Unsung Heroes

In my mind, being against child molestation is not enough, nor does it make you a good person by itself. It does a person no good to be against child molestation if they are doing wrong by children in more socially permissible ways, for they would be in good company. Parents who repeatedly assault their young children in the service of discipline are fearful and hateful of child molestation too. Politicians who would (if they could at any instance) send your children out to fight and die to preserve global business interests in unstable regions, also hate and are fearful of child molestation. Even the school officials who would trap up a 9-year-old autistic boy in a duffle bag to discipline him...they too are (most likely) hateful of child molesters. Are you no better than an abusive parent? A corrupt politician? A "well-intentioned" school teacher? One has to wonder if even the child molesters also hate child molestation, for as Christ said, "Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" What good then does it do to hate child molestation?

Surely, the list of who is against child molestation also includes the broad majority of society that also finds these similar acts reprehensible (although not to the mob- mental destructive fervor they reserve for child molestation), but hatred makes strange bedfellows of them nonetheless. Blinding hatred is just that, blinding, because it stops a person from being able to discern what is moral and just, even when guided by one's own intuition. We start to over-sing the psalms of damnation upon one propped-up source of mob-mental aggression, the "child molester," only to ignore other forms of abuse just as objectively destructive. It is as if we've been blinded by the lightning shot which crackles one by the hour, and have forgotten about the billions of raindrops. We'd let our children freeze to death in that rain by the hundreds before we eased our horror that even one may be struck by a random bolt. Truly, there's more to being a good person than simply hating on that which is demonstrably vile (as the vigilantes do).

To be a good person in this sense, you actually have to not cause harm to any child by intention, and if necessary (in some "life or death" situation), only with the pain of regret guiding your hand. This not only includes child molestation, but all those more socially acceptable means adults have invented over the millenia to abuse children into submission. The many who don't routinely abuse children under the guise of discipline, who don't spoil children into dependence, or give the order to put young people into harm's way for someone else's gain--those are the unsung heroes. If society can permit anyone who simply hates on child molestation to claim to title of "hero," and then orchestrate songs of praise for their good intentions, imagine how society ought to treat the broader majority of people who don't just have good intentions but put them into practice for the good of others. If such were the case, these heroes would no longer be unsung. 

However, western culture (Babylon) continues to fetishize the perverse anyways, despite all the good intentions in the world. This is how a man can hold up a convenience store or cause an accident in a high speed chase and gain not only news headlines but even highlights on television clip shows, but the good act of charity that some other man participated in will never be given any spotlight in anyone's mind. If an action is not spotlighted in the mind by culture (whether it's right or wrong), then it is almost always more right, more just, and more decent by its sense of genuine earnestness than any flimsy public moralistic spectacle could ever be. Moral spectacle is merely pretense laying on a bed of perverse fetishism. The more virulently popularized that moralistic spectacle is, the more justified its unsung, unnoticed, cousin act becomes. For example, parents shouldn't consider themselves good people because they hate and fear child molestation, or any other heinous act, as everyone else, but rather, by whether or not they read to their child before telling them to get some sleep. And even if one isn't a parent, one could almost justifiably judge themselves along the same criterion.

Sure, the act of reading to a child is not going to win you an award, nor is it going to bestow on you the mantle of "Protector of Children" (as many of the anti-pedo vigilantes covet), but you will have done right by a child in doing so, in almost all cases. The only song you will ever have played in your life will be sung from the souls of the individuals you nurtured and gave your love and time to. That, to me, is a more justifiable vindication than this more "culturally-accessible fear and hate mongering" will ever be, concerning the worst among us--the very thing that, though so attractive to our sentiments, becomes the most vile thing of all. 

How to Grow Up

I find the science of human development fascinating because we all have our own experience growing up, and understandably have our own ideas about how that happens. What the science of human development does is it shines a light on all the illusions about who we are that we may have convinced ourselves of along the way. It either validates our experience or broadens that highly personal and anecdotal series of fading memories toward a frame of reference beyond ourselves and reflected by humanity.

What it teaches us is not just that we are so unique in how we specifically came to be the person we are from the person we were a relatively short time ago, but also that our experience of that maturation was not all that unique. We are constantly reinventing our own history. With the science of human development, we have to confront the fact that our successes may not have been as special or tied to own abilities as our ego may direct us to think at times, but to circumstances beyond ourselves instead. At the same time, we also have to confront the fact that our circumstance was not always solely responsible for our personal failings, but to our own doings.

The science of human development forces us to concede that there is more to humanity than ourselves, and that we are not merely products of our environment or products of nature's indifference, but that we are products of both to varying degrees that we may not even realize. No other science is as innately personal, perhaps with the exclusion of modern health, and likewise, in no other science does nearly everyone alive consider themselves an expert.

For this reason, adults (parents) are often inaccurate when making assumptions about the behaviors and interests of children living today (often interpreting the worst), for they compare the real actions of their children today with the invention they created around their own childhood, and they understandably don't like what they see. What they don't remember is that children themselves have never changed, just the various hang-ups of the society around them. Human developmental science works to remind us of what changes and what doesn't, so we don't go drugging our children out of existence so as to pair their experience with the perfect or imperfect childhood invention of our memories.

It could be said that we are not truly grown up until we recognize the fact of our existence is a constant maturation, a constant imperceptible development, rather than being confined strictly to the condensation of time behind us. The notion that we are all on a flat-line towards death in the present could be considered implicit immaturity. Maturity, in contrast comes not with age or experience, but with the understanding of the transient nature of our mental state in a constant flux of development.

More Honesty, Less Irony

Irony is the package that truth is delivered in, so that it can be palpable to comprehension. Contrary to what people think, truth is actually pretty simple, but it's impossible to comprehend due to its simplicity, so people invented irony to tease it out. When truth is delivered with naked honesty, it is feared at best and disregarded at worst. So society is full of irony, which is to say, pretense, which is to say, lies in the guise of truth and truth in the guise of lies. Our intuitions are always an honest representation of ourselves, but adults in particular (far more than children) are contented to bury their intuitions under false pretense for the purposes of keeping up appearances. Adult society is built by honest conviction that is delivered and made palpable by lies, self-deprecating humor, sarcasm, and ironic twists of personal judgment to fit in with prevailing cultural standards. If society decides to castigate or lynch a group of people, the individuals within it are more inclined to support that lynching with their love of irony, sarcasm, self-deprecating humor, and misrepresented values, than they are with their honesty and truthful conviction to their gut.

Truthful conviction and honesty tells us that all people deserve respect unless they have personally done something that amounts to a forfeiture of that right by their own discretion alone. For instance, our honest, truthful, "heart of hearts" knows by pro-social evolution that to disrespect an individual on the stereotypes or heuristics of the class, race, sex, or creed they belong to (or are perceived as belonging to) is shameful. Our intuition directs us to value some version of an equality standard for all, and not solely base an individual's inclusion in that standard on the perceived class or "group" that an individual belongs to. For most non-sociopaths capable of shame, it seems unconscionable on the face of it to show disrespect to someone for a reason having nothing to do with that person's own character or actions, but to circumstances totally beyond that person's control. This is not a novel concept to most people, so we have every reason to assume there is at least some truth to it, but let's see how irony will cause a person to break those very same conventions in the name dishonest truth, often for humor's sake.

Irony in the broadest sense is a narrative device where a circumstance exists for which an unexpected result occurs with the property of contradicting or going against the meaning behind the circumstance. It is usually easier to depict than to define, for instance: when a child and an adult are competing, and the inexperienced child outwits the adult, it is an ironic situation because it is not expected that someone of smaller experience would outwit someone of larger experience. Adults find such joy in irony like this because they have more of an experience with social conventions and like to see something that challenges them or contradicts them from unexpected sources. Girls outwitting boys, for instance, is another common trope, even now when we should no longer consider a girl to be an "unexpected source," but such is the backwards way with irony. 

Adults use irony to accomplish the opposite of challenging convention though, and deliver the "unexpected truth" by confirming convention only so much as to kill it with kindness. This forms the basis of most deconstructionist, post-modern philosophy. For instance, by saying something like "children are better than adults by their savagery," there is an attempt to combine "superiority" with "savagery" (an unexpected pairing), and children (traditionally considered to be pure and inferior to adults), with the same, for the purpose of exposing the more intuitive truth that "adults are no better or worse than children." But why all that diversion when one could have just said: "adults are no better or worse than children?" It's because that truth is made more thought-worthy when it comes dressed in a subtle poetic quip involving lots of comparisons. Blatant statements of belief mean nothing to anyone beyond the church pew, but lies that cover up truths seem to really cause people to stop and reconsider their thoughts. That is just how the secular world prefers its truths. But by confirming something that one does not actually support, even with the intention of laying bare some truth about it, one is essentially dressing a truth in a lie, which is to say, lying.

So human beings can get away with making the most ludicrous and crass statements, cast misguided judgement, purposefully misrepresent where their values lie, and get away with it, as I have done at times, by calling it "sarcasm" in the pursuit of a higher truth, or by being humorous. But where do we draw the line before we've totally divorced our honest intuition from our outward dishonest personality? Do we get away with saying that "boys are stupid" so that we may appear ironic for saying it and therefore be "interpreted" as saying anything supportive of girls? "Boys are stupid" will never be a supportive statement for anyone. Do we get away with calling a particular boy "stupid" because of the circumstance of his sex (which he had nothing to do with)? Do we get away with advocating for the lynching of ethnic minorities just so we can feel sarcastic and witty enough to be espousing truth in furtherance of tolerance? "Lynch him in a back alley" will likewise never be a statement endorsing tolerance, no matter how ironic it is perceived to be. 

It is not that sarcasm this hurtful should be outright censored though, just that those who speak it should be regarded shamefully. It is shameful to say something that contradicts one's better judgement, whatever that judgement may be. If we have to assume that no one truth exists, but that each one of us has our own truth, the best we can do is be truthful to ourselves as best we can, and that is called direct honesty. The truth does hurt, which is why we invented irony--to soften it, to make it more palpable, to make it humorous, to add distractions so that we're not forced to accept it as much as we'd like to--but the truth is always the truth and it can't be twisted, even if one doesn't agree with it. As much as the truth hurts though, dishonesty hurts more. When you are being honest by saying "peace on earth," chances are, it was dishonesty that lead the first battle cry.

Saying "equality for all people," is the only way of truthfully conveying the message of "equality for all people," even if it sounds comically vague or naive on the bare surface like that--but that is what the truth is! The truth is naive. It is simple. You can not arrive at "equality for all people" if you're going around, cheekily saying "girls are better than boys," for instance, because you know that statement, when expressed categorically in relation to a whole group of people, is false, and therefore, a comic lie. It is a statement of devaluation toward one group and a superficial support of another (not on the basis of merit, but on the basis of circumstances neither child had any control over) against your better intuition. You know you are lying when you say it, so why don't you feel shameful? If you are saying the opposite of truth--a falsehood---and if you know that it is false, then you are lying.

Adults don't think of irony or sarcasm as lying because they know a deeper truth is attempting to be exposed with its phrasing, but they only arrive at that conclusion because they have adult brain capacities. Ask any child what a lie is, and they will tell you about the time they lied to get away with something they didn't want exposed. In our case, what we don't want exposed is the truth, and instead, favor a pretense of falsehoods, lies, and sarcasm. How does that not describe, in its entirety, all that the sarcastic, ironic, hypocritical, pretense and illusion that the adult social world is built on?

The Public Good

When the public good is pitted against the interests of the private enterprise, the private enterprise has almost never lost. Every one of those battles was waged on the pretense that protecting the private enterprise would serve the interests of the public good, but so few have actually turned out that way. For every bill introduced on behalf of a public need, there are lobbyists standing in the corridors of government with suitcases of money and campaign donations to essentially "influence" it out of existence. Those lobs of funding are a lot more influential than a bunch of disparate constituents back a thousand miles away.

Corporations know about the fickle nature of the voting population, for it has lost all hope in its elected officials. And since private entities are not in the same public spotlight, politicians have more to lose by placing the needs of their constituents before those private interests than they do by signing on and towing the corporate line (and thereby avoid having to air their dirty laundry before the public via the corporate media). After all, in the next election cycle, he or she who made the most corporate friends in their tenure will most likely be reelected-- all constituents do is just put in the physical votes to ensure that the process takes place. Campaigns with the most money have the most resources, staff, and publicity, which is why those campaigns get elected.

This is why there has never been a politician in the last hundred years who has favored constituents over businesses. It turns out that businesses can afford to hire lobbyists. Those lobbyists can court their preferred politicians during all the various formal receptions and private meetings, and thereby gain a rapport with them in a way that constituents will never have the opportunity to do. Those lobbyists then use that special rapport to make the case that whatever is in their best interest is actually also in the public interest, and that it will undoubtedly benefit that politician's constituents should he or she get behind whatever they propose, no matter how far fetched the rationale has to be. The politician is then left to ponder the benefits of "killing two birds with one stone" before they break out the cigars.

That, kids, is the story of how politicians that win usually end up in the pocket of multinational corporations that actually don't give a damn about constituents. That is how the worst outcomes usually follow from the best intentions. That is how democracy gets auctioned off.