Who are You to Judge?

[Antigen]

On 2005-03-16 12:46:00, Anonymous wrote:




Here is a good debunking article:



http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1224



It's over 10 years old now but, as Ginger says, there is nothing new under the sun."

Thanks. I was looking for that and couldn't remember the title or the author. Sure does demostrate that good old saw, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Totalitarianism is like a specter which drinks the blood of the living and so achieves reality, while the victims go on existing as a mass of living corpses.

http://www.whitecloud.com/fight_vs_totalitarianism.htm' target='_new'>Karl Jaspers, The Fight Against Totalitarianism (1963)

[Antigen]

On 2005-03-16 12:56:00, Dolphin wrote:

Odds are the kid WILL grow out of it, but what damage will they have done to their bodies and to their futures?

There's no tellin, is there? But then the Program can do a whole lot of damage to these kids bodies and their futures too. It's not asif this is a safe alternative. It's not safe at all. The only real difference is that, this way, YOU are in control and the other way HE would be in control. It feels safer when you're calling the shots. But you're not the one actually getting the treatment.

And you know very well that the kid is in no position to tell you, or even to understand himself, what's going on with him. For all you know, they might be grilling him right now to confess his homo-errotic fantasies about Marshall Mathers to his peer group. That sort of thing can drive a young boy to suicide. Did you know that?

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
--Carl Sagan, American astronomer and author

_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
Seed sibling `71 - `80
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
   10/80 - 10/82
Anonymity Anonymous
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

[Anonymous]

You are SO right about the hysterics! I am a granny who attended highschool and college, way back in the late 50's/early 60's. My generation was every bit as bad (if not worse) than my own kids were as teens. There were similar drug, alcohol and sex problems then as now. My mother (now in her 90's) says she was a wild teen back in the 30's! Some things never change, teens are supposed to horrify their parents to one degree or another, to do otherwise is simply not natural. If my teenage grandchildren are any example of their peer group, kids today are more sensible and less wild than their great grandparents were!

[Anonymous]

On 2005-03-16 00:48:00, Perrigaud wrote:

"Yeah? What about teen suicide, suicide attempts, kids being tried as adults, anorexia, bulimia, and such. There are a lot more on diversion than there were in the 90's. Also a lot of them don't explode/inmplode with all their issues unitl later on. DUI's are high amongst the 20's.

Anyhow, not to say that every teen with issues is going to end up like this. Most of them grow up and out of it.

Kids these days are seeing a lot more than the kids in the 80's. Aids, rape (that has been never reported), incest, harder drugs, std's, and the fear of violence in school. "

Perri--I went to high school in the early '80's, and we were definitely wilder than the kids are now.

The *only* thing I think the kids today are wilder about are blowjobs.

The rest?  Nah, as a whole high school class, compared with a high school class of today, we were wilder.

We were pretty good at hiding it.  And our parents didn't or wouldn't take us down to get us drug tested.  And our parents didn't have a cow about a couple of joints.  I didn't smoke pot, but I was probably one of very few people in my whole senior class who hadn't tried it even once.

Not that I was a goody-goody--my vices were just different.

By and large, our parents knew (okay, *mine* turned out to have been mostly clueless--go figure) when we came home trashed and as long as the kid who was trashed hadn't been the one driving they'd let the kid stagger in to sleep and pretend they didn't notice.

Our parents never got prosecuted for "corrupting the morals of a minor" for looking the other way while their kids held beer bashes.

Most of the kids were parking and screwing around, and our parents looked the other way.  AIDs wasn't really around yet, except in a very few Haitians and gays.  Mostly our parents just hoped the girl didn't get pregnant and nobody got VD.  Mostly we kids either didn't get pregnant, or if we did, somebody's McJob wages went to pay for the abortion.  Or for VD, the clinic visit(s).

Mostly pregnancy was the hazard, but it there was still a fair bit of social stigma to a high school baby, so if you got pregnant you either left school and went back to alternative school at night, or had an abortion.

And we had kids die of this and that--mostly drunken or speeding car crashes.  Had kids in the hospital from alcohol poisoning.  Had kids bust each other up in fights.  Had plenty of suicide attempts that you just never heard about unless you knew the kid really well.  Had kids stuck in the mental hospital 'cause they lost it, and kids sent off to military school.

I guess our rates of just about everything were higher than today's kids'

One of the troubles with evaluating each generation's problems is that every generation of kids thinks they invented sex, and pretty much thinks they invented drugs too.

And that Mommy and Daddy only did it once for each child and *certainly* don't do it anymore.

And then they grow up and think they were the worst generation, and as they learn about all the problems in the big bad world that they have to face as adults, and they think those problems just got there.  Maybe intellectually they don't, but that's how it *feels*.  And so it feels like things are getting worse all the time---including the next generation of kids---even when they're not.

And of course you've got the evening news always making sure it seems like the sky is falling.  You know what the editors say:  If it bleeds, it leads.

I'm not trying to sound all superior or anything---it's just I went through it in my 20's, and it took awhile to wear off.

For some people it never wears off.  A lot of people never go back and look at the statistics to see what the data says.

Today's kids aren't little angels.  But my generation was worse.

Timoclea

[Antigen]

You think that's bad? My dad, born in the early `20's, used to run bootleg and numbers for his uncles. His uncles, including the town mayor, were the biggest bootleggers in the Delewar Valley and said to have produced some of the finest "Jamaican" rum ever to flow out of those hills. His dad was the chief of police. He was also a drunk, and a paranoid, jealous, violent one at that! But that didn't stop him busting his brother's load and splitting the family over it (among, I'm sure, other things).

Talk to some old people or just read old newspapers. Oh, the stories they tell!

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.
--Thomas Brackett Reed

[Erinys]

Ha!

Yeah we can shock the younguns!  Coupla years ago I was chatting with the neighbor boy,  middle school age, about fractured/satiracal lyrics of pop songs. I sang him one I remembered from the time I was his age.

To the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory
Of the Burning of the School.
We have tortured every teacher,
We have broken every rule.

We are marching to the flagpole now
To hang the Principal.
Our truth goes marching on!

Glory, Glory Hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
Met her at the door,
With a loaded .44
And now she isn't teaching anymore.

Child was horrified!  
Said if any of his teachers heard that he'd be expelled and suspended and in forever detention, the police would be called, his parents would be called, the bomb squad would be called... etc.

He liked it though, and we agreed it would remain an inside joke.

That which does not kill you can make you stronger, but I really never needed to be this strong.



http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/5580/straight.html' target='_new'>Scott Wagner

[Antigen]

I know! Remeber playing cops and robbers? I do. I was almost always one of the robbers. We had toy cap guns that looked relatively real and all. I bet that's not allowed in school anymore, either.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

--John Quincy Adams, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives [July 4, 1821]

[Nihilanthic]

Took a cap gun to school and it would be locked down and youd be arrested and charged with a litany of charges.

Oh boy, lets over-react summore!

The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those who act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.




--Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley, 1958

[Antigen]

Man, the difference between here and the east coast is just amazing. Here, they still have toy guns in the toy aisle and shotgun shells for sale at WalMart.

By 1940 the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites. Eighty percent for blacks. Notice for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were still literate. Six decades later, at the end of the 20th century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can't read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled, despite the fact that we spend three or four times as much real money on schooling as we did 60 years ago.
--Vin Suprynowicz

[Perrigaud]

Ok. I've come to the conclusion that everyone thinks their own generation was more extreme. Ok, I think that the truth is that every generation had its own vices and problems. The difference is that the problems are different. The 70's had the draft, war, hippies, and psychedelic drugs. The 80's had abortion, neon colors, zinc, and sex. The 90's had gangs, war, sex, rap, snowboarding, and skateboarding. The 00's have war, kids having kids, corrupted leaders, rape. In all actuality all generations had these problems. Some issues were more abundunt in some than others.
When it comes to the ways they treated the problems that's different. They once used electric shock therapy. Then it was mental hospitals. Pregnancy, some were sent away to live with nuns or even pregnant teen facilities. Nowadays we are known as a Prozac nation. We have an illness/syndrome for everything as well as an accompanying drug. Is that any better? Lock down facilites (corrective boarding schools) are not for everyone. However I agree with Dolphin that it is for others. Now, does that mean that parents are being lazy? Not necessarily. My parents did everything they could. My will is strong. Don't want to glorify it. But that is what kept me alive in the days before my teens. That's what seperates me from a lot of people. In a world of followers I am a leader. What is my gift is also my poison. If I have my mind set on something I will attain it. If that thing is something helpful or good for me than I'm golden. If it is destroying then it can be really detrimental. I always take offense when people tell me my parents are bad parents, lazy, or such. That is not the case. My parents are good people. I now realize that they are truly some of the strongest people I know. And I thank them for giving me the opportunity to learn and grow in the environment of CCM. [ This Message was edited by: Perrigaud on 2005-03-17 01:24 ]

[webcrawler]

"They once used electric shock therapy. Then it was mental hospitals."

Shock therapy is making a comeback. Everyday there is an ad in the local paper where U of M is practically begging people to join their "non invasive therapy". It's 100% free, plus a sizable stiped for willingly getting your brain zapped! No thanks, I'll pass.

[Troubled Turd]

I had some shock therpy done a whyle bak & it did me a world of good..I wuz in BAD SHAPE before I got that....I rekummend it!

[ehm]

Isn't "Scientology" based on shock therapy?

[Anonymous]

Making a come back here and abroad.

With limited availability of medicines and counselling therapies, some doctors are increasingly relying on electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, to treat Iraq's mentally ill. This involves passing an electric current through the brain to induce a fit and in the UK is used, under general anaesthetic, only to treat severe depression and psychiatric illness, and then only after other treatments have failed. The irony is that in Iraqi cities, with their intermittent electricity supplies, even this therapy is not always available.
Story at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0, ... 07,00.html

[Antigen]

Perri, sorry, didn't mean to disrespect your parents. That's not exactly what I meant by all that.

My parents bought into essentially the same sales pitch in 1970. In those days, it was clear (even to the cop accross the street, who was my best friend's dad) that my parents were a little off. Most people didn't buy into this stuff. Most people just dealt w/ their kids the old fashioned way. Now that's changing.

Now they run a TC style bootcamp within the Broward juvenile system. If a kid gets caught skipping school or mouths off to a teacher, instead of getting a detention or something, they get sent down to the JIF (Juvenile Intervention Facility) for a psyche eval and recomendation. I know of one girl who was given Welbutrin for telling a teacher "Oh yeah? Go ahead and punch me. I'll flatten you." They got her down to JIF and determined that she had an anger problem because she responded this way when a teacher raised a fist and threatened to knock her through a wall. And this happened in front of an entire classroom full of other kids.

These days, most of the adults are over-reacting and only a few are calling bullshit. And it seems that it's those of us who have been down that road who get it. Even those who held for years that the Program saved their lives don't put their own kids in programs. And I'm guessing you won't either.

If you say you really needed a tough, boot-camp style intervention, ok, I take your word for it. But w/ a grain of salt. Your saying that you went through the Program, but only let it effect you in certain, positive ways comes off about the same as Jose Conseco extolling the virtues of steroids.

All I ask is equal freedom.  When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.
--H.L. Mencken