I was encouraged to expand a comment into a diary, this sparked by a diary that triggered a flood of memories and emotion.
I'm going to go ahead and do that, because that exchanged brought me to the realization that I have some latent anger over the state of things, and I believe that is part of what drives my passion for politics.
As we age, we come to the realization that the world does, in fact, change and we then are faced with the choice of changing, adapting with it, or holding back to preserve that which makes us who we are.
I'm hoping that some of you will read this, identify with it, and share your own personal growing up experiences, ideally those that marked you in some way, contributing to who you are and why. This is a healthy thing to do once in a while. IMHO, it's good to look back, see these things and know how our selves came to be, then look at what is occurring today, extrapolate, and see something of what's coming to be.
I don't like what I see, and that's the point of it.
My childhood was something I would never trade. It was filled with beauty, anger, hunger, poverty, love, excitement, and most importantly, a very rich set of experiences that I unabashedly draw on today, often to the confusion of my adult peers, lacking those kinds of experiences.
Before I say anything else, let me share some, then we can talk about what the kids today are seeing, and why we think it matters.
By the time I left grade school, I had done all the following and plenty more:
Learned to cut down trees with an axe, and split most of the wood we used for heat.
Took apart every thing I had, going to the library to find out what the things were, how they worked, why they worked.
Fixed the fan in the Library.
Fixed the TV in the 5 grade viewing room.
Rode a fine stallion to the absolute limit, enjoyed it, gave him an apple and a rest, then did it again!
Kissed my first girlfriend.
Made recordings of my home, during a family time to be played back later for memories.
Built my first custom bike.
Rode a motorcycle.
Spent the night in the woods with a friend, flashlight, fire, and tent.
Built and used a blow-dart gun.
Went shooting "for fun" both archery and real guns.
Trained some of the farm animals.
Grew stuff.
Learned to read most simple music.
Brought actual tools to school, and worked on projects over lunch with friends.
These things were done with my peers, and being a country, rural kid, the first thing you learn is that the people that live where you do are your friends, largely because everybody else is too far away. Either one finds a way to get along, or it's kind of a lonely, ugly life.
One other memory from this time I find significant is that age didn't matter so much. There was many a Saturday where "the kids" would be out "doing stuff", and it was a mix of boys, girls, younger kids, older kids, and sometimes groups, but sometimes not. "We" were "kids" and as such, could live a lot of our lives "below the sightline", invisible to adults, unless we didn't want to be, and generally that was a bad idea, unless you wanted to do work!
This below the sight line time was special, free time! And most everybody came to realize that really bad things could happen, and happen for real, and happen to US, if we didn't stick together and get through the adventure of the day, whatever it is.
Usually that adventure would start by organizing a gathering. Being a low tech time, that meant a few phone calls, NO LONG DISTANCE, getting on bikes, or walking to visit people, or meet in the meeting place to see who would be there, and decide what we thought might be a good idea to do.
One of our places was near the road, and this was a dangerous road! 1/2 mile, 6 percent grade, straight, with 8 foot banks, like right out of that "Pet Cemetery" movie! No joke. There was a tree that provided some nice cover, and a smaller tree we had trained to grow down the bank for easy climbing up. We called it "the living rope", and it existed for quite some time after we grew up too.
We would meet there, and simply decide to do stuff. No parents, no rules --well, some rules, like don't get killed, don't steal things, don't kill the animals and don't abuse them or let them out either. Don't break stuff, don't mouth off to or talk to strangers, and for gods sake, don't get lost!
Folks, that's about it. Scary compared to most "free time" kids experience today, isn't it? ...or, is it kind of morbid? I lean toward morbid, and this diary might explain part of why.
In third grade, the bus routes changed. Our new route took us to the bottom of that hill, for a walk, along the road, or a hike up the bank to walk through the woods, one half mile to reach home. Every day after school, we would ride that bus, get off at the bottom of the hill, walk with the high speed cars, eating what we found growing along the way. That continued until High School where we either had cars, or the alternative bus route.
So then, the lesson was simply that, if we didn't actually pay some attention to things, we could actually die that day. What does that mean? Pay attention, and make sure your friends do too! That's what it means. Real stuff can and will happen.
Moving on to high school, meant:
Programmed games in assembly language, just for fun.
Did TV repair for date money.
Built wooden toys, with real machines that can cut stuff off, sold them in the local "farmers market"
Built a 100,000 Volt "Jacobs Ladder" mad scientist style spark gap, just because it was fucking cool.
Obtained my HAM radio license, which I let lapse. (I know, dumbass, I'll get it back soon)
Stayed for nearly a week out in the woods, alone.
Exceeded 50 Mph on a custom bike, built from parts found around the neighborhood.
Tweaked CB radios for truckers for date money.
Bought, fixed, and drove my first car.
Ran one hell of a "Dungeons and Dragons" campaign, despite the horrors of it being broadcast at the time.
Went hunting with my own rifle, and dealt with every aspect of that from the kill to food on the table.
Taught computer languages my last two years.
Directed the school chorus, from sheet music to performance.
Performed in many theatre productions, while doing lights, sounds, and building sets and effects.
Blew some stuff up proper, with real explosives, complete with fuse, as part of clearing some land for a friends fathers new house.
Worked in the TV shop, metal shop, wood shop...
Got into trouble for damming a creek, stopping irrigation down stream. Oh well, the damn was bad ass.
Topped 75 foot trees to make antennas. Climbed same trees to collect seed cones for gas money.
And countless adventures out side, often all day long, eating what we found growing, not returning home until it got cold, dark, or both.
In that high school, we got to use the computers. The first time that happened, they handed out these instruction disks that were supposed to give us activities. One very striking memory comes to mind, and that's on the day we were typing commands to the machines. If it was wrong, the machine, an old Apple ][, would emit this loud "BEEP!". There were three kinds of people in the room. Some, like myself, would try to make it beep again, some would pause asking for instructions, and others were scared, looking around to see whether or not they should be feeling bad about it.
A few of us learned to change those disks, and we did to make them tell a few jokes. When discovered, instead of the modern day reaction aimed at shame, compliance, and discouraging learning that would shut young minds down, that teacher took the group of us, put a few machines in the corner, got books, and told us the rules for the rest of the year:
- State what you want to do
- State why
- Do it.
That's it!
That year, we came to fully understand those machines, learned enough to help teach classes, and the four of us all enjoy professional computing careers today.
Today I read stories about kids getting felony charges for learning how a network works, or being suspected of nefarious intent because they can actually make the computers do stuff they want, instead of those things others want them to do.
Stark contrast isn't it?
You know that educator, who chose to empower us to learn, could have really made a bad impact. Had we gotten in trouble that day, experienced that totalitarian norm many kids today do, we may well have rebelled, learning nothing, each with very different lives today.
Is there any wonder our kids have so much trouble??
So there you go. Some serious perspective on what growing up can mean. For me, it means knowing real human limits, as opposed to "safe" ones that make the attorneys and insurers happy. It means knowing the real meaning of DO WHAT IT TAKES, through direct experience, not just lectures on responsibility and accountability.
It means never, ever paying for a lock smith for my entire life, and that's true for anyone that knows me as well. Why? An uncle gave me a bucket full of old locks, and shared his skills as a locksmith, starting from fabricating the tools needed, then applying those to the problem of the lock directly, with each one opened some nice reward, in terms of a story, or some other little bit of knowledge that might be good to know.
It means knowing what is really possible, not just acceptably possible, or legally possible, but actually possible. Think about that for a moment, and what it means in terms of life choices, difficult situations, life and death, and what lacking that perspective might impact.
Another thing it means socially is tolerance, and some understanding of people in all their modes, being calm in "emergency" situations because the pool of experiences I shared with my peers easily matches what I see in life today.
It also means knowing the world isn't Disneyland. There are real people in it, doing real things, sometimes ugly things, dangerous things, beautiful, or powerful things, and knowing why and how they are done, and being free to choose which of those things makes sense for our reasons, not just the ones given to us by some authority.
An example of that is how the first amendment really works. How many people have you met that think it's some kind of shield? Truth is, if we say ugly things to people, they just might do ugly things back, despite the law saying otherwise! A lot of the problems we see in the world boil down to people simply not realizing that other people might just do stuff that's not ok, and that being aware of that is a necessary thing.
People who grew up like I did didn't have it easy, and that's just not a bad thing! It's not always safe, but neither is your drive to work!
The most important realization I have from thinking about this is the understanding that we cannot just produce good people. We can empower people, we can teach people things, we can work to give them good experiences, but in the end, people are who they are born to be, and are the product of their nature, plus the experiences they have.
Everybody in this world, at some point, needs to self-identify. That only happens when they experience a robust enough set of things for them to process that and understand who they really are, and why that matters.
If we water down the schools, make them so safe that nothing can happen, we produce people, who have not self-identified, maybe actually living a lie, never really knowing who they are, and what that can mean.
Frustration builds, people act out, rebel, suicide, and they do so when the expectations they have set about the world, people and the nature of things don't align well with their actual life experiences.
IMHO, the biggest problem we have in schools is the failure to understand that we have those schools to empower people, tease the good elements out of them and grow those, while at the same time building good citizens, people we can eventually look up to, admire, and trust with our old age.
We do this by modeling the best in people, leading by example, every single day demonstrating the real worth solid people have. We don't do this through lectures and draconian "zero tolerance" kinds of environments. The norms I had as a kid, which did not include "zero tolerance" were all about making mistakes, learning and growing from those, and the very real understanding that mistakes would be made, because kids are not finished yet! They are incomplete people that will do stuff to become real people.
How then can we justify imposing such a harsh, bland, environment on them, with all the accountability that adults have, while lacking the mental state that justifies holding them to those things?
We will come to regret these trends. When times get tough, or we are challenged in new ways, we will want the real people, who have lived in the real world, and who are potent, solid, quality people that inspire us, lead us, protect us, and entertain us.
That's not gonna happen unless we make the investments we need to.
The most depressing thing to me right now is the oppression in the middle class just isn't about who has what or why. Remember, I grew up so poor, we sometimes didn't eat! Truth is, I'm better for that, being able to grow things, build things, fix things, and get through a day no matter how ugly that day is. Wouldn't trade that for the world.
It's not about that.
What it is about is denying people the time and means and freedom to actually parent their kids, and denying the educators the ability to teach the kids, and MENTOR them in ways that compliment parents, not work against them.
I've written before that wealth is expressed in terms of time. Money isn't the core element here. Time is.
Our lives have grown very complex, despite significant technological gains. That's how we are poor, and is the source of so many growing problems. When both parents have to work, and work extra, and deal with bills, taxes, self-serve this, and that, and that all makes us poor in the worst of ways, because that poverty denies us the time we need to actually invest in our future leaders.
If there is a point to this exercise, it's that we can't fear so many things that we teach our kids how not to live, do, grow, build, love. And it's that having any real social justice means pushing back so that people can be people, not just consumers, and be free enough to live, and to show their kids, or let their kids learn to live.
All that I love about America was there in my childhood, and so much of it is absent from a lot of kids lives today, and we will pay for that, and that makes me angry and I had no real idea that anger was there, or if I did, I didn't give it any weight until I was moved by this exchange.
Take some time today and think back on your growing up, and compare it to growing up today. If you are in a position to make a difference, do it. You might just move some kids in good ways like adults did for me many years ago. I can look back and tell you of those people I knew that TOLD ME REAL STUFF! Real stuff that actually matters. Some were friends, some were parents, some were teachers, and some were just that farmer down the road, who took the time to talk about the world in real terms, not just Disneyland, and by doing so offer up the chance for a person to save themselves the time and trouble.
Thanks for reading. I needed to write this. Maybe some of you need to read it, or if this triggers something, post up in the comments, and let's talk about some stuff. I'll be around off and on all day.