Fighting Decadence

The most potent question for resolution in all these musings may be over whether the CL is fighting a battle for inclusion or exclusion--that is, the difference between thinking children ought to be included with what adult's have determined to be the "human society," and the thinking that they ought to be excluded from adult civilization because they shouldn't need the permission of their taskmasters to claim human dignity for themselves. The question boils down to the same fundamental disagreement that has haunted the entire evolution of every youth movement in history: do children belong in an adult world or in their own?

Decadence defines all adult social interactions and motives for action. It is not a wrongful behavior, just a pervasive one built into the very nature of socially constructed adult life. It is a lifestyle of culturally-assigned self-indulgence--for our purposes, we could understand self-indulgence on the part of the adult to be benefits granted to the individual adult by other adults, but systematically denied to those not termed "adult," such as children. The right to vote could be considered a self-indulgence. The right to express one's sexuality would be considered a self-indulgence.

Thus we can understand an adult's decadence in these spheres of self-imposed freedoms and the lack thereof imposed on young people for the preservation of their own indulgence, similar to the balance of power kept between ethnic groups, "the first world" and "the third world"--essentially, divide the world into those who get to enjoy the decadence and those who can not. It is this aspect that the CL, as an adult, seeks to go beyond. They may perform the functions of an adult, even the decadent ones, but not in a way that reeks of deceit and false pretense.

What makes the CL distinct is that while they may and do work within the system, their ideal is to perform their good works for a child they love on the basis of pure charity. By doing such, they work to toss off adult society, with all it's shallow conceit and false pretense, and carve out a role for themselves as human beings separate from the so-called "age defined" limitations of culture. Casting aside the decadence that adults have reserved for themselves in light of their flaws is a show of revolt against culture. It is a show of humility in the face of that decadence to then devote oneself to being a peer to children, but the task is not so much to just raise them up to that very same level of adult decadence, but to supersede it--to go beyond it as well.

Thus it could be said the ultimate mission of the CL is an existential one, emphasizing the essential humanity of young and old and downplaying all the socially contrived nuance that typically defines adult and child interactions. Working within the system produces healthy young person fit to be the followers of a conceited adult social system. Working as a rogue individual doesn't produce anything, but gives the child room to experiment in the infinite possibilities available to human beings from the word go.