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.

Who's Watching the Watchers?

Because of what the adult brain loses as it develops from adolescence, adulthood is not great. It is not qualitatively better or greater than adolescence by experience than adolescence is greater by innocence, or ignorance (as it were). The adolescent brain is simply fighting to express itself in a world governed by unbridled adult expression, for better and worse. By contrast, the adult brain is fighting itself in a world governed by its own self-imposed inhibitions, those learned by experience, and also for better and worse. So where do adults get the idea that they are qualified to judge the young?

The adolescent calculates the why not while the adult simply contents itself with knowing the why not. The adolescent tests its limits while the adult lives comfortably within them. The adolescent strives for a costly adventure as the adult settles for safe and clean complacency. The adolescent seizes life regardless of the consequences while the adult lives in a world of consequences and denies life. The teenage mind defies expectation while the adult mind defines it. When the teen mind defies life to its detriment, the adult mind defines it to the same extent. The adult is superior though for its longevity while the teen is superior for its aspiration--both have what the other lacks.

If you're an adult, and you find this characterization limiting, then you are experiencing the same effects of decadence (which is to say vanity) that limit the youth perspective. Characterizations of people on the basis of age are naturally limiting. The only difference of course is that these characterizations draw a line of equivocation between adults and adolescents (and children), while most adult heuristics in regards to young people do nothing but reinforce the so-called superiority of adults (in the active realms) and children (in the passive ones). All the truth in the world adds up to adults thinking in adult ways and framing non-adult situations with adult-centric perspectives. That's all there is to it. Truth is a function of power, and because adults are in power, their truth prevails. And yet, their truth about humility still applies to everyone.

In the name of humility, the justice system is often considered to be the sociological "parent" for adults. It's supposed to be the high-holy thing that judges adult behavior and punishes indiscretions in the rational world. It is however formed and created by adults, so one is left to wonder, who is watching the watchers? Who is judging adults in the manner in which adults judge the young (other than the young people themselves?)? Adults are given unbridled expression because they exist free of judgement half the time, and when they are being judged, they not only participate in, but create the system for which they are to be judged by. What child has that much authority over the judgement system when he or she is facing the scorn of adults? If only children could set the terms by which they could be judged by, because then they would have the same free terms that adults reserve for themselves. As it stands, adults are policing both themselves and children, so adult judgements go unchallenged in either case. 

It is entirely human for an adult to be taken by the decadence that is bestowed on them by culture, and there isn't one alive that doesn't think, in some way, that they are superior to young people. Adults don't need to be derided for their egotism any more than kids do for theirs, they simply need to be awakened and cut down to size so they may see themselves as the increasingly decrepit apes they are. None are so high and mighty that they should be beyond reproach, whether adults (in active realms) or children (in passive ones). Chances are, in the grandiosity of the cosmos, nothing an adult human says makes any real difference or carries any more universal a truth than the children who were once told "not to speak unless spoken to." Whoever said the adults could talk?

Play Spaces

It's true, the play space is where kids plot out their method for world domination. These methods won't be taking effect immediately, but at some point, the children alive today, who you see out playing, will take over the world, and the kind of space they have to practice out their methods now makes all the difference over whether they chose to simply replace us, or take us out by force and demand something better. The powerful and the downpresser would prefer a gentle replacement that benefits them unto and beyond the end, but the powerless want their children to be a force onto themselves, bold enough to fix what does not work, stand up for what is good and just, and throw those benefiting from the broken system into the ground as fast as possible. At least, that is how the adults have decided to use children.

The economic engines of our society have attempted to create a generation contented on its own gluttony and self-absorbsion, and it's not so much a conspiracy as it is just good business practice. If you want future customers or constituents, you only tell the incoming generation to challenge authority if you intend on being the authority, otherwise, you close and limit their play spaces, and distract them with your gadgets so they never have to leave a parent's sight. But then when that technology expands their new insular play worlds to the largely unregulated spheres of play found online, a problem develops, for they become "beyond control" once again, and therefore a threat to power. The powerful then endeavor to turn even their newly formed online play spaces into havens of corruption. Simply put, adults don't want kids playing in or outside the box, not behind the shed, not in the house, not in their room, not stuck to their computer--they don't want them playing here or there, they don't want them playing anywhere!

A child caught walking the public streets could easily find themselves in the back of a police car. A group of kids playing in the woods could find themselves branded as hoodlums and once again thrown in the back of a police car. Gone are the days when the cop would tell them to "get on home." Now the message they're given, should they choose to accept it, is that either their home is the shopping plaza, their own backyard, or if not, it's the hold up at the police station. Simply put, adults don't want their children in this day in age to play in the uncouth, unstructured, unsupervised ways in which a child seems naturally drawn. Most parents, most townships, most police, don't want children learning too much about what it means to be a free individual because a free individual is encouraged by a free, wide open to roam place space to think free thoughts--thoughts that threaten those who stand to gain from a broken world. They want the next generation to be "good little goobers" now, and forever.

One play space is really no more or less superior than another for children to learn about the workings of the world and other people, whether it is online or out in the neighborhoods of the sticks and concrete jungles alike. They will naturally test out their strengths and weaknesses, socialize, and grow fond of each other in these social spheres, regardless of what any adult tries to do to stop them. They carve out their own decadence in a world that adults wish to fashion for themselves alone, and that's why it is discouraged. But the adults are fighting the losing battle, for it is just a fact of nature that the children, regardless of what is put into them now, will someday rule the world, it is only a question of time.

We didn't really have what the kids growing up in this day in age have, we of the generation Y. We were in the unfortunate position of having our physical play spaces limited by the PC "don't let the kids ever get hurt" parenting, and at the same time, didn't have the boundless internet where we could replace that missing play space. We had no acceptable place where we could be truly beyond the eyes of our overlords, and because of that lack of opportunity to direct our own purpose, we were grown spineless. Due to the internet, we can't expect the same from generation Z, who grew up in a world divorced from many adult's understanding. The internet has become our mode of cultural rebellion, it is our play space--for now at least, so let the revolution commence.

We are Anonymous, legion.

The First Flash

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

The first flash of faith, they say, is always the strongest. And the same could be said about the first flash of social awareness. At the first instance when a young mind is coming to know the injustice in the world, when their reception of it is all consuming and most passionate, it is stifled. No, the world is no simple place, and young passion alone doesn't rectify injustice, but neither does the experienced complacency that condemns it on those grounds. Young passion is stigmatized, it is marginalized, because it is inexperienced. The powers that be like to view it as misguided and naive, the result of a sheltered individual just coming to terms with the world around them, feeling one way or the other about the injustice out there, and having no idea how the world actually works or the possible ramifications should their ambitions be realized. It is for this reason that youth passion is shot down.

The powers lay the claim that youth passion is naive, that its solutions to social injustice are uninformed and too simple. As often as this is the case though, youth passion does not have a monopoly on presupposing uninformed simplicity onto a complicated world. Simplicity is in saying things are too complicated to work toward a solution in, simplicity is in ignoring the plight of those obviously wronged by systematic injustice to save face before one's own, simplicity is in "bending the rules" to fit personal interests when one is tasked with serving the will of the people--these are all things "experienced" complacency (apathy) apologists cling to while condemning so-called "youth passion" as simple-minded. They know how the world works, alright, they are experienced in it--it just so happens that in their years of experience, they've learned how to make the system work for themselves, and are unwilling to give it up. That's what's really going on.

Show me a youth who has chosen to exercise his or her passion against such a system in anti-social or naive ways (terrorism, vandalism, violent protest, dramatics...etc.), and I will show you a case of an aged and crooked judge, a dirty cop, a corrupt politician--people who have chosen to exercise their "expertise" with the system in selfish and destructive ways. Who shall we trust more, then? The liberal with no brain or the conservative with no heart?

At least when the passionate youth speaks, they speak from the heart, they speak with passion in their convictions, no matter how naive they may sound, they are speaking what they perceive to be the truth. If they say that love conquers all, it is because they believe it. If they say universal platitudes, "peace must come," it is because they mean it. They say what they mean and mean what they say. The experienced mind has lost its passion because it is necessarily bogged down in the reality of life. This is not a bad thing, it is just the way things work. It does not say what it means or mean what it says because it knows what it is saying is probably untrue.

Why then should we trust it?

Passive Resistance

Children break the cultural bodily boundaries on a daily basis. They exert their sexual, physical, gritty nature and the world shames it. Since no exploratory sexual behavior, outburst, nose picking, burp, or fart goes without reprimand for the first six years of life, no matter how much it's encouraged by looser mores, children spend the next six years using each one of those things in pointed attacks of retaliation and resistance against anyone they see as a worthy target. Having absorbed shame for their bodily needs and functions long enough, they stand the message on its head and use them to cast shame on others. It doesn't matter if the target is a sexually active youth's distressed parent, an illness-faking student's easily swayed teacher, or a nation's policy against violence in its schools (as we'll soon see). Children will quite literally hold their breath until they pass out to make a parent bend to their will.

This commentary comes in light of a now-annual phenomenon in news. In the mix of reports regarding the effectiveness of Zero Tolerance in public schools, we're treated to a slice of absurdity disguised as comic relief. It seems something as innocuous as "disturbing class" in the right context, if expressed with enough disdain, is considered violence and can and will result in a kid's arrest. Not even a kid's intestinal gas can be tolerated, so long as he emits it derisively and obnoxiously enough. Disruption like that no longer warrants only disciplinary action, but a police cruiser, handcuffs, a booking, and a police record, because kid farts are weapons now, officially.

Sometimes the only way to lay bare a system's faults is to cause a passive stir like this and force the system to abide by its own rules. And seeing as kids currently have no rights to free speech, what other way do they have to voice dissent than to hurl their bodily needs like weapons at their captors?

The use of the body is resistance expressed through non-violence. It's the willful glorification of self-degradation because the system can't degrade them enough on its own. For certainly, their bodily functions, including sexual impulses, are the one thing a child truly does own. The mind can be bent many different ways, behaviors can be controlled and redirected, but the need to void, the need to shed, to have intake and output, is entirely theirs, and theirs to do with as they please. It's the one thing where if it were controlled, the powers controlling it would cease to have a living child to control, and therefore, cease to be in control. Passive resistance plays with an authority's ability to control in like manner.

So let's reexamine the power of a kid's body. The body is one way our kids express comfort with their peers. They use their body to produce kinesthetic, athletic, and scatological feats, and express early masculine or feminine identification. They use their body and its functions as learning experiences in pro-social behavior, human bonding, manners, and taking ownership for their actions. The body is as much a projection of personality and talent as it is a depiction of their health and well being. It's a source of great pride. More importantly though, a kid's body presents options to them--needs, desires, excretions--that can be delivered decisively anytime and place, command instant attention, and express personal control--the root of all individual sovereignty.

So let the kids be free to be gross.

Condoning Child Abuse

While society is concerned and paranoid about the sources of abuse from without, and views those who bring harm to children unknown to them as inhuman devils gnashing teeth and dancing on bones, much of society openly advocates the routine abuse of children. Discipline is healthy, and a child spared of discipline could almost be considered handicapped, because no one should get a free ride through life. However, the line between abuse and discipline is a tightrope, and its walkers are often thrown in perilous different directions--either abuse is mistaken for discipline, or discipline mistaken for abuse. In either extreme, children are at the mercy of the overreaction of an adult--either they are deprived of healthy discipline, taken out of healthy homes and placed in traumatizing state care, or routine abuse is seen as "consistent" punishment. As above, the abuse of children is often permitted in society for various reasons.

Irrational people make tirades justifying the abuse of children. It almost seems like the abuse society hates the most is the kind that happens by social rogues in one-child, one-shot affairs, and the abuse society hates least, and even advocates for, is the routine, daily recurring abuse from people society invariably trusts. By the same note, welts and bruises of the same magnitude are examined and understood differently based almost entirely on whether or not society trusts the category of human being they originated from. This is not especially widespread, and most parents usually agree that any "discipline" that leaves physical marks such as bruises or lacerations is in fact abuse, but there are irrational people who will trust that a child has been correctly dealt with so long as those markings were caused by parents, teachers, or people whom society trusts. If dealt by people society hates--rogues, minorities, pervert slugs--only then has a tragedy occurred.

In all objectivity though, markings are markings, regardless of who made them, regardless of whether it's a parent or a child molester, so it makes no sense to treat them differently according to where the perpetrator falls in society's prejudices. A word of caution though ought to be had when determining the course of action stemming from an incident of abuse. It makes no sense to turn one bruise dealt by an otherwise caring parent into a lifetime of systematic, institutional abuse for that child under state care, which can and does happen. It makes no sense to treat parents as potential devils in disguise, as the rouge members of society have been cast. It is hypocrisy on the part of our culture to condone abuse from some sources, almost jokingly, and despise abuse from other sources vigilantly.

In reality, no human being is objectively a "monster" or a "beast," and such characterization (a sick glorification of the abuse) does nothing for the victim of the abuse. They are simply people with various psychological malfunctions, as in the case of child molesters or kidnappers, or they are people who have been culturally force-fed this notion that because children are a subservient class of person, they deserve nothing short of the physical assertion of adult dominance in their daily life to grow healthy. The later group are the aforementioned irrational people, the ageists. People who deal abuse don't have to don horns or sprout wings or dance on bones to abuse a child, sometimes they just have to be a part of the population that western culture doesn't understand. Sometimes they just have to believe in something western culture has understood for centuries--the so-called superiority of the adult. From these two things, all child abuse spews forth.

Cute Power

Adults have power by the position they've granted themselves in society. Children have control though, over themselves and their immediate environments. Even if a child is strapped down, their ability to control the hearts and minds and the weaknesses of adults remains in check, given to them by adults for their lower, demeaning status in society, and taken for themselves in spite of it. Thus, it stands to reason that the adult is constantly at war with the child's ability to flex their control, and the child is at war with the adult's ability to exert their power.

The power of the adult is brought on like an overwhelming force, it exudes from their pores, taking with it all of its purely socially constructed edifice--the "this is how it is" stamped firmly on the ground like a boot print after a stomping. It is something very physical, very absolute, like God's word, and doesn't hold itself up to question. Inversely, the control that children hold over themselves is internal, it comes forth in their cuteness, and like nymphets and faunlets, they use it to their advantage to gain the favors of adults. They take control by disobeying the overwhelming force, if not directly, subtle and meticulously. They are the insurgency.

Children use cuteness as a means to gain access to an adult's weaknesses, just as adults jump on children's weaknesses to exert power over them. And with recent research suggesting the same parts of the brain are activated when responding to something cute as when responding to something sexually appealing, it's becoming very easy to determine what motivates an adult to do such. Dominating a child's cuteness stimulates reward centers in the adult's brain. The feminists are fond of saying that all sex is merely an act of conquest, and if it's true, then we can understand why child abuse is never going away. They're addicted to the drug of power. They'll slay the dragon and then be the ones putting on the claws. By attacking predators and not granting children the ability to control their dignity, they are only pleasuring themselves.

They are taking from the slug perverts what is socially evil, and using it to exert for themselves over children what is socially acceptable, for the very same reason--pleasure.

What we believe is that children should not only understand the amazing control they have over themselves and their destiny, and over other people, just like any other human being, but also find the power connected to being small. Advertisers have known for as long as there have been advertisers that picturing a sweet-looking child can make an adult spend money. Governments know that invoking children, or depicting children in advertisements can influence the passage of almost any legislation or even help in the election of our leaders (see ad "Daisy" 1964). The media knows that depicting a child is a ratings booster, normally if the child is depicted as traditionally helpless.

Despite all this popular usage, if children could be made aware that their cute face can melt the heart of an adult, get them to swoon and smile, get them to lend an organization money or not shoot a dictator when surrounded by the likes of them, then there is power in that face. Power that is given, controls, but control that is taken, is powerful.