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.

Unworthy Victims

One of the problems with victimology and unwavering victim-worship is that it is unevenly distributed. In western culture we're almost lead to believe, whether by accident or not, that certain people are more deserving of our sympathies than others for matters having nothing to do with the circumstances of their victimization, all things being equal. The "usual suspects" are always our template for villainy, and the "typical victims" are always getting hammered into our sympathetic nerves, time after time. All else who don't fit the narrative need not apply, even if they have been objectively victimized too.

The image of a girl being raped by a shadowy man, even as tragic as it is, has been turned into little more than a thought-stopping cliche. It is indeed the prototypical image in our heads when we think of sexual exploitation, simply because of its incessant repetition in film, television, and the news media. Its depiction no longer makes us think, we merely become anesthetized to it, and we ignore and become incapable of seeing exploitation in other forms perpetrated on less-prototypical human beings. Not only does its repetition rob our emotional minds blind to the real tragedy of it (just because we've seen it a hundred times), but it holds that emotional mind hostage and blocks its rational ends from seeing the travesties committed on those our sympathetic acuity has been blinded to.

One wants to talk about how the predator manufactures the consent of his victim when he exploits her, but what about when culture has done the same to you, and has manufactured your consent to feel one way or another toward or against someone, at its discretion, by repetition? When the mere gender of a person, the age of a person, or social class of a person, has more to do with your outrage, your indignation, your sympathy for them, than the act that they have become victim to or perpetrated, you've already become a victim to the cliche of the media narrative yourself. That is how culture and the propaganda, the "thought-stopping cliches," have molested your will and alienated your compassion from you by their constant mercantile presence. Herman and Chomsky wrote on this phenomenon in like manner:

“Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotions. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.”

—E. S. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent

According to culture, men and boys are unworthy victims, so society does not care when they are victimized, abused, and maltreated en mass. Boys may only be sympathized with because they also fit the class of "child," but not because they are boy children. According to culture, teenagers are unworthy victims, so society does not care when they are victimized, abused, and maltreated en mass. So by these two observations alone, we should expect society to feel more sympathy for a six-year-old girl that has been mishandled, than a 15-year-old "young man" who has suffered the same--or even still, has been murdered, or sold into sexual slavery as a bacha bereesh in Afghanistan, even as much attention has been given to the treatment of girls in that country.

That which we assume "en mass" dictates how we respond to individuals within that mass. It would certainly lend an explanation as to why it does, and why male offenders are touted as "beasts" while female offenders of the same crimes are given the "mother of three" treatment. Where do you think your sympathy is "supposed" to go, given the choice between a beast and a mother of three? What if the "beast" had children too? Nobody is given the chance to care, and it is not important anyways.

So while we are all required to feel sympathy toward the typical cases, and hatred toward the "usual suspects," let's not forget those our culture has forgotten to take seriously. The moment you have an image in your mind about a typical case victim, fill her in with her exact opposite, and remember that it happens too, and how nobody cares about it when it does. Nobody's singing the lamentations of a teenage boy who has been violently raped by a woman, no matter how traumatic, just because it doesn't fit the typical schema of "offenders and victims." Nobody's asking for the head of the female rapist either. And when you realize this, you'll see real sexism, real ageism, real classism at work in ways the focus group didn't think would be commercially viable enough to wrest your "unquestionable" sympathy for.

All media is the same story being sold, over and over. Don't buy it.

Justice for Caylee

Way to honor a child's life, with a perpetual shouting match on national television. One wonders if this child hadn't been as cute, as photogenic, whether anyone would have paid her death more than a momentary notice. If she had been instead a ten-year-old black boy on the streets of West Philadelphia having gone missing, no national coverage would have even taken place, never mind a three year headline involving a play-by-play depiction of the trial chased with righteous indignation disguised as commentary. It would have been seen almost as "appropriate" by the very same so-called arbiters of social justice.

No, this is where all their righteous indignation leads, once it is distilled to its main ingredient--if Caylee Anthony wasn't cute, if she wasn't white, if she wasn't three years old--if she wasn't the exploitable tot, the perfect victim that the news media so callously could turn her into, they wouldn't have cared if she got justice or not, and nor would the viewing public. It can be concluded because it happens every day. This story would have ended with the search in the local media, three years ago, and that would have been that, and you know what else? It would have been far more just, and righteous, than the disgusting circus they turned this little girl's death into.

The so-called arbiters of social justice in the media saw this child not as a child, with her own rights and dignity, but as some expensive commodity, a platform from which to pilot their fledgling cults of personality straight into the living rooms of America. The more well-meaning their intentions, the less respect they showed, as Caylee's images were sprayed across the screen when they spoke, as if to repeatedly underscore their moral high ground. In like manner, Caylee's image might be blown up on the screen before cutting to a commercial break, as if to prime the viewing public for that coveted eye time. It was sentimentalism for the sake of gaining eyes, and sensationalism in the service of exploiting them--the propaganda of the consumer culture for the well-intentioned public.

Even overtly, their message was insulting--that child rights only exist to protect these pieces of property from society. Talk of "children's rights" only seems to matter to these people after the kids are injured or killed, and even at that, is only extended to the extent that it renders them lifeless victims which need protection against adult interventions. Such a mindset only serves to perpetuate their lifeless, infantilized victimhood, to stand them out from the crowd and paint a sign on their backs that screams "I am a child, I am a victim! Target me!" whether they have been victimized or not, for which more restrictions are proctored. Victimhood has replaced childhood.

If there ever was going to be justice for Caylee, it ended the moment the story broke on the national scene. From there on, any hope of justice for a little girl was thrown out the window and replaced with endless repetition of the child's inhuman victimhood, or the glorification of her now-sanctified existence--neither of which extreme did a little girl any justice. All it served was to give absolution to adults who would have felt guilty if they didn't join with the cults of personality and the talking heads in singing praise for the existence of this little girl and her tragic end. Adults feel all too guilty for the decadence of their culture, and they find an outlet in the death of children.

Thought-Stopping Cliches

Our typical human overhears the cultural media pulpit repetitively spouting thought-stopping cliches about predators day in and out, takes them at face value and then perhaps turns around and criticizes those who practice religion. There is no difference. If religion is said to become anxious at the idea of critical analysis and receives criticism for it, then our media pulpit should be spared no less the same. The only thing that is necessary to say to render null all arguments for justifying our opinions based on reason alone is wrapped up in the confused media-fed jargon of the expression, "predators targeting innocent children." No one can contest paranoia like this without looking like they support the "predators," so it becomes truth regardless of its truth.

"The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis."
(Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism 429)

Childhood innocence is a cultural designation for which there is no evidence--sure children exist inside a different developmental stage from adults, but there is no reason to believe they are any more "innocent," "pure," or "angelic" as a result than your average adult given their own developmental state. Another is the purely cultural detestation for "pedophilia," where ignorance has produced in the mainstream its 1 to 1 correlation with "child molestation." Such a 1 to 1 correlation has no evidence, and even runs counter to evidence suggesting that not all pedophiles necessarily commit the crimes of child molestation and possession of child porn. But put these two words together in the same sentence, "innocent child" and "pedophile," and all analysis stops. If you contest the jargon, you're in support of the perpetrator. In the past, such an ability to think beyond the words would doom your soul to hellfire, these days, it dooms our society to ignorance and illusion servitude.

Ignorance on Display

I found this statement online. How wrong, ignorant, or just plain sexist is it? Shall we count the ways?

And I have to say that maybe if you're a man, you might not quite get the instinctive caution or even revulsion felt when it looks like an adult male is too involved with a child.

The writer is implying that men "may or may not" be capable of feeling empathy for victims of abuse or revulsion towards abusers, or even caution at a child who appears to be slipping into a hazardous situation. Lord help me from slipping into the same trap of sexist ignorance this female commenter has fallen into, and jump to the conclusion that all females are incapable of telling the difference between child abuse and an adult male and child simply spending quality time together. Are not fathers, for instance, supposed to be "involved" with their children? Are they not too "adult males?" Obviously not all females are as ignorant as the ignorant among them imply all "adult males" of being.

And how shall we quantify when an adult male is "too involved" with a child? What precisely is the boundary that causes such revulsion in females who apparently are so adept at deciphering it? If we are talking about real physical, emotional, or any other form of abuse in such a way that there is physical harm, jeopardy, or any kind of marked impairment in the child as a result, then we have something to base our revulsion on for sure--whether or not "feeling revulsion" for the abuser will do any good for the child is another story. If we are talking about a child and an adult male spending a mutually appreciated, non-harmful, parental consented "fun filled" afternoon together, then as the saying goes, "the boredom under peace will spread its own evil" in the popular imagination. Knee-jerked "revulsion" on cue in such a situation will only cause harm, not just to the child, but to everyone involved, and those ripples of negativity will spread throughout society.

Society can either be held together on a platform of trust and responsibility, or it can be held together on one of fear and knee-jerk assumptions. Each of us have to make that choice, and society will either benefit or suffer for it.

And how shall we quantify what is meant by "child," anyway? Are we speaking of a 17 year old, or a 4 year old? What are the circumstances of these encounters? These are all questions that need to be posed and answered before you should be expecting anyone to feel "revulsion" on cue at the mere suggestion of an adult male and a child spending time together. Blanket statements requiring our revulsion toward phantom child molesters and sympathy for phantom child victims do nothing to help real child victims and deter real child molesters. If anything, it hinders our ability to feel empathic or even "cautious" in real life situations, because so much of our emotional fortitude is distracted and divested to feeling "revulsion" or "sympathy" for the shadows in our heads.

Diversions and Distractions

What gets society all up in a frenzy and what really matters are two different things. It seems like it was always like this. Society is so caught up in portraying the symbolic gesture of doing the right thing that they seemed to have forgotten completely how to do it. This is to say, society is distracted by the sentimental, sensational nature of heroism and the impulse to frame it inside some kind of digestible narrative, and can no longer (as a whole) just appreciate things or actions for what they are on the surface.

Whether we're caught up in the wrongness of burning the flag while ignoring the less viscerally arresting imagery of corporate imperialism, or caught up in the "sex beast" who looked at a child the wrong way while ignoring how society has been turning a blind eye to the treatment of black boys in education, we're distracted. We're not paying attention to the right things. We're distracted by the glamor of narrative and symbolism, by sensationalist media and sentimental hand-on-heart "oh dear"-isms, and for that it's getting harder to tell what really matters. What really matters is people and the planet, not how this blog or any pundit out there frames the goings on between those two things.

No matter how we feel about our adversaries, whether they be labeled "maggots" or "sex beasts," or "antichrists," it should never distract us from living and loving those around us for whom our allegiance and loyalty should be full. We shouldn't be ignoring the isolated crying child on the bustling city sidewalk to return to our private den that night and redirect our guilt and self-hate for inaction toward some overhyped convicted sex offender on TV caught entering a library. Who among us could possibly argue that this is a better use of those energies? Assist the crying child on the sidewalk, and forget the TV sex offender, and the world will be better for it.

Perhaps this is idealistic, but it's the truth.

The Boy King and the Giant

Everyone thinks that their side of an argument is the little man standing up victorious over the mightier adversary. Everyone believes that the one thing they have to guide them against their adversary to victory is truth. Indeed, even the big, mighty establishment itself thinks of itself as the underdog standing up to its oppressor, the general population. The simple truth of the matter is that there is no side that is mightier or weaker than another, and there is no side that claims the monopoly on truth, because there are hundreds more sides that also claim that same precious artifact.

Regardless of this, simply stating that one is in the possession of some truth, no matter how far fetched, is like painting a target on your back. People will incarcerate, shun, or even kill you simply for saying you hold the truth, even if you don't. If there's one thing true in the world, it's that those who hold onto their version of the truth with the strongest conviction are the ones going down at the hands of those who can't seem to grasp theirs very long.

When the outcome is unlikely, the prevailing puny is praised as being closer to the truth (such as the case with the boy king killing the giant in a single hit), but when the outcome is likely (as in the case of the outsider CL losing out to the child abuse entertainment industry), the prevailing powerhouse is practically worshiped for bringing the so-called truth into 100 million homes every night. Sometimes it seems society is more interested in perpetuating and glorifying those it casts as predators simply because they had the audacity to hurl that label at them to begin with. But of course, in their eyes they are just the meek David staring down the beast, a delusion brought on by endless repetition of the romantic sentimental typical plot. Sometimes it seems society is more interested in playing the constant hero than it is in actually doing what is right.

Post-Sympathy Society

Sympathy, when given on volition, is really what we're striving for as a society, but all too often it's twisted out of us by the powers of sensationalism. When sympathy is given freely, it is a blessing, but when given at the behest of manipulation, is only a sad sorry excuse. Feeling bad for someone on the basis of some group's political or commercial agenda is a waste of our tears and a diversion away from those who could actually benefit from that shedding.

And since the amount of sympathy twisted out of the tear-ducts of adults on behalf of children is unparalleled, no other group of people seems to suffer more as a result. No other group of people are loosing out to our diverted sympathies than children. This forms the basis of our sympathetic society. A "post-sympathetic" society would be one were people feel sympathy for people they can actually reach out and touch rather than those at such great distances that no amount of feeling bad for them could ever hope to reach across. It is a society where sympathy is not a commodity, a means to an ends, but an ends in and of itself, a charity.

In short, it's the idea that those around each and every one of us is more deserving of our sympathies and assistance than those who we can't hope to reach or contact in any way. No amount of feeling sorry for the child kidnapped in California is going to bring them back home where they belong if you happen to live in New Jersey, for instance. Human beings will naturally react to such a story with pity and remorse, and such is fine, but the near pathological sadness and depression brought on by the constant media barrage bent on ringing our collective sympathies into a fever pitch of hysteria and mob-mental hatred is never going to do these injustices any good. It thrusts a sense of endless victim-hood on those affected, and associates whole groups of people sharing the characteristics of the perpetrator with his evil deeds. It does nothing to bring the kidnapped child home, and in those instances, may help reinforce the perpetrator's reasons for not stepping forward to release their possession.

In a post-sympathetic society, people would feel sympathetic for those around them, and not those the television tells them to feel sympathetic for. This is an ideal, of course, and therefore probably unattainable, but a genuine one that most people may indeed feel sympathetic toward given enough media exposure. In such a society, they'd not bicker at the children riding their big wheels in the condo parking lot for making noise and then come inside and shed a tear for the missing child on the news -- unless they are somehow associated with that child the way they are with the children outside their door. They wouldn't sanctify the dead and ignore the living.

One can dream.

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.

Cockroaches at the Table

Imagine an inter-generational pairing, a child and an adult, out in public enjoying each other's company on a special occasion. The adult is pampering, buying gifts, and the two are spotted eating out at a restaurant. Maybe it is a birthday celebration, maybe it's just the kid's last day of school for the year. Imagine public displays of affection, flirting, walking hand in hand, and then imagine that this adult has no legal ownership of this child, nor in any way are the two related. Now you cringe.

Society does not know how to deal with that. The kind of culture we have is not ready for that. They're confused about what kind of person would do such a thing as described with a child (a piece of property owned by someone else), and their reactions are confused, like someone who encounters an entirely new species, similar to the portrayal (in film) of an archetypal plot of clash of interests over a new discovery - be it an ancient city, a new scientific discovery, a new alien species, a new bug, a monstrous organism or whatever. What do we do with it?

Some want to destroy it, some want to contain it, some want to preserve it and let it loose, some want to leave it alone entirely, while some want to exploit it. You'd think CL's are as cockroaches to human dwellings as bugs in human form. They're seen as an infestation upon a healthy host, something that is inserting itself where it doesn't belong. What we see in reality does not match what culture impregnates in our imagination. The sentimentalism of the theatre inserts itself upon the realities of life, and the child and adult at the table are no longer a child and adult enjoying an evening, but a vermin eyeing down a useless lump of helplessness.

While people acknowledge that they cannot make the CL extinct, they want to contain them as much as possible, or at least the inhuman part of their own projections--born out of their own inner urges. Few people proudly profess their love and in doing so kill the urges, many denounce the few and let their urges run amok, calling cockroaches where there are none and ignoring the fat one on their own plate.

Child Molestation

Let's not mince words or wax poetic on this. Child molestation, including all sexual exploitation and kidnapping, is evil. While vigilantes are consumed by hate to the point where they would not bat an eyelash at the mutilation of those who stand in the path of their lust, child molesters are just as sick. Both come in the guise of some savior and leave society scratching its scalp, disgusted and unable to come to terms with what would drive an individual to such depths. While vigilantes are gratifying themselves over the severed tongues of their adversaries and treading blood in the storm drains, child molesters are making them feel vindicated for doing it.

The doctor may be able to get away with the excuse that causing a child harm by the prick of a needle will create great benefit because of the injection, but the same logic will never justify any other harm done to a child, or to society because of a child. Unless you create a fanciful story whereby a child must be harmed in order to save their life, intentionally harming a child out of a need to protect them should go against your deepest principles. The first rule, the cardinal rule, of CL is "do no harm," and this is true no matter what form of it is manifested. As we shall see, this doesn't just mean "don't subject the child to harm" but also, do not seek any kind of benefit from children being harmed, because to do so is to be an accessory to their suffering.

Having said that, it should be surprising that when society says it wants to protect children from molestation, they do the opposite. Most child molestation, by wide margin, takes place between family members, not strangers. Most child molestation takes place within the home between people the family trusts, not strangers on the playground. Most child molestation occurs between parent and child. Very little child molestation occurs due to rogue slugs on the internet, but so much emphasis is placed on this tiny percent, and it happens at the ignorance of the more prevalent forms of child molestation. Society easily fails to accomplish what its best sentiments had directed it to do when its distraction by the tiny minority of cases overwhelms its attention toward the wide margin. Child molestation is child molestation, whether society has clearly painted a target on the perpetrator's back or not. Imagine that!

And with all the tear-jerking on the issue of a child being victimized, we can only conclude that selling child molestation as an entertainment format in the media is tough when the perpetrator is "one of the audience"--namely, all the parents lapping this stuff up. Nobody wants to insult their paying parental viewers or readers, so the perpetrator always must be some rogue slug instead. Parents just don't make very convincing villains to a parental public, no matter how much the child had to suffer at that particular perpetrator's hands. Rogues always make better villains, no matter how inoffensive the crime. Their priorities are backwards (the majority of child abuse is ignored, the minority is blown up to ridiculous super-villainy status), and because of this, child molestation continues to be a sensationalist epidemic, children suffer at the hands of this "child abuse entertainment industry", John Walsh gets rich on their unfortunate demise, and vigilantes have a never-ending vat of human beings to terrorize for their own pleasure.

No one who is benefiting from child molestation is in any position to preach morality on the topic, it doesn't matter if you're a child molester, a vigilante, or a media reporter earning a buck off the sale of your latest story. On the contrary, the groups who have any position to say anything on the issue are those who don't stand to benefit from child molestation in any way--the hapless public lead to believe anything, and those who love children--known as CLs.

Good Over Evil

The distortion of reality to fit sentimental politics is the work of the evil and the powerful, for which there is little to distinguish. We are who we are. The status of wrongdoings and the relative punishments human beings receive are inversely proportional to their size in the pond. The bigger they are, the easier it is for them to evade the repercussions of their actions, and therefore, the the easier it is to justify their lives by the laws--to play the moral high ground. We are the small fish, being eaten by the big fish, and we don't want to be justified.

Sensationalism is the greatest force of evil in existence, because unlike any material object (such as money), its evil property is not ascribed to it by human beings. For instance, there is nothing evil about money in and of itself, it is a material or conceptual thing that, without human interference, is incapable of being evil. Sensationalism on the other hand is bread out of human nature, it can not be independent of it. It is the intentional manipulation of not just information, but of the fallible human psyche, to produce an intended response from another human being. It is the molestation of another individual's will for furtherance of one's own, masquerading itself as objective.

Objectivity is a fruitless pursuit, but however impossible it may be to be completely objective when reporting on the affairs of the world, it will never justify, as is often made the case by the media, the intentional deception of the public--the manipulation of the public's trust. The powerful are in no position to play the moral high ground simply because they are powerful, when reporting on the crimes of rogue, powerless individuals like pedophiles committing crimes.

For the small fish, there is no greater honor than to be found guilty by the wicked, it simply means that you're doing something right. When the crime one is being accused of only happened in the minds of your accusers, who were influenced by the sentimental sensationalism ubiquitous in society, then one is only guilty of offending their weak minds with individual strength. Such a thing is greeted as a sign of victory among the rogues.

The prosecution of harm where no harm has happened with draconian sentencing that destroys a person's existence, as well as the existence of their family--including their children--is nothing more than pent-up passive aggression funneling itself into the likeness of the one being accused--the scapegoat for society's repression. The repression of society is evil, and though evil exists among the powerful and the powerless, it's one that is perpetrated almost exclusively by the biggest fish. It's effects drip down and corrupt every segment of civilization, and while it may all seem clean and business-like, the transactions taking place among the powerful, each cover-up blood-dollar finds its inevitable repercussion further down the food chain in the face of the beast the sensationalist media will portray as its scapegoat.

Only the guiltless have any moral high ground. What goes around, comes around. There are more of us than them.

Child is Not a Weapon

Children are truly mankind's greatest resource. They are both the artillery hurled at our enemies and the shield we use to protect ourselves from attack. The force that propels dictators to surround themselves with children as a means of deflecting bullets is the same one that propels people to use children's wide eyes and button noses to elect the next one. That force is human sentimentality.

If we ever experience a limitation to the right of free speech, it will come in the guise of protecting children. If we ever experience a limitation to our right to remain innocent until proven guilty, or a full reversal of such under vigilante rule, it will come in the guise of protecting children. Indeed, if we experience tyranny in the future, it will be in part helped along to fruition by the obsessive sentimentality mankind ascribes to the young ones. Preserving the made up substance of innocence in a child robs society of its own. The more worshiped children become, the less stable a society will be.

One might be tempted to think of this as a contradiction. Why, if society is said to be worshiping children, could one believe children are being used as weapons? The answer is more obvious than it may seem. When we idolize something, we cease appreciating it. In the same function that causes mankind to destroy each other over an omnibenevolent God, humanity destroys itself over their "innocent" children.

No Muddied Angels

Nietzsche famously wrote, "All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not of truth." Children are no exception. Adults throw an interpretation at childhood, and it becomes a cultural standard by virtue of their power. Adults create the terminology we use to think about the position of childhood in society, and those terms inevitably find their way from the realm of ideas (taken as truth) to practice in real life. The powerful look at the powerless as innately inferior, deserving of their status, even by genetic argument, but also fool around with this notion of the noble savage, whereby those that are powerless, innately inferior, are put on the pedestal of righteousness simply because of their righteousness. This is often referred to as the "white man's burden."

As anyone can see, this ideology is so pervasive it has been enmeshed in the terminology of racism and racial prejudice for centuries, but it also lends its support to the arguments of ageism as it has always done. Nowhere does the adult interpretation of childhood rear it's ugly head as forceful and destructive as it does with the paradigm that childhood exudes natural purity. In the modern age, children have become deified as noble savages. Ignorance is their grace, it's the halo affixed upon their anointed heads, and to do anything to cast away that ignorance is to pull the child down to hell from their hearth upon the clouded realm. Ignorance preserves their subservience, and such is the motivation for maintaining it, for infanillizing their activities and restricting their natural inquisitiveness.

Every breath is sacred, as a byproduct of their angelic grace, when breath is nothing but a bodily function. If we are going to anoint a bodily function simply because it originates from a pure body, there is then no reason to not anoint their other excretions. A hole is a hole. Their anus is as sacred as their mouth, their breaths as gracefully angelic as their farts. Both preserve the organism, after all. Both perform a necessary function to keep the child functioning, but why one is anointed and another ignored, even shunned, has only everything to do with human preference, by interpretation, and serves to exemplify the fickle creation that humans begin to play with when they ascribe purity to human flesh. There are no muddied angels.

Ignorance in relation to the so-called adult standard should not be celebrated, the child's knowledge relative to itself should. Children are not an exception to this game of interpretation either, as their ascriptions and summations of adults are often faulty and inconclusive. A pure mind does not make faulty interpretations of others, and certainly not ones that threaten their relationships with others.

As girls are more prone to make judgments about people, girls invent many interpretations about adults they interact with on a daily basis, and just like adults, some may be perceptive and others may be just as much a product of ignorance as adults. Boys don't tend to make subjective judgments, as they aren't as aware of what they are projecting, never mind contemplating how others are receiving those projections. Girls have considerable power to create interpretations, just as adults, and the reason girl interpretations even prevail as truth has more to do with the degree to which the girl is anointed by adult interpretation (even beyond the boy), and is certainly no matter of truth.

The Minor Trap

Teenagers are caught in a trap. They have the strength and ability to get out of the trap if they want to, but it is illegal for them to do so. So here we have animals caught in a trap that is too small for them, willingly keeping themselves captive to certain extents to appease their overlords. Some manage to broker a deal with their overlords and are granted short little excursions outside the trap, but most simply aren't extended the resources to enable them to take that great leap.

Each and every day they are shuffled through the maze from room to room, sitting here for a while before moving on to sit there fore a while. Some enjoy it, some make the most of it, some don't enjoy it, some can't make the most of it. Those who enjoy life inside the trap are the ones clinging to its sides, ready at the stroke of midnight to rip the veil from their heads and drop their ball and chain. Those who don't enjoy it are the ones who inevitably wear those chains the remainder of their days, whether it is legal or not.

In either case, youth is made to be something to flee from rather than something to enjoy. Youth is a prison for which there are no exits. Even if one were to escape, the mere quality of how many earth revolutions around the sun one has lived to see makes all the difference in how that individual is to be treated in the world of human beings. It has everything to do with whether they are permitted to shake themselves out from under the trap they're born into or whether they are condemned to live inside its boundaries day in and day out, happy or sad, like it or else.

Some teenage animals don't have to be wounded when cornered in the cage, some wound themselves, if only to scare away the overlords trying to corner it, if only to give it some bite. And all this so as to preserve the adult's sentimental idea of children enjoying childhood at all cost to human dignity.