Time is something fleeting. Human beings can only perceive time through movement, and movement is only a series of changes in position and state. We sense that time is unfolding because we can see objects resting in one position one moment and then observe them resting in another position just by moving them, or understand that a child has aged based on observing them being seven years old one moment and eight years the next. The interim between these two moments where a change has been observed is what we call time. If an object could remain stationary and completely unchanged at all so-called "times", we'd have no evidence of time existing around that object.
Because we're unable to fully observe time itself unfolding on an individual, we tend to assume that they are whatever they appear to be in the moment we observe them, and that they will continue to be what they were in that moment for every one thereafter. On the contrary though, we may look at a new car one moment and then watch it run off the road and wreck on a tree, and consider the wrecked car and the new car the same vehicle and focus on the change in its state, but we don't see the child and the adult as one entity at two different times in the same manner. This is to say, there's a disconnect in how we perceive the line between child and adult, we may not see it as a straight line from one to the other.
Rather, we seem to observe children as if they were a race of subhumans coexisting along with adults, and the line connecting them to the human race appears to us to be divergent, mysterious, or just totally heading off into obscurity. Cognitively, of course, we understand that all adults start out at one time being children, and that all children (unless they meet with an unfortunate end or have some other circumstance), eventually mature into adults at another time, but because we can't see it happening, there's a tendency for our minds to assume that it's not happening. This is how a child can "grow up so fast," for instance. In reality, they are not in fact growing up fast, they're growing up normally. It's just that we don't perceive that growth has happened unless we can physically observe it in the space of a much shorter interval.
Due to this inability to perceive natural growth, adults may make inaccurate assumptions about a child's maturation. For instance, the eye can observe a moving image that the brain perceives as a static one, and will judge the image to be static--as in, no change from the time the image began to when it ended--all because the image is moving imperceptibly. If the growth of a child is similarly imperceptible, then adults may often judge the child to be static over a definite amount of time--as in, no change from the time they began seeing the child and when they stopped--when in reality, the child is maturing every day, as are adults in one way or another.
Children also make inaccurate perceptions about adults, and don't perceive their parents' hairs growing grayer, or in general, tend to believe that the way their parents are in the moment is the way they always were and will always be. Children have an unnatural expectation that things will never change, and perhaps only have a fleeting idea of what it may be like to change over time based purely on what they know about the nature of the world. Children who've no doubt experienced a lot of change will be more adept to notice how time impacts all things regardless of how stable everything appears in the moment. But however inaccurate children and young peoples' perceptions of adults may be, only the adults have granted themselves the authority to flex their inaccurate perceptions over a child's development and even punish them for growing up faster than is perceptible--no matter how natural the development is proceeding.
These errors in perception account for the majority of ageist prejudice against adults and children alike, and everything in between. Racial prejudice is a shorthand way of categorizing a person based on characteristics that are permanent (skin color for instance), whereas ageist prejudice is a shorthand way of categorizing a person based on characteristics that are impermanent (short stature in children, or mental capacity for instance). To underestimate or overestimate a person for a characteristic they exhibit temporarily, and assume that because they are exhibiting it now, in the moment, they'll continue to exhibit it forever, is discrimination.
For instance, if a child exhibits a sexual behavior with another child as a purely natural expression of their temporary lack of knowledge on sexual social customs, to criminalize or at least stigmatize that child as a lifelong pervert would be age discrimination. In it, those making the assumption would be choosing to focus on the immediacy of the action's appropriateness, factoring in the child's lack of understanding, and ignoring the temporary nature of the circumstance. It could be that in twenty years time, that child is not the sex beast that their actions at the age of four would have led us to predict, and perhaps even less so because of the abundance of negative attention those actions might receive in the present. In many ways, children are at the mercy of how adults perceive or don't perceive them changing over time.
Due to the fact that we are never fully here or there between being born and being in the full maturation of our faculties, what sense does it make to continue dividing up individuals along artificial categories spread out across time? Can we not just look at a child and think "human being," as we do for adults, and just expect that any differences between them are expressions of being in two different developmental timezones, and that all behaviors and expressions pursuant to one are simply relative to the expressions of the other? For while it may be sunset in one timezone, in another that very moment, it is dawn--and for all the hoopla surrounding their objective difference, the only thing that separates them is their relative distance from one another across time.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
A Small Noise
Remember the old joke about adult power: "a man farts at a kid's eye-level"? I've been thinking about aphorisms of empowerment geared for kids, to get them thinking about non-destructive ways they can influence their own destiny and those around them, and this one I just can't seem to shake. Tell a kid you know to go in easy but leave a big impression--to be a small noise but leave a big stink. You could say, it's contrary to being 'loud and proud,' and it cures their pinkeye.
It is better to disorient one's oppressors in a creeping blaze of controversy than to open fire in a physical gunshot that can be easily deflected and get the bigger guns brought in. The mightier opponent doesn't have to know they've been marked until they are consumed in it. It's like allowing the fire in a young heart to spread on its own without calling attention to oneself as the arsonist, or the "shooter."
There will always be some who adore the attention that comes with being 'loud and proud', but in the end, the small noise from the undetected rebel always stirs the largest influence. It is what the adults will call subversion. It is control taken where power is given.
Tell a kid they got to be "silent but deadly," and they'll understand and appreciate it--the ready ones.
It is better to disorient one's oppressors in a creeping blaze of controversy than to open fire in a physical gunshot that can be easily deflected and get the bigger guns brought in. The mightier opponent doesn't have to know they've been marked until they are consumed in it. It's like allowing the fire in a young heart to spread on its own without calling attention to oneself as the arsonist, or the "shooter."
There will always be some who adore the attention that comes with being 'loud and proud', but in the end, the small noise from the undetected rebel always stirs the largest influence. It is what the adults will call subversion. It is control taken where power is given.
Tell a kid they got to be "silent but deadly," and they'll understand and appreciate it--the ready ones.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Adult Sitcom Tropes
Adults use children in drama as props, sensitive props upon which to pair off the so-called complexities of adult affairs. How many tender scenes depicting two adults engaged in so-called painful dialogue are intercepted by some child of theirs, seemingly catapulted out of nowhere and who's arrival signals the complete closure of the "dirty" "dark" "depressing" adult-talk? Suddenly the adults in these fictionalized portrayals decide to go all-smiles at the sight of the child with the subtlety of a painted clown face. What's worse is how the child is to remain oblivious to the crying clowns--which is what these adults are--and skip along merrily as if to fulfill every wish an adult could have about a child.
Children are perceptive. They are not as perceptive as they are often made out to be when adults wish to showcase their perceptiveness, but they are not the "runaround dunces" they are commonly depicted as in the sitcom world of adult wish fulfillment. As perceptive as they are capable of being, even adults eventually have to concede that as they grow, children do develop more direct ways to express their ability to decode the so-called "sophistication" of adult affairs. These are called "teenagers" in this same sitcom universe, and because adults have to accept that teenagers are no longer runaround dunces and have powers of perception, they choose to recast them as the enemy.
Runaround dunces are no threat to the adult's self-inflated perception of their importance, so they are more or less depicted as inconvenient playthings. However, teenagers, being also under the adults' power but capable of usurping them, are rendered as the enemy. The teenager has to be shown as an impetuous brat willing to call insurrection without warning if the adults so much as suggest anything to them. They must put themselves in jeopardy (they can never be depicted as right), and the adults must swoop on in and heroically rescue them from their own undoing. They usually finish out with a talk as if the teen has learned some valuable lesson in self-reliance. Such a thing is there to please the adult's conscience--it's really just a cover for the fact that the teen has come full circle and is now in complete deference to the adult's authority. The curtain closes. This is the only way these events can unfold on television, never in reverse.
Watching adult-centered fictional television is literally like watching one age group's self-serving skewed view of reality. All the other perspectives--the perspective of the runaround dunces and the perspective of the impetuous no-nothing brats are not considered. At the end of the day, only the adults must be satisfied, and the children, just satisfied that the adults are satisfied.
It is similar to the old television trope where each character is called upon to give an account of something, and we get to see each character's skewed recollection of events that cast them as the heroes and everyone else as the villains. In this case, adults love to cast themselves as the heroes, even as misunderstood heroes, and everyone younger than them (or older as the case may be) as the "enemy." Adult television, and all of it's assorted tropes, are propaganda for the 25 to 50-year-old demographic, and more importantly, their inflated opinion of themselves. To be egotistical is to be human. Adults just have the means to televise theirs non-stop, 24/7.
Children are perceptive. They are not as perceptive as they are often made out to be when adults wish to showcase their perceptiveness, but they are not the "runaround dunces" they are commonly depicted as in the sitcom world of adult wish fulfillment. As perceptive as they are capable of being, even adults eventually have to concede that as they grow, children do develop more direct ways to express their ability to decode the so-called "sophistication" of adult affairs. These are called "teenagers" in this same sitcom universe, and because adults have to accept that teenagers are no longer runaround dunces and have powers of perception, they choose to recast them as the enemy.
Runaround dunces are no threat to the adult's self-inflated perception of their importance, so they are more or less depicted as inconvenient playthings. However, teenagers, being also under the adults' power but capable of usurping them, are rendered as the enemy. The teenager has to be shown as an impetuous brat willing to call insurrection without warning if the adults so much as suggest anything to them. They must put themselves in jeopardy (they can never be depicted as right), and the adults must swoop on in and heroically rescue them from their own undoing. They usually finish out with a talk as if the teen has learned some valuable lesson in self-reliance. Such a thing is there to please the adult's conscience--it's really just a cover for the fact that the teen has come full circle and is now in complete deference to the adult's authority. The curtain closes. This is the only way these events can unfold on television, never in reverse.
Watching adult-centered fictional television is literally like watching one age group's self-serving skewed view of reality. All the other perspectives--the perspective of the runaround dunces and the perspective of the impetuous no-nothing brats are not considered. At the end of the day, only the adults must be satisfied, and the children, just satisfied that the adults are satisfied.
It is similar to the old television trope where each character is called upon to give an account of something, and we get to see each character's skewed recollection of events that cast them as the heroes and everyone else as the villains. In this case, adults love to cast themselves as the heroes, even as misunderstood heroes, and everyone younger than them (or older as the case may be) as the "enemy." Adult television, and all of it's assorted tropes, are propaganda for the 25 to 50-year-old demographic, and more importantly, their inflated opinion of themselves. To be egotistical is to be human. Adults just have the means to televise theirs non-stop, 24/7.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Washing Out the Sand Lines
I can only imagine the typical conversation between a defender of artificial age limits and a liberationist ending one way--with an enlightened ageist. Those who defend artificial age limits do so because their imagination hasn't evolved past 19th century assumption. As an experiment, if you just present them with this statement by educator and advocate John Holt, you're guaranteed to hear a particular nuanced set of responses and be able to test the limits of their reasoning:
They will remark that children shouldn't have the right to vote, for example, because they lack the "mental capacity" for it. This wouldn't be such a bad argument if they were referring to the potential ways adults could scam children out of their votes without the children knowing it, but this is not how they mean it. They mean it in the most simplistic way possible--that children shouldn't vote because they don't understand politics. The same goes for sex--children shouldn't have sex because they don't understand sexuality.
The liberationist will chide back with the rebuttal: what about a 17 year old one minute before midnight on the day of their 18th birthday (the year a child can vote in the United States)? Are they incapable of understanding politics right up to midnight on their 18th birthday? What causes them to be suddenly blessed with the ability and knowledge to vote? The same argument gets even more confusing with age of consent laws, where there is not just one, but hundreds of different age limits, where suddenly children are capable of having sex in one area, but a mile away across the border, the very similar children over there are incapable. What manner of science could explain this phenomenon of temporal and geographic difference in "mental capacity?"
It will cause the ageist to scratch their head, possibly having never concluded that there's a difference between 2-year-old children and 17-year-old children that the law might have missed. In any case, the ageist will retort that they understand the confusion over the exactness and absolute nature of the "one minute before midnight" scenario, but will usually respond by saying, "it's not an exact science, but there has to be an age limit somewhere even if it doesn't match when a child is capable of voting." One should note that this already flies in the face of their previous rationale.
The liberationist will chide in immediately with an obvious rebuttal. If what the ageist said is true, that there in fact needs to be a set age even if it doesn't correspond to ability (contrary to the reason the ageist had given in the first case), then why does the age have to be 18? Why not move the age of majority in the US up to 20? Or how about 30, or 40? If we understand that the age limit is arbitrary, but also understand that it must exist anyways, why do we settle on 18 definitively?
The ageist will then come back with how 18 is closer to when a person is capable of understanding politics than 40, and will then normally pretend they agree with the liberationist by recalling particular teenagers who are far more politically astute than their own adult colleagues. They usually do this to show that they are not bigoted about young people, but it only adds to the case the liberationist is making. It's simply the point in the argument when the ageist has run out of explanations, just before settling on the "it is the way it is" rationale, unknowingly forfeiting all their earlier assumptions.
Age limitations have nothing to do with human aptitude. They do not legislate human aptitude. They are merely artificial limitations invented by humans to keep other humans from participating in areas of learning and experience they'd rather reserve for themselves. Lifting age limits on children would not impose the weight of the adult world onto them, and thus become its own form of oppression as critics may suggest. Children who do not have the means, the mind, the capability, the maturity, or the motivation, to make use of the rights newly bestowed on them, such as the right to vote, simply would not vote--just as adults do when they have neither the means, mind, capability, maturity, or motivation to vote. Society has already made it such that adults who are deemed incompetent for any reason are not permitted to bare the burdens and responsibilities that would come with competence--there is no reason to believe that the liberated five year old would be treated any differently than the incompetent adult when it comes to running their own affairs.
In fact, what society fears is not that incapable children would be dumped with the pressures and responsibilities that come with human rights beyond their ability, it's that in granting them such rights, many more than previously expected may be found more capable than the adult world ever imagined could be. Adults would be in a real state of cognitive dissonance over their assumptions. While five year olds would be sure to fail a required driving permit written test, for instance, we may just find that fifteen year olds, rather than just sixteen year olds, are competent enough to pass it. Such a thing would be sure to send shock waves of fear through the hearts of adults who would like to maintain the millennia-old belief that they, modern men and women, are special among all living things. It would force them to conclude that they are not special just because they've reach some magic age of human fellowship, and that they spent a good many years squandering their ability in pursuit of a magic number.
"I propose...that the rights, privileges, duties of adult citizens be made available to any young person, of whatever age, who wants to make use of them." -John C. Holt, "Escape from Childhood"
They will remark that children shouldn't have the right to vote, for example, because they lack the "mental capacity" for it. This wouldn't be such a bad argument if they were referring to the potential ways adults could scam children out of their votes without the children knowing it, but this is not how they mean it. They mean it in the most simplistic way possible--that children shouldn't vote because they don't understand politics. The same goes for sex--children shouldn't have sex because they don't understand sexuality.
The liberationist will chide back with the rebuttal: what about a 17 year old one minute before midnight on the day of their 18th birthday (the year a child can vote in the United States)? Are they incapable of understanding politics right up to midnight on their 18th birthday? What causes them to be suddenly blessed with the ability and knowledge to vote? The same argument gets even more confusing with age of consent laws, where there is not just one, but hundreds of different age limits, where suddenly children are capable of having sex in one area, but a mile away across the border, the very similar children over there are incapable. What manner of science could explain this phenomenon of temporal and geographic difference in "mental capacity?"
It will cause the ageist to scratch their head, possibly having never concluded that there's a difference between 2-year-old children and 17-year-old children that the law might have missed. In any case, the ageist will retort that they understand the confusion over the exactness and absolute nature of the "one minute before midnight" scenario, but will usually respond by saying, "it's not an exact science, but there has to be an age limit somewhere even if it doesn't match when a child is capable of voting." One should note that this already flies in the face of their previous rationale.
The liberationist will chide in immediately with an obvious rebuttal. If what the ageist said is true, that there in fact needs to be a set age even if it doesn't correspond to ability (contrary to the reason the ageist had given in the first case), then why does the age have to be 18? Why not move the age of majority in the US up to 20? Or how about 30, or 40? If we understand that the age limit is arbitrary, but also understand that it must exist anyways, why do we settle on 18 definitively?
The ageist will then come back with how 18 is closer to when a person is capable of understanding politics than 40, and will then normally pretend they agree with the liberationist by recalling particular teenagers who are far more politically astute than their own adult colleagues. They usually do this to show that they are not bigoted about young people, but it only adds to the case the liberationist is making. It's simply the point in the argument when the ageist has run out of explanations, just before settling on the "it is the way it is" rationale, unknowingly forfeiting all their earlier assumptions.
Age limitations have nothing to do with human aptitude. They do not legislate human aptitude. They are merely artificial limitations invented by humans to keep other humans from participating in areas of learning and experience they'd rather reserve for themselves. Lifting age limits on children would not impose the weight of the adult world onto them, and thus become its own form of oppression as critics may suggest. Children who do not have the means, the mind, the capability, the maturity, or the motivation, to make use of the rights newly bestowed on them, such as the right to vote, simply would not vote--just as adults do when they have neither the means, mind, capability, maturity, or motivation to vote. Society has already made it such that adults who are deemed incompetent for any reason are not permitted to bare the burdens and responsibilities that would come with competence--there is no reason to believe that the liberated five year old would be treated any differently than the incompetent adult when it comes to running their own affairs.
In fact, what society fears is not that incapable children would be dumped with the pressures and responsibilities that come with human rights beyond their ability, it's that in granting them such rights, many more than previously expected may be found more capable than the adult world ever imagined could be. Adults would be in a real state of cognitive dissonance over their assumptions. While five year olds would be sure to fail a required driving permit written test, for instance, we may just find that fifteen year olds, rather than just sixteen year olds, are competent enough to pass it. Such a thing would be sure to send shock waves of fear through the hearts of adults who would like to maintain the millennia-old belief that they, modern men and women, are special among all living things. It would force them to conclude that they are not special just because they've reach some magic age of human fellowship, and that they spent a good many years squandering their ability in pursuit of a magic number.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Affectionate Men
This is a culture that honors work over family, so it is no surprise that the struggle to gain women equal standing with men in the workplace and therefore in society in general, has been generally promoted. It is also no surprise that the struggle to gain men equal standing with woman over the family, the children, has never taken root. This work based culture seems to want nothing to do with raising its own children. The majority of men are pushed away from the care of children, and just as many seem more preoccupied with the workforce, with careers. With the arrival of feminism, it was finally declared that women sought the same. For both, having and raising children has become just a side project on a path toward personal fulfillment within the work place--something you have to do just to stay in keeping with social expectations.
These expectations have done nothing to raise us out of the sexist, 1940's culture that permeates family law in the United States. It has even been conveniently overlooked by the feminist movement itself--once again, because it doesn't concern the workplace. Family law arises from the belief that men are breadwinners and women are housewives and child caretakers. This is how a man and woman can divorce, and along with fifty percent of the marriage effects, the woman is typically granted the children, child support, and alimony. Many fathers who have weathered divorce have been brought into extreme poverty and even bankrupcy and homelessness as they've watched the mothers of their children reap the rewards of 1940's sexism in a modern equal opportunity culture. This is especially true if the man was not indeed the true breadwinner.
Regardless, all this stems from a pervasive and destructive cultural belief that men can not and should not be affectionate with children, and certainly are not equipped to be sole caretakers of them. As the old adage goes, we're fast becoming a culture that fears it may never cross a bridge designed by a woman, but couldn't care less if its children are raised by a man. Stereotypes, comedic tropes, and sexist cliches reinforce prejudice and embolden standards. Men who express any affection in public toward children, even fathers toward their own children, are often mistaken to be pedophiles, to be deviants. They are often ridiculed openly and harassed rather than celebrated.
The problem is not feminists, who have conveniently overlooked matters of family law and long ago demeaned and diminished the importance of raising children. The problem is not with men, who have been belittled from birth against showing affection toward anyone, and certainly not toward children, until they accepted this without complaint. The problem is with the underlying culture that does not allow men to complain about their diminished importance within the family, within childcare, as the feminists did about their status in the general workforce. Society looks up to work, it looks down on child raising. If a group of men come out and declare that they want to be taken seriously as child caretakers, it becomes a comedic trope at best rather than a genuine statement of desire. Why should a group of men who are not being discriminated against in the glorious and glamorous workforce want to do something as demeaning in the eyes of the culture as raise and nurture children? Society can not grapple with this concept.
Most men aren't like me. Most men don't place a high value on parenting either, as culture has dictated, so it's only the disaffected men (those who have been spit through family court) that complain. Many men will be reluctant to demand equal rights under family law because doing so makes them appear effeminate. What was a strength among the women's movement--the calculating, un-feeling, career-minded, self-fulfilled, self-dependent ideal woman of the future--becomes the unraveling of the men's movement--the nurturing, loving, reliable, educational, invested, selfless ideal male child caretaker of the future. It's seen as a sign of weakness to devote oneself to the ones society generally demeans anyways. The women's movement goes with the flow of western civilization (self-fulfillment, making money, children as a means to an ends...etc.) while the men's movement resists it (self-fulfillment in the fulfillment of a child's needs, children as a ends in and of themselves). There's no money in staying home and taking care of the kids, so western culture has no use for this new breed of man, and roots for his demise.
Feminists may have overlooked the affectionate man, male chauvinism may have tried to keep them down, culture may be trying to do away with them like shedding a malignancy, but the one group that needs the affection of a man is the only group we care about--the children, the boys and girls. In the end, raising them up is its own vindication where all else has failed them. If society wants nothing to do with the demeaning aspects of raising a child, then it's high time someone steps up to do the most important job of them all. Automation will erode the glorious western workforce, but children are always going to need affection.
These expectations have done nothing to raise us out of the sexist, 1940's culture that permeates family law in the United States. It has even been conveniently overlooked by the feminist movement itself--once again, because it doesn't concern the workplace. Family law arises from the belief that men are breadwinners and women are housewives and child caretakers. This is how a man and woman can divorce, and along with fifty percent of the marriage effects, the woman is typically granted the children, child support, and alimony. Many fathers who have weathered divorce have been brought into extreme poverty and even bankrupcy and homelessness as they've watched the mothers of their children reap the rewards of 1940's sexism in a modern equal opportunity culture. This is especially true if the man was not indeed the true breadwinner.
Regardless, all this stems from a pervasive and destructive cultural belief that men can not and should not be affectionate with children, and certainly are not equipped to be sole caretakers of them. As the old adage goes, we're fast becoming a culture that fears it may never cross a bridge designed by a woman, but couldn't care less if its children are raised by a man. Stereotypes, comedic tropes, and sexist cliches reinforce prejudice and embolden standards. Men who express any affection in public toward children, even fathers toward their own children, are often mistaken to be pedophiles, to be deviants. They are often ridiculed openly and harassed rather than celebrated.
The problem is not feminists, who have conveniently overlooked matters of family law and long ago demeaned and diminished the importance of raising children. The problem is not with men, who have been belittled from birth against showing affection toward anyone, and certainly not toward children, until they accepted this without complaint. The problem is with the underlying culture that does not allow men to complain about their diminished importance within the family, within childcare, as the feminists did about their status in the general workforce. Society looks up to work, it looks down on child raising. If a group of men come out and declare that they want to be taken seriously as child caretakers, it becomes a comedic trope at best rather than a genuine statement of desire. Why should a group of men who are not being discriminated against in the glorious and glamorous workforce want to do something as demeaning in the eyes of the culture as raise and nurture children? Society can not grapple with this concept.
Most men aren't like me. Most men don't place a high value on parenting either, as culture has dictated, so it's only the disaffected men (those who have been spit through family court) that complain. Many men will be reluctant to demand equal rights under family law because doing so makes them appear effeminate. What was a strength among the women's movement--the calculating, un-feeling, career-minded, self-fulfilled, self-dependent ideal woman of the future--becomes the unraveling of the men's movement--the nurturing, loving, reliable, educational, invested, selfless ideal male child caretaker of the future. It's seen as a sign of weakness to devote oneself to the ones society generally demeans anyways. The women's movement goes with the flow of western civilization (self-fulfillment, making money, children as a means to an ends...etc.) while the men's movement resists it (self-fulfillment in the fulfillment of a child's needs, children as a ends in and of themselves). There's no money in staying home and taking care of the kids, so western culture has no use for this new breed of man, and roots for his demise.
Feminists may have overlooked the affectionate man, male chauvinism may have tried to keep them down, culture may be trying to do away with them like shedding a malignancy, but the one group that needs the affection of a man is the only group we care about--the children, the boys and girls. In the end, raising them up is its own vindication where all else has failed them. If society wants nothing to do with the demeaning aspects of raising a child, then it's high time someone steps up to do the most important job of them all. Automation will erode the glorious western workforce, but children are always going to need affection.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Good Intentions
Good intentions aren't good enough. Those who are granted responsibility always have the best intentions, because they don't need to take responsibility. Professionalism ensures that they never have to put their own neck on the line, it means that so long as they follow the formula for interaction with a child, they can never be held personally accountable, and everything they do for better or worse is with "the best intentions." This is probably most true for social workers, but could also extend to anyone who has been given a role of responsibility over a child. Those who act on good intentions do such because they don't have to act on good works.
The term good intentions, or best intentions, is a meaningless platitude. All it means is that someone intended on doing the right thing regardless of the outcome. If the outcome is that an innocent person is murdered, does it really matter if the culprit, in their own minds, had the best intentions for doing the murder? After a family has been split up by the state in a case where no abuse or neglect has been observed, where only the social worker's personal prejudice is the deciding factor, should their best intentions grant them immunity to the harmful effects they've caused? Should vigilantes be let off the hook for harassing the current occupants of houses that used to be owned by registered sex offenders, just because they had the best intentions?
Someone who decides to love a child openly doesn't get the benefit of the doubt though, nor should they, or anyone else. If an independent agent steps over the line in a child's life and begins to impose, it doesn't matter what their intentions were. A CL's best intentions are not considered by society, nor should they be, only their outcomes, and neither should society's "best intentions" be granted as excuses for its own inadequacies.
The term good intentions, or best intentions, is a meaningless platitude. All it means is that someone intended on doing the right thing regardless of the outcome. If the outcome is that an innocent person is murdered, does it really matter if the culprit, in their own minds, had the best intentions for doing the murder? After a family has been split up by the state in a case where no abuse or neglect has been observed, where only the social worker's personal prejudice is the deciding factor, should their best intentions grant them immunity to the harmful effects they've caused? Should vigilantes be let off the hook for harassing the current occupants of houses that used to be owned by registered sex offenders, just because they had the best intentions?
Someone who decides to love a child openly doesn't get the benefit of the doubt though, nor should they, or anyone else. If an independent agent steps over the line in a child's life and begins to impose, it doesn't matter what their intentions were. A CL's best intentions are not considered by society, nor should they be, only their outcomes, and neither should society's "best intentions" be granted as excuses for its own inadequacies.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Bullying
Impinging on a child's right and ability to defend him or herself is the greatest way adults have concocted to ensure the victim's dependence and empower their aggressors. If you want to weaken a child's resistance, teach them that all their squabbles should be arbitrated by an adult, give the bullies reason to believe in their own physical superiority over their victims, and better yet, punish victims for fighting back. This is a "tell an adult" culture, and in teaching our children to swear to never lift a finger in their own defense, we not only empower bullies and punish those who would fight back, but we victimize children who could have otherwise handled the situation easily without becoming a victim.
Violence and self defense are two different things. This has been known forever, and yet, it appears the ancient warrior codes and chivalric honor is completely lost on modern civilization when it comes to children. In the old world, a bully could be subdued and rightfully punished. The resisting victim would be encouraged to go on resisting, standing up for him or herself. A victim that lay on the floor and received his beating would be encouraged to put his foot down should his aggressor come back with another round. In the new world, the victim is expected to lay there and absorb the beating, and wait desperately for an adult to intervene. Then they bully's needs are equally considered. If the victim doesn't resist, they are praised. If they fight back, they are punished too, perhaps with offender sentencing even. Both are considered victims, despite the fact that bullies and delinquents are often different things.
This new scheme has all the best intentions. It seeks to sympathize with the bully's plight (the very thing that shouldn't be reinforced), and it seeks to be a neutral overseer in the dispute, but only drives itself more partisan with its insistence that every act of aggression has a definitive victim and abuser. In this way, a child may be harassed by another student for weeks and months only to be dealt the swift hand of justice the moment he or she retaliates--only because the child refused to bring their problem to the ear of an adult who was most likely just going to do nothing about it anyways, or the equivalent of nothing. Is a "stern talking to" really going to set a bully straight? The bully's actions are not considered acceptable by no means, and are said to be the work of a "traumatized soul"--a soul that has to be "pampered" and provided "attention" so that it may somehow find alternative means to express itself, or so goes the theory. The so-called neutral overseers then coddle that soul rather than educate it, with the effect of only emboldening it.
The problem here is that this scheme rigidly applies the theory that children are utterly morally perfect and pure and incapable of handling their lives in all aspects, that only adults have the ability to intervene in children's squabbles (with their self-agrandised "higher wisdom), and that children's transgressions are solely a result of contamination from an outside aggressor. Therefore, even the victim isn't off the hook. To keep the victim from being "contaminated" by the bully, he or she must also be reprogrammed, along with his or her peers. They are given non-violent alternatives that basically amount to self-limiting victimization strategies (society having totally lost grasp of the difference). They are told to either submit to an adult's intervention or submit to the bully's. To a kid, there is very little to distinguish one from the other.
The victims need to know that the adults are in their sparring corner, and if the child comes to an adult requesting assistance to deal with a bully, then that request ought to be honored and non-violent solutions hashed out. Ultimately though, unless the situation is absolutely too hazardous, the child should be encouraged to be the one carrying out the solution, whatever is appropriate. We can all agree that children should not be taught to throw weight around needlessly and act out violently without provocation, and that in all possible circumstances they should find the least violent path possible, but there are one or two occasions where a child seems more than entitled to give another kid a good punch in the mouth. Not all bullying is the same and requires aggressive responses, but some do.
If all non-violent options fail, and the bully is still persistent, the victim really ought to be granted carte blanche to defend themselves, knowing of course, that such action will cause them disciplinary action too. If that's the price for finally subduing the bully (standing up for themselves), then it's well worth it. They ought to be encouraged to greet their disciplinary action with their head held high. Someone ought to shake their hand as they are banished to their room, to a detention hall, or wherever they are going. If, as the theory goes, the bully is simply acting out an inner sense of inferiority by choosing to dominate others, wouldn't it be wise not to give him submissive bodies in order to dominate? Empower the victims, even as they step up to receive their own discipline. The moment a bully lashes out at another student is the last point in time when they ought to be "attended to," such an action should have probably happened long before it reached that point.
And speaking of ignoring bullies until they lash out, let us not forget that girls are just as vicious, just as aggressive, if not always physically, but verbally. Boys bare the bunt of the adult attention when it comes to bullying because physical violence is always more visceral (and adults have a hard-on for all things viscerally arresting at an ignorance of all else), but girls who are relentlessly harassing other children verbally don't deserve to be ignored just because what they do may not result in "bloody noses" and "black eyes."
What we shouldn't be agreeing to is that violence can be eradicated in children if we all just join hands, victim and abuser alike, under the guidance of an adult, declare peace and assume that all is settled. Such claptrap is born out of the adult's shortsightedness, their ego, their feelings of superiority over kids (as if they are in any way the ultimate arbiters of morality that all children must just beg at the feet of), and their desire to be useful. It is nurtured by inaccurate ideas concerning the inhuman "purity" of children and their general shock that children can be just as destructive and downright evil as they themselves are. Bullies are nature's way of holding a mirror up to the adult world and reflecting its image onto a "manageable" size. When an adult sees themselves in a child, more often then not, it's because the child is a bully.
Violence and self defense are two different things. This has been known forever, and yet, it appears the ancient warrior codes and chivalric honor is completely lost on modern civilization when it comes to children. In the old world, a bully could be subdued and rightfully punished. The resisting victim would be encouraged to go on resisting, standing up for him or herself. A victim that lay on the floor and received his beating would be encouraged to put his foot down should his aggressor come back with another round. In the new world, the victim is expected to lay there and absorb the beating, and wait desperately for an adult to intervene. Then they bully's needs are equally considered. If the victim doesn't resist, they are praised. If they fight back, they are punished too, perhaps with offender sentencing even. Both are considered victims, despite the fact that bullies and delinquents are often different things.
This new scheme has all the best intentions. It seeks to sympathize with the bully's plight (the very thing that shouldn't be reinforced), and it seeks to be a neutral overseer in the dispute, but only drives itself more partisan with its insistence that every act of aggression has a definitive victim and abuser. In this way, a child may be harassed by another student for weeks and months only to be dealt the swift hand of justice the moment he or she retaliates--only because the child refused to bring their problem to the ear of an adult who was most likely just going to do nothing about it anyways, or the equivalent of nothing. Is a "stern talking to" really going to set a bully straight? The bully's actions are not considered acceptable by no means, and are said to be the work of a "traumatized soul"--a soul that has to be "pampered" and provided "attention" so that it may somehow find alternative means to express itself, or so goes the theory. The so-called neutral overseers then coddle that soul rather than educate it, with the effect of only emboldening it.
The problem here is that this scheme rigidly applies the theory that children are utterly morally perfect and pure and incapable of handling their lives in all aspects, that only adults have the ability to intervene in children's squabbles (with their self-agrandised "higher wisdom), and that children's transgressions are solely a result of contamination from an outside aggressor. Therefore, even the victim isn't off the hook. To keep the victim from being "contaminated" by the bully, he or she must also be reprogrammed, along with his or her peers. They are given non-violent alternatives that basically amount to self-limiting victimization strategies (society having totally lost grasp of the difference). They are told to either submit to an adult's intervention or submit to the bully's. To a kid, there is very little to distinguish one from the other.
The victims need to know that the adults are in their sparring corner, and if the child comes to an adult requesting assistance to deal with a bully, then that request ought to be honored and non-violent solutions hashed out. Ultimately though, unless the situation is absolutely too hazardous, the child should be encouraged to be the one carrying out the solution, whatever is appropriate. We can all agree that children should not be taught to throw weight around needlessly and act out violently without provocation, and that in all possible circumstances they should find the least violent path possible, but there are one or two occasions where a child seems more than entitled to give another kid a good punch in the mouth. Not all bullying is the same and requires aggressive responses, but some do.
If all non-violent options fail, and the bully is still persistent, the victim really ought to be granted carte blanche to defend themselves, knowing of course, that such action will cause them disciplinary action too. If that's the price for finally subduing the bully (standing up for themselves), then it's well worth it. They ought to be encouraged to greet their disciplinary action with their head held high. Someone ought to shake their hand as they are banished to their room, to a detention hall, or wherever they are going. If, as the theory goes, the bully is simply acting out an inner sense of inferiority by choosing to dominate others, wouldn't it be wise not to give him submissive bodies in order to dominate? Empower the victims, even as they step up to receive their own discipline. The moment a bully lashes out at another student is the last point in time when they ought to be "attended to," such an action should have probably happened long before it reached that point.
And speaking of ignoring bullies until they lash out, let us not forget that girls are just as vicious, just as aggressive, if not always physically, but verbally. Boys bare the bunt of the adult attention when it comes to bullying because physical violence is always more visceral (and adults have a hard-on for all things viscerally arresting at an ignorance of all else), but girls who are relentlessly harassing other children verbally don't deserve to be ignored just because what they do may not result in "bloody noses" and "black eyes."
What we shouldn't be agreeing to is that violence can be eradicated in children if we all just join hands, victim and abuser alike, under the guidance of an adult, declare peace and assume that all is settled. Such claptrap is born out of the adult's shortsightedness, their ego, their feelings of superiority over kids (as if they are in any way the ultimate arbiters of morality that all children must just beg at the feet of), and their desire to be useful. It is nurtured by inaccurate ideas concerning the inhuman "purity" of children and their general shock that children can be just as destructive and downright evil as they themselves are. Bullies are nature's way of holding a mirror up to the adult world and reflecting its image onto a "manageable" size. When an adult sees themselves in a child, more often then not, it's because the child is a bully.
Aphorisms on Child Sexuality
And now for a few observations, shared between myself and a like-minded friend, NG:
Sex between consenting adults is one of the most ugly things on the face of this planet.
Since molestation is primarily a deprivation of sexual liberties, it seems reasonable to assume that some victims of molestation would grow up to be militant defenders of childrens' sexual freedoms.
Child victims who grow up with a vendetta to clamp down on childrens' sexual expression are the ones society likes. Child victims who grow up and move on with their lives are tossed to the ash bin.
Child abuse must be all-consuming on the victim. If they ever recover and grow from it, they are seen as "justifying" the abuse.
Society has taken the concept of child sexuality and equated it with satanic rituals. This is abhorrent, heinous and unforgivable.
For the law to call mutually consenting loving relationships rape, is an atrocity in keeping with rape itself.
Society's ignorance of the sexuality of children under 18 has made them totally oblivious to the term "sexual development".
*
Sex between consenting adults is one of the most ugly things on the face of this planet.
*
Since molestation is primarily a deprivation of sexual liberties, it seems reasonable to assume that some victims of molestation would grow up to be militant defenders of childrens' sexual freedoms.
*
Child victims who grow up with a vendetta to clamp down on childrens' sexual expression are the ones society likes. Child victims who grow up and move on with their lives are tossed to the ash bin.
*
Child abuse must be all-consuming on the victim. If they ever recover and grow from it, they are seen as "justifying" the abuse.
*
Society has taken the concept of child sexuality and equated it with satanic rituals. This is abhorrent, heinous and unforgivable.
*
For the law to call mutually consenting loving relationships rape, is an atrocity in keeping with rape itself.
*
Society's ignorance of the sexuality of children under 18 has made them totally oblivious to the term "sexual development".
*
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