So now that I got that great big rant about how glad I am to have escaped Jen and her illegitimate children out of me, I figure I ought to get to writing a tiny bit about parenthood in the modern world, and just why I -- as a holy childless man--- think so many of these total suckers out there completey despite it, but are of course trapped in it.
The first thought that comes to me when I think about this topic is this: Over the course of the 20th century, and especially now the first 18 years of the 21st, I believe that humans have undergone a titanic shift not just in terms of technology, but also in terms of consciousness. To put it simply, I think that many activities we humans were rather mindlessly engaged in for centuries upon centuries, are now no longer such mindless activities. Child raising is obviously the perfect example of one such “mindless activity” that, for a long time, we humans kept doing on repeat, without really thinking about how it changed our lives.
Basically, the thesis I am presenting here is that, in pretty much every century prior to the 20th, there was, in some sense, nothing better to do with ones time on Earth, besides raise children. After all, in a year like 1780, books really weren't widely published, video games didn't exist, airplanes weren't flying everywhere, televisions weren't in every room, clothes were all pretty dreary, and ...well, 1780 just looks like it would have been a pretty boring time, for someone who was alone. Cause in 1780 there was basically no point in even being alone. You would have nothing to do. Families and children and all that, they were almost actual necessities, if you wanted to be entertained, in a year like that. What else could you have really possibly done all the time? It was a dreadfully mundane time in whixh to be living, in many ways. In a certain sense, the idea of the “individual” had not yet even been invented.
Indeed, it's this big idea of the individual and the actual creation of him or her, that has completely changed child rearing in the modern age, and made it so absolutely intolerable for so many very remorseful parents. Basically what happened is that, with the advent of TV, films, books, video games, airplanes, automobiles, birth control, grocery stores, and of course now the Internet, people became something they never had been before: Mentally self sufficient. Now being mentally self sufficient is a bit different than being physically self sufficient, but essentially what it means is that, no matter who you are now, it's pretty easy to keep yourself endlessly entertained, all the time, without the help of a spouse or a couple children running around. Again, so many avenues of entertainment we have now, just did not exist in the past. Freedom was severely limited. If you were born in Italy, you were probably trapped there in every sense of the Word...you couldn't even hope for a bloody one hour TV show to help you escape your surroundings. All of this is gloriously over now. The scientists and inventors invented things, and tons of them. Yes some of those things, like the nuclear bomb, and Wal Mart, were terrible--- but so many other things were wonderful. And all these wonderful things have made child rearing just seem like milking cows or working the assembly line at the Ford factory. It's almost like some old and obsolete pastime now. The same fun you would have had doing it in 1650, when literally the entire village Outside your door was doing it with you, just ain't there. It just ain't there….
Again, it all goes back to this idea of the individual having been created. I don't think many people realize just how recent of an invention the individual really is. For almost the entire length of human history, he or she didn't exist. What we had instead were groups or tribes . For example, when one thinks of a caveman, one does not think of someone who had his own specific interests. The caveman is instead a lot like a dog: All of them did the exact same thing ...none were really that noticeably different than the other . And this lack of differences between people actually went on for quite a long time, believe it or not, especially when you're talking about the poorest among us. Coincidentally, who is still giving birth to the most children? The poor. Why? Because they literally still feel like they have no identity of their own to maintain or salvage; theyre eager to trade themselves in for the identity of “parent”. They are like the cavemen: They don't do enough thinking to be individuals. Therefore, they don't necessarily miss “themselves” much, when they give birth. But wealthier people definitely do miss themselves , cause they see right away what was lost. Wealthy people had interests, after all, that they pursued as individuals, that they see right away, are totally forfeited.
Of course, at this point, I understand that older readers might be looking over this, and thinking I'm nuts, and wondering what it all means. After all, if what I'm saying has any truth to it, doesn't that mean that we are rapidly approaching a time when literally everyone , or nearly everyone, will find child raising dreadfully annoying, and not want to do it? Well, yes, that is sort of what I foresee happening, in fact. The problem with this, of course, is that the world will still need new lives, and someone will have to raise them, so how's it gonna work? Here's where it gets to be a bit like science fiction: In the future, it's very easy for me to imagine a scenario where, instead of perhaps being raised by angry, remorseful and clueless parents, children will be raised by a collective unit of trained professionals. In other words, child raising will somehow become completely a matter of the State, rather than being something that's left up to the private family.
At first, for modern ears, the idea sounds dreadful, and it almost even sounds pretty lacking in individualism. After all, isn't a private family much more individualistic than something as awful as the State? The answer is actually both yes and no. For example, the nuclear private family is more individual than the tribe, which predates it, but at the same time as that, the tribe existed in that terrible time when there was no technology, and this idea I'm coming up with -- which sounds similar to a big tribe raising children---- would have very different results than a tribe, since this idea will exist in a world of very innovative technology. The child of the cavemans tribe always wound up being just like every other child because they had no computers and didn't live in a highly advanced and skilled society. The child of the advanced State would probably face some indoctrination, yes--- but he wouldn't face it to the extreme degree the tribal child used to, or even, in my opinion, to the same degree a modern child in an Evangelical family does right now. Making the indoctrination argument is rather pointless: No matter which way you raise a child, some type of indoctrination will always be present. The only problem would be indoctrination on a massive scale, which could arise in a situation like the one I paint, but so long as the society remains democratic (which I feel would actually be more likely to happen) there would be no issues. The society of children raised by an advanced state would be a highly educated society. As I say, the risk of indoctrination is always there. The Germans who fell for Hitlers asinine plan were the grown children of very close knit late 19th and early 20th century nuclear families . Nuclear families produce indoctrinated morons too. It's simply not a valid argument ….
The other important thing to keep in mind here, since I know many people will find the idea of children being raised by the State so mortifying, is that, in so many ways, ¾ worth of childhood has already been handed over to the state, even in our own time.
Public school from the age of 5 to 18 would have been an unthinkable horror to the family person of , say, the year 1235. It wouldn't have made any sense, mostly because it would have been making the child too much of an individual, as a result of the fact that an education inherently separates a child from whoever their family might be. See what I mean? Nowadays it's something you literally have to do. Every child must go to school, in at least some form. This idea is publicly supported by taxes, and the reason people support it -- even in America, where everyone hates helping one another ---- is because no one wants to live in a society that's half filled with children who can't read, write, or who don't even know literally the first thing about the history of the country they're living in. It'd be a terrible country to live in, that did not have public school, and my prediction is that this entire idea of being taken care of by the public will eventually bleed over into every last aspect of 9/10 children's lives. All but the wealthiest children may very well find themselves born into the State, raised by professional caretakers. It sounds scary to the modern ears, I know -- but so does a nuclear bomb, and no one seems to be crying about the existence of that every day anymore. Society changes. It must, or else it will flounder. And right now the plain fact is that far too many children are falling into massive black holes of our society, because the nuclear family has gone bust, and it ain't coming back.
Here's the big detail in all of this, however, that most people are probably missing: In a world where the majority of children are somehow being successfully raised by a public state, there will be a ton of people milling around with a lot more money and a lot more free time, than anything we can imagine today. The reason why is obvious: In our own time, it's basically still almost nearly “everyone” who falls into the trap of having children they couldn't really afford. Believe me, I've done a lot of reading on it, and lived it firsthand, and it's clear to see that even people who have the children within marriages right now, usually can't really afford them. As a result, we have a great deal of very stressed out people living in rather bleak conditions, who never have a single waking moment to take a breather, or think much about someone else's kids. Most poor families in America literally have no extra money and not even any real time to enjoy their own kids, in fact. They spend nearly their entire lives just working to keep the kids alive, and then the kids get to age 18, have more kids, and basically do the exact same thing. In the alternate future world I'm describing, every kid would instead have a connection to something or someone who actually had loads of free time to pass with them . Every kid would eat 3 meals a day. Every kid would be raised by professionals who would be trained to identify and work with their core strengths , whatever they may be, in order to successfully prepare them for their place in society.
In such a world, it's very easy to imagine that my skill as a writer could have been quickly identified and advanced upon at as early as 11 years old. Instead, in this world, I was left mostly at the mercy of clueless parents, who basically seemed illiterate and disinterested in everything I had to say. Which world really sounds more dystopian to you? The one where tons of kids get unfortunately born into families that collapse a month after they're born, cause daddy likes smoking crack and suddenly realized he didn't want a kid, or a world where professional caretakers have been trained to work with kids, even when it comes to passing the night time hours? Again, the idea I have is seen as so belligerently radical, but it's really nothing more than an extension of the school life to the evening hours. Monday- Friday, from 7 am to 3 pm, already sees the child under the wings of the professionally trained caretaker. The future world merely makes it all full time, Monday-Sunday, 100 percent. It doesn't really sound scary to me honestly ...not after the family life I had to deal with, and am still dealing with . It doesn't sound scary at all. If anything, it sounds downright relieving. I would have had the chance to be with all my friends. No begging for rides to their house every Friday evening. I would have been living with them and studyjng with them, all the time. Honestly it sounds more evolved.
You see, the one detail that struck me so much about Jen's story (to discuss that briefly now) was that, when you listened to her tell it, she often would make it sound as though, if only the childs father would stop smoking crack, shooting heroin, and cooperate with her, all would eventually be just dandy and perfect, without a problem in the world. After a long enough time of listening to Jen tell this tale over and over, I almost began to believe it myself, and I saw things from her eyes, which made me interpret the "standard family", where daddy is home and works a good job, and where mommy is also home and maybe works a good job too, as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The thing, however, that ultimately shattered this asinine illusion, was that, when I began to research the recent history of the nuclear family, as well as all the articles posted by scientists and actual parents online, about how much they hate married life and regret having kids, it dawned on me very quickly that, even the married couples with money, whom Jen believes to be happy, aren't really that happy anymore, in this modern age.
The real dark truth about child rearing in our time now is that, as i keep stressing, nearly everyone is growing more and more discontented and annoyed with it, with each passing generation. The woman with babies in the 1960s was more annoyed than the woman in the 1940s, and the woman in the 1980s was more annoyed than the 60s, et cetera et cetera. This is because the nuclear family has gone bust -- and the family has gone bust, again, because of the advanced technology we have created, which has resulted in this "hyper individualization" occurring. For example, if my reader is someone who finds my idea of the "individual" only recently being created preposterous, just think for a moment about a very common argument that occurs between married couples today: "What shall we watch tonight on our television set?".
This argument simply didn't exist in the past; there was no TV set and thus the only real argument a married couple from, say, 1920, could have gotten into, was about whether they wanted to take their child to the river, or down to the park. It's still an argument, yes, but its not nearly as significant as what to watch on the TV set, which now has 900 channels. The hyper individualization I'm referring to is deeply connected to the 900 channels the average commoner now has to choose from, in addition to the fact that he can also just buy a separate TV set all his own, or a computer, etc. As I repeatedly stress, people in the year 2018 have a mass array of interests that no one ever had before, for all of time. Think for a moment of a fellow who would have cleaned the deck or something, on a big boat, in the year 1690. He did his duties and then he perhaps got drunk, talked to some other people on the same boat as he was for 3 hours, cleaned his clothes, perhaps stared at the ocean for 20 minutes, and went to sleep. That was the total extent of his "self". Choice hardly existed for that, depending how you look at it, very fortunate deck swabbing soul. He did not say "I want to listen to the Rolling Stones tonight instead of the Beatles! Damn you other sailors!". He had no choice; he just listened to whatever musician may have been available upon the boat. And believe it or not, but this gigantic multitude of choices, lifestyles, activities, interests, books, and TV shows, has all radically altered the manner in which we are interpreting child rearing. As I say, it's like milking cows now. It ain't the same, and it never will be again. It's annoying now, especially if you have no idea what you're doing and you've gotten trapped doing it all alone.
So yea. I've actually sort of written about all of this before somewhere, but I figured it deserves some attention again, what with all my grief about Jen and how much she hates her life and all that. As I always say, ciao ciao.
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