Hate-Fear-Love

It has been argued that the most primitive emotion is fear. This is because fear is what alerts our senses to danger in the environment and gives us the energy and impulse to react in ways that could potentially assist in our individual survival. In this basic schematic, we could understand love and hate as primal orientations to and away from that which is being feared. What is loved is that which we perceive as ensuring survival, and what is hated is that which we perceive as endangering us, and by framing this simple analogy out, we have a basic mechanism for the motivation behind every human activity. What is pleasing is assumed better for our survival, and what is hated is assumed hazardous to our survival.

It is then no question that these three fundamental starting points play into how society manages to raise its children. What is deemed hazardous is hated, and what is deemed helpful is loved. What is better for the child's survival is loved and what is aversive to it is feared. This would be all well and good if human nature were as binary as a computer, incapable of seeing a hazard where none exist and inflicting harm on the child in the process, or failing to see a hazard where there is one, also allowing harm onto the child. Because we are as children and fail in our reasoning, we cushion our lapses in judgment with punitive laws set to eliminate the need for reason. These are called "line in the sand" laws, because a line can be drawn at any point along a beach and these determinations are arbitrary, yet just as definitive. The age of consent, for instance, is designed to eliminate the need to reason about whether a child is ready for sex, because they are when the law says they are.

This protects the adult from having to worry about a child having sex when they are not ready--a potential hazard. It justifies the hatred of those who would cross the boundary even on the youth's request, and the love of those who would enforce this law. The one thing it doesn't do is protect the child. Because such line in the sand judgments are built on assumptions, it is the assumption itself that inflicts the most harm on the child--the assumption that they are all equally incapable until the law deems them ready. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to educate the child to reach "readiness" by the time the law would determine them to be legally ready, they see this line in the sand as the essence of "readiness" in and of itself.

The youth's questions go unanswered because they have not reached the line yet, they "aren't old enough." Everything is done to make sure the youth is not ready by the time they are supposed to be ready. Readiness is essential for survival though. Would the parent of any mammal species that nurtures its young to adulthood as humans do be wise to withhold information from its young about how to find food, or how to avoid detection? What if such a law were established, on the basis of misguided fear, that established no bird could fly until a certain number of weeks had passed, irregardless of capability, and upon which date would be then expected to fly with ease? How long would they survive in the wild?

The bottom line is, there is the world governed by fear and hate, and then there is the world governed by common sense, which is ultimately a world governed by love. By showing respect for the growing capacities of youth and just a mindful observance toward potential hazards, we are showing them the greatest love because we are not being governed by fear.