I'm having a little difficulty wrapping my skull around it.
Literally ... I just killed (intentionally), a whole, massive warehouse of ramblings.
I'll try again later. But,
ye gods!, I'm considering random violence just trying to get an overview of the problem.
The problem, though, cannot belong to the kids. They grow exactly as they're taught, whether we like it or not. Even if they disobey, they are still forming their actions around your principle. (More deletions; I've tried the following six times, so let's just hope for the best ....)
I have decided, after careful observation and consideration, that the critical wound my parents issued was that they never picked the right issue. (More deletions ...)
That is, when we collided head-on, it was never about an important facet of the issue at hand. (Even more deletions.)
I'll try this, for starters: We know kids are paranoid. I was raised that way ... most of us were raised that way. I would assert that parents, for their best intentions, fail to alleviate any of that fear. In fact, I would assert that the entire world, as it regards children, has the cumulative effect of scaring the hell out of them.
We talk sometimes about role models ... who teaches your kids how to be a friend? I look around at my own generation (the "Special" Generation ... I think we're all ADD-HD, lead-painted, CFC-gasping idiots, from time to time, and the long nights spent fearing the end of the bloody world didn't do much good, either!) and I see a number of people who still act like they're in high school. As far as the excessive drinking and amusingly reckless drug use goes, that's just fine. But they still measure their friends in ... well, less-than-ideal ways. Nobody taught us how to be "friends" ... from the rarity of friends we learned that "friend" was anyone who looked like me, thought like me, was the same age, and generally wasn't boring or impoverishing to be around. I wouldn't worry that youth set friendship standards around who's got the best toys, or who wears the best fashion labels, except that I see thirty year-olds who haven't gotten past it. Most of 'em, in fact.
Role models ... friends ... might I assert, as a general principle (and so I don't have to delete any more wandering rants) that our nation's youth are slowly suffocating from a lack of human contact. When we book a child's pre-school because it might make a difference getting them into Harvard ... when we schedule play dates with the Jones' boy, but not the Hamiltons', because the Hamiltons' can't afford the same kindergarten ... really, is it worth it?
The schools are political battlezones. They are genuine battlezones, as well, as seems to be the issue. But teachers are laden with political politics; youth are laden with schoolyard politics. The purpose is comparative, but to be superlative. Every person is either a resource to be consumed, or a competitor to be defeated. It isn't "for the fun of the game", anymore. Parents are switching their kids' high schools to get a better shot at college scholarships. Parents are
killing each other in Pee-Wee league. A spouse is an insurance policy, a prenuptual agreement, a trophy of conformity or beauty to be shown off, to be superlative. The world around a child is incredibly selfish, incredibly vicious, and incredibly aggressive.
Even churches are polarizing. Sure, confirmation was boring in my day, but they're busing teenagers around to protests.
Streets are hostile, perhaps dangerous. There's pedophiles in the streets and glowering security guards kicking kids out of coffeshops and malls across the nation.
Family life is twisted, to say the least; who's isn't? But we've got kids so strung up about "normal" that they'll literally be twenty-two and climbing out of a pint glass when it hits them that such embarrassing chaos as their family
is the standard.
But there's huge stakes on everything, and nowhere to turn that is absolutely, purely quiet and without judgement. There's a woman who wants to marry me who can't be quiet. There's a woman I should have married who I don't need to speak to. There's a world of difference between the experience of being in a room, alone, with one or the other. That quiet, human moment is exactly what I consider the
standard for friendship, and every human being should have at least one of these people in their lives that you
aren't married to.
But who's teaching kids how to carve out those moments? We're so worried about their conduct that they can't. They're either humping like bunnies or competing like jackals.
We teach kids the value of a dollar, the value of hard work, the value of honesty. But when it comes to the value of other human beings ... well, it never seems pure.
It might be that they're starving for contact. It may not be an epidemic of violence.
It might be catharsis.
thanx,
Tiassa
(PS--I had a Zen moment recently in which a simple question about what someone was doing at that moment, in my presence, spiraled out into approximately the whole universe in a matter of seconds. The topic at hand is not an easy one to get hold of, hence the notes on deleted text. Otherwise, we're looking at about six to ten times the present length. I'm hardly finished, though. But things came together nicely. Really. Okay, from
my perspective. But I can say
Catharsis, and it has a functional meaning I didn't have when I started the post. It might become the Whole Answer for me on this one in the sense that the myriad answers I seek will come down to human beings sharing forms of expression. Empathy?)
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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot
