Loving Children

There is nothing wrong with loving a child. Children deserve love because they exist, from anyone willing to give it, and they deserve to be allowed to show love to anyone who will receive it. It is only wrong to deny them love and attention, and only right to give it to them. It is wrong to spurn their attempts to show love, and only right to receive them warmly. Society is wrong when it works to separate adults and children on a pretense of fear, and only right when it allows them to coexist in peace and harmony, guided by pure love and care. Children deserve love even when their parents are unwilling or unable to give it, just as those who give it are deserving of receiving it. Their love is human love, and humans need love like they need air, water, and food. Children are no different from human.

Love doesn't have to be unrealistically selfless and overly simplistic, for discipline, when authoritatively enforced, is a function of love (whether adults are disciplining children or children disciplining adults), it just needs to be felt that way. To deprive someone discipline is to be depriving them of love, just as to neglect is to deprive, and to abuse is to keep depraved--none of these are expressions of love. Children deserve to be loved by society as much as they need to be cared for by it. When a child is loved by an adult, and it is purely expressed, the child will love back. To gain the child's love in return for love: this is the only legitimately hallowed co-relation between adult and child that can exist, and the most noble arrangement a man, woman, boy, or girl can be blessed with. The truth is often plain and usually simple.

There's nothing wrong with a child loving an adult. Adult-to-child love and child-to-adult love is human love, and human love expressed tenderly in private and charitably in public is an expression of God's love. Children are not only capable of receiving their parents' love or solely capable of showing love toward their parents, but are capable of accepting kindness from anyone, young and old, who is willing to give it, and giving it to whoever is willing, young and old, to accept it. This is the meaning of "good will toward all."

The parental responsibility over their children is only there to be the gatekeeper deciding who may enter and who can not, as is their right to keep their child safe, but children deserve love even from their gatekeepers, and even from those incapable of keeping the gate and are still tasked to do so. If they are unable to receive it from their primary gatekeepers (their parents), then they both need someone else to fill that responsibility and extend to them the warm embrace of love and guidance. Parents love their children because they have to, by nature. Childlovers love children because they want to, by choice. True childlovers are never out to replace parents, but to supplement them. They are not there to strip a child off their family, but to be an extension of child's family. They are not there to further suppress the child, or to spoil them into subservience, but to act as role models working through legitimate channels of outreach acceptable to all capable of accepting love.

Childlovers love children as an adult lover might for their own lover, but the love of the childlover is purer, because it is felt almost exclusively out of interpersonal connection, selflessness, and devotion to allowing the child complete freedom. Adult love relationships, by contrast, are often compounded with expectations of monogamy and sex, but such things would be unthinkably selfish, and potentally hazardous, in a childlove relationship. The childlover never seeks to gain the child solely for themselves for "all eternity" as the primarily self-motivated adult relationships often do as an institution (marriage). The childlover instead only seeks to impart to a child the kindness and charity they are deserving of as human beings, and lets the child alone to live their own lives and pay that love forward to whoever they wish. That is the difference that makes all the difference!

The adult should only be someone the child knows personally for one reason or another, someone his or her parents know and trust, and someone from whom the relationship develops naturally and gradually out of friendship and trust. And because true love is never forced, coerced, or manipulated out of someone, whether adult or child, that which is isn't love and doesn't have any legitimate reason for existing. This is as much true for a child's non-parental lovers as it is for their legal guardians. Anyone who can not love a child genuinely (selflessly, harmlessly, charitably) has no business around them. Those who can will prove themselves worthy if their heart is pure. Psalms were written to celebrate such a love as that!

A Thousand Prayers Worth

A repulsive, evil act, and an unspeakable tragedy today. My thoughts and prayers go out for the victims and their families. To God above, Amen. 

"A man opened fire Friday inside the kindergarten classroom at the Connecticut elementary school where his mother was a teacher, killing 20 children [and 6 adults], as youngsters cowered in corners and closets and trembled helplessly to gunshots reverberating through the building, before the gunman took his own life." (CBS/AP)

Children are Sexual

Puberty is not the beginning. The sexual life of the human being begins in the womb. It is expressed, enjoyed, shared, and felt in childhood. It is then repressed by those who fail to regard its existence. It is punished by those who fail to recognize its humanity. Children are instead fed fabrications about what their sexual feelings mean, and even adults begin to believe what they preach. We are told that child sexuality not only doesn't exist, but that any expression of it is deviance, and any discussion about it is the promotion of child rape. This has not always been the case, as any cursory glance will reveal from such academic works as Loving Boys (1986) by Dr. Edward Brongersma, or Paedophilia: A Factual Report (1985), by Dr. Frits Bernard, or The Sexual Life of Children (1994), by Floyd Martinson, or even The Sexual Life of the Child, from 1912, by Albert Moll, among hundreds of others lost to history.

In decades past, discussion about the sexual life of children was alive and well in fact. It was accepted as repeatedly observable in the wide breadth of scientific inquiry into human development, and discussion about it didn't lead anyone to think that by investigating child sexuality anyone was in fact promoting child rape. Times have changed though, and all progress has not only stalled, but reversed itself. The very fact of a child's sexuality has been run over by the preponderance of research dealing with child sex abuse, and now all child sexuality has become subjugated to the adult fear of child sex abuse first and foremost, rather than remain liberated as the legitimate form of inquiry it is.

The inquiry determining the difference between mental and physical sexual maturation for the purpose of procreation, and the preexisting sexual feelings that children are born with and grow up experiencing and acting upon, has been left behind with the sexual revolution of the 20th century. All other aspects of human sexuality have been greeted with toleration and eventual acceptance (and even many of the earlier sexual "perversions"), but children are not extended such courtesy, and it has everything to do with the maintenance of adult illusions. Having no conception of breathing does not stop an infant from breathing as an act of self-preservation, and neither does having no conception of sexuality stop a young child from masturbating, even at the age of seven months, for boys in particular, no matter what we tell ourselves.

But no amount of adult illusion can change the fact that children are sexual, engage in sex play, feel every bit of sexual tension and pleasure that adults do, and that all of it is denied to their understanding. No amount of telling ourselves it isn't true is going to erase the fact that decades of research has repeatedly shown children engaging in genital stimulation, auto-erotica, and even sexual activities with one another at what we in the twenty-first century have concluded are "unnaturally low" ages. On the contrary, they knew something in the 19th and 20th centuries that seems lost to us now: that the "unnaturally high" ages of sexual activity we promote in our modern "progressive" age are indeed what is more abnormal, if anything. For procreative purposes, the older ages are in fact divorced from nature, rather than any representational paradigm of it. The inability for adults to accept aging out of sexual activity in recent decades has caused them to criminalize and pathologize all youth expression of it instead, despite youth sexuality being the natural paradigm.

So we celebrate the birth of a new century where childhood sexual activity is not only stricken from all public discourse, but so is the very fact of its existence. It has been erased from both the academic landscape as well as popular opinion. Demonstrable facts have been lost and replaced by adult illusions--the illusion of the child as a wholy innocent creature devoid of feeling and depth, who is merely here to be a repository of adult services. This is the "predator panic" illusion that our society calls progress.

There is so much lack of understanding on this issue that actual child sexuality, existing as a fact of nature, has been conflated with pedophilia, and pedophilia with child sexual abuse, done through its constant repetition in research and popular culture to scare our sensitivities away from where they naturally would've been. In this way, all discussion of child sexuality as a part of a child's physical being, manifesting a great deal of their humanity, has been equated inextricably with child sexual abuse instead. "If a child is a sexual being," so goes the popular opinion, "whether sexually active or not, the child is beyond help, and more likely to be raped or sexually exploited." But since every child is sexual by nature, expressing it to varying degrees, and child sex abuse is still a relative rarity by comparison, this is hardly an appropriate conclusion.

Adults attempt to eradicate the existence of a child's sexuality so as to protect them from themselves as well as predators, and make deviant a child's natural sexual exploratory behavior all as the price for protection against those who are truly deviant. So the only image we are fed is that of the child as a porcelain doll who feels not, thinks not, and perhaps only breathes so that in life they may give adults something to protect. In this way, a child's humanity has been taken away every time their human drives are equated with deviance. It seems the western world has no problem with stripping the humanity off a child though, just so long as the boy or girl keeps their clothes on for it. 

Agreeing to Disagree?

People tell me I fail to agree to disagree, and I tell them it's because I have principles--not to my own point of view, but to the truth, whatever it may be. I have too much respect for the truth to accept that I'm right when I could be wrong, or that others are right when they are wrong. Agreeing to disagree only creates an impasse in a social dialogue. It shuts down all communication, and ends all progress towards the truth. It is an excuse to leave the room when one's ego can not submit itself. But a line must be drawn between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, on any social issue of disagreement, and if there is no one solution, progress towards one is all that is needed. Without progress, we are merely in perpetual disagreement.

Agreeing to disagree, as a solution, is motivated by the supposition that warfare and hatred are avoided only when parties agree that everyone is wrong, and right, as if coming away with a mutual misunderstanding of each other is the only preferable solution. It's an excuse to give up the quest for understanding when the terrain gets difficult, to give up at the precise moment that we really ought to be convinced if we are wrong or convincing the opposition if we are right. A stalemate is not a win for either side, it just means that both sides have delayed losing until another date. It is a prolonged lack of progress, because no one is right when everyone is right.

Only when someone is convinced of something can progress resume, otherwise, it's a perpetual stall. Disagreement is acceptable only because it is unavoidable, but we have to recognize that perpetual disagreement is a stalemate, and not a win. We can't accept perpetual disagreement as a solution in and of itself, or else we fall victim to apathy. If the fate of the world rested in the balance, an agreement to disagree about a problem or solution offers no solution and no progress towards one, and only gives us a good feeling about our lack of ability to admit where we are wrong. There are always things, even small things, we can agree on, and when we agree to disagree, we kill off our opportunity to agree on anything else but that.

Someone is always right, at least in part, and someone is always wrong, at least in part. There is no convincing me that we are "both right" when one of us is clearly wrong. Let history be our dialectic and rationality be our tool. If I am wrong, I will accept it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what I have to give up, and you may go glory in yourself in your victory. You have my permission to do so, just as I would expect you to accept it where you are wrong, at least in part. This is preferable, because agreeing to disagree is more about maintaining ego than arriving at an approximation of the truth, whether one exists or not. Ego is an impediment to rationality, not an impetus of it. Ego is the impetus of ambition, and when tested by reason, the result is progress.

On Lying to Children

We teach children not to lie. We teach them that lying is an act of cowardice and an affront to the dignity and respect that others deserve, so of course we feel comfortable lying to children. We actually seem to enjoy holding the truth over them, just out of reach. We invest energy and years into feeding their delusions only because they are willing to accept what is being told to them. This is their nature, as is human nature when sources beyond our direct involvement or understanding (the media, government, laws...etc.) dictate how we are to think. But how much more human potential could be unlocked if we valued the truth as much as we value maintaining a child's delusions?

The child molester lies to his victim to gain access to their trust, but just imagine what that child would do in that situation if the child molester had told the kid the truth upfront. Image if what society told our trusting children was the truth also, and what kind of change that next generation could bring about in the world as a result of knowing the truth. If the truth could save a child from trusting a child molester, then truth could save a child from trusting our kindly police, teachers, parents, and society in general as immediately. Imagine for a second how many children would be saved. Imagine how many could be saved from committing the hypocrisies of adulthood if they were told as children to loathe corporate and political hypocrites as much as they are told to fear "strangers." 

The next time someone respects a child's dignity, it will be because they will be telling them the truth. And while it's true that "the truth hurts," how much pleasure do lies, sarcasm, and delusions bring? How much disillusionment and disengagement could be spared in our young adults if as children they were reared from the start to know how the world is and what it will take to change it? Imagine how many children could be saved from learning the lies of our fast-money, sex-obsessed, violent, materialist, culture of selfishness and sin from all those back-window sources, if we as adults could be there at the front door to greet them with the truth when they asked for it? How many could be spared the draconian sentences of the law for naively exposing themselves to each other if they could be told upfront how the law does more to punish them than it does to protect them? 

Empowerment is the enemy of ignorance, and it is given with the truth. It does no child any good to have the truths of life withheld from them, even the most unfriendly truths. For instance, everyone says "death is a part of life," but no one wants to accept that a child of theirs is ever going to die. People either deny to themselves the fact that children are living entities capable of death, or they deny to themselves and to their children the fact that living things have to die, in order to keep their emotions on the issue intact. They have to lie to themselves to justify stripping the humanity away from a child in the process of protecting that child's delusions. Delusions that keep the child a corporate slave, for instance, do little to nothing to empower them, no matter how much "girl power" or "guns and ammo" you get them drunk on, but the truth will always set them free. 

Every lie to a child is also a lie to the one perpetuating the lie. The one confusing the maintenance of ignorance for the "safeguarding of innocence" is lying to herself. The liar is only safeguarding themselves from their own anxiety. The liar is only safeguarding their authority and control over a child's will born out of their fear of the world. Conversely, the one telling the truth to the child is the only one doing everything the liar has convinced herself she is doing. The one telling the truth is actually the one doing the protecting, respecting, and sparing of the child from grief. If a child is capable of asking a question, they are capable of hearing the truth as assuredly as they are capable of hearing a lie. The air does not discriminate one from another. 

Malala Yousafzai

"I don't mind if I have to sit on the floor at school. All I want is education. And I'm afraid of no one." --Malala Yousafzai

In taking someone's life, a bullet also attempts to kill their conviction, but only succeeds when they're not in possession of the truth. 

Get well soon Malala. 

The Child In Distress

Parents and professionals who continue to fall prey to cheap tabloid journalism have learned nothing from the childhood tale of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." In the "child in distress" narrative perpetuated in our culture, children are constantly prey to whatever new scary apparition appears on the horizon, and everything must be sacrificed to keep them safe from the next "flying inevitable". One can scarcely go through ten minutes of media without being bombarded by a child in distress. This repetitive narrative of the child in distress, however, only drives the same psychological niche for adults as the "damsel in distress" once did for the chauvenist culture, and is just as flimsy a vehicle.

Being concerned about the actual hazards a child may immediately encounter is crucial to human survival, but we seem to think being afraid of the foretold but non-existent "wolves in the fold" has something to do with it as well. It doesn't. It's a justification we created for ourselves. In general, those who are in their own minds powerful like to perpetuate fantasies of their own usefulness, stemming from arrogance. It doesn't matter who that powerful source is or whether that usefulness is needed, natural, or man-made. For adults, that fantasy manifests itself when we make ourselves feel useful for slaying the demons in our own heads out to possess our children (which probably don't pose any immediate threat to justify such a reaction), regardless of whether such a crusade is actually useful. 

It is hardly a revelation, as Nietzsche and Rousseau described the arrogant fantasy of the powerful in terms of social class in the 19th century, and Mill and Wollstonecraft in terms of indefensible sexism in the 19th and 18th century respectively. But I equivocate it now toward all adults who still maintain this ideology of superiority over all age groups below them despite hundreds of years of evolution on the "dignity of difference" between class, race, and sex. Why the feminists in particular ignored the similarity between the "child" and "damsel" "distress narratives" when they hurled criticism at the old self-serving male fantasy only speaks volumes about the limits of feminist critique. After all, women are adults too, and are served by the repetition of the "child in distress" narrative just as much as men are, if not more.

Instead, the myth of some "age determinism" of superiority and inferiority continues without reproach, with the justification that children ought to aspire to the adult example and adults ought to aspire to the child's. It is just assumed, by adults first and then by children, that this is a beneficial co-dependence between the age groups and that it is necessary, but it is neither. It's not instinct. It's in fact a self-serving ideology on behalf of those who created it--the powerful, the adults. It is created out of adult-centric culture. 

It's easy to see how superiority theories like this breed only inter-group contempt. While aspiring to the adult example as they are expected, children are taught to despise their childish nature, and while aspiring to the child's "innocence" as they are expected, adults are taught to despise their "adultish" nature. Neither is expected to appreciate who and what they are at either end of the developmental timeline, and they take their induced self-loathing out on the other group, be them perceived as superior or inferior. Sentimental sloganeering is constantly depicting children as "wide eyed" and "innocent," and proposing that if only adults could be like that, all our world dilemmas could be solved. While this is hardly convincing, it is pervasive, because adults and children alike will naturally seek out the positive traits of the other for their own sake, and condemn the negative traits of their opponent for their opponent's sake.

So I don't like to ever say one group is better than another group, because typically the group that assumes it is better is only better because it alone set the standard by which "betterness" is tested. Adults have always been powerful. They've always set the standards by which betterness is tested, so by their might alone, they are superior. And what have they done with their power? They've declared that only they are capable of using the power they've granted to themselves, and they remind themselves of this by reproducing the child in distress narrative.

But does not assuming that children are capable threaten to become an even worse imposition on children than assuming that they are incapable? After all, children and adults are different, you say, and wouldn't imposing the adult world onto children be just as bad as imposing the will of adults over them onto them? That kind of thinking, while overtly condemning ageist imposition, further establishes systemic ageist inequality. It is like dropping a weight down on one of two otherwise "conceptually" equal scales. To justify legitimate differences, the two must be given two different narratives? That only works when you can be sure you're not inadvertently disenfranchising one's differences and advantaging the other's in your distress narrative. 

Educator John Holt, in Escape From Childhood, wrote on how the assumption of capability in children only opens the doors for those who can, and does nothing to impose on those who can't or won't, so long as the initiative is voluntarily entered into. Right now, children are automatically involuntarily entered into the narrative as pawns in the adult's innocence game, and are thus stripped of their dignity as women once were, and rendered involuntarily defenseless despite their abilities. What in the chauvinist narrative, as it existed, advantaged a woman's dignity? And if you can't answer, ask yourself, what in the adult narrative of the "child in distress," as it exists now, advantages children? The answer is nothing at worse, or a negligible advantage at best, as perhaps one could argue that the "child in distress" narrative "motivates" adults to care about children. But the assumption of their inability affects every child through repression by its involuntary imposition still, while the assumption of a child's potential only affects those who rise to the occasion through voluntary inclusion, and in doing such, is not repression.

Because the adult narrative often disenfranchises youth and solely advantages adults (as it exists for their benefit), it shouldn't be tolerated as the sole paradigm. The narrative should only be justified when the inequalities between the age groups, or gender groups, or race groups, don't "consistently" manifest themselves along traditional power differentials. If the child is "always" the disenfranchised one, the meek one, the one being saved, when positioned in the distress narrative, and the adult is always the one in control, always the one doing the saving, then it is unjust inequality being represented. Likewise it would also would be unjust inequality if, all things being equal, it was assumed that only black children did poorly in school and had to be rescued by whites, or if it was assumed that only women become jeopardized and need to be rescued by men.

Unjust inequality is the imbalance between groups that exists due to human assumption rather than natural occurrence. It is one thing for natural inequalities to present themselves--for a black child to do poorly, for a girl to do poorly, or for a child to be controlled by an adult--but if any of those are the only paradigm ever shown, then one group is being unfairly advantaged while another group is being disenfranchised consistently. Individual variation is a good measure of natural inequality. If individuals vary from person to person, then all are equally being served and all are varying in their response. If a whole swath of people aren't being served to begin with, then there is no variation, just one group advantaging while another group is disenfranchised. That is not an acceptable "difference."

But adults have more self control, you say, and better cognitive skills, and superior strength. Should not adults take the initiative to rescue the weaklings? Of course they should, but only because it is intuitive that those who are strong look out for and protect those who are weak, and not simply because they are adults. If a child or young person happens to be strong and capable enough to take the initiative, why deny them only for not being old enough? To continue to misrepresent strong and capable young people as meek and defenseless only implies that one favors infantilizing them, and all the repercussions that causes, over empowering them, and all the benefits of that.

After all, it's not about believing one group is better than another group, it's about recognizing the differences between the two and affording them respective to their individual ability. The weakness of the adult narrative is that it ignores the possibility that capability is a human trait that everyone possesses to some degree, and instead tries to claim "capability" as its own entirely, and therefore the term "humanity" as well. There is nothing wrong with an adult taking initiative for a child in distress, so long as we recognize that there's also nothing wrong with a child taking responsibility for another child in distress, or an adult in distress, if they are capable of doing so, and we should depict all scenarios accordingly.

The question becomes whether or not children benefit from the adult narrative of "the child in distress," or if they are just the recipients of neutral, natural circumstances. Perhaps adults are inspired in some way from the repetition of the narrative to nurture their children, but even still, this isn't a satisfactory motivation. The best display of the adult's weakness is their need to justify their position of unquestionable authority (their so-called "maturity") by fantasizing about distressed and endangered children. If adults were truly matured, they would feel the requirement and responsibility to nurture the young the young people's sake, without having to resort to storytelling cliches that serve only their personal sense of pride, and ego.

On Pedophilia

Pedo-erotic urges exist in everyone to varying degrees, often subconscious or not strong enough to elicit our attention, but existing nonetheless. It's pretty clear there may even be an evolutionary basis for pedophilia--that men have it in abundance because they need to be attracted to "younger" females who are more fertile for child-rearing--and that we've understood this for a long time without calling it what it is. It's highly likely that if women have a pedophilia strain in them, it's in regards to child-rearing itself. And since there is very little outward distinction in sex physicality between boys and girls, pedophilia may even express itself in contrast to the traditional Kinsey scale of sexual orientation. In any case, we need not feel dirty for this underlying desire so long as we understand the difference between attraction and self control.

Self control may not be something our modern society expects from us as it constantly seeks to cripple our sexual resolve for profit, but it is important for all of us to maintain, pedophile or not. Pedophilia is as human as anything else, for better or for worse, so we need to understand that people only become child molesters when they break the law, regardless of whether they were pedophiles or not. After all, any child who has ever had a crush or an infatuation or attraction to another child below the legal limit is a "pedophile" too, perhaps not clinically, but socially. And that goes for everyone, of every sexuality.

Much of what we call pedophilia in a "clinical" sense though might simply be an untimely pairing of biological directives and modern cultural norms. In the modern world, artificial age limitations have no relation to the biological time clocks we used to observe, when puberty was the final hurdle for procreation. Times may have changed, but kids are still biologically capable of reproducing after puberty. It's a fact of nature, no matter how inconvenient it may be to our modern sensibilities. Wait a while and our sensibilities may change again.

But while the scathing vitriol regarding pedophilia is allowed to rage unmitigated, how rational are the sensibilities we actually defend? That old-time "final hurdle" of sexual cognizance is creeping toward the middle-aged and upwards, where people often have to resort to costly medications to even achieve arousal. And as if to compensate, we add further insult to nature by denying even the existence of child and adolescent sexuality when it is biologically in its prime. Youth can't participate legally because we keep them from knowing the rules socially, so this creates an ecological situation perfect for child sexual exploitation to thrive.

It's simply unnatural to bear children as relatively late in life as we do, but we do it because that time period tends to be more stable and secure for child-rearing in our middle-class culture. It's also simply unnatural to deny all children and adolescents their sexual cognizance, but we do it because we want to maintain their ignorance and prolong their potential victimization, which serves us as adults. We subjugate youth by forcing their abstinence and dehumanize them by re-classing their biological drives as dangerous promiscuity, and we do it because we want to punish the rapists among us--the adults. And since "no punishment is enough" for the adults who commit these crimes, the only ones who end up adequately paying the price for the adult evils are the children themselves, once they too step over the line with other kids. There are just as many 5 year old sex offenders as there are 55 year old sex offenders*. There is no distinction.

And our sentiments remain intact, and so does every child's ignorance. Rape and biology go together better than rape and morality, and we let morality dictate what is biological now. We seem to think that because the worst among us might rape children, all children must be subject to forcible abstinence under penalty of law. So once suppressed in our youth, our immoral biology then continues to ride under the surface of our so-called "civilized" appetites. I'd even take it a step further and say that so much of what we consider to be female sexual objectification is actually very childish in appearance. The modern idealized female form, with its emphasis on smooth skin, thin limbs, and wide eyes, is an attempt to transplant the features of a child into those of a legally and culturally acceptable adult.

And as to the sexual preference for youth and its appropriateness by itself (outside its connection to molestation), where do those standards originate anyways? The same society that actively encourages our sexual attraction to automobiles, food, alcohol, and any object that can be bought and sold, is then going to tell us what sexual attractions are "unnatural?" Just compare one unnatural urge with another one. Our culture is still youth-based, otherwise our economy would hinge on the attractiveness of saggy, middle-aged adults. Even as much as the middle-aged, middle-class adults would like to think this is the case, it is not.

How many times in suggestive advertising have you seen a woman with batted eyes and a finger to her lips in that "opps, silly me" stance? Is that not childish in appearance  Is that not what Nabokov might have called, the "nymphet" amok in the eye? In general, the whole "cute kid" gimmick in films and advertising speaks to these underlying desires en mass. "Cute" and "sexy" stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain biochemically, as do psychoactive substances and food. The whole practice of schoolmasters flogging kids on the ass was a highly sexually charged release of the adult's pent up aggression, and many still swear by it, so is that not clinical pleasure seeking? Afterall, is not rape more concerned with conquest than sexuality? Do typical adults not dream of child conquest as they go about their business with children in tow?

Of course they do, they just don't realize that it is a desire one and the same with that of child molesters--the only difference being that child molesters actually do what the typical adult only dreams of doing. One doesn't have to be a pedophile to harm children or to dream of doing it, but anyone who actually does harm a child sexually is automatically branded one. Rape is an atrocity no matter where it crops up and who the victim or perpetrator is or what their sexuality is, but rape can and does exist contrary to sexuality, and outside of pedophilia people understand this. Pedophilia is an attraction, rape is a loss of self control. Child molestation exists whether pedophilia does or not, and likewise. Child molestation is solely a product of  a weak resolve, and still pedophilia exists whether or not self control is present.

This is also true when speaking about the popular assumption of a pedophile's weak self control, and where that expectation actually originates. Heterosexuals have the luxury of being able to express their sexuality freely and openly. They grow accustomed to doing it and assume it is the same for everyone, but it isn't. They make the conclusion that repressed sexual feelings will inevitably lead to harmful consequences, but it isn't necessarily so. Fringe sexualities with a sound mind actually have to learn self control in more constant, realistic terms, so they may actually have a higher degree of it than their "normal" peers, who are accustomed to building erections at the sight of beer bottles and automobiles. If most straight men don't rape feminine-shaped cars or curvy bottles, then it's possible even fewer "pedophiles" rape children.

Those who do though, are deserving of the worst.

* United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2000). Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement. 8 (Figure 6). Retrieved July 19, 2012.

Hating Kids is Child Molestation

Think about it. Sexual molestation is an unspeakable evil, and society agrees. They take the obviously unquestionable moral tautology of detesting child sexual abuse, and then feel it justifiable that anything but outright detestation of kids is "unacceptable" on the grounds that "wanting nothing to do with them" reduces the likelihood of their abuse, or something. This means that it's actually preferable now for a man (in particular) to hate kids than to show them any compassion whatsoever, professional or otherwise, related or not, on the grounds that any compassion coming from a man to a child is a sign of inevitable sexual abuse in the works. Truth be told though, how it protects children to encourage the social disregard of them by half the adult population is beyond my reasoning capacity.

It's a weird situation of society wanting to "have its cake and eat it too." Do they want us men to hate kids or do they want us to agree child sexual abuse is wrong? Is not sex abuse predicated on harm, and harm stemming from lack of concern? If we're not supposed to show any compassion toward kids while they are unharmed, why does the presence of harm have to change those expectations? And if we're really supposed to hate kids, wouldn't it make sense that we shouldn't also care about whether they are being abused or not? See, I just get confused about what the standards are, because if it were up to me, I'd prefer to live in a world where I can wholeheartedly be against child sexual abuse and still not be expected to callously disregard that which I don't want to see come to harm.

I'd prefer to live in a world where a child's right to be nurtured by an individual was not dependent on whether society tolerates the sex of that nurturer, but that isn't the world we've allowed thus far. It happens every time the insinuation is made that the relationship of the man to a child is inevitably coercive and harmful, whether it's a professional relationship, family bond, or even a friendship. Every time that insinuation is made, even if in jest, a loving, committed adult man has convinced himself to turn away from a child in need of a role model. This is unfortunate.

Many men will go so far out of their way to prove to society that they absolutely, fundamentally, have no interest in children, that they actually start to sound more like the stereotypical child molester who only thinks about child abuse when he looks at a child. They've been scared into submission and conditioned from the time they were children themselves to withdraw, to fold at the sight of a child, to shirk them off, and now society wonders why so many do exactly that? Men are condemned for "stooping so low" as to be parents. They are harassed by paranoid bypassers when they take their own children out to the park. They are both lauded and chastised for running from their natural responsibilities so consistently and with such venom (to be undervalued when being a proper father and dismissed completely when complying with expectation not to be), that so many do run.

So many want nothing to do with children as a result, and the expectation that men are to keep a distance from every child maintains itself, spreads to the new generation, and society is content with it. They are content with depriving children their positive male role models. Our society delights in it, even if they don't recognize their own delight. They please themselves on the notion that a man can only bring harm to a child, and they seem to think the next generation ought to feel the same. It is the tyranny of the present once again over the future of mankind, and regardless of our intentions now, won't last. Bigotry never does.

Anyone, be them child molester or not, who looks upon a child and can only see the destruction of that child, is the equal of a child molester in sickness, and so is the society that holds such an expectation to begin with. The men who don't run, who don't submit to that sickness, and still do what is right for kids regardless of what anyone expects of them, are among the most commendable human beings on the planet, and unfortunately, the most under-appreciated.

An Open Appeal

An open appeal, an earnest request:

Life & Style, in the process
of harming a child.

For those who advance themselves at the expense of others in any form... for those who seek to own humanity... for those who hold one group of humans to a different standard than another for reasons having nothing to do with just desert or character... for those who lie to themselves in order to justify their own deeds... for those who work to separate humanity from its children... for those who count out a group of people from sympathy because they are "minority case" victims...

For those who peddle fear and paranoia to scapegoat and magnify the "easy targets" while protecting the real oppressors... for those who cause great unintentional harm with the best intentions... for those who devalue a human being (a man, woman, boy, or girl) only when it is socially acceptable to do it... for those who mock and ridicule the weakened man for the glory of the stronger... I see the mark of the beast on your smiling faces. Congratulations!

If you are accomplishing your directive in life by doing any of the above, then congratulations to you, antichrists of the world. Congratulations on your infamy. I laugh in the maw of your glory in our culture, for yours is the resting place of history's hell-mouth. The derision of people like you will forever be rolled across the tongues of your own progeny. Congratulations on your personal alignment with all mankind has determined to be vile and unjust. The fight for human dignity could always use a nemesis like you to make an example.

But if that is not what you desire, you who revel in any of the above, then you must turn and become purified by reason, justice, and the love of human dignity before you can be considered a person. You are not a good person in this world by your own decree, but by your works.

As damnation follows infamy, vindication follows integrity, and the choice is yours.

The Tethered Master

If only the mature people could see how incredibly childish they are. In the back of an adult's mind, they seem to know it implicitly, but always defer to the cultural expectation of the authority placed on them. The expectation they use as a catch-all justification for all age-iniquity is that the adult is limited by their responsibility, tethered by their professionalism, constrained by their worry, and tied down to the standards of conduct and pretense, and that for some reason, are and should continue to be, the masters of this planet solely by virtue of this fact.

They are slavish masters, it would seem, if that makes any sense. The one who is the most tethered, the most constrained, the most limited, is the one who grants him or herself the most unconditional respect. How much ego does it take to crown oneself master of a planet and then call children "egotistical" for claiming ownership of every toy they see? It takes the full maturity of a person's faculties to even know how to stretch logic and justification so far that even carrying a self-applied burden can somehow now become a "virtue," and yet it's what adults do every day. They anoint themselves "masters" to make themselves feel good about being slaves. It's childish human nature through and through.

They envy childhood and demean children. They go from believing fairy stories to looking down on the creatures who do, and instead grow up to indulge themselves in their own fairy stories--fairy stories of the child molester behind the face of every man, fairy stories about the constant hidden menace to their young in the world, fairy stories about the hazards of the air, the sunlight, the water, the ground below their feet, the sky above their heads, and the immanent destruction of what they love in that space. They'd sooner take their child out of that space if they were told by their cable news parents that "air" was deadly.

They're pacified by their parent media, like children, are told when to feel good, when to feel sad, and when to feel outraged at all the right parts in the fairy story, by musical cue, by expert editing--close faces, black and white, blurry images--and it works on them. They gasp, they panic, they clutch their children close and push others away at the behest of an invisible force, and all when they are told to, and all for the sake of saving themselves from the tedium of being "adult," to justify such a malignant position of authority because they know without it they would have no reason to do so.

They dread their quickening decay, their inevitable death, and in so doing decide to deny life to the young to spare them of any and all fate the same. They manufacture inhuman hardship for children in the effort to maximize their little one's comfort, convince themselves they are in the right, and then pat themselves on the back for their so-called selfless ingenuity in fleeing from the fear and guilt that rides their lives for doing it. That is the modern human adult at play--a child having his way when he's wrong.

Adults set the standards by which they judge themselves and others, and by that fact alone, are powerful. It is arrogance, but it is human. Being tethered to responsibility does not equate to virtue, as the Sword of Damocles teaches us, but an arrogant human mind in seeking to justify its doomed and slavish position of personal limitation, will ascribe to it "virtue" to save itself. Likewise, being carefree as children are said to be (which also is not the case, children are far from "care free") does not equate to its own assigned virtue. Once again, an arrogant human mind in seeking to justify the deprivation of rights and dignity to children, will ascribe to childhood the virtue of innocence, and the lack of virtue when comparing it to that of an adult's.

That is to say, an adult looks at a child's reality by way of distance and when in comparison, assigns their own reality to virtue by deeds (for them, a superior method of human appraisal, because children are supposedly deemed incapable of willful deeds), and assigns a child's to virtue by its mere existence--as one subservient, humble, and incapable of willful deeds (ie. innocence). These are not truths about either reality, but arrogant presumptions made by adult psychology. They are human, and therefore childish, things to presume. They are a part of human nature, but they are not justifiable.

Happiness

From now on, I'm going to be happy with what I have, and never seek anything more.

Entitlement and Perseverance

People say that we millennials are an entitled generation, and I think it's an accurate description. We grew up under the mantra of entitlement and saw the world at our feet, and now that we are entering the job market, still expect it to be there. We won't settle for less because we expect the most. We expect fairness, honesty, and equal opportunity, and because we are so disposed to demand such things, we are envied by those who were born having to settle for whatever they could get, and from that envy comes their damning characterizations of us. Of course not all people born between the years 1980 and 1995 are this way, but since this is how the same adults have chosen to represent us, we're obliged to indulge them.

We'll graduate from the top schools and go on aid missions around the globe, have resumes that stretch a page by the time we're fifteen, but we don't know the basics of punching a time clock, showing up and putting out, day in and day out. We're more special than ordinary people. Mowing the lawn for cash was never going to get us into Princeton, so we never did it. We then expect a title and a name on the door right out of the production line degree mill we just graduated from, and because those same adults always told us it was all within reach since we were small, we're demanding it now. Some of us are actually finding it, and some are facing the reality we always knew was there (despite the adults' best efforts to hide it from us).

And it's all thanks to the notion that "Every child should go to college." It's all thanks to the notion that "children who don't go to college turn out to be sleeping in the streets." When every child goes to college, we turn into a society of a skills abundance in limited use. It's all thanks to that notion that "no child should have to face adversity." It's all thanks to the concept that "children are innocent, and therefore must be spared from the adult world." I say, welcome to the new, happier, freer adulthood, where anyone can be anything they want to be--born not out of austerity, but from the dream of abundance--and pursuing not society's destruction (for once), but its constant creation and rebirth.

We of course remember those who came before us (...those who would criticize our sense of entitlement now), and struggle to live up to their esteemed shadow:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for angry fix.

--Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"  (1956)

But with entitlement comes responsibility, and we just have higher aspirations than being "destroyed by madness" or settling for less. We have careers to think about.

Now I still believe in reality, despite how I was raised--a reality where nobody cares about anyone, and least of all me. At the same time, I think there are still lessons to be learned from this cultural shift--from those who settle for whatever they can get to those who believe the choice is theirs--and that is of perseverance. Where the best among the youth of the past were having good times, destroying all modernity, the best of this generation are embracing modernity, and contributing for the good of society--not because they have to, but because they want to.

No child should "ever" have to face disappointment, they said, so I refuse to be disappointed. No matter what disappointment rears up, I refuse to let it put me down like it did those before me, because "greatness" is inevitably within my grasp, as it is for everyone equally, eventually. Reality, bring on the world.

Real Gender Equality

Seeing as it is International Women's Day, I figured I should clarify my idea of gender equality. It goes a little something like this: If males get it, females get it, and if females get it, males get it. For everything that exists, for every statement that can be made that includes any connection to males or females, of any age, the syntax should not be any different with the word "male," "men," or "boys," than it would be with the words "female," "women," or "girls." That is all there is to gender equality. If there is an International Women's Day, and it has widespread publicity, the same should apply to International Men's Day. If there is a "Girl Effect," there should be a "Boy Effect." If there is a "Women's History Month," there should be a "Men's History Month." There should be no "women and children first" policies any more than there should be "men and children first" policies. This is what the feminists envisioned--total 1:1 equality across the board, not just "rough equivalence." But is that what we have?

Gender equality should be like writing a novel full of stereotypical characters, changing the sex of every single one of them, and coming out with a story no different than before. Gender equality means that all human beings are people regardless of their sex, that sex is a biological assignment and gender is a cultural construction. There could be infinite genders, even if there are only two biological sexes, and none of those genders should be expected to correspond to any particular sex. Gender equality is not about erasing gender, just about erasing the barriers that hold individuals back from participating in the varieties of human expression, and having their needs responded to. It means that alimony, child support, and full custody, ought to be rewarded to stable men in a divorce once in a while. It means that men ought to be able to mentor girls just as women can mentor boys, because one's biological sex shouldn't determine what child can benefit from what adult.

Gender equality is about being able to say: "X's are typically strong, nurturing, aggressive, and emotional," and seeing that any sex, any gender, could substitute for X without causing you confusion. You should have no idea of what gender is being implied by the words "strong," and "aggressive," any more than "nurturing," and "emotional." If you truly believe in gender equality, these are qualities that any human being can possess. Gender equality does not mean biological sexes are the same, it just means that as far as culture is concerned, they should matter no more than eye color. A blue eye is different than a brown eye, surely, but does it matter what color it is so long as it sees? What is true for eye color should be what is true for gender. The sexes are different, but they should not be valued any differently. I support this extreme equality because it can be used as a thinking tool to disassemble all destructive social evaluations of males and females.

And valued differently they are, as the fetishization of the emasculation of men and boys carries on in popular culture, and the sexual objectification of women and girls continues to persist as well. If true gender equality is what we are striving for, then I will not rest until the fetishization of the devaluation of women and girls is carried out, and the sexual objectification of men and boys begins in full too. Since the existence of feminism does nothing to devalue the importance of men and boys, the same should be true in the reverse, and there should be no "feminism" without also a "masculism." There should be no double standards for men and women, at all--women should earn what men earn for the same positions and the same productivity (whatever the criterion is), and at the same time, women should not be permitted to abuse men, and there should be "Men's" shelters just as there are "Women's" shelters. What one gets, the other should get equally as much, across the board.

We could also just treat people with dignity, uphold that they are valuable, and deserve respect, based on who they are, and not what they are, but that has so far been outside our grasp as a culture. Seriously, if we can't say "International Human's Day" because to do so would be to strip away the significance of the day with a vague "human" label, then "feminism" has a long way to go before it can be considered truly pro-equality. Either we surrender to the total equality formula, stripping everything down to a vague and therefore meaningless "human" level, or we allow only equal distribution of resources and values to both sexes. Because I believe that males and females are equal, but different, I prefer the later.

Men and Children Can Coexist

I reject traditional masculinity and promote child guidance instead, and does it make me virtuous? Does that make me the ideal man? One brimming with patience, sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and love? Not in the eyes of a society where it would be more acceptable and profitable that I should be the man they can best sell to, and though I've done nothing, be kept from even sitting next to children on airplanes based on my sex alone. The sensitive man is not any more profitable than the man who complains about such sexist discrimination, for both are cast with the same suspicion of deviance just for being what they are--men who question social prejudice in one way or another rather than just accept it as men are expected to, and as many do. Where do we fit in as men when it comes to children?

The sensitive men are feared at best, ridiculed, emasculated, and then outright hated at worst. Those who can't understand our lifestyle look at us with a light-hearted condescension at first, jokingly making us surrender to judgment for the crime of heterosexual, and homosexual, male non-conformity. When I refuse to let it get to me, and carry on anyway because the world needs more compassion in it from our side towards children (which the world itself also says is lacking), the fearful among them unleash their ignorance completely--as if offended by their own inability to get under my skin--and amp up their assault not with more "efem" jokes, but with real threats. I could be kicked off an airplane simply because I'm a male sitting next to an unattended child and I refuse to move. Now I want to know what impression it is having on children where, wherever they go, they are to see men scatter, or be beaten back with sticks. That's child abuse in my book.

It seems all those who reject the commercially manufactured beer-swigging, sex-crazed lifestyle of the modern man are subject to termination by not only its benefactors but its hive-minded heterosexual adherents, raised to hate children instead, as if that was preferable to loving them. In the eyes of the world, child guidance is not a suitable interest for the modern man, no matter how necessary it is. Men and children however, can coexist in the same world without someone pressing a panic button, because we have existed in the same world for millions of years, even long before people decided to start putting paranoid sexist discrimination before human dignity. When certain people decided to start separating every man from every child, they separated their humanity from themselves. It's time we separated them from their perches. 

Many Shades of Grey?

Anything is justifiable with the words "look at it this way..." but that doesn't make it justified. I am a firm believer in moral objectivism--that the activities of human beings are either right or wrong, but that we are all just incapable of grasping the true difference. We instead invent this concept of "the many shades of grey between black and white" to justify our actions (no matter what they are) in the event that our conscience is unable to weigh the pros and cons of our activities or those of others. This is how we can get away with judging the deeds of others with more impunity than our own actions, based almost entirely on our perceptions of other people rather than the facts of their circumstance. This "many shades of gray" theory gives us the benefit of the doubt no matter what, and allows us to search out justifications for our actions no matter what the consequences of those actions were. The reason I don't subscribe to this "moral subjectivism" is because the worst among us--child molesters even--are able to use it to find moral justification for actions that our society convicts them for. Now ask yourself, are you no better than a child molester?

It is a fact that there are circumstances in life where morality is ambiguous to us, where the pros and cons of doing something force us to choose the "lesser of two evils," or force us to choose randomly because the consequences seem either morally neutral or are too large or small to conceive, or have their effects at a great distance from us. But let's be honest, when people insist that "there are many shades of grey," what they are really saying is that there is only grey. If even minute immoralities can be shirked off as possibly containing ambiguities, and therefore be rendered "neutral," then the same could logically be said about large immoralities (which is why we have justifications for murder, war, and even child abuse), so what is really meant is that all actions are ambiguous, if only because it is the logical extension, unless one wants to start deliniating what is ambiguous and what isn't (which is just to be acquiescing to moral objectivism anyways).

So instead, the subjectivist then jumps to label an action as "more acceptable" simply due to the particulars of who is doing the action and what they were doing it for, or some other immaterial criterion we can establish as a judgment point in our own minds that is separate from its ambiguous consequences. That way, that which is more divorced from our actions directly, that which is the work of the majority, that which is not done by intent (or by accident), that which is performed by people of authority (political or professional), and that which we do (as opposed to the like actions of others), all becomes "more acceptable," simply because it tends to be the case in nature, regardless of the very real consequences of those actions. People and intentions become more important than actions and consequences.

It is as if we are to accept, and eat, the spoiled fruit off the ground just because the picker had "intended" to pick it when ripe and just forgot. "Oh well, we say, the picker is a professional and he didn't mean to let our food spoil. It wasn't his fault, therefore, his food is safe to eat." It may sound like a straw-man criticism, but consider what professionals are allowed to get away with doing unintentionally in real life, particularly towards minors, under the premise of "they didn't do it intentionally." Good intentions aren't good enough. That which is rotten, is rotten, regardless of whether it was intended to be ripe when served. Likewise, psychiatrists who intend to treat teen depression with a prescription for a series of suicide pills, have produced rotten fruit, regardless of their intentions to treat and heal. We can't seperate or ignore the negative consequences of actions simply because we trust the person who did the action, and likewise, can't overemphasize wrongdoing simply because we don't trust them. Either way, we are letting perspectives govern consequences, and in the case above, putting psychiatrists before clients, or perpetrators before their victims.

Almost all actions carry with them positive consequences and negative consequences, so on the surface it may appear that morality is subjective, and that all judgment about right and wrong "depends on how you look at it." The problem with this view is that it inevitably forces you, the subjectivist, to concede to a new set of moral laws which may not be so tolerant to your intuitions--the laws of nature--where the strong cut down the weak, the majority cuts down the minority, the powerful cut down the impoverished, the old cut down the young, and the young cut down the old--where the affluent justify the ruin of those who suffer at a distance, and where each of us escapes all judgment from every "ambiguous" deed and non-deed simply because the court in our own minds is always adept at finding justification and absolution from the feeling of guilt, regardless of consequence. This is the new moral law that you inevitably subscribe to when you accept the "many shades of grey" illustration, because this is what we see happen in the world when culture accepts the subjective nature of morality as if it was unsubstantiated truth (by its own subjective principles). We are forced to base our lives around the law, which allows for us to justify our immorality so long as doing such is legal, and so long as there is a benefit (no matter how minute) stemming from our actions (no matter how destructive). So long as all actions are considered "grey," there is no right and wrong, there is just "grey," for everything and everyone.

It is understandable that in circumstances of ambivalence or ambiguity we're forced to make a choice and accept whatever consequences or benefits come from the action. What is not understandable though is when we have to justify to ourselves that the action we were forced to take ultimately was the correct one, or at least, the better choice, after the fact. It seems merely self-serving, a quest to save the ego from itself so as not to subject it to the fact that the "lesser of two evils" we just chose was still in fact "evil." If it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation beforehand, and you choose "do," you're still as damned after the fact as you were before, let's not forget. Just because you chose doesn't mean you haven't produced damnation on yourself. It's better to accept the consequences of your actions, accept that your choice had repercussions, than to carry on as if you just averted catastrophe simply because you made a choice. Who can we pass judgment on? No one, because no one is qualified. All we can do is do the best we can and accept the consequences that come inevitably from "our best guess."

If an action has more negatives than positives, it is not "a shade of grey," it is morally wrong, and sometimes, things that are morally wrong are necessary to do, but their necessity doesn't make them right. If an action has more positives than negatives, it is merely "less wrong," or morally acceptable at best. Only actions that produce no negative consequences whatsoever can be considered unquestionably morally right (if they even exist), and only actions that produce no positive consequences are unquestionably morally wrong. What those morally right and wrong actions are, though, is difficult for anyone to say because the human mind is governed by instinct, emotion, reason, culture, legality, and a whole host of other characteristics that influence our perspective. Without these forces pulling us in one direction or another, we'd be able to possess the purely logical expression that morality is, that thing that we are all just stumbling around trying to get a handle on and align our intuitions to. Mankind invents its own moral laws to try to simulate the perfect "form" of morality strewn from our intuition (as evolved in us via instinct) and expressed as culture, but all man-made systems fail to express it completely, in one simple formula, the fact of what is "black" and what is "white." So we have "grey" only because we don't want to face the fact that we often don't know the difference.

We are all children.

Predator Panic

Our modern culture is fixated on child molestation, predation, kidnapping, and pedophilia. It is obsessed with the concept of children getting picked off and preyed upon, and there is no low the media won't stoop to, no far-fetched connection they won't try to harmonize with, and no half-baked conclusion they won't try to draw, in order to connect child molestation to every depiction or reference to children and childhood in popular culture, whether real or fake. Children in fiction as well as life seem to exist solely to perpetuate the narrative of "predation and rescue," or "child in distress," if only to soothe the guilty adult conscience for the state of society, but the repetition of this narrative has its unforeseen consequences.

Children and youth still have no standing or legitimacy for themselves under the predation narrative, because it exists for the benefit of adults. Such thoughts do not flow from the spring of respect or dignity, and only produce the tainted waters of iniquity and conceit. It may even get to the point where we can't bring children to mind without conjuring the imagery of abduction and molestation, abuse and dismemberment. Such a schema is not child-centric, or even child concerned, since it only exists for the adult's purposes. Predator panic is a function of selfishness. It soothes the adult mind and guilt. It's about justifying the decadence of adult indulgence and maintaining adult control of youth. Why do you think vigilantes latch onto it with such zealotry and demagoguery? Selfishness is their raison d'etre. Why do you think victimology is such a profitable market? It is a sickness, and many have already fallen prey to it. But I suspect its time is slipping away, and soon the tide may turn and we may see a generation more immune to the sickly fascinations that prey upon the mental defects of this current one.

This molestation fixation is neither healthy, nor does it benefit children anything. In fact, it may even be one causal factor influencing our reactions toward minor misconduct, particularly toward minor sexual expression, formed in zealotry and expressed with draconian simplicity. Easing the worried mind, troubled by the constant thought of destruction, becomes the highest priority when all we are lead to believe is that destruction is everywhere. The moment we lose sight of reality, we lose a hold of our future. And if children are our so-called future, inhabiting reality, you'd think it would behoove us to keep our minds firmly rooted, rather than let them drift to fantasize the inevitable destruction of children and childhood at every turn of the page, every flip of the channel, and every thought in the head. Some are rooted well, still others are out to sea.

In any case, fixation on child endangerment by its ceaseless repetition in our thoughts and culture does nothing to stem the tide on actual child abuse, which has no total abatement, nor does it actually inform us of the reality of it. Instead, this fixation only contributes toward the increasing infantilization and marginalization of all young people by the paranoid and restless adult psyche. Teachers may have their own "teacher's pet" without gaining the assumption of pedophilia. Coaches may still pat their players on the back without gaining the same assumption about their motivations for doing such. Boys may still be allowed to perform in Catholic church choirs, and sign up for Boy Scouts without the need for viewer-hungry tabloid journalists to assume potential child abuse connections between everyone involved. Girls may be allowed male tutors or mentors without the need for bureaucratic entanglements -for if we were to suspect all men of being pedophiles when it comes to working with girls, we may as well outlaw every daughter's father, every niece's uncle, or every sister's older brother as well.

When we have broken up enough families though, disallowed enough youth from community outreach organizations, and severed all bonds between adult and child in society, do you think our fearful minds will finally be at ease, even then? Do you think that children will be safe, even then? It takes a perverse mind, a sick mind, to look upon that which has no sexual or abusive context and contrive out of it "sex abuse of children," so even if every draconian reaction were set in stone, that perversity already there would only continue to infect and grow. It takes a healthy mind to look upon things for what they are and see them for what they are--to look upon children and see them as children rather than "potential victims." Children grow into adults, and will serve the future. "Potential victims" only serve the current paranoid adult's darkest fantasies.

Severity over Statistics

I don't believe in putting people down and hiding behind statistics to justify doing it. I despise that mentality of compartmentalizing people by numbers, or assigning respect by numbers, or thinking about people in terms of averages and percents rather than faces and names. Statistics is a tool used to justify the inequality of respect and reverence shown to human variation, particularly in regards to tragedy. It doesn't have to be that way, and it would be great to live in a world where people were people and received the respect or disdain they deserve regardless of what group they belong to and what the average crime rate for that group is, or what the average poverty rate for that group is, or what the average grade point average for that group is...etc.--but sadly, that is not the world we allow ourselves to live in. Individuals get credit or criticism based on the characteristics most common to their group, and statistics makes it possible.

Statistics is often used to engineer equality by pouring resources into a priority group at the expense of the so-called "stronger" group, but social engineering promotes nothing but unequal opportunity--mainstreaming for one, and disenfranchisement for the other. True "equality for all" means exactly that (if one values equality, that is), so you can't both organize to benefit or prioritize one group (ie. women/children/men/wealthy/poor...etc.) at the expense of another group, and still remain an egalitarian. But there's no question that the facts of a situation are indeed the facts--that men earn more than women for instance--but the general facts shouldn't blind us and keep us from respecting and observing that people do exist outside the "average." This we tend to forget as we cater to the mediocrity of the middle. Our minds fall prey to heuristics and stereotypes, ignorance rules the day, and statistics makes it possible. 

Furthermore, if it's wrong to claim about individuals, then it's wrong to claim about groups of those same individuals. Insensitivity is more than just being disrespectful to individuals, it should also include showing disrespect to groups of people. This isn't to say that we should censor ourselves, just that we should not tolerate disrespectful speech, even if the thrust of that disrespect is supported by evidence (statistics). We might agree that saying "Bobby is stupid," is insensitive, but how much less insensitive is saying, "the group that Bobby belongs to ("boys," for example) is a whole batch of stupidity"? We think we're good people when we dodge the bullet of hurting someone's personal feelings as we use statistics to justify our personal prejudices against the group that person belongs to, but it doesn't make it right, or valid, to do such. We ignore individuals and insult groups of humans en mass, and we think these numerical truths we are using to accomplish this categorization are doing society a service. They are most likely not.

I also believe in focusing on severity over statistics. Numbers are used as a form of distancing oneself from tragedy. To headline on "only 20 people killed"  kind of makes whatever happened in the story seem insignificant. That's a lot different than simply saying, "20 people killed." Likewise, if only one kid got raped in a juvenile detention center in the last hundred years, who am I to disqualify the significance of that for the victim by referring back to numbers--by saying, essentially, "well, it wasn't so bad, you were the only one in the last hundred years!" The point being, if it was severe enough, and it hurt the victim, then no other quantity should get in the way of that "fact". Severity over statistics. Bruises over averages. Humans over outliers. Cases over representative samples. People before numbers.

I think this constant need to frame tragedy in a numerical context is a defense mechanism built into us to maintain our personal perspective rather than have it subject to the full weight of the tragedy itself. This is normally supposed to be of great benefit to the human, but in these times of constant information, we find ourselves turning away from tragedy at a rate unseen in human history. When you read something appalling, you automatically search for reasons to discredit what you're reading so as to not have to feel upset over it, even if it's a minuscule piece of information missing, or any tiny part that may not relate to your personal circumstances (so you don't have to believe that it happened).

This is especially true if the victim is not your typical victim (a "man" getting raped, for instance). People only seem to get fired up about things when they fit into a preconceived schema (ie. "women are always victims"), and otherwise ignore and underestimate all else to distract themselves from the validity of the tragedy before them. In all truth, I don't know what is worse, a mind like mine (which tends to take all sources of information at their word), or the multitude of minds that need constant verification for every detail before they feel any human emotion, period.

If you can find a reason not to feel bad about something you see, do you not feel better as a result? You could say then that the reason we study things at all is so we can "feel" in control of a situation we feel powerless about. Instead of feeling that gut reaction of disgust regarding rape, for instance, we study it and put a whole bunch of numbers in our heads to persuade ourselves into thinking of it in terms of percents and averages rather than faces and names. And when we do that, we underestimate the names and faces, particularly those we have cast to the side as "outliers." We create a society, an organization, that caters to the statistical average, and not only ignores the "outlier" but even flat out mocks him, and takes pleasure in his dejected circumstance. The male victim of rape is one such outlier that is routinely mocked and underestimated.

People underestimate the human element in the rightfully quantitative social sciences. I don't. I concern myself with that which people underestimate.

Being a Kid at Heart

I'm going to keep my thoughts succinct this month and perhaps from now on. There is wisdom in "keep it simple, stupid," so here it goes:

Just because marketers and advertisers and other professional experts of divisiveness decide that one object should be marketed to children and another one to adults, doesn't mean it would be wrong or improper for an adult to enjoy something created for children, and children for something made for adults. Otherwise, we are letting marketers and advertisers define our lives and interests, rather than doing it ourselves. It's one thing to subjectively dislike something, but it is quite another thing to do so because someone has told you that to enjoy it would be "immature." What is more immature than letting someone else tell you what "you" are expected enjoy?

Discrediting the validity of what one expects a child to enjoy in the process (as "childish" or immature") demeans children and disqualifies you, and if done to any other group of people, would be called prejudice. Prejudice is an edifice formed by sexism in length, racism in width, and ageism in height. To uphold ageist prejudice over peoples' lifestyles and then be otherwise open-minded, is to be building a structure of prejudice that is very narrow at the base, but still a mile tall. If traditional gender roles are no guideline for individuality, then traditional age boundaries ought to be no guideline either.

There is no shame in being a kid at heart. There are only those who enjoy life and those who don't. You don't need to be "rejuvenated" as an adult to be young, you just need to enjoy life as a child to be truly grown. Age is meaningless.

Cynicism is Asking Questions

It occurs to me that what I've been ranting about here could be considered a form of cynicism--that is, the philosophical belief that underestimates or totally devalues the conventional or prevailing valuations of mainstream culture or times, in regards to a particular virtue. Cynics ask questions about why we value the things that we value, and what good it really does us to value them how we do. For instance, is the inflated caricature of adulthood superiority over adolescents due to the fact of its moral superiority, or is it simply due to the fact that adults have always been the ones drawing the lines? Is the inflated caricature of childhood innocence and purity due to the fact of its moral neutrality, or is it once again due to the fact that adults have always been drawing the lines? Is so-called "parental intuition" so unshakable, so natural, so perfect in our minds that we have to ignore its irrational foul-ups? Is the fetishization of male under-performance really any use in ensuring equality between the sexes? There are countless new values that need to be questioned out there, just as wealth, fame, power, and consumerism all have in their turn.

Modern culture all but instructs us not to question, and many people will call you out as an "extremist giving strength to other extremists" for even dignifying their extremism with a response. Many will stop being your friends when you so much as call into question that which they hold so dear, or at least, that which they want to pretend doesn't exist. I say that not dignifying the gleeful, ignorant, or dishonest statements floating around these days is to be giving them greater potency. It's to be letting them off easy. What harm does questioning extremism do when extremism is flawed by default, especially when one questions it with focused and passionate rational resolve? It is like saying that we must not hurl our poison-tipped arrows at some vicious beast, for to do so will "only make him mad." Why put up with the torments of a vicious beast all your life under your inaction, when you can both "make him mad" and swiftly kill him dead with your words this moment? All the victors of history managed to get things done, despite calls from the crowd to let the extremists off easy.

Cynicism is often thought to be a doctrine of pessimism, when in reality it is the opposite. It could be argued that nothing gives someone a clearer perspective about how to value that which actually needs to be valued, and how to toss off that which in the end is a mere construction of society, than it. People have gone to their deaths or have lived vain lives over ideals that are silly and flimsy, and in the modern world, people have managed to carry out all manner of destruction on premises that are just as silly and flimsy when opened up to simple scrutiny (marriage as an institution, for instance). Writer Lenore Skenazy over on the Free Range Kids website writes endlessly about the ways that society has become destructive toward children in its efforts to mediate their every step and breath, and in so doing, does the world a service every time she questions something. She could be yet another "child defender" and preach protective paranoia with smug self assurance, but instead, she prefers to do parents and the world a service simply by questioning our deepest held prejudices and fears over child safety. The act is a literal pealing back of the eyelids from the realm of an illusion to the world of the causal and the physical, and where consequences matter.

It has been my work to take this line of argument even further--to question not just our valuations of protecting children, but our valuations of children and young people themselves. I've gone on record before in questioning whether or not the standard of beauty in culture necessarily relates to what our commercial-driven media apparatus has been convincing us it is. First and foremost, the female body is no longer a dignified subject matter because of it, and has instead become synonymous with hawking products. That doesn't carry a connotation of beauty in my perspective, although many others have been tricked into thinking as such. I could just as easily though make the argument that children are beautiful--and do it not from a purely "parental perspective", but from a similar exploitative beauty standard perspective as we see in commercial media--and I would be no more wrong. Women are not any standard of beauty and children are not any standard of innocence and optimism. Our valuations on human beings and other entities and objects are not correct simply because we think them.  There was a time when men were considered the standard of beauty (ancient Athens), and children were considered "little savages," for instance. Time changes things, and if you don't think it will, wait another three hundred years.

Those who vigorously defend the endless "innocence" of a child are doomed to see nothing but the infantilization of that child instead, once he or she has grown. Everything we think requires re-thinking and questioning, lest we become stuck in a similar cultural rut--a state of societal arrested development. Learning requires accommodating new information. Stagnation only requires needless oath-taking to age old traditions, premises, and other illusions of value.

Indeed, the greatest personal affirmation is achieved when one decides to shirk off all that is superficial and focus on instead what really matters--whatever that may be for each individual. This was the driving principle behind the existentialists. All that is superficial tends to be what we have in common with everyone else. We all believe children are human beings and should be treated with dignity and respect, so to think ourselves righteous simply for upholding that is superficial. What really matters as far as that is concerned, is how we behave around and respond to children in real life, whether we know them personally or not. The same principle goes for all people, animals, and the earth itself. It's not enough to uphold something, one has to question whether simply upholding it is indeed virtuous, and if not, scrap it and focus on realigning one's values with inter-human bonds where virtues are shown, rather than "upheld." You can not get there without being cynical towards the out-dated and counter-productive traditional expectations of what we are to "uphold," and particularly those sentiments we are expected to "uphold on the highest." One could argue that we are expected to uphold nothing higher than our constructions about children, childhood, and their well being, so therefore, nothing is more deserving of our criticism.

Cynicism is the only progressive tool we have, so perhaps even it deserves question. I'm not so sure about its emphasis on the natural world as being particularly virtuous, for instance, because the natural world is in fact no more virtuous than the civilized world. Childhood is no more virtuous than adulthood, and adulthood no more than childhood--so even our valuations of our revaluations can be subject to further questioning... but the point remains still--to question.

The Smartest People in the Room

How much better off does it really make you to be smart enough to know how to create justifications for negative consequences? There are people whose whole job it is to do nothing else, and it's typically called "public relations," but that is only half of the rotten fruit being sold to you as ripe. What good does it do to graduate at the top of your class if that status propels you into a position that only brings out the worst in you? On the whole, it makes little sense to squander one's abilities for any reason. It seems, though, as often as people take the low road and do just that for no reason at all, or even for good reasons, just as many decide to take the even lower road and squander their abilities in the promotion of malicious or devious ends, if only to put their learning to "some" use. It is not because they are "bad people," it's just that they are raised in a learning environment where they are prompted to "give in" more than they are empowered to resist.

I know this firsthand from my own experience with higher education, where I was tempted to undermine my own credibility at times to ensure I made the grade and gave the average response to every question. Staying "in" was more important to me than rising "above," due to the potential of falling back down. In conversation with fellow students, I observe more "giving in" and "giving up" in institutions of higher learning than anywhere else (and certainly more than in the workforce), and it seems that it's because nowhere else is one's conformity so desirable towards their so-called longevity (outside the military, that is). Just as much as a wasted talent seems a shame to me now, even more so does a talent that has been put to misguided use via people-pleasing conformity. You could say, it is better that you should be a failure who does good work than a success who wallows in their justifications for iniquity.

For instance, what is the value of a higher education when so-called "outside the box" thinking means finding new ways to scam, lie to, or deny people a critical service? The phrase "smartest people in the room" originated to describe the men who ran Enron during the corruption scandals that brought the company down, and is pejoratively used now to describe any group of people who use their brilliance for malevolent ends. Many of those who engineered the economic collapse for their own gain could also be considered among the "smartest people in the room"--those who were smart enough to discover how to push buttons all day and make obscene amounts of money in the process, introducing little to no innovation or development into society. Where does it lead you as a conscionable individual coming out of the college system when the so-called "smartest people in the room" have the least integrity? There are many examples of how unbridled passion without reason can cause the collapse of a person and a society, but it seems equally perilous when self-concerned reason is exercised without regard to an empathic concern for one's fellow human beings. Those who are smart enough to switch off their conscience in the light of some flimsy justification suffer from a lack of integrity.

What good does it do one to be the the most educated and adept person in the room at exploiting loopholes to get away with corruption?  What good does it do you to be pushed into pursuing some college-bound path from the time you're born as if it's the only option in existence, where your future is mapped out long before you can even see any concrete routes to take within it-- much less have enough of an identity to know which route to take? And what good would it do you then, being in that situation, to set an uncharted course through that labyrinth with only a fabled "exit" in mind and no concrete idea of how to go about finding it, lining other people's pockets and ensuring your own indentured servitude to debt in the process? Higher education is capable of doing great things for the world, but so are people with vision, passion, and freedom from debt. You can be the smartest person in the room without having to forfeit your personal integrity to acquiesce to some "company line" of whatever institution or organization "accepts you" once you "get out." Education was never meant to be a conveyor belt upon which you just sit and accept whatever people instruct you to think. It ought to be a platform from which you can, as an independent voice, graciously challenge the scams, lies, and conspiracies that are propping up those very same people who do nothing but acquiesce to injustice-- it should give you the tools to refute them rather than become them. 

Higher education ought to be about making complicated systems more humane and more responsive to human beings-- not merely training on how to give a false smile, a firm handshake, and an automatic response that has been programmed into your head to the point you and only you believe it. It doesn't take a smart person to be a public relations slave for a major corporation, for example-- at least, no more than it would for a trained dog drooling on command-- so why one would waste all that time and money just to end up the equivalent of a drooling dog in the workplace seems beyond reason. That is, unless one's reason is to simply do anything (no matter the consequences) on the pretense of the Nuremberg defense, or the "need to make a living," or more appropriately, the "need to repay a debt." Only because the drooling corporate slaves out there are not alone responsible for the negatives of the world do they find some absolution from consequences. But why betray your conscience if you don't have to?

In a world where it is still possible to make a living doing positive and pro-social things for the world, choosing to contribute to something that produces more negatives than positives on the justification that it "repays the debt" sounds more like defending one's conscience through excuses. No one, unfortunately, is more skilled at turning off their conscience to become a slave to flimsy justifications than the so-called "smartest people in the room." And ironically, no one appears more well-equipped to combat those "professional justifiers" than those among the smartest minds who happen to still have the virtues of empathy, honesty, and a thirst for social justice intact. It all begins in the home. Empowerment breeds integrity. Conformity creates corruption.