Thursday, September 30, 2010

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.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

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.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

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.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

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.

Friday, September 17, 2010

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.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The Boy King and the Giant

Everyone thinks that their side of an argument is the little man standing up victorious over the mightier adversary. Everyone believes that the one thing they have to guide them against their adversary to victory is truth. Indeed, even the big, mighty establishment itself thinks of itself as the underdog standing up to its oppressor, the general population. The simple truth of the matter is that there is no side that is mightier or weaker than another, and there is no side that claims the monopoly on truth, because there are hundreds more sides that also claim that same precious artifact.

Regardless of this, simply stating that one is in the possession of some truth, no matter how far fetched, is like painting a target on your back. People will incarcerate, shun, or even kill you simply for saying you hold the truth, even if you don't. If there's one thing true in the world, it's that those who hold onto their version of the truth with the strongest conviction are the ones going down at the hands of those who can't seem to grasp theirs very long.

When the outcome is unlikely, the prevailing puny is praised as being closer to the truth (such as the case with the boy king killing the giant in a single hit), but when the outcome is likely (as in the case of the outsider CL losing out to the child abuse entertainment industry), the prevailing powerhouse is practically worshiped for bringing the so-called truth into 100 million homes every night. Sometimes it seems society is more interested in perpetuating and glorifying those it casts as predators simply because they had the audacity to hurl that label at them to begin with. But of course, in their eyes they are just the meek David staring down the beast, a delusion brought on by endless repetition of the romantic sentimental typical plot. Sometimes it seems society is more interested in playing the constant hero than it is in actually doing what is right.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Run Down the West

The decadent west has been described as a "vampire" by some critics, sucking children dry of blood. Blood is a life sustaining fluid, and to be robbed of it is to be dead or dying. Here, the west is said to be depriving children of their essential life elements--typically understood as the catchall term for modern affluence. The west stresses individualistic egotism, instant gratification, progress and persuasion over such mundane things as wisdom, guidance, kindness, charity, and patience. Indeed, in the west people seem to be fighting to retain these virtues on a personal scale in an environment that does nothing but encourage the opposite.

Children grow up in this environment, and learn quickly the world does the opposite of what it teaches. The so-called character in their "character education" is actually forged in a fight. It is caught between coming and going, between doing what is right and doing what the market and the media encourage, between valuing humility and respect and climbing to the top of an artificial social edifice to spit in the face of those who lost out. In truth though, virtue is just as important to sustaining an individual as blood. If to be robbed of blood results in a poor health and death, then to be robbed of personality by culture is to be in a state of comatose where one's will is no longer in control of the body just barely kept alive by the external system. Children need individuality like they need blood or air, otherwise they are living a life of a slow drown in the depths of illusion (aka. what the mystics call maya).

However illusion-based the west is though, it is also a free world, and the "big bad media" is simply an organization of individuals producing a product by utilizing that free will. Censorship of the content of the media, or managing culture, should be no entity's sole discretion. The culture simply "is" and nothing can be done about it. It is an engine fueled by a collective perspective shared by hundreds of millions of people, it is not inherently evil or even wrong, it's just ubiquitous and persuasive and limits our resolve to resist it (and therefore utilize our own individual will against it). The only solution to tempering the pervasiveness and destructiveness of western affluence on the minds of younger generations is through direct love and guidance of an adult who is himself also a victim of that "vampire" of affluence. It can hardly be argued that the CL is anything but.

Unlike other sources of guidance who may be entrenched in the will of society, or even be benefactors of the system (such as social workers), the CL is an independent agent. Through their outside charity, their love and guidance, a child is able to truly prosper as an individual. The CL is able to teach children about the grip of the west, to understand what makes it so powerful over human life, and ultimately how to respect that human life more than any product, social system, idea, or even society itself. They learn through their interactions with the non-parent how to swear allegiance to no artificial pillar of culture and only swear allegiance to themselves, how to be self reliant, how to be a person and not a puppet. When a child is given that kind of deep appreciation for life, theirs and others', by observing the works of the person who loves them of their free will, then they grow so much more protective of life. They'd see material things to be temporary pleasures that add to life, and not life itself.

In doing so, the vampire, the Babylon dragon, is rendered tame.