Item: Katharine Mieszkowski writes in today’s Salon: “In her new book, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry, [Lenore] Skenazy suggests that many American parents are in the grips of a national hysteria about child safety … fed by sensationalistic media coverage of child abductions, safety tips from alarmist parenting mags, and companies marketing products that promise to protect tykes from every possible danger.
…
“[W]e've started to think of our kids as the most vulnerable, the most endangered, the least competent, the most, uh, dumb generation in history that needs the most supervision the most hours of the day, literally, than anybody until now.”
Item: French medical anthropologist G. Clotaire Rapaille had American participants in his “archetype research” lie on the floor, lulled them into an alpha state through relaxing music, and had them then free associate off of images of different car designs. Overwhelmingly, the participants said: “It’s a jungle out there. It’s Mad Max. People want to kill me, rape me. Give me a big thing like a tank.” As a result of this market research, Chrysler added an extra thick front bumper to the PT Cruiser, made the rear window smaller and increased the amount of sheet metal in the hatch to convey a more powerful vehicle.
Item: Condi Rice at Stanford, replying to a student about Abu Ghraib and torture policies, tells him that Americans are in danger and that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were necessary to protect Americans. When the student points out that the US faced a much greater threat in World War II but didn’t resort to torture, Rice is unable to come to grips with this.
Item: According to the Gallup’s late April 2009 poll, 53% of Americans think that “harsh interrogations techniques” were justified. (51% of Americans nonetheless favor investigations into the torture policies under Bush and Cheney - in spite of being told by Obama that no investigations are necessary, and in spite of being told by most of the media that “torture worked”).
Item: Reportedly some individuals buy hundreds of surgical-style masks to protect themselves from Swine Flu. As Joe Blow points out, masks are completely useless.
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We live in a more media saturated environment than any people ever. The events of elsewhere become part of our immediate world, brought to us via a flat screen or via alarmist headlines. Media find that scaring people sells and beats spending the money on real investigative reporting. We’re warned that low prices at Costco are a draw, but you better watch out for possible inventory falling on us in the aisles.
Public officials scare Americans, who live in a country that is second to none in world history in military might and that already spends more on its military than all of the rest of the world combined, into thinking that we must go after petty dictators half the world away because they might be planning to get us. Pre-emptive wars – the supreme international war crime - and even torture are justified, they say, in order to protect this greatest of all nations from nations that don’t even have missiles, an air force or navy.
Parents hold tight to their kids, lest predators get them, tightly scheduling their kids’ lives so that very few kids nowadays know what it is like to just hang out with their neighbors and create games.
Is this anyway for us to act?
Knee Pads and Helmets for Life
As Lenore Skenazy points out:
“[W]e are bombarded with advice like that all the time, not only from TV, but from the parenting magazines. If you start reading them, they will drive you crazy, too. They make everything into a potential for disaster. There was one article on kite flying with kids: ‘Choose a sunny day when there is no chance of lightning.’ It's like, oh, thanks, because I was really thinking, Should I go out when the thunder is rumbling, and when it's already lashing rain, and you see a witch flying by on a broomstick? Everything becomes the worst-possible-case scenario and almost laughably terrible.
“Then there are products out there that will prevent this from happening. Here is a helmet your child could wear when she starts to toddle, lest she fall over and split her head open and die, or suffer traumatic brain injury.
“Kids have been toddling -- it's a whole stage we actually call toddlerhood -- ever since we started walking upright, which has been a pretty successful experiment for the human species. But now you're supposed to think that it's too dangerous for a kid to do without extra protection and without extra supervision and without this stupid thing you can buy.
“There are kneepads that you're supposed to put on your kid because crawling is considered too dangerous for the knees, as if knees weren't built for crawling. That's why they're cute and dimpled and fat.
…
“Ben Franklin was apprenticed to his brother at age 12. Mark Twain was an apprentice, too, and Herman Melville was going off to be captured by cannibals by the time he was 16.
“Twelve was sort of the age of maturity. Up until then, it wasn't as if they weren't doing anything. They'd be helping out their fathers. Girls would be pulling sacks of laundry around, or taking care of the younger children. Even today in most societies that don't have a ton of money and do have a ton of children, it's not the mother who's responsible for playing patty-cake with the kid all day long lest the kid not develop his verbal skills and, you know, good eye contact.
“The 7-year-old would be taking care of the 5-year-old, and oftentimes the 5-year-old would be taking care of the 3-year-old. Children are more competent than we believe. We forget what kids are capable of. It's interesting, if you look at history, or if you look at other countries, to realize how very specific to 2009 our worries are and the way we think of kids is.”
A fearful people are not only damaging their own ability to live a good life and hurting the chances of their children to become capable and brave, but taken to extremes, which is exactly what has happened, a fearful people are a cruel people, willing to do horrid things to others in order to assure themselves that they are safe.
Will we continue to allow crimes against humanity to be committed to foster an illusory sense of security? Will we follow leaders who tell us that the price of freedom is American gulags like Bagram and rendition?
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Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Watching Frogs Boil
Karen McKim
Erica K
Jennifer Prestholdt
Julie Morse
Salon.com
Comments
If you made me dictator, for a week, :), you would have everyone get a media budget, with two days off, and you would have a minimum amount of complexity and time allotted in news stories. We are ADHD nation.
The parental arms race does not help either in terms of activities, keeping up with the Jones.
Although the one qualification I would say is that there is a cascade downward from old to young as far as competence that might be inevitable: big brother bashing little brother and on down the generational chain about how "kids today,' which might well be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The longer we live, the dumber we become.
and also the last paragraph,
that's a good question? O gaud.
Fake "leadership" creeps are terminal wacky.
Years of inbred nepotism may be the reason.
Soon we'll ride a hoofed donkey to sip Windy.
We'll eat monkey (tease) and ride a big Harley.
Perhaps we'll shoplift a Fax machine for e-Bay?
We will haul the computer to a dump sight huh.
Then we can buy a 3/4 pint bottle of goat milk.
We can revert back to poison rubber pacifiers?
Gag. Wear football helmet with nose-face guard.
We can call a goose a hippo? We toot:`heehaws.
We may take a gov`mint correspondence course.
I sigh:`Respectfully, a Course in Quack Miracles?
I heard that an Authority (not) mumble:` Quacks.
These high-level "experts" are the rot sewer drips.
Free range government cronies on all-fours spews.
'Um chicken scat. Ducks cackling moronic a- gooses.
Dennis Loo. Mr Yoo love Dennis Loo? I bet not tho.
Me Loo. Yes! Your acts. O, keeping readers abreast.
Tails. Crude, base, low-lifes, left-over, bushy weasel?
Or something? 'Um lost the soul. No humanity. UGH!
They are the proverbial rotten liver with no humanity!
Heartless. Scabs. Putrid. God goes gets a sharp scythe!
Stellaas reponse is particularly good.
As Americans, we seem to have gotten the idea that we can control the world around us and somehow cheat death if we just drive a hummer, wear helmets, exercise, and eat all the right foods. I am reminded of Jackie Kennedy Onassis who, when told she had terminal cancer, replied, then why have I done all these things?
Don: the Internet has created a rapid news cycle. It started with CNN. Before then, news broke day by day rather from hour to hour, and news outlets had more time to look into stories and to fact check. Partly because of the news cycles being shortened so much and partly due to merger mania (with news operations becoming part of gargantuan corporations and having to show bottom-line profits) news investigations have given way to cheaper, faster, more sensational and less reliable stories. This dovetails with the ideological components involved here with shifts sharply to the right.
Stellaa: yes, absolutely. I'd be interested in the author you cite.
Cartouche: Americans used to live predominately on the farms and kids grew up working side by side with their parents. At the turn of the last century (1800s to 1900s) the average American slept 9 hours/day.
Arthur: Yep, you got it. John Yoo would not like, does not like, what I write.
O'Steph: your Jackie O story reminds me of an American who was asked by a reporter on NPR about the stock market crash of the early 2000's. He said that he "followed the rules and did all he was supposed to do," how come his stocks crashed?
Occasionally, I find myself flirting with bad motherhood, or what is considered bad motherhood, based on my experiences as a child. For example, I am going into the store to get one item at 3pm. It is not hot outside; it is cool. I can see the car from the window of the store. Why in the world can't I leave Little Miss Wiggle Worm in the car for the five minutes while I go in and get what I need? Because this is, I assure you, what my mother did, except my mother did that in all weather, at all times of day, and took longer than five minutes. No one thought a thing about it. She cracked a window. I guess we're lucky to be alive? I don't know.
And don't get me started on how I used to sleep in the little space under the window in the back of car when I was little, how I crawled over the seats, sans seatbelts ... etc. etc.
I'm not saying those seatbelts are bad. NO, they are great. But some of it ... argh. It's out of control.
If the experts were to be believed, it's a miracle that the human species exists at all.
Owl: There is so much information that we have to prioritize what we can do a lot of research on and know well, although because of the Internet, it is possible to speed up the research process tremendously, as long as you have a sense of how to evaluate and analyze sources and evidence, which a lot of people don't know how to do because they've not been trained in it. I know that I can now put together material for a topic that used to take me many fold hours longer than it does today.
Four Times in Eight Sentences:
Asked yesterday by a fourth grader about she thought about what President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration used to get information from detainees, Condi Rice, having prepared better this time and scaling down the age of questioners from Stanford undergraduates to elementary school students, said:
"Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could TO PROTECT THE COUNTRY. After September 11, we wanted TO PROTECT THE COUNTRY," she said. "But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order TO PROTECT THE COUNTRY."
She added: "I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time. We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die. . . . Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal, and I hope people understand that we were trying TO PROTECT THE COUNTRY."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301739_pf.html
Further, the world really has changed. Yes, I rode my bike all over creation when I was a youngster, but by the time my kids reached that age, traffic had multiplied 100-fold.
In addition, when I was young, all of our mothers were home to look out for us, which was not an unalloyed benefit for women.
And I would say that Rice's comfort with torture is not directly related to her discomfort with risk. It's a far scarier process than that: "I will because I can, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."
High Lonesome: You are correct about Condi. She wasn't saying that she supported torture because she's all that scared. She is employing that threat as an excuse.
As for whether the world has changed all that much: kids used to walk to school when it was a reasonable distance. Now no matter how close it is, many parents insist on driving them. Unscheduled and unorganized play time has disappeared to a large extent in part out of fears of the unknown predator. Halloween trick or treating still exists, but in many places parents have substituted parties because they fear the tainted apple - for no good reasons since there's not a single documented incident of poisoned treats from strangers.
Guilty souls have good reason to be fearful. Does anyone really expect good things from a religion of greed and warfare? That fear has to manifest itself soemwhere.
Thanks-rated
Harry: Always good to hear from you. There's a theory, I'm forgetting at the moment whose theory it is, that Americans feel some guilt over their valuing their lower taxes over the adequate funding of public education and stealing the futures from their kids by the systematic defunding of social programs and public services. While many don't make this (simple) connection in their minds, on some unconscious level, according to this theory, they do feel some guilt. So you may have a point as to some of this.
In short- we now live in a complex world. We can't go back to the simple days anymore. Anyone who tries to sell you that 'Back when we were kids' nonsense is delusional.
icemilkcoffee: I grew up in the city and not on a farm so we didn't have dirt floors, but I did play in the neighborhood with the neighborhood kids (who were quite a bit older than me and actually quite mean, but that's another story), and didn't participate in any organized sports until middle school. My parents never took me anywhere for sports. My daytime, after school life, and weekend life was largely unscheduled.
The ratcheting up of fears about "WHAT CAN GET YOU" is something that has been present in the recent past and cannot be explained on the basis of the existence of urbanization, power outlets, or Prozac.
Having worked in educational publishing for the past 20 years, I vaguely remember when this sort of thing started to creep into articles and books; and it started to happen when society started becoming more litigious. No publisher wants to be successfully (or even unsuccessfully) sued by someone who read the kite-flying article, took his kid out kite-flying, and got struck by lightning. The fears feed the articles, the articles feed the fears, the ephemeral becomes embedded in our psyches.
I heard this at a retreat recently; it was spoken by a Jesuit priest:
"The world is a terrifying place, with wonderful things in it."
I thought that about summed it up.
Rated.
Hovering over children may protect them from immediate harm, but at what cost? How are children who are never left to their own devices going to learn independence or develop creativity? Children who have everything done for them and expect to be entertained every moment are going to be ill equiped to deal with the world as an adult.
By the way, I grew up on a farm and no one had dirt floors! However, I did learn self-reliance.
In addition, those who have faced adversity and overcome it by learning that they have the inner resources and strength - i.e., resilience - are much better adapted and happier than those who have never had to face difficulties. The notion that adversity isn't something good for young people is hogwash and is contributing to producing young people and adults who have trouble facing reality, as Stellaa and SuznMaree point out.
Helen: Thank you for that info. Around what years did you start to notice the heightened litigiousness?
Also, people still lived surrounded by extended families and stayed within 30 miles of where they were born and raised. Easier to get out of tight spots with a cluster of relatives to support you and communities that knew you. Now-a-days, we have nuclear or single-parent homes; Americans are more likely to change jobs and residences over a lifetime than our grandparents and great-grandparents did.
So my vote goes to the dissolution of ties to family and community as a prominent source for increased levels of fear and isolation. Of course, the introduction of the boob-tube in the 1950s didn't do anything but exacerbate isolation and provide an easy conduit for fearful messages from government and corporations.
I remember a documentary about Chicago before and during WWII, where everyone from that generation said that they never stayed home in the evening. Everybody went out to clubs, especially jazz clubs to dance, to socialize, to meet people. Nobody stayed home--there was nothing to do at home. But that all ended when television was introduced. From then on, most everybody stayed home; the jazz clubs died out. People lost that drive to socialize and have fun together.
Sorry, but I'm a bit late finding this post. I'd come here more often, but I find I have a limited capacity for vile-ness, and I already pay too much attention (is that possible) to all that is wrong in the world.
Oh, and it is litigation, or the fear of it, that's behind all of the "safety" products. Seat belt laws were lobbied not by concerned motorists, but insurance companies, who'd have to pay your claims for having gone through the windshield. If you've ever wondered why laundry detergent says, "not to be taken internally," then check out this post on my blog.
[http://open.salon.com/blog/fudo_myo/2009/02/24/may_contain_nuts]