On 2006-03-21 12:02:00, BuzzKill wrote:
I'm also not talking about the natural pulling away and pushing boundaries that takes place in any healthy family. A certain amount of defiance and opposition to ones parents is natural and good.
Yeah, and the algorythm to determine the proper level has to factor in just how fucked up your parents and community are. My one bold act of defiance was to empty my bank account, pack a bag and set off into the wild beyond to start a new life all on my own. It was a radical, risky thing for a 15yo kid to attempt. Certainly, I hadn't thought it through quite well enough or I would have planned on someplace
to go, instead of just hoping I'd fall in with a decent situation.
But was it out of line? I was rebelling against, defying and opposing being placed into a brainwashing program. Not that I could have articulated it at the time, I certainly couldn't. Now that I'm grown and I can articulate it well enough, I don't think I was wrong. I think my parents were dangerously unbalanced and all of the adults in our lives should have seen it clearly and had the sack to do something about it. Hell, many of those adults
did talk about how sorry they felt for me, being locked down and isolated as I was, always walking on egg shells, scared of getting put in the Seed.
But they didn't
act. Not for me, not for my older brothers and sister, not the neighbors. And, to a large degree, they still don't. You want to know why kids ta day are so angry, surley and defiant? Just look at the way we treat them. We're the grown ups, they're the kids. If there's a wide-spread problem between the generations, the onus has to be on the older generation to identify and correct the problem. The kids just got here. They haven't got the education or life experience yet to even be able to articulate what the problems are, never mind to come up w/ strategies to solve them.
Hammering thin lies into their heads like "Just go to school and get a diploma!" or "Respect authority!" or "Work hard and be honest and you'll prosper" isn't going to cut it. Forcing them to go along with, or even to believe these lies isn't going to make them true.
What we should be doing, instead of scapegoating kids ta day, is figiring out why a diploma is worthless, why the value of hard work and honesty have been so debased in our economy and how we, as a society, can address those problems.
I was thinking more about defiance for defiance's sake. The coolness of anarchy. That mind set causes many un-necessary and self destructive behaviors.
Or, to look at it another way, the value of exploring alternatives whenever the status quo doesn't meet muster. "NO" is just one word. Saying it, however often or loudly ain't gonna cut it. It's not enough information. If you buy into the zero tolerance, just say no mindset, you abandon your kids to their own devices to find satisfaction. Might it not be better, instead, to concede that the system we've built for them really is flawed and to help them come up with better, more honorable, more effective ways to rebel?
Just a thought.
No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!
-- John Muir