Sunday, October 31, 2010

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.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

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.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

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.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

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?

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

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.

Friday, October 8, 2010

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.