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.
Showing posts with label Rejuvenation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rejuvenation. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Superficial Rejuvenation
Who needs the attainment of wisdom at the foot of one's mortality when we have rejuvenation cosmetics? Where once we had faith, now we have so-called rationality, and while one produced simple humility in its adherents, the other produces little but vanity. Mankind no longer goes gently into that dark night, but instead spends the rest of it actively fighting the natural aging process. If life is all there is to this body and soul, it behooves the holder to hold it as long as possible--regardless of whether it's natural or healthy to do so. Where once the aging were encouraged to feel humbled before the infinite, we now have a population vainly empowered by the shorter number days they have left (thus making everything a "limited time offer").
Civilization shirked off this deference to a charismatic authority hell-bent to improve the soul and character of mankind, and in its place, built the establishment of consumerism to cater to their psychological defects instead. Is that the end of the saga? Hundreds of years of rationalism so that we can now have superficiality and vanity in the place of integrity? So that we can have anti-aging lotions, wrinkle creams, and "hair removal" regimen? It's as if we have nothing better to do with the remaining 50 years of our lives than try to make ourselves look like we did in the first two decades. When eternal deference was cut off to the heavens above, it seems like human beings then had no problem turning the same so-called "blissful ignorance of reality" onto themselves instead.
Most children are encouraged to do little else more universally than "get bigger" or "grow up." For children, aging is a prime directive, and the older and more mature one is, the more that simple status is regarded with coveted dignity. As soon as a "child" passes the threshold of adulthood though, all that anticipated growing has come to its final and premature peak, and society expects the young person to then look out on the road ahead and see nothing but a repulsive downward trajectory. How quick are we to really experience life when we are either stuck in an upward current or in a downward spiral? One way or the other, we're made to feel destined to a particular fate, with no acknowledgment of our life in the present--the "right now."
Imagine feeling as though you're on the death bed at the age of 21. Such is how we seem to expect our 21-year-olds to feel. On the contrary though is everyone over that age, who is then expected to want to be that age the rest of their lives! There is no period of human life that our culture has reserved for us to revel in the fact of being a whole individual at one place and time, without either "needing to be older" or "needing to be younger." Being whole is not as profitable as needing a hole patched. The perversity of it is revealed through close observation of nearly all commercial media surrounding anti-aging products, and nearly all products in general to a greater or lesser extent. I say perversity because this is a perversity, forged by Babylon itself, and is no less disgusting to my tastes than any other form of perversity.
Reality dictates that we all grow, decay, and eventually die, and yet only the most rational of the so-called later-day rationalists would accept this to be true. They'd rather bust out all their science to fabricate products to profit off the widespread lack of fulfillment that infects so many a person over thirty these days. Most seem to think or have been bred to believe that wasting one's good time is preferable to using it toward constructive ends, but only because nothing profitable for someone else has ever had anything to do with a consumer being constructive. And since those idolized "first 20 years" are the same years that the average human being exists simply to make money for other people, it's no wonder why that same individual would then want a refund after that time has passed and has gained them little. It is all too easy to "grow up" lacking fulfillment only to "live" a mature life in continuous want of a refund.
That "refund" is another way of saying "rejuvenation." Where once the passage into adulthood meant something to the primitive roots of culture, now it is simply the age at which a youth realizes for the first time that he or she has been gypped for the first 15 or so years of life. It is no matter though, for God willing, there is another 50 years left to waste trying to earn back the time that was lost during their so-called "good years." Who needs to be "born again" in the so-called eternal spirit when superficiality and artificiality accomplish the same trick for twenty-seconds at twice the price?
Civilization shirked off this deference to a charismatic authority hell-bent to improve the soul and character of mankind, and in its place, built the establishment of consumerism to cater to their psychological defects instead. Is that the end of the saga? Hundreds of years of rationalism so that we can now have superficiality and vanity in the place of integrity? So that we can have anti-aging lotions, wrinkle creams, and "hair removal" regimen? It's as if we have nothing better to do with the remaining 50 years of our lives than try to make ourselves look like we did in the first two decades. When eternal deference was cut off to the heavens above, it seems like human beings then had no problem turning the same so-called "blissful ignorance of reality" onto themselves instead.
Most children are encouraged to do little else more universally than "get bigger" or "grow up." For children, aging is a prime directive, and the older and more mature one is, the more that simple status is regarded with coveted dignity. As soon as a "child" passes the threshold of adulthood though, all that anticipated growing has come to its final and premature peak, and society expects the young person to then look out on the road ahead and see nothing but a repulsive downward trajectory. How quick are we to really experience life when we are either stuck in an upward current or in a downward spiral? One way or the other, we're made to feel destined to a particular fate, with no acknowledgment of our life in the present--the "right now."
Imagine feeling as though you're on the death bed at the age of 21. Such is how we seem to expect our 21-year-olds to feel. On the contrary though is everyone over that age, who is then expected to want to be that age the rest of their lives! There is no period of human life that our culture has reserved for us to revel in the fact of being a whole individual at one place and time, without either "needing to be older" or "needing to be younger." Being whole is not as profitable as needing a hole patched. The perversity of it is revealed through close observation of nearly all commercial media surrounding anti-aging products, and nearly all products in general to a greater or lesser extent. I say perversity because this is a perversity, forged by Babylon itself, and is no less disgusting to my tastes than any other form of perversity.
Reality dictates that we all grow, decay, and eventually die, and yet only the most rational of the so-called later-day rationalists would accept this to be true. They'd rather bust out all their science to fabricate products to profit off the widespread lack of fulfillment that infects so many a person over thirty these days. Most seem to think or have been bred to believe that wasting one's good time is preferable to using it toward constructive ends, but only because nothing profitable for someone else has ever had anything to do with a consumer being constructive. And since those idolized "first 20 years" are the same years that the average human being exists simply to make money for other people, it's no wonder why that same individual would then want a refund after that time has passed and has gained them little. It is all too easy to "grow up" lacking fulfillment only to "live" a mature life in continuous want of a refund.
That "refund" is another way of saying "rejuvenation." Where once the passage into adulthood meant something to the primitive roots of culture, now it is simply the age at which a youth realizes for the first time that he or she has been gypped for the first 15 or so years of life. It is no matter though, for God willing, there is another 50 years left to waste trying to earn back the time that was lost during their so-called "good years." Who needs to be "born again" in the so-called eternal spirit when superficiality and artificiality accomplish the same trick for twenty-seconds at twice the price?
Friday, March 26, 2010
A Slow Disintegration
They're not entirely the slowly disintegrating corpuscles that they often believe themselves to be, but adults are grotesque, and they know it. The adult is motivated in part by their own slow deterioration, while being uplifted into the social realms of their own creation--having attained human rights and responsibilities--by the maturity they've earned through experience, they inevitably find themselves at a point where they see the transaction for what it really was. For rights and prestige, they've sold their passions. For maturity and responsibility, they've sold their enjoyments. Once this realization has been made, and it can be made at any age past the one drawn in the sand, the boundary between the noble savage and the burdened conqueror, they begin to envy the young, and in envy, there is aggression, and the result of aggression is control.
In the typical portrayal, the child envies the adult's rights without regard for the responsibilities that come with those rights, and the adult envies the child's sweet naivete and youthful ambition, and sexual virility, without regard to the restriction it is under. The child is not envious of the adult's actual state of disintegration any more than the adult is envious of the child's actual state of being inhuman property, but this typical portrayal is not necessarily an accurate depiction of the two psyches at work. Obviously children are at least aware of the adult's responsibilities, and being able to obtain the sacred rights of being human seems to them, from their state of reference, to be worth the price of responsibility. In the same way, to obtain youth or at least the closest proximity to it, the adult is also willing to pay a hefty price.
The plan is simple from there on out. One, control those who have what you want. Adults have granted themselves the power and authority to rule over every aspect of the lives of youth, to restrict their freedoms of expression, love, sentiment, and ability, guide them along preselected pathways to attainment that inevitably suit adult purposes, prosecute and otherwise stigmatize those who don't follow those routes, and all under the half-fast and yet bold-faced ideology of "protecting them." Two, transplant the activities and interests of those you envy into your own life once you've made it impossible for them to have them. It goes without saying, that so many advertisements geared for adults will focus on reattaining youth. Even the word "rejuvenation" which is so often touted in these ads is taken straight from the root word that forms "juvenile." Adults want to live the lifestyle they have assigned in their own imaginations as being that of a juvenile, and have all the rights and responsibilities that go along with adulthood. Essentially, once the actual juveniles are subjected, turn their subjection into adult "rejuvenation."
This is not to say that this is the result of some grand conspiracy, although most adults are in fact aware that this is part of their fundamental makeup. Regardless of whether or not the typical portrayal as described above really exists, many adults believe in it to such extents that they use it to justify the social set up they have constructed and are no doubt ashamed to keep. Like any gratifying thing though, they're helpless to its subtle lure like an addiction, even as they realize that their so-called protections for children are just a neatly packaged front for their ulterior motives. The more they push the button of subjecting youth, the more they get fed their rejuvenation, even when they know it doesn't, and will never work. They know they'll never be young again like the child knows one day she'll be human.
The overfed fear of child predators takes its cues from this dilemma. Adults fear the child predators because they fear that part of themselves that wants to re-assume the qualities of youth for their own pleasure. They hate child predators because they hate the audacity of the child predators for dragging their own psyches out into the open. When child molestation occurs, they not only hate and fear the captured slug, they take personal pleasure in watching it get squished, and they don't mind if their children are watching. The uncorrupted stasis of their children's eyes only needs to be preserved in times when "protecting the children" serves to position the adult as right and pure, but when it only shows them for what they are--gratifying succubi of youth--suddenly the slug must be squished and it's entrails rubbed all over the kids' faces, if only to distract them from the ugliness, the grotesque disintegration, that is them.
In the typical portrayal, the child envies the adult's rights without regard for the responsibilities that come with those rights, and the adult envies the child's sweet naivete and youthful ambition, and sexual virility, without regard to the restriction it is under. The child is not envious of the adult's actual state of disintegration any more than the adult is envious of the child's actual state of being inhuman property, but this typical portrayal is not necessarily an accurate depiction of the two psyches at work. Obviously children are at least aware of the adult's responsibilities, and being able to obtain the sacred rights of being human seems to them, from their state of reference, to be worth the price of responsibility. In the same way, to obtain youth or at least the closest proximity to it, the adult is also willing to pay a hefty price.
The plan is simple from there on out. One, control those who have what you want. Adults have granted themselves the power and authority to rule over every aspect of the lives of youth, to restrict their freedoms of expression, love, sentiment, and ability, guide them along preselected pathways to attainment that inevitably suit adult purposes, prosecute and otherwise stigmatize those who don't follow those routes, and all under the half-fast and yet bold-faced ideology of "protecting them." Two, transplant the activities and interests of those you envy into your own life once you've made it impossible for them to have them. It goes without saying, that so many advertisements geared for adults will focus on reattaining youth. Even the word "rejuvenation" which is so often touted in these ads is taken straight from the root word that forms "juvenile." Adults want to live the lifestyle they have assigned in their own imaginations as being that of a juvenile, and have all the rights and responsibilities that go along with adulthood. Essentially, once the actual juveniles are subjected, turn their subjection into adult "rejuvenation."
This is not to say that this is the result of some grand conspiracy, although most adults are in fact aware that this is part of their fundamental makeup. Regardless of whether or not the typical portrayal as described above really exists, many adults believe in it to such extents that they use it to justify the social set up they have constructed and are no doubt ashamed to keep. Like any gratifying thing though, they're helpless to its subtle lure like an addiction, even as they realize that their so-called protections for children are just a neatly packaged front for their ulterior motives. The more they push the button of subjecting youth, the more they get fed their rejuvenation, even when they know it doesn't, and will never work. They know they'll never be young again like the child knows one day she'll be human.
The overfed fear of child predators takes its cues from this dilemma. Adults fear the child predators because they fear that part of themselves that wants to re-assume the qualities of youth for their own pleasure. They hate child predators because they hate the audacity of the child predators for dragging their own psyches out into the open. When child molestation occurs, they not only hate and fear the captured slug, they take personal pleasure in watching it get squished, and they don't mind if their children are watching. The uncorrupted stasis of their children's eyes only needs to be preserved in times when "protecting the children" serves to position the adult as right and pure, but when it only shows them for what they are--gratifying succubi of youth--suddenly the slug must be squished and it's entrails rubbed all over the kids' faces, if only to distract them from the ugliness, the grotesque disintegration, that is them.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Human--All Too Human
Children serve a paradoxical purpose as a repository for adult judgments. They are idolized in the ways that don't pose an immediate threat to adult society and infantilized in the ways that do. Every behavior of theirs that serves to uphold adult authority at the subjection of the minor seems to have it's own holy day by comparison to any behavior that serves to make the child an autonomous entity. Children are both angels when it comes to expressing any traits adults find themselves incapable of possessing, and no better than animals when it comes to expressing traits any way similar to human nature.
Adults crave to regain the what they perceive the child has in abundance--youth, optimism, freedom, contentment, love--and even seek out children like faucets that they may drink from their nourishment and be made fulfilled themselves. No doubt driving themselves to the brink of war and personal tragedy to protect this natural resource within their own. At the same time, they perceive children hazardous--as poison containers for their own projections and evil spirits the world over, such that only by subjecting the so-called innocent can they be protected from the corrupted nature of the adult.
In reality, children are no more super-human and no more sub-human than the average adult. They reveal their natural human weaknesses, fallacious thinking, and fallibility as do their masters, in developmentally relative ways. Every adult who has tried to drain the so-called positive energy tap that the child represents for them into their own has walked away inevitably worse for the ware--either walked over or enmeshed in the fruitless passion of child worship to their own rational destruction. There is no youth to be regained other than in the adult mind. Likewise, every adult who has tied down this small human animal to save them from their influence has done the opposite and inflicted the child with even more of their so-called "evil spirits" than the child would have picked up from the air.
Kids, too, have their own faulted projections of adults--just as human as human.
Adults crave to regain the what they perceive the child has in abundance--youth, optimism, freedom, contentment, love--and even seek out children like faucets that they may drink from their nourishment and be made fulfilled themselves. No doubt driving themselves to the brink of war and personal tragedy to protect this natural resource within their own. At the same time, they perceive children hazardous--as poison containers for their own projections and evil spirits the world over, such that only by subjecting the so-called innocent can they be protected from the corrupted nature of the adult.
In reality, children are no more super-human and no more sub-human than the average adult. They reveal their natural human weaknesses, fallacious thinking, and fallibility as do their masters, in developmentally relative ways. Every adult who has tried to drain the so-called positive energy tap that the child represents for them into their own has walked away inevitably worse for the ware--either walked over or enmeshed in the fruitless passion of child worship to their own rational destruction. There is no youth to be regained other than in the adult mind. Likewise, every adult who has tied down this small human animal to save them from their influence has done the opposite and inflicted the child with even more of their so-called "evil spirits" than the child would have picked up from the air.
Kids, too, have their own faulted projections of adults--just as human as human.
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