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."
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
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
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
Thursday, November 18, 2010
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
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
Monday, November 15, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, November 12, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Ignorance on Display
I found this statement online. How wrong, ignorant, or just plain sexist is it? Shall we count the ways?
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.
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.
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