Power of Choice

As questionable as any abstract policy, agency, cultural concept, or limitation is, it can be rendered limp with just the choices, the words and actions, of human beings. Individuals--be them adults or children, social workers, teachers, parents, legal guardians, child care workers, independent agents--each and everyone, has the power to overcome the limitations of what society has established collectively. Human passion transcends bureaucratic disenfranchisement, because it existed before it and will continue to exist, it prevails where the system fails.

It is the difference between the life and passion of the warm heart and the paycheck for the cold heart. One has the power to help the world, the other to watch it crumble and run. It's the difference between the active and the passive soul working in a dehumanizing system, the stiff professional downpresser and the warm personal caregiver, the cog and the human--and all it takes to propagate is a loving, caring, and reasonable perspective. When that personal perspective is on the table, one can truly help kids. Without it, one can only do damage.

It may not make you hip or gain you friends, and certainly may put you at odds with the systems of control in the world, the cultural schemes, but you stand a chance of really improving a child's life on the most personal level if you allow a bit of yourself to shine through. Children respond to that, because evolution has produced in them that instinct long before we had things like the CPS around to siphon it away. It is natural for a child to respond well to an adult that actually cares for them, and also completely natural for them to resist those who are only in it for the check.

The choice is out there. We may have these cushy titles and social roles given to us, such as "teacher" or "parent" or "social worker," but it makes little difference if we fail to truly lend the personal touch that allows anyone fulfilling those positions or others like them to make a difference in the lives of the next generation. It's the only power individuals truly manifest. If one wants power, don't go for high titles and recognition, but instead, humble and give of oneself first. The shorter trees let light be shared among the saplings, the tallest ones just block it.

Taking Responsibility

It is better to take responsibility than to have responsibility. This is to say, it's better to act for the best interests of others than it is to simply have the authority to do it. Having the authority to work with children in particular should be of little consequence to the person who dedicates himself to doing it. Having the authority that comes along with being a social worker, a teacher, a parent, or any person elected or hired into a credential based system should be considered secondary to how the person chooses to utilize their authority. Far too often, the kids and mainstream society in general are at the mercy of people who have the authority or the credentials and choose not to take responsibility for their clients, citizens, or offspring, or exercise their authority for beneficial purposes.

Social workers who last in the field are those who are capable of trading in their empathy for human life for the ability to routinely do the job and bring in the results at any cost. They have to become desensitized to the harm in order to function as they are required. Their duties to the state overwhelm their gut feeling as an individual, and they can become just as cold in their private life as the bureaucratic body they are the fists and fingers of in their public dealings. They have responsibilities to perform but can not be held responsible, and for that reason alone, agents of the state in particular fail to properly serve their clients and constituents.

As an independent volunteer, a independent agent, a CL has no public-appointed responsibility over children, but are (and should) be held completely responsible for their mistakes (because mistakes do happen in life). It is for that reason alone that the CL is more trustworthy. When a stranger kidnaps a child, the stranger is brought to justice. When the state kidnaps a child for spurious or ill-formed reasons, the state is beyond reproach even if they loose their case against the family. If a private entity were to behave as the state, they would no doubt loose customers, but the state behaving as the state, is in no danger of loosing citizens. That's the difference between having responsibility and taking it. When you take responsibility, you have to put your neck on the line. CLs do it out of love. When you have responsibility, it's a showy accolade--it will help you win an election.

Those who have to be accountable--the teachers, parents, independent agents, CLs, and private entities in general--are in better standing to adequately serve those they care about. Those who don't have to be accountable, those who will reap federal funding regardless, those who pretend to be the moral arbiters and intrude on family life in attempt to realign responsibility within it, naturally invite criticism from the masses it has imposed on as to its own failings and inadequacies. One can not stand on a hill and ridicule one standing in a valley that he is too low and not expect the low man to accuse him of being too high. There are no moral arbiters except those who are blameless--there are none blameless, true, but there are those who take responsibility for what they can be blamed with, and those who don't. The CPS takes no blame, and therefore, is no moral arbiter for family life and ought to be distrusted.

No agency that is granted authority over human life, such as the Child Protective Services in this case, has an interest in properly serving its constituency in order to maintain its longevity. They just have to appear to be doing such.

Sweet By and By

For all that is made about the "insufferable" childishness of children, adults can be quite childish themselves. At least it is appropriate for a child to act childish, according to the adult perspective, but in reality, the same should be true for adults. Because what is childishness? It is the inappropriate actions of a child who has not grown snug into the customs of his or her surroundings limited by the circumstance. In short words, it's the temper tantrum when they can't get what they want, the egotism, the pre-conventional understanding of morality. Essentially, it is the expression of a developmental mindset at odds with the requirements of the universe it finds itself in. This is true of kids, but it is also true of human beings.

Could it be said that any adult has worn the universe so snug around them that they haven't acted like just another sentient ape running around, throwing tantrums and basking in self importance on this spec of dust in the limitless chaos? Of course not. Human beings are not gods, but because they are not gods, are these inappropriate actions then, given the circumstance they find themselves in? If we can determine a child's childishness, how do we determine what is appropriate for humankind in the grand scheme of the cosmos if all we are is human beings?

If religion and spirituality does anything, it renders the adult mind as they would prefer to keep a child's, it's the only thing stopping an adult from assigning even more self-importance to themselves than they already do. It forces them to look out at the world with the same humility and subservience that they expect and demand from their offspring. It reminds them of how truly childish they are, as they sit around on earth gloating about their so-called importance just for being adults. Perhaps Christ himself was onto something:

Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

When we speak of childishness, what we're really talking about is the overly expressive human ego. It doesn't stop expressing itself simply because a child has matured into adulthood, instead, even as the adult becomes more aware of it, it comes to define civilization. Materialism is a concept for people who are not easily swayed by the humility that religion imposes and spirituality inspires, those who want to believe that because they are in the "full maturation of their faculties" that they are gods themselves, and the material culture of western civilization feeds into and is a product of that egotistical belief. These are the people who believe the full maturation of their faculties means there can be nothing higher or more transcendental than the narrow adult human, animal, five-senses, culture-specific, planet Earth perspective they have. Given the massive scope of "existence" itself, there is nothing more childish than that.

What is childish is human. In the grand continuum that is human nature, there are many shades. Adult is just one variety. It is no more or less important than any other. It should command no more or less authority over the universe than any other because it has no more authority over it than any other. It can't. Just like all the other varieties, it is too self-absorbed.

The First Flash

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

The first flash of faith, they say, is always the strongest. And the same could be said about the first flash of social awareness. At the first instance when a young mind is coming to know the injustice in the world, when their reception of it is all consuming and most passionate, it is stifled. No, the world is no simple place, and young passion alone doesn't rectify injustice, but neither does the experienced complacency that condemns it on those grounds. Young passion is stigmatized, it is marginalized, because it is inexperienced. The powers that be like to view it as misguided and naive, the result of a sheltered individual just coming to terms with the world around them, feeling one way or the other about the injustice out there, and having no idea how the world actually works or the possible ramifications should their ambitions be realized. It is for this reason that youth passion is shot down.

The powers lay the claim that youth passion is naive, that its solutions to social injustice are uninformed and too simple. As often as this is the case though, youth passion does not have a monopoly on presupposing uninformed simplicity onto a complicated world. Simplicity is in saying things are too complicated to work toward a solution in, simplicity is in ignoring the plight of those obviously wronged by systematic injustice to save face before one's own, simplicity is in "bending the rules" to fit personal interests when one is tasked with serving the will of the people--these are all things "experienced" complacency (apathy) apologists cling to while condemning so-called "youth passion" as simple-minded. They know how the world works, alright, they are experienced in it--it just so happens that in their years of experience, they've learned how to make the system work for themselves, and are unwilling to give it up. That's what's really going on.

Show me a youth who has chosen to exercise his or her passion against such a system in anti-social or naive ways (terrorism, vandalism, violent protest, dramatics...etc.), and I will show you a case of an aged and crooked judge, a dirty cop, a corrupt politician--people who have chosen to exercise their "expertise" with the system in selfish and destructive ways. Who shall we trust more, then? The liberal with no brain or the conservative with no heart?

At least when the passionate youth speaks, they speak from the heart, they speak with passion in their convictions, no matter how naive they may sound, they are speaking what they perceive to be the truth. If they say that love conquers all, it is because they believe it. If they say universal platitudes, "peace must come," it is because they mean it. They say what they mean and mean what they say. The experienced mind has lost its passion because it is necessarily bogged down in the reality of life. This is not a bad thing, it is just the way things work. It does not say what it means or mean what it says because it knows what it is saying is probably untrue.

Why then should we trust it?

Passive Resistance

Children break the cultural bodily boundaries on a daily basis. They exert their sexual, physical, gritty nature and the world shames it. Since no exploratory sexual behavior, outburst, nose picking, burp, or fart goes without reprimand for the first six years of life, no matter how much it's encouraged by looser mores, children spend the next six years using each one of those things in pointed attacks of retaliation and resistance against anyone they see as a worthy target. Having absorbed shame for their bodily needs and functions long enough, they stand the message on its head and use them to cast shame on others. It doesn't matter if the target is a sexually active youth's distressed parent, an illness-faking student's easily swayed teacher, or a nation's policy against violence in its schools (as we'll soon see). Children will quite literally hold their breath until they pass out to make a parent bend to their will.

This commentary comes in light of a now-annual phenomenon in news. In the mix of reports regarding the effectiveness of Zero Tolerance in public schools, we're treated to a slice of absurdity disguised as comic relief. It seems something as innocuous as "disturbing class" in the right context, if expressed with enough disdain, is considered violence and can and will result in a kid's arrest. Not even a kid's intestinal gas can be tolerated, so long as he emits it derisively and obnoxiously enough. Disruption like that no longer warrants only disciplinary action, but a police cruiser, handcuffs, a booking, and a police record, because kid farts are weapons now, officially.

Sometimes the only way to lay bare a system's faults is to cause a passive stir like this and force the system to abide by its own rules. And seeing as kids currently have no rights to free speech, what other way do they have to voice dissent than to hurl their bodily needs like weapons at their captors?

The use of the body is resistance expressed through non-violence. It's the willful glorification of self-degradation because the system can't degrade them enough on its own. For certainly, their bodily functions, including sexual impulses, are the one thing a child truly does own. The mind can be bent many different ways, behaviors can be controlled and redirected, but the need to void, the need to shed, to have intake and output, is entirely theirs, and theirs to do with as they please. It's the one thing where if it were controlled, the powers controlling it would cease to have a living child to control, and therefore, cease to be in control. Passive resistance plays with an authority's ability to control in like manner.

So let's reexamine the power of a kid's body. The body is one way our kids express comfort with their peers. They use their body to produce kinesthetic, athletic, and scatological feats, and express early masculine or feminine identification. They use their body and its functions as learning experiences in pro-social behavior, human bonding, manners, and taking ownership for their actions. The body is as much a projection of personality and talent as it is a depiction of their health and well being. It's a source of great pride. More importantly though, a kid's body presents options to them--needs, desires, excretions--that can be delivered decisively anytime and place, command instant attention, and express personal control--the root of all individual sovereignty.

So let the kids be free to be gross.

Commercial Exploitation

There's nothing wrong with making money by marketing to children in and of itself. The problem is that children aren't given the freedoms in society at the same time they are expected to be consuming. This makes them a prime resource in the eyes of the money-makers, for they can be easily manipulated and can not complain, at least not officially. This is not to say that children don't complain, it's just the child's been turned into a commodity, who's use value only stretches as far as their parents buying power can persuade. This renders their complaints on deaf ears. The economic feedback mechanism for the child commercialism is that children are exploited for profit.

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...” -Jonathan Swift (1729)

Now of course Swift was writing in jest when he made these comments in A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden for their Parents or Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Public, and certainly in protest of other economic conditions.

But such a scheme is not so far fetched in the minds of those who exploit children as a means to satiate their own ends--for society has not considered the willpower of children, or even acknowledged it. They make children a victim of exploitation simply by not allowing them the autonomy to fully consent to their exploitation.

When people speak of child exploitation, they are normally thinking of those rogue members of society who are out to abuse children in some physical way--child molesters. The term exploitation, as far as children are concerned, almost always deals with the physical well-being of children. Could it be said that we have come to this ultimate narrowing of the idea of child exploitation because it has not officially recognized yet that a child has an independent will that can as easily be exploited as their body?

In adult relationships, financial systems, and governments, it is well understood that exploitation is not always abusive. Often exploitation is consented to by the party that is being exploited. Exploitation simply refers to the act of using something as a means in order to achieve ends or other means. The exploited person can be someone as harmless as an employee, or something as harmful as a rape victim. In either case someone else is getting usage out of the person being exploited. Not only humans can be exploited, but objects, both tangible and intangible, and animals as well. The connotation for exploitation nevertheless normally is negative, meaning that when the word is used it most often refers to someone using something as a means for illicit, illegal or immoral ends.

However, when the idea of child exploitation arises, not only are all other intuitions about the nature of exploitation in general disbanded, but so is all rational sense. It is thought that child exploitation refers specifically to cases of child prostitution, rape, and other abuses regardless of whether the abuser is actually exploiting the child or not. Pedophiles exploit individual children at one particular instance, or perhaps set of individual instances. Marketing experts for companies exploit millions of children, if not all of them, in this country and globally at times, and at all times, throughout a child's development. But who are made to be the demons of society, and who are ignored by parents? Which one is more universally threatening?

There arises this thinking that children don't have the ability to be exploited mentally, or have their own wills alienated from them, because they lack the mental sense.

But the marketing experts know better, and have been exploiting children's will for many generations, attempting to turn kids against their parents, turning children into billboards for their products, and otherwise distracting them from their complete lack of personal say by fattening their minds up with self aggrandizing slogans about "empowerment" that have little realistic meaning outside their use as turning kids into good little consumers.

"The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour." --Karl Marx (1884)

Children do not work as they did in Marx's day, nor was the concept of childhood as important in his day. Children are not considered candidates for "physical" work, but they have assumed a new "social" utility in this day in age. They are both consumers and marketable, and they work very hard perpetuating the regime that spends millions to molest their wills, their brains, their interests and change their sense of self (to one that is consumer based), gender (to one that is boys vs. girls), their parents (to one that is kids vs. parents), their education, (to one that is kids vs. teachers), and their age (to one that is young vs. old) in ways that are beneficial to the profit motivation of the company.

These are ways that are often opposed to the way parents and schools want to socialize children of all ages and genders and personalities to be productive, observant, thoughtful, and self-regulated individuals. Children are converted into dollar signs, and set to work for these corporations as soon as they are marketed to and asked to go beg their parents for those certain highly-prized ticket items.

They are alienated from themselves, their parents, their society, and other children, who are forced to compete with each other for prized high ticket items in order to find some sort of validation with their peers, and all but otherwise distract themselves from the fact that society has not given them any other way to validate themselves. Such more personally constructive means are not profitable, and therefore discouraged in the laws, because supervisors and volunteers are dissuaded from working with children due to laws to combat the scourge of paranoia.

But let me stress a caution, these companies would have a lot less influence if a child was recognized as having a legitimate individual will. At present, they do not. It is not so much the fact that children ought to be protected from this change in the very definition of childhood, which Marx would have called "Bourgeois," it's that they should be empowered to use their individual wills to their own extents, and not be held so captive to the suggestion of their profit-motivated corporate overlords who have no collected interest in fostering the child's positive development.

The more children are protected from things that harm them to the point where they can not protect themselves, the more vulnerable they are to these influences. Furthermore, because children's minds are not afforded the right to give any consent to be exploited, the only way this transaction can happen is if it is coerced. This is the same situation society holds against pedophiles and child molesters. However, it seems to believe so long as child exploitation without their consent (simply because they can't give consent to such things) is profiting someone monetarily, it's perfectly acceptable. Any other way, and it's an abomination.

Political Correctness

What compels a person to see something beautiful and helpless, sleeping beneath the willows by the brook in the spring, delicate and docile, and rape it, destroy it, cut it to pieces and devour it after a slow boil? Calm your heart, because it's the same urge that causes seemingly rational people to swear an allegiance to political correctness. PC is the demon of social decay, the lord of the flies, that feeds off otherwise healthy and passionate human behavior and shits out its prefabricated, soft and grotesque version of reality. Originality, essence, meaning, it's all lost in the transformation, and what is produced is nothing less than the ultimate victim of molestation--the slow decay of our free society.

Children grow up in a prefabricated world simply because the world has already been established before their birth, but adults seem to want to go one step further. Raising a child on a PC version of that world is similar to feeding them food that has already been chewed up and regurgitated by the parent. There is the real world, let's say, the cheese on a cracker, and then there's the PC version of it, the cheese and cracker mush laced with saliva and stomach acids that has been thoroughly chewed and digested by an adult. Both plates contain the essential food product, the only difference is that one contains the real treat and the other is what occurs when adults have to intervene. After that, it becomes difficult to tell what is real, seeing as the regurgitation is sitting right there on the plate and seems real enough, it's just that now we have to begin force feeding to get the child to eat it when they could have just eaten it themselves.

Many "concerned parents" won't think this is an accurate comparison, because in this case the cheese and cracker is obviously more healthy than the pre-digested slop, and in reality, many things that are PC don't inflict all that much damage on the young--at least no more or less damage than exposing the kid to the real world. It is an accurate comparison though, as all adult intervention to censor reality, limit freedom of expression, limit knowledge, or ban outright any part of a child's ability to reach out to the real world around them is dangerous, not only for children but for all of free society. The reality we want our children to eventually live in is the real one, not the fabricated "inoffensive" one called politically correct. They already live in the real world, and one day will possess it, like it or not, and no amount of focus group tampering or "concerned parent" molestation of reality is going to stop them from possessing it.

In a Nutshell

CL is an old-world child-rearing practice, outmoded by the swing of western civilization in the throes of a bureaucratic authority (where the state has assumed the essential functions), that survives through the charitable actions of independent agents (CLs) standing in opposition with, or at least parallel to, mainstream "decadence" and western cultural practices in child guidance. All too much is made of the cultural constructs separating children from humanity (childhood "innocence"), and such idealizations have done nothing to benefit actual living children, so the CL advocates recognizing a child as a whole individual--the good, the bad, and everything mental and physical about them.

It is an idealistic "love doctrine" standing in opposition to cultural and social modes of child subjection, control, abuse, and over-protectionism, that stresses being responsible for a child over simply "having" responsibility, good works over legislation, on a pretext of "do no harm." All too often what is there to protect children chokes them of a nurturing development, and should be regarded with the same disdain as child molestation itself. CL takes nothing material for itself, for it is primarily motivated aesthetically, spiritually, biologically and socially, and is given with genuine charity rather than flimsy officialness.

The essential belief is that human beings are social, children develop in a social world, and that modern society is and has been systematically cutting off a child's ability to form an intimate, positive, social relationship with the world around them and the people in it after decades of sensationalist paranoia, over-liability and protectionism, and sentimental pleas over common sense. CLs see their work as a slow rebuild of humanity in its children, essentially getting back those primitive human-to-human bonds between adult and child in a modern social context. It is an adult and child spending time together for no other reason than the fact that they are benefiting from each other.

Because both the child and the adult in this relationship stand in contrast with cultural practices, they run into conflict with its basic tenets (political correctness, nanny state policies...etc.), and are therefore often ridiculed. Because of this social ridicule, CLs feel they are better able to relate to a child, an entity also put upon by adult decadence and narrow-mindedness. The CL is truly a man of the past living in the present, walking in the future.

Men in Care

Despite what is said, despite what is advertised, men are not wanted in care fields, working in care capacities, where there are children involved. He can apply, he can try to volunteer, he can do all these things to put himself in for the line of work, but staff to child ratios, gender ratios, age ranges, and other bureaucratic paper and tape block his ability to put himself into that line of work. Males can't work in care with girls. If there are more girls in the room, a female staff is preferred. Males can't work in care with young children. If there are more toddlers in the room, a female staff is preferred. In most situations, a female staff, applicant, body, or candidate is preferred.

This is true as much for Big Brothers Big Sisters as it is for the Scouts--gender barriers across the board. It seems the only place for males who desire work with children is in their detention and rehabilitation centers, where the population is normally older male youth anyways. Where confrontation abounds, males are expected to line up. Where there are colorful rooms with small tables, males are to keep at a distance.

In the 21st century, an era where bridges are being built by females, society has all but prevented males from working with its children. It won't be surprising that at least some part of the rest of the 21st century will be spent unraveling the negative effects of this cultural predator panic that has done nothing but separate children from positive male role models for the last couple decades. Perhaps our children will stem this tide, perhaps they will continue it.

The Tame Wild

Are children these days out of control or are they just pawns of the system? Are they on the warpath against civilization, blowing up schools, or are they just shills for gadgetry and merchandise? Are they too rebellious or too submissive? Don't ask your average adult, because they will say something different depending on the context from which the question is asked. Adults think contradictory things about the collective nature of children.

There is nothing human beings of any age like more than to build things up just to tear them back down. As children do with block towers, adults do with other human beings, and children are not off limits. Are they truly innocent or are they culpable? Are they society's "raison d'etre" or just a social burden? Are they "too young to know" or are they stupid, irreverent, or ignorant? Adults can't even seem to agree on whether young people know how to work or whether they really know how to have fun.

The one thing they rarely do though, unless brought to this understanding, is let the new generations define themselves. It is not unreasonable, at least not as unreasonable as dismissing "the modern kids" for being one thing, and then dismissing them as the opposite when it applies. It doesn't help then, that adults create many of the circumstances that they later dismiss young people for either falling too infatuated with or falling too far away from. Perhaps they are all these things at once just because there are so many of them.

Incapable, Yet Culpable

Could it be that the greatest threat to America's children is not the threat of predation, but the threat of incrimination--for innocent sexual games played among themselves-- by a system that deems them incapable, and culpable? I've always considered it worse. For one, the "child abuse industry" (add "entertainment industry" where applicable) affects many more children (whole swaths of the population at a time) than any lone child molester does, and arguably, with the same ferocity and delusional, narrow-minded lack of insight about the effects.

The real difference is that child molesters are outlaw scumbags that society hates, they are easy to ridicule, easy to shame, and therefore, the only recipient whipping boy of society's pent up reservations about the treatment of children. On the other hand, protectionist groups and law enforcement are sponsored scumbags that society regards as heroes.

It would seem that whether the molester has the kid tied up on the floor or the officers have the kid tied up in a cell waiting for a judge to determine against the kid's life on earth over something as trivial as "seeing someone naked" at the age of 10, the child is going to suffer at somebody's hands. It turns out society has no problem with children suffering, only so long as the entity man-handling the minor with its grubby hands is state sponsored. Society has no problem ruining a child's life, so long as its tax dollars go into funding those responsible for doing the deed. After all, the right to life and dignity was never something it granted children to begin with, not so long as they were "minors."

So all this righteous indignation about corrupting children can not and should not be without mention of the juvenile justice system, the system society has entrusted to turn normal children into registered sex offenders.

Diversions and Distractions

What gets society all up in a frenzy and what really matters are two different things. It seems like it was always like this. Society is so caught up in portraying the symbolic gesture of doing the right thing that they seemed to have forgotten completely how to do it. This is to say, society is distracted by the sentimental, sensational nature of heroism and the impulse to frame it inside some kind of digestible narrative, and can no longer (as a whole) just appreciate things or actions for what they are on the surface.

Whether we're caught up in the wrongness of burning the flag while ignoring the less viscerally arresting imagery of corporate imperialism, or caught up in the "sex beast" who looked at a child the wrong way while ignoring how society has been turning a blind eye to the treatment of black boys in education, we're distracted. We're not paying attention to the right things. We're distracted by the glamor of narrative and symbolism, by sensationalist media and sentimental hand-on-heart "oh dear"-isms, and for that it's getting harder to tell what really matters. What really matters is people and the planet, not how this blog or any pundit out there frames the goings on between those two things.

No matter how we feel about our adversaries, whether they be labeled "maggots" or "sex beasts," or "antichrists," it should never distract us from living and loving those around us for whom our allegiance and loyalty should be full. We shouldn't be ignoring the isolated crying child on the bustling city sidewalk to return to our private den that night and redirect our guilt and self-hate for inaction toward some overhyped convicted sex offender on TV caught entering a library. Who among us could possibly argue that this is a better use of those energies? Assist the crying child on the sidewalk, and forget the TV sex offender, and the world will be better for it.

Perhaps this is idealistic, but it's the truth.