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A Facebook friend has posted this link to this news report about yet another child suicide aparently facilitated by bullying. Which reminded me of Jim Crawford's 'Confessions of an antinatalist' passage on school. I've been reading it the other day. I gotta say it feels weird being unable to highlight passages with your finger.
The point is, childhood does suck. I wasn't abused or beaten or anything extra rude or tragic in my childhood years, but especially after school started I couldn't wait to grow up and be my own boss. They say childhood is careless because you're dependednt on parents and don't have to worry about bills or other grown up problems, but you also have to be living by somebody else's rules all the time, ask for stuff and hope your parents don't dismiss what you're saying. Everybody gets to tell you what to do, adults expect you to show them respect simply because they've farted around on this planet a few times longer. In essence, kids are a way to feel smarter and more important about yourself. Maybe you haven't achieved much in an adult world, but you can always tell some kid how to live because you're taller and have more visible wrinkles on your face.
So anyhow, I've decided to take a couple of pics of the book since I can't just highlight a text and paste it.
A pretty good summation of what our lives are about. Constantly living awaiting the best still somewhere in the future, still about to manifest itself some day. Or accepting that this is the normal state of affairs - to be spending most of our time doing what we'd rather not.
Although I might be a bit luckier with regards to actually liking my job but would I have preferred to work less and spend more time on other things like hobbies and travelling? Of course. Moreover, would I have preferred to be born in this country? Nope.
So anyway, childhood is no paradise, that's for sure.
More posts from this category: On the pointless absurdity that life isEqually beautiful? Yeah, right!
Vicky
|
06-12-2016
That's a pretty thorough and exhaustive analysis. Pretty much summarizes what I've always known.
In many (not to say all) respects childhood's much worse than adulthood, where at least you've got a wider choice and you're the one in control, rather than under someone else's control. To me, childhood was alright till I turned 11, and it was then that the problems started. Now, at 29 I would never return to being 5, 10, 11, 16 or 18 again, even if I could. Thank you! |
Irina |
13-12-2016
Thanks for your comment, Vicky! You're right, at least as adult you're the one in control, however ill prepared and unqualified, because parents oftentimes aren't any more prepared to make the best choice or find the best solution to a problem for their kid. |
Schools are simply a way of ensuring that people don 't get to think for themselves - a kind of 'brainwashing ' to 'socialize ' people at an early age, so that they can accept as perfectly normal and reasonable the profit motive, hierarchy, aspiration, nation-states...and, in large chunks of the world, female genital mutilation, female slavery, and so on.