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.

Bleeding [F]earts

Don't like an adult's opinion on young people? Wait twenty minutes, it will change.  

Don't trust anyone over 30 (because they can't make up their minds), but don't trust anyone under 30 either (because they can).

A Small Noise

Remember the old joke about adult power: "a man farts at a kid's eye-level"? I've been thinking about aphorisms of empowerment geared for kids, to get them thinking about non-destructive ways they can influence their own destiny and those around them, and this one I just can't seem to shake. Tell a kid you know to go in easy but leave a big impression--to be a small noise but leave a big stink. You could say, it's contrary to being 'loud and proud,' and it cures their pinkeye.

It is better to disorient one's oppressors in a creeping blaze of controversy than to open fire in a physical gunshot that can be easily deflected and get the bigger guns brought in. The mightier opponent doesn't have to know they've been marked until they are consumed in it. It's like allowing the fire in a young heart to spread on its own without calling attention to oneself as the arsonist, or the "shooter."

There will always be some who adore the attention that comes with being 'loud and proud', but in the end, the small noise from the undetected rebel always stirs the largest influence. It is what the adults will call subversion. It is control taken where power is given.

Tell a kid they got to be "silent but deadly," and they'll understand and appreciate it--the ready ones.

Aphorisms on Child Sexuality

And now for a few observations, shared between myself and a like-minded friend, NG:

*

Sex between consenting adults is one of the most ugly things on the face of this planet.

*

Since molestation is primarily a deprivation of sexual liberties, it seems reasonable to assume that some victims of molestation would grow up to be militant defenders of childrens' sexual freedoms.

*

Child victims who grow up with a vendetta to clamp down on childrens' sexual expression are the ones society likes. Child victims who grow up and move on with their lives are tossed to the ash bin.

*

Child abuse must be all-consuming on the victim. If they ever recover and grow from it, they are seen as "justifying" the abuse.

*

Society has taken the concept of child sexuality and equated it with satanic rituals. This is abhorrent, heinous and unforgivable.

*

For the law to call mutually consenting loving relationships rape, is an atrocity in keeping with rape itself.

*

Society's ignorance of the sexuality of children under 18 has made them totally oblivious to the term "sexual development".

*

Aphorisms for Hypocrisy

Those who fear the child predator ignore the child marketer. Those who fear the child predator ignore the army recruiter. Those who fear the child predator on the news, the sex offender living down the street, or their child's freedom online...ignore police arrests of 8 year olds, corrupt CPS child removals, and the ethnic, racial, and gender disenfranchisement in many public schools.

Those who feel an innate sense of disgust at one form of child destruction, do not bat an eyelash at the "socially acceptable" forms of it. It doesn't matter if the 8 year old arrest was simply a kid guilty of the crime of walking to school in a predator-panicked district, or if the never-liable CPS worker had no evidence of abuse or neglect in their decision to abduct children for funding, and it certainly doesn't cause anyone to lash out with such displays of righteous indignation (at least not to the "lynch mob" status given to solitary perverts) over what happens to the African American boy in an under-performing school. Where are the bands of concerned citizens gathering to defend him, and why are they rallying to kill the television pervert instead?

Those who believe they have done the children of the world a service by hating on the one teacher caught with child pornography, do not even shutter at the fact that the common airport terminal has been turned into the largest creator of child pornography in the world, and its operators into the biggest collection of child groomers. These same people certainly don't mind sending their children through the chambers to be pictured naked for a trained onlooker, patted down by strangers, or strip searched in public, in order to board a plane--after all, the parents already paid for the ticket.

What is sanctioned by culture is never illegal, no matter how wrong, but what is illegal is sanctioned rarely, no matter how just. Illusion becomes real, and reality becomes ignored. What is true is obliterated, no matter how right, and what is sensational is preserved, no matter how evil. The innocence of children must be preserved as long as it is profitable.

"All this righteous indignation about predators... This whole country is trying to get into your kid's pants, because that's where he keeps his wallet."
--Bill Maher

The Antichrist

For now, an aphorism.

Cyber-vigilantism is an Antichrist. If anything can be said to be an antichrist in this day in age, and the mere labeling of such calls the same immediacy and fear from the populace as the labels it gives it's own well-meaning adversaries, then it makes sense to call a spade a spade. The Antichrist is alive and well, and its name is the anti-pedophile group Perverted Justice. Its name is the vigilante group Absolute Zero.