ChrisL
Diamond Member
And for what reason would you feel the need to manipulate my posts? So that it isn't as obvious that you are avoiding the direct questions that I ask you?
CDZ Intergenerationality
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And for what reason would you feel the need to manipulate my posts? So that it isn't as obvious that you are avoiding the direct questions that I ask you?
ChrisL
Diamond Member
Laugh. Please, present your credentials then. I'm afraid being a parent is hardly a credential without its drawbacks, as there is a potential conflict a interest- you may want to protect your children at the expense of them forming relationships that they find to have more benefits then risks.
You are a stranger to this child on the internet. The benefits of talking with YOU certainly do not outweigh the risks.
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- #163
I'm not trying to manipulate your posts. I'm just removing content that I'm not responding to, in order to make it clear what I -am- responding to.
ChrisL
Diamond Member
Why would you not respond to my entire post? Why so evasive? Surely you must realize that the girls parents are going to be upset by a 40-year-old stranger befriending their daughter on the internet?
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- #165
Laugh
You are a stranger to this child on the internet. The benefits of talking with YOU certainly do not outweigh the risks.
I -was- a stranger to this teen. We now know certain things about each other. You are free to hold the opinion that the risks of talking to me outweigh the benefits. However, you are only the guardian of your own children, and teens can and do make decisions for themselves. They may not always be the best decisions, and there are certainly some laws to try to prevent them from making some very specific types of decisions, but the fact of the matter is that they are on the cusp of adulthood and they need to start learning how to make decisions on their own before they actually -reach- adulthood.
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- #166
Because your posts are frequently highly irritating to me. You are picking at my life as if you had a right to know everything about me. Whenever I try to do it to -you-, you simply tell me to not make it about you or ignore my queries entirely. And ofcourse you generally refuse to talk about the main subjects of this thread, which has to do with intergenerational interactions in general, vs. my own personal experiences with them. There's only so much of this type of thing that I can handle at once.
ChrisL
Diamond Member
I haven't asked you about your life. I'm telling you that most parents are going to find your trying to befriend their teen daughters inappropriate.
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- #168
You most certainly have.
If I were trying to do it offline, it would certainly be pretty unusual, and yes, many would deem it to be innapropriate, as you say. The same could be say to some extent online, but not as much. There is a barrier online that there isn't offline. Frequently, the age of individuals is unknown in online games, so people of all ages can play together without having to worry about whether they are "befriending a minor" or not.
ChrisL
Diamond Member
Laugh
You are a stranger to this child on the internet. The benefits of talking with YOU certainly do not outweigh the risks.
I -was- a stranger to this teen. We now know certain things about each other. You are free to hold the opinion that the risks of talking to me outweigh the benefits. However, you are only the guardian of your own children, and teens can and do make decisions for themselves. They may not always be the best decisions, and there are certainly some laws to try to prevent them from making some very specific types of decisions, but the fact of the matter is that they are on the cusp of adulthood and they need to start learning how to make decisions on their own before they actually -reach- adulthood.
They are under the guardianship of their parents until they are 18, and there is a reason for that.
ChrisL
Diamond Member
AS my links show, there is plenty of reason for concern. Talking in a public venue is not the same as when you start trying to form a personal relationship with said teen.
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- #171
Laugh
You are a stranger to this child on the internet. The benefits of talking with YOU certainly do not outweigh the risks.
I -was- a stranger to this teen. We now know certain things about each other. You are free to hold the opinion that the risks of talking to me outweigh the benefits. However, you are only the guardian of your own children, and teens can and do make decisions for themselves. They may not always be the best decisions, and there are certainly some laws to try to prevent them from making some very specific types of decisions, but the fact of the matter is that they are on the cusp of adulthood and they need to start learning how to make decisions on their own before they actually -reach- adulthood.
They are under the guardianship of their parents until they are 18, and there is a reason for that.
Ofcourse. This doesn't mean that they have to micromanage every decision their teenage children make, and most parents don't, nor should they. You can't learn how to be an adult by being completely micro managed until you're 18 and then put them out into the world, expecting them to know how to make all their choices without micro managing all of a sudden.
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- #172
Oh boy, here we go with your "personal relationship" talk again -.-. Just because teens don't want to do everything under public scrutiny doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with that.
Holos
Senior Member
I am actually impressed with the curriculum presented.
I wish I had that kind of education growing up (besides the also excellent education I got). Although I greatly enjoyed my fundamental and medial education, having gone to one of the best schools in the State for almost 10 years straight, I also experienced a lot of distress during that period because of a lack in sexual education. The bright side is that I am still learning and still growing, so I can participate in a less distressing educational experience in the continuing future.
The kids back when I had not yet graduated, myself included, would be always anxious for not being fully recognized as corporeal, sexual living beings. We did learn a little of human anatomy, but it wasn't even close to be sufficient in addressing health and identity.
Up to this day I still find myself anxious and confused about how to approach the myriad of sensations I feel for my overall benefit, including of course leisurely pleasure, healthy engagements and individual biological working efficiency.
Because I am so repressed in that way, having experienced a great neglect from family and friends in acknowledging and properly respecting both my individual and social uniqueness (my mom offering condoms freely with no explanation other than for being protected meanwhile strictly condemning any possible association with drugs or experimental substances, in turn giving no explanation for that prohibition other than "it is not good and I won't accept it" while my dad was carelessly liberal, hiding his own substances from my mom and stimulating me to take experimental experience as priority.), I always felt unnaturally responsible and overwhelmed in relation to widely distributed news about criminal activity associated to manipulative but "protected male sex" (rape or harassment) and "assault prompted by drug addiction" (even unto homicide). As the years passed, my friends would increase their taunts and provocations about the fact that I was different and persuasively confused, without realizing it bothered me, and yet believing it was "comradely" to disregard my investigative uniqueness and include me in what they thought was the only "appropriate homogeneous conduct" to have a social life.
If I mentioned any inspiring strangeness in my experience, they would maybe empathize with the sentiment of confusion (as in, "don't worry", or "there is nothing wrong" - which was of course obvious to me because I can solve my own problems, having been in school for years) but they would not recognize my curiosity about it and would generally scoff it as simplistically fanciful or crazy, without any further prospecting interest, as I would share or question to also know more about their own uniqueness (which was also largely vetted within their own families because of the lack in sexual education we all had, sadly substituted for multiple idolatry: "the best thing in life is that famous or unknown rock band, that movie, that other country, that actress or actor, that sandwich, the air conditioning machine, my chosen job and the certainty of getting a credible degree to be sure of making enough money").
Even my chosen sexual partners throughout the years, although initially thrilled by having an experience of something so important but never presented to us educationally, would eventually come to consider my sincere and loyal friendship as an aberration of some sort - friendship which was all I really looked for in sexual contact so that I could feel safe in learning more about it - either alone, with them, or with others.
After not so many weeks of being together in exploring each others body I would suddenly receive demands to suppress my free speech, my creativity, or my social behavior when involved in other activities besides personal body exploration (without any demands on my part, except for still being recognized as a friend - even if to be from thereon geographically distant and definitely non-intervening).
So I've never truly ever had a firm, intimate bodily relationship - perhaps even in my entire life - which has lasted more than a few days or a few weeks. Although I had gone through different kinds of childish and unnecessary "social contracts" (as in "are we really together now? can I really call you my dear friend now, after spending a whole month getting to know you and tell my friends all about it and write your name on my notebook?"). Of course, there was no reason for me to say "no", although what I wanted to say was "that's totally unnecessary, we've been together for so little time; we should be thinking about more activities to do together, not about contracts or status at this point", only for the response to be "you are tedious", or "how can we be together then? you must enter a contract now without thinking twice!" or finally "okay, we don't need social contracts at all" and then of course loyalty was disregarded as appropriate, and eventually friendship too, which to me was incredibly baffling as a child).
When I would decide to abstain from sexual activity (alone or with other people) because it would never produce enduring or pleasant results which I modestly expected, my entire social sphere would either mock the situation for continued investigation on the matter without caring to know anymore, or would praise sexual activity as the ultimate meaning of life - but only from the mouth out, as they equally alternated their idolater behavior and their neglectful blaming complaints, despite any of their sexual activities also being ever so fleeting for them.
As a result I became more and more isolated and also became an unwillingly self-hurting masturbation addict, as I would only perceive sadistic conflict in other people's desires and endeavors in relation to one another, but still had to recognize myself as a desiring and endeavoring person too.
So you see, I'm just providing all these disturbing details to make a point about how important sexual education is and how appropriate the Ontario curriculum appears to be with those simple grades presented. An individual, a sensitive child, like myself or any other, can be severely impacted by having the smallest part of them neglected or imposed on. I never cared, nor intended to include masturbation in my routine, and only initially approached masturbation because I was curious about the absurd situation the people around me were making sex to be, despite the neglectful and even scoffing manner in which they treated themselves and others, about their bodies or about their behaviors. In the beginning it was nothing different than urinating, with the "orgasm" or "peak body activity" interesting only because of the density of that "new urine", which would have to be produced somewhat forcibly in contrast to urine fluidity. Reporting back to the other kids, who for whatever reason were making sex to be an abrupt but inarguable trend topic, they told me I couldn't have possibly done it right, that it could not possibly be even similar to urinating. So then I did it again the next day, looking for what else there was in doing it, and I found it nothing different than feeling satisfied in taking an ordinary shower, except for the mixed, perhaps uniquely controllable, expectation that could be associated in excreting the thicker, viscous semen by manipulable intervals when compared to the more regularly flowing kidney controlled liquid urine. The kids would spend the next days, weeks and years talking about sex but never really wanting to get educated about it, but only being able to associate adjectives to their experience (good, best, excellent) and because I was still in school I ended adopting masturbation as non-meddled and non-meddling self-pleasure, as coping mechanism to continue at least partially social integrated while making my unique learning most efficient as priority.
Considering all that, and being also very present, even now, at those childhood events in which my singular perspective was neglected, I think I am not truly qualified to answer the second question, although I am creative and have plenty of ideas that would probably provide safely for myself as child and adult, and also for others as children and adults.
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- #174
Thank you, you're the first person to even comment on it, I had almost given up on that question being answered here
.Cool.
I had around the same amount of sexual education myself, although one substitute teacher did manage to sneak in the subject of contraception and our home room teacher had a little speech about not trying to presume too much from getting a hug.
Biological working efficiency?
Could you elaborate on what they thought was the only appropriate homogenous conduct to have a social life?
Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Could you elaborate on these demands to suppress your free speech, creativity or social behaviour?
I see. The longest romantic relationship I've had lasted about a year, back when I was around 31 years old. She was around 4 years older than I was. I made it clear from the outset that I was polyamorous in mindset, and that this wasn't negotiable. I was frightened that she would ditch me, but by that point in time in my life, I had decided that not explaining that this was my mindset was a recipe for disaster, as for me, it's a very important part of my identity. It may have been a close thing, but she decided to give it a go. It was a rocky year, wherein we had many breakups only to get back together after a day or so, and I felt very frustrated when after my efforts to try to reconcile our different mindsets, she finally decided it was time to move on (I got to thinking, why did I even bother trying so hard?), but now that 8 years have passed, I'm glad that I tried as hard as I did. I've found that I'm just not one to get into many relationships, and that one, being by far the longest, is one that I can look at and still reflect upon to this day.
I had precisely 0 girlfriends as a minor, so I never got into such issues. I had 1 or 2 online girlfriends around my mid 20s, but I didn't have my first physical girlfriend until I was 30. It only lasted about a month, after which I had a sharp disagreement with her about something and we went our separate ways. In her case, I didn't bring up the fact that I was polyamorous minded until -after- we had become boyfriend/girlfriend. It may be that my bringing it up was part of the reason things ended.
Personally, I find that masturbation is the best way to cope with generally not being in a relationship. One can -imagine- being in an erotic relationship, atleast as long as the masturbation lasts, and then go back to one's normal life.
The details you mention don't seem that disturbing to me, though I must admit I am concerned about this 'self hurting masturbation addict' bit. I'm definitely glad you like the Ontario curriculum
. It is constantly coming under fire by various conservatives (I know that many muslims are dead set against it), but so far it has survived.I think your experience with masturbation may be affected by what you do (or don't do) with it. For me, I can't get aroused if I'm not thinking of a scenario, the more plausible the better, wherein I can imagine myself in a situation I would find erotic.
I can definitely understand the coping bit. To me, masturbation is certainly not the ideal, but it is much better than nothing. It's like hope- it's not what you want, but as long as you can -imagine- getting what you want at some point in time, it's enough.
The second question is a minefield. I only bring it up because I have had some -very- traumatic experiences that I wouldn't want anyone else to go through, ones I doubt I'll be talking about too much here, and I want to try to avoid it happening to others. The primary experience is one over time, having to do with ostracization due to certain preventable mistakes, if only I had our society better educated their youth at the time. The current Ontario curriculum may well have prevented a lot of things. But this curriculum is only in Ontario, and I think it still leaves some things out.
Holos
Senior Member
I also was not only restricted in the absence of a sexual education by limited human anatomy, but in my language classes we got to write dissertations on problematic or controversial topics which would pretty much include the wide-spread social absence of sexual orientation and sexual gender education. Those dissertations were never only to be referred in relation to the school and the teaching methods (which largely evaded the students' minds as a long established system of 100 years old), but to the situation in the whole nation. So although our education was limited, it was determined to provide indirectly and at a long term development to each students' individual situation.
Organ efficiency; Organic system efficiency. How to maintain and enhance autonomous (internal organ tissue such as the lungs, the heart or the liver) and sympathetic (muscle movement such as fingers, hands and arms) activities in the human body. Those aspects I learned in my limited biology class directed at human anatomy, but there was no further instruction in how to interact with those aspects outside of a classroom environment and beyond textbook references, despite the obvious requirement of those anatomical aspects to continue engaging in all other subject matters taught by the school besides biology.
It was on the basis of duality opposition. Dominate or be dominated. No third option, except for instant social ostracizing and eventual social neglect. Worship and abide to only half of what we perceive, demonize and repudiate the other half. To even suggest the possibility of an alternative conduct would cause impulsive marginalizing reactions. To then disclaim that the "impossible" alternative conduct was my very own would meet no recognizing reception at all. The only two options previously made possible would be even further restricted to demand a single choice of those two that were once available. The procedures of homogeneous social integration would then turn to express themselves in self-obliterating conventions posed as righteous, but unquestionable, hedonism: alcohol use, loud music, violent video games and horror movies.
As above described, although already at a very personal, bodily, intimate disregard, the demands would manifest themselves especially as sarcastically alienating, self affirmative and passive aggressive proclamation (you *saliva bubble of speech*, you are such a *saliva bubble of speech*, what difference does it make, aren't you a *saliva bubble of speech* anyway?) often with an underlying tone of surrendering seduction, requiring that I took the position of dominance or that I must therefore be dominated elsewhere because of their definitely decided sureness of "controlling their own life by never-excessive hesitant tactics", of course for being in the same kind of sexually uneducated, imposing and neglectful society I found myself in (where were they then when I asked what they wanted to do and all they could say was "I don't know, I am not doing anything, what do you want to do?" probably also recovering from some serious past learning trauma, attempting to recollect themselves while I would look over them to make sure they wouldn't hurt themselves as I had already done many times over for being so insensitively and irrationally marginalized like all of us were just for being curious children, and so having to feel and be responsible for city-wide crime that was, for many decades prior to our births, taken as the law, without anyone truly knowing cause nor consequence, nor caring to investigate or to question).
I am actually so traumatized by the massive amount of people I encountered who had no idea about how to be in a relationship (more so then I am traumatized by my own personal experiences with girlfriends) that imagining anything while I masturbate is extremely disturbing. I have very invasive imagination (vivid memory recollection), and although I usually ward most of it off without much problem when I am focusing on any given activity, sometimes when I give myself time to simply relax (as in masturbation, walking time or eating) some of that imagination comes to be welcome by its own, without me pursuing any sort of form or shape. Because this situation has already been going on for many years, I have developed a series of personalities in which I may be in trusting relationship at any and all of my time, without requiring another person which may also still be working with their own traumas or which may not be willing to be with my uniqueness.
The details you mention don't seem that disturbing to me, though I must admit I am concerned about this 'self hurting masturbation addict' bit. I'm definitely glad you like the Ontario curriculum
I have come to hurt myself in masturbation because I have not only been neglected by prospective intimate sexual relationships, but because I have also been neglected in all kinds of relationships: intellectual, artistic, professional, leisurely, athletic. Those behaviors which could not open space for any pioneering reflected the absent space within my self, within my own continuous pioneering. Since the very original materials of my pioneering weren't my own, but of so many other people that were no more alive or no more responsive, I had to take a load greater than what was meant for a single person, which required distribution, but that was not being in any form welcome. That load required a certain physical therapy of my own that, just with any other aspect of my life, could not be sufficed by standard immutable measures unwilling to change by individual uniqueness. That's why I became addicted and at different points lost the ability to discern between pleasure and pain, from which I am still recovering. Part of the load was never meant for me to have, but someone had to take responsibility for it. It's just a bundle of emotions associated to pleasure and pain which through masturbation I can convert large part of it (but not all of it) into just pleasure. At times, not knowing how else to convert that extra-physical pain that I was carrying around, I put myself to "yank it" over a couple of days no matter what cost to my reproductive system, since I was all by my own anyway, and by the mistake of thinking I could get rid of all the extra-physical pain (which did not pertain only to my body) just through masturbation, or the final let go of my unequally concentrating pleasure center, I ended up surprisingly and unwillingly abiding to "body modification" procedures (as I call it to cheer myself up from rubbing too much). I do not masturbate every day anymore, but everyday, at least for some part of it, my anatomical attention is greatly captured by my uncomfortable genitals (which to me isn't just the same as "craving", but actual "damage").
Yes, I think that is true. Masturbation can occur not only by or through sexual organs, but I have not learned masturbation to be in any other way, and my psyche is still bound by the trauma of not being acknowledged for recognizing my own self and my own body, or for being somehow devalued because of my unique personality and bodily features. Besides, the place in which I live now does not give me the "ethereal" space I would require to masturbate by anyway other than I did before. Like I said, I've got an invasive imagination, largely triggered by the people within a certain geometrical radius. Locking myself in the bathroom, especially under the shower, allows me to be free in recognizing myself, but otherwise I cannot even dare to contrive pleasure just by breathing, or otherwise I am punished by my invasive imagination for at least 30 times longer.
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- Thread starter
- #176
Cool
. I'm a subscriber of the Salon newsletter, and I got this in my email box today, I thought it was appropriate, especially in light of the issues that many teens face, and how having online friends can help...The Internet saved my life: At 13, I told one person I wanted to kill myself—my best friend, whom I had never met
In the very same Salon email, there was also also an article detailing the dark side of intergenerationality, from a woman who had suffered child sexual abuse and wrote a memoir about her life, including that element:
My husband wouldn’t read my memoir: “It’s just too painful”
The article itself doesn't specify who did the abusing, but another article I found does- like most cases, it was someone within her circle, in this case a cousin...
Memoir 'The Telling' makes sense of Zoe Zolbrod's childhood sexual abuse
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320 Years of History
Gold Member
I think Ontario's is a good plan/program. The deadline for successfully having developed well informed people who can apply the full body of content they learn to their personal decision making processes -- kids or adults -- is before they need to make those decisions and before they are somewhat likely to find themselves needing to make a decision on the matter in question, and most certainly before they actually do make bad choices as a result of having not been well informed.
- Schools must neutrally present information, all of it.
- Parents must put that information into some sort of perspective for their kids.
- People, upon becoming adults and as they progress through adulthood, must consider the merit and current applicability of the perspectives, paradigms and conclusions their parents presented regarding that information and determine whether it holds true for them now as it did for their parents before.
I'm going to broadly construe "teacher/student" to mean any non-familial relationship that exists primarily for the minor's benefit, but that doesn't aim to create anything that provides the adult with benefits other than compensation (and its attendant job benefits) as a paid teacher, coach, counselor, etc. With that context as the guiding principle, I don't think there's any time or mode of interaction that is unacceptable between adults and minors.
Given the sex/sexual context of your OP, I'll bother to say that, of course, sexually physical and or romantically emotional relationships between minors and adults are "off limits." While a minor may in some cases display behaviors or express ideas that indicate they desire the relationship take on those aspects, it's incumbent on the adult to manage the situation as needed to ensure that does not occur. How the adult does that may range from merely making it clear that isn't acceptable or going to happen, to completely removing themselves from the minor's life.
I think parents must be accorded a wide range of freedom to exercise discretionary judgement on matters such as that one. In some places, it's probably fine to allow a seven year old to walk alone to a nearby park. In others, it's probably not such a good idea. I don't know Port St. Lucie, FL, so I can't remark on the sagacity of mother's allowing her child to go alone to the park, but my gut says that she knows whether it was generally safe for her kid to do so.
I didn't read the "playground" story. I presume the context is much the same as that of the "park" story. Is it?
As for the matter of charging and prosecuting either parent, it seems kind of absurd to me. Why? Well, because criminal negligence requires mens rea, and quite frankly, I don't think either woman was mentally acquiescent about their child's safety. I mean really...to charge those women with neglect is to imply that either mother, though not willing to actively see their child harmed, was "okay" with the child suffering harm if they weren't around to do something to prevent it or if they could "engineer" legitimate deniability in allowing some known and reasonably expected (not "possible," "expected") harm to befall their child.
Anecdotally, as a child I certainly went to play in the park behind my home. That park, Rock Creek Park in D.C., is huge, and as kids we went "all over the place" in it, sometimes walking, other times on our bikes. My parent's primary admonishment: don't talk to strangers; they may want to hurt you. My home abuts a far smaller park, Woodland-Normanstone Park, and my kids routinely played unsupervised there. Would I have let them do the same at Lincoln Park were we to have lived in that neighborhood? Hell no. The logistical circumstances just don't make that a good idea; there's not much for kids to do there other than play with other folks' dogs, and that necessarily would have forced them to interact with strangers.
I'm sure some folks may think/say, "Well times have changed." Yes, they have. Incidents of "bad things" happening to children at the hands of naer do wells is more widely and more frequently reported in the news. "Stranger danger," however, these days seems quite an unlikely risk that will materialize into genuine harm for one's children.
Of all children under age 5 murdered from 1976-2005 —
At some level, a parent has to allow their child a degree of reasonable freedom to "have a life" befitting their point in life. We have to trust parents are able to make good decisions in that regard. If we aren't going to give parents the freedom to make those kinds of choices, we had better be prepared to ship all kids of a certain age to "child rearing farms" of a sort so we can tightly control all the influences on them.- 31% were killed by fathers
- 29% were killed by mothers
- 23% were killed by male acquaintances
- 7% were killed by other relatives
- 3% were killed by strangers
It certainly can be. To the point of Ontario's sex ed program, and given the range of sexual material that's readily available -- regardless of whether one tries to find it or not -- it makes sense to me to address (or at least begin to) the matter with children as soon as possible. Kids are innately curious; that's part of how they learn and one cannot squelch their interest. I think when a child asks about something they encounter, or when a parent has good reason to expect their kid may encounter "this or that," it's time to tell them about it. Children mature and consume knowledge at the rate they do, not at the rate we parents may want them to, and that's so in both positive and negative contexts.
Continuing from the end of the preceding paragraph I wrote...
Agree. Our pre-teens and young teens think they are grown; our late teen and 20-something kids are, for all intents and purpose and technically speaking, grown, but occasionally behave like children. What's a parent to do? There's no "winning" in that regard. There is only time, effective, untimely and ineffective management of the child's development. Plus, there's no instantaneous delivery of evidence about one's success or failure at being timely and effective with one's choices about the lessons one imparts to one's children.
Parents, much as we don't like doing so, have to recognize that when it comes to their children's experiences, there are things we can control and things we cannot. For the things we cannot, the only, IMO, sane thing to do is to provide kids with the information they need to make good choices on their own. To the extent that a sex ed program like Ontario's helps with accomplishing that goal -- be it applicable in the child's interactions with other kids or on the Internet -- I see that as a good thing. It's not a replacement for our duty as parents, but it helps make the tasks of performing our duty a lot easier. If nothing else, it provides a framework for parents to have those discussions with their kids.
Holos
Senior Member
Cool
The Internet saved my life: At 13, I told one person I wanted to kill myself—my best friend, whom I had never met
In the very same Salon email, there was also also an article detailing the dark side of intergenerationality, from a woman who had suffered child sexual abuse and wrote a memoir about her life, including that element:
My husband wouldn’t read my memoir: “It’s just too painful”
The article itself doesn't specify who did the abusing, but another article I found does- like most cases, it was someone within her circle, in this case a cousin...
Memoir 'The Telling' makes sense of Zoe Zolbrod's childhood sexual abuse
The article actually raises a really interesting point which I think is leading to a general comprehension not only of the necessary education that we all require to live quality lives but also why education doesn't come to be obvious as the fundamental conduct for life as we live in such a complex world, both or children and adults.
I think we can all agree that plenty of mistakes, very grave mistakes, have been made throughout history from its very origin, thousands of years ago. Even after civilization has been built and developed for so long, we still get, at the least, some media informed reference to criminal activity happening somewhere, although at this point the message is usually very politically convoluted and generally confusing for the lay public.
Some of those very grave historical mistakes had to be adequately compensated, and could only be so over a long period of recovery time, not unlike excessively exploitative deforestation leaving a land bare, but which through natural geological processes (wind, rain, fire, erosion) occurring repetitively at an extended period of time would again make the land flourish as a biodiverse flora. Human activity is also able to assist in those restorative natural processes, so even as the mistakes would perhaps take thousands of years to take the full compensating effect, a naturally driven social cohesion distant from those exploited areas (not anymore supportive of the self-destructive excessively exploitative, mistaken life now dead) can reduce the time necessary for full compensation by acting as one more of the fundamental geological processes for the maintenance of life.
That natural process of recovery in which human activity is also included isn't only focused on restoration, but also focused on modification because the deforestation didn't happen only for immediate consumption, but also for product manufacture that would last some time after the forest was gone. That's why recycling is an entire industry nowadays and also so important for the quality of our lives in this day and age.
Now, in relation to the article, all this history is important because it brings us to single individuals who have "something wrong inside", some form of "bio-chemical imbalance", "some requisite attention that evades the empirical senses", making them miserable, confused and often self-harming in similarity to those excessively exploitative, once-alive-now-dead, people who were unknowingly and indirectly self-harming for not properly assessing resource capacity but now in these generations of still living beings in which we are alive we are brought that historical awareness of exploitation close to us; the knife to their very own skin instead of the knife to the table-and-throne-tree, to the stew-rabbit, to the grilled-fowl, to the banquet-cattle, to the exquisitely-tasting-insect, to the water-swimming-meat).
I emboldened in the excerpts from the article you shared the word "waitress" because that's a term used for people who work in the fading remembrance of all those historical homicides (yes, wildlife is also human [homo = equal] life), those historical miscalculated resource assessments, those mistaken crimes which were promoted through the duality paradox of "we are weak against the weather, we are weak against ourselves, we must therefore reaffirm our oppressed strength by oppressing and preying on weaker life forms", and it is not so much the memory of those circumstances that cause depression, or a chemical-imbalance, but actually ingesting the hamburger, the "continental breakfast" of egg and bacon, the buttered "french toast", the coffee with cream, the milkshake, the chicken soup, the "fish and chips" - all these products that are inertial factory outcomes from a senseless mechanizing of what was once massive DILIGENTLY TORTUROUS, sadistic, criminal activity that occurred throughout history. See, the reason why those products are still circulating to such an extent is because now murder, rape, and all sorts of careless exploitation (which led the cause for excessive extractivism) are restrained (literally dammed) from being unwillingly felt or experienced, although there are still millions, if not billions, of life forms undergoing the criminal retroactive self-fulfilling predicament of remaining in **assisted** stasis by their very own acclamation of what life was to be about by their falsely authoritative demands.
In short, those animal products, that once-animate-life now inanimate, so available, relatively cheap but never truly changing in aspect, are torturously poisonous for being a temporary substitute of animated life which at some historical point denied their own selves and the selves of others for some kind of torturous, warring, superstitious ritual. The mind frame would go something like this: "If I eat the bull, I will have its strength and endurance to protect and conquer.", "If I eat the rabbit, I will have its speed and agility to protect and conquer.", "If I eat the bird, I will have its ability to fly.", "If I eat a member of an old inimical tribe, however, that could be either the maximum spiritual-physical reward and tribute, or it could be an offense, a desecration of values, a taboo, the worst poison" and on to the whole natural world, to tribal wars, to national wars, and finally to anthropological literature, the world after all wars and all superstitions.
The children now currently around have been raised mostly in urban environments where the topic of education is still emergent and laborious, urban environments that we have no difficulty in comprehending as "concrete jungles", where any corner street sells a piece of history (that is, provides an observable, empirical example, with a numerical, monetary value), criminal as it was, and criminal as it still is in the archives of time. That empirical example not being sufficient, along with our widely available literature in public libraries, we are generally welcome to partake of such torture through ingestion to know the problem closer, yet again originating through us, although the lawful knowledge of it wouldn't be clearer or more comprehensive, since it has come to be exhibited through the procedure of conclusive executive law, and besides the poisoning experience with no other biological result besides chemical dysfunction (in modest recognition of past criminal endeavors), you will also have to abide to the numerical monetary value given to it when that same value could be otherwise invested in a product with an actual generous and quality-continued future.
We children in urban environments, at least from my own experience, have not been informed of history in such a way, if at all, and many of us have lived to see our parents and grand-parents bound to their uneducated consumption unto their very own terrible and diseased deaths, confused, afflicted, hopeless and attached to their debts and their inability to correctly assess resources. Because of this same situation, probably confused at the very first offput meal which continued to be put in front of me by my mother without any lucid discrimination but with the same obligatory and superstitiously driven mindset of "you must eat these things, and it must be these things, so you may come to be strong" (and the same happening to both my parents since they were born and probably to all the people in their same age group of which they related to), I ended up psychiatrically hospitalized a few times until recognizing what was really the "chemical imbalance", the "inside fix", the "internal wrongness" about, but only by my 20th birthday (and until then I was unkowingly poisoning myself ever since my mother endeared me to eat whatever she gave me, promising me whatever it was, while I took her promise to just be her presence, without realizing it was what I was INGESTING that caused and continued to aggravate the whole problem while I attempted to be a functional social participant, from animal products to alcohol, to highly concentrated sugar sweets and oils).
My family was completely swayed, and to some extent still is, by being intoxicated by all these products, what would be considered trivial treats as an amenity for the inherited suffrage of life already so ill from the products considered "more worthy because more expensive but not anymore affordable". In other words, less meat and more cookies.
While I was writing this post and associating it to the adequateness to the email you got today, I was text messaged by my father with the following words:
"Good morning! Today would be Ralphs [his father, my grandfather] 93rd birthday. I feel much gratitude for him giving me life and the gift of curiosity and compassion."
Unfortunately, I could not say the same and could not even think the same about my grandfather, myself still recovering and not so far damaged by the extensive, interfamilial and intergenerational trauma.
I barely knew my grandfather, I barely spent anytime time with him, living my entire childhood and teenage years in another country, only rarely visiting him and only once or twice being visited. When I finished High School and decided to go to college in the State of my father's lineage (California), I was welcomed to stay with my grandparents while I adapted, although it was expected of me to go elsewhere as soon as possible. Not two years after I arrived, both my grandparents died with varied symptoms of dementia. Already extremely ill when I arrived, himself and my grandmother feeding off TV dinners, dozens of pills, bio-auxiliatory machines, cookies and ice cream, most of my inquisitive student mind was relegated to an invariable dullness, both at the abandoned living room with its many book shelves and travel souvenirs and at dinner table, as I perceived myself incapable of providing or discovering any change in my grandparents' legacy. And that was the first impact impression I got from the determination of pursuing an academic career, since my grandfather held an office at UCLA (University of California of Los Angeles) as retired PHYSICIAN.
To complete this argumentative post that is truly only a background for the further discussion on the fundamental sexual education here proposed, I would like to bring the article shared to attention again, with both of the citizens there evoked as recognized for their roles in dealing with the problem of isolation and mental illness in this same 21st century we are living in.
Leigh is the city child, the protagonist with the primary intention of being with other people, people of which she would like to be taking care of and of which she would like would take care of her too, just like my very own self-described situation.
David is the freeing agent, not entirely free himself for being in similar contemporary urban condition of partial lucidity and wide-spread intoxication, also requiring external social relations to proceed in choosing life regarding enterprises, but given a less demanding, less isolating, social sphere.
The main reason for the difference between the two was not so much in the individual attention they were giving to the problem at the time of their encounters - as it was a lasting friendship - but more so given to their family backgrounds and how their families dealt with the same historical situation of ingesting intoxicants passed off as an adequate diet (if not the only adequate one) or as adequate modern etiquette (in many cases an equally damming, inefficient substitute for historical tribal superstition still enduring in commercial and urban environments).
I think the close suicide of the New York Drama Goil being prevented by the "Into the Woods" Baker empathy somewhat elucidates the problem's reach as well as the problem's solution.
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- Thread starter
- #179
Well said
Ideally, parents would do that, yes. However, we can't count on parents to do that. Ideally, all parents would have to undergo some parent certification of sorts before becoming parents, but that's simply not the case. Failing this, I think schools have to both present pertinent information -and- put some sort of perspective on it. Being a democracy, I believe the perspective would have to be one that most parents would go for.
Sounds reasonable...
- Thread starter
- #180
Fair enough. One thing though, what about volunteer organizations, such as Big Brother/Sister?
Based on the article, I certainly believe -she- felt it was safe. The police may have known something she didn't, but I don't think it should be her fault that she didn't know what they knew. Here's a quote from the story:
**The arresting officer said that Gainey had failed to provide her son with care and supervision by allowing him to cross the street and go to the park alone. According to the report, he told her that there had been recent criminal activity in and around the park and a number of sex offenders lived nearby.**
Furthermore, I think there should be signs on parks where children are not allowed to leave their children unattended or face arrest. I'm pretty sure that would avoid problems like this.
I'll quote from the article:
**
A South Carolina woman has not only been arrested but also had her 9-year-old daughter taken away from her after making a controversial decision that's sure to change the rest of her life. Debra Harrell works at McDonald's, and for most of the Summer, her daughter had accompanied her to work, passing her time by playing on a laptop. After the Harrell family's home was burglarized and the laptop stolen, the child found herself with nothing to do and asked her mom to drop her off at a local park instead of returning to the fast-food restaurant.
Harrell complied, and for three days straight, the girl was dropped off at the park, where there are swings, a splash pad for frolicking in the water, and plenty of shade. She left the daughter with a cell phone so that she would have a way to contact her. On the third day, a woman asked the girl where her parents were. Horrified by her response, she called the authorities, and the rest was history.
Harrell was arrested for unlawful conduct toward a child, and her daughter has since been put into foster care.**
I think putting her daughter in foster care just because she let her daughter play in a park is horrifying. There is another issue here that I think is important- the mother -couldn't- really attend to her daughter, she was working. When her laptop was stolen, her daughter literally had nothing to do. I can certainly understand why her mother decided it might be best to let her play in a park with lots of things for a kid to do. Perhaps the real tragedy here is that the many governments fail to provide services like free or low cost daycare, and probably better paying jobs to afford low cost daycare. I found an interesting article regarding Sweden:
**So four decades later, almost every Swedish toddler heads off to preschool with trained educators, even if there is a parent still at home. (Of course, because parental leave is so generous, almost every child is cared for by their mom and dad until at least their first birthday.) Fees are charged on a sliding scale based on income, but the average maximum charged is modest by Canadian standards – about $300 a month – and preschool is free for four- and five-year-olds.**
Source: What the world can teach Canada about building better daycare
Agreed. It seems clear that both parents were certainly thinking of their safety, both giving them a cell phone so that they could reach their mothers just in case something happened.
So did I, with my eldest sister, and frequently. To be fair, though, there was sometimes supervision back then. But not always. My parents didn't seem concerned, so neither was I
. Yep, that was pretty much the advice they gave us too. Me and my sister used to walk to a school that was pretty far as well. I only did it in grade 1. I never found myself in any danger, or even any suspected danger. After that, I took public transportation to a school that was even further. I believe my sister was driven to school after she told the family that some strange man had followed her. For a time, we both went to the same school, and we would go home together, I never noticed anyone following us, but we were no longer quite as young as we were at first (My eldest sister is 2 years younger then me).
Good point.
That's what I thought. The statistic that really stands out there:
**
Violence Against Children 2-17 is going down too (and not just because we are helicoptering. Crime is down grown men and women too, and we don’t helicopter them):
Physical Assault: down 33% 2003 – 2011
Rape, attempted or completed: down 43% 2003 – 2011
Source: University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center)**
They also mention that while actual crime against minors is down, the -perception- of crime against minors is up, and reference the following article:
Joe Keohane: The crime wave in our heads
That statistic is so very important. Everyone is afraid of 'stranger danger', which accounts for a mere 3% of deaths, but pay so little attention to the fact that 90% of deaths (adding up percentages from your statistics there) comes from family or relatives.
I'd argue that they essentially have that already- Children's Aid can and does remove children from their parents if they decide that's what should be done, and then ship them off to foster care and possibly adoption after that. I'm sure there are some instances where it's warranted. I'm also sure there are some instances where it's not- I believe a good book that covers many such instances on that would be "Harmful to Minors"
Agreed.
I think that, in one sense, it's nice to have a hard line marker of when a child becomes an "adult", that being 18. Personally, though, I think it should really be something like "more mature adult". In the natural world, an animal becomes an adult when they can reproduce. Only humans have this artificial idea that adulthood doesn't occur until a date well past that point. I'm certainly not saying that a child that is able to have a child should be considered an adult in the sense that we currently consider it, but I -do- believe that they should be treated differently then children who have -not- yet reached that point. To some extent, we do; puberty tends to start in the teens, though sometimes it can start before that. Something I absolutely detest is the idea that children can be tried as adults and yet society has the hypocrisy to say that they don't have the -rights- of adults. They shouldn't have it both ways. Personally, I don't think children should ever be tried as adults, regardless of the crime. Or perhaps have 2 stages for children- pre pubescent and post pubescent but not yet 18, with different rights, and different possibilities of sentencing.
No, but there is certainly a body of knowledge. I really think that all parents should need to get some kind of certification before becoming a parent.
Definitely
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