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Putting a Damper on Bottled-Up ExplosivesMar 07 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Never mentioning bad things won't make them cease to exist, but it may add to pent-up alienation. Or "Artistic catharsis prevented me from going Ka-Boom." The category title seems to have changed since I wrote this opinion (a very long time ago, I can be ridiculously slow about posting these things). Hrm. I wonder if a few little jiggerings can make it appear to still fit? If not, I won't be alone considering every opinion I've read in this section has little or nothing to do with school. The Burning Question: Am I Evil Or Benevolent? Originally this began as a comment in response to lessaleigh's opinion about censorship. Mind you, it wasn't a disagreement. It was merely a comment. And when it got to be around 400 words long, I decided it might be better off as an opinion. I had more to say about the matter anyway. So far I haven't stumbled across any pro-censorship epinions, though I have read several good anti-censorship ones. Either I'm simply missing the pro arguments, or the average epinions writer is too hung up on that silly freedom of speech right we have going for us to want it to be taken away. Surprise, surprise (note the sarcasm here), I'm on the anti side as well. But it is a subject I need to give much thought to, because I am often enough told that I'm a horrible person for some of the things I write about to not stop and ponder whether or not it is true. A case in point is that one time, on the usenet newsgroup I've long haunted (and co-created, for that matter), I was worried about a friend who was depressed and had started cutting himself. Just a little. Well, this was somewhere I'd been for years prior. I'd learned a lot about the dos and don'ts in such situations, how you can cause serious damage or scarring and how you can avoid it. How you can prevent it from becoming a hysterical act, that'll undoubtedly cause unwanted damage, etc. Because I was worried I decided to write two posts about safety tips. I did this because I know you can't make someone stop, but you can get a person to be more careful about what they are doing. Another friend asked if he could put these posts on his web site (this'd be gene_s here on epinions, and the web site is "for adults only"), to which I responded "yes". Gene was promptly flamed by someone calling himself tikey, to the tune of "Congratulations, you idiot! You probably just got kids cutting themselves!" Actually, he used some words that I can't repeat here. Yep, I had to seriously ponder this one. But what I kept coming up with was "Why would anyone stable want to do something as painful as slashing themselves up with a razor blade just because they saw a batch of safety tips about doing so on a web site?" No matter how many safety tips you follow, it still hurts. It hurts a lot. And most "stable" people don't want to be in that much pain. A lot of unstable people don't want to hurt themselves, for that matter. The two posts became part two in a three part essay I wrote, for the third issue of Morbid Curiosity (an adult oriented magazine), about my gradual switch from being a suicidal self- mutilator to a therapeutic self-mutilator. Part three then detailed my switch from that to the rare carnal alchemy performances I inflict on myself these days. There are a lot more people in the world who self-mutilate than is suspected en masse. It is even a little known fact that famous people like Princess Diana were self-mutilators. And there is really nowhere, or next to nowhere, for people who are losing themselves in this "self-treatment" to turn. No way to find out how to be safer about it while you must do it, no way to find out that you really aren't insane like you think you are. Chances are you simply have a lot to deal with, and no proper avenue for coping. So, in the end, I decided that the people who need these tips and who need to know they aren't alone far outweigh those who will grab a razor blade and start cutting just because they saw on a web site or in a magazine that some people do this. I felt like telling tikey "Newsflash: kids are already cutting themselves, and many will wind up heavily damaging or killing themselves as so many others have in the past!" But, of course, I have kids and I worry about what they will see. I'm not claiming we need "How-To" manuals for self-mutilation in our public schools. That might be over-kill (no pun intended). I do feel the information should be "out there somewhere", though, so anyone who needs it (disturbed teenagers included) can track it down. Perhaps the public school counselors could help point students where they need to go, rather than assuming sending everyone off to be doped up on Prozac will solve all of the world's troubles. And They're Going To See It Anyway I always make sure I'm familiar with whatever my kids are watching or reading, but unfortunately a lot of parents simply don't care. Or they don't feel it is a matter of importance. And those of us who do care can't watch the kids 100% of the time. I'm often shocked by the things my son Griffin will watch over at a friend's house, shocked that the friend's parents don't mind letting them watch such things. I probably wouldn't have plopped him down in front of Nightmare on Elm Street when he was 9... but someone else did. However, I also think kids can handle a lot more than people give them credit for as long as an adult is willing to talk it over with them. Therefore when I found out Griffin had watched the beginning of The Matrix over at a friend's house and knew he would watch the rest soon, even if I asked him not to, I sighed and sat him down to watch my own copy of the movie with me. Not only was it a decent excuse for teaching him about Gnosticism, because we're pretty non-religious in this house (Jellyfish excluded) and I actually need excuses to teach him about various religions, but I could also make sure he wouldn't be getting any weird ideas from all of the violence. I live in Colorado, where people wound up pretty whacked out about the Columbine shooting. The first time I watched The Matrix, I said I was betting that Klebold and Harris were fantasizing the scene where Neo and Trinity blast their way through tons of cops and security officers with a mighty impressive arsenal. I mean, who wouldn't fantasize about such scenes? It's when you try to make the fantasies reality that it becomes a problem. But this is going to lead into something that I would rather say toward the end of this opinion, after I touch upon what was actually in the comment: labelling. I'm of the mindset that, before we begin seriously talking about censorship, what we should really be doing is talking about stricter age guidelines. Of the variety where a worker at a counter could say, "Uh uh, kid, you ain't buyin' this!" (Pardon, we wouldn't actually want to teach the kids bad grammar.) As opposed to, say, the current measure they're trying to instate that'll force libraries to censor the content people can view through their computers because kids might find porn and get warped. By which I mean state libraries, not school libraries. One would expect elementary school computer guidelines to be slightly different than those for computers that more adults would be using. Since the parents won't monitor what their kids can and can't handle, everyone should be blocked from everything. Which leads it wide open for deciding what is inappropriate and therefore should be blocked. A friend of mine was recently down in the wilds of Louisiana and logged in from a server called integrity.com. They'd blocked everything inappropriate so their users wouldn't be warped. Apparently every single web site I've put up was blocked. Hrm. I always suspected I might be lacking in integrity... But they'd also blocked others that I had difficulty perceiving as inappropriate. Another friend (dllanders here, but he hasn't done any opining) had blocking on his web usage at work. They wouldn't let him load any Satanic web sites, but they would let him load Christian sites. He complained that this wasn't exactly seeming very "freedom of religion" oriented, and that if they wanted to block the Satanic sites they would have to also block the Christian ones. They realized he was right and blocked them all. So obviously we would be getting into the territory of people determining what is and isn't appropriate at libraries. For that matter, what is and isn't porn. I've heard some pretty liberal usages of that labelling, and likewise a lot of porn gets away with hiding under other labels. Like erotica. Or soap operas (heh). It's still porn, though. It seems simple enough to leave the blocking software fairly open. I would hope that the parents who don't have enough time to monitor what their kids are looking at would at least have a few moments to enter their own guidelines into the criteria before leaving them unattended. And if they don't, well, at least the rest of the library's denizens wouldn't be deprived over it. And you know what one of the first things I would block would be, if I was going to let software do my own parenting? Cheat codes for games! Griffin once asked me to grab a bunch of them off of a site for him. Since I was playing the game he wanted them for, I let him know that the game is perfectly easy to get through without cheating and that once he blew the fun for himself he would never be able to go back and make it a neat new experience again. So he got the codes on-line while visiting his grandparents. Oh well. They'll always find a way if they're determined. What Might Save Us? As the epinions community seems well aware of, it's not taking more of our rights away and triggering a domino reaction that will save us. There are laws preventing kids from drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Kids are drinking and smoking anyway. I started smoking when I was 12, and was never carded until I was legally old enough (funny how that works). Likewise, I boozed it up at many a restaurant at the tender age of 14. I really wish I hadn't started smoking, and I wish I hadn't been such a drunk as a teen, but that's how it was and that's that. No laws about illegal drugs ever prevented me from taking them, for that matter. Nor did any exclusions of drug books at the school library. Perhaps if there had been books about keeping your drug habits safer, I would've read them and been less reckless. Or maybe not, I don't know since the possibility didn't exist. All I could read was anti-drug propaganda. As many of us also realize, from having and/or having been kids, directly forbidding kids access to anything can often translate within young minds to "Ooh... forbidden fruit that the adults want to keep all to themselves... I want some!" Come to think of it, similar translations can be found within minds of any age. But being told it's there and available, and why they might not want it anyway, can cause some people/kids to think "Feh, not interested". Failing that, seeing how to be safer about doing "whatever" might possibly incline them to, say, be safer about it. Since the all-important "personal responsibility" can be a moot point with kids who don't always understand why something that is wrong is indeed wrong, and parental responsibility seems to have fallen to the age of electronic babysitters, the best solution I can come up with would be to amp up the guidelines. And if we can't rely on parental guidelines, which is a definite shame since some individuals will be ready for things at very different ages than others will, we'll have to rely more upon age guidelines. At least for those kids who will bother to heed them, instead of working around them. Age guidelines don't serve as anything beyond warnings. I signed enough written statements that I was 18+ when I was actually 11-15 to know they can't outright prevent kids from buying things that are labelled as being above their age ranges. But then I've also gotten letters (the magazine and books I publish are all labelled "For Mature Readers" and I state that I need an 18+ age statement from people before I'll sell any of the publications to them) saying "I'm only 16. How can I buy 'this & that' without an age statement?" And then how can I respond in any other way than "You have to wait two years." ? And possibly roll my eyes, because the kid could've easily gotten around that (though illegally, which I would hope would scare some of them off from doing it). Well, okay, I say "Your parents can purchase it for you, or you can wait until you're old enough." Of course that is mail-order though. Plenty of stores sell my publications without worrying about the ages of their consumers. At bookstores, movie theatres, music stores, etc, they could stand to pay more attention to who they're taking money from. I know I never once got prevented from attending R rated movies without parents as a kid. Not that I didn't see them with parents. My Dad (on visitation weekends, my Mom wasn't as thrilled about some of his choices) let me watch a lot of horror movies. He even let me watch "10", which absolutely shocked Mom. It seems that unless something is hardcore porn (and even there only when it's visual. I can think of a mass market sex-fiction anthology that I have a story in, the Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica, that is listed at amazon.com without a single mention of its including strictly adult material. Some 13-year-old who did a search on "historical" could conceivably wind up with a mighty interesting school history project!), barely anyone bothers to consider who it should be sold to. I feel that before we begin determining what can and can't be done in the fields of art, we need to get more serious about these guidelines. As I've stated, they won't prevent anyone from getting what they want if they really want it. Or if they genuinely need it. But it will serve as a deterrence for those who are less determined. And it could, in a decent world, force parents to pay more attention when their kids are yammering at them about buying this or taking them to that movie because they can't do it without parental consent. Besides, pausing to implement these procedures will allow people like me to mouth off for a while longer before we get shut down! ;) But These Nutso Kids Will Watch Something, Then Go Out Killing And Raping! Well, this is a problem. Fortunately, not everyone is insane or inconsiderate enough to do such things. Because I grew up watching icky R rated movies, and reading icky R rated books, and didn't really have anyone explain any of it to me, I feel you can only be influenced to do things you are already capable of doing. I got some interesting ideas as a kid, but there's getting interesting ideas and then there's acting on those interesting ideas. I hated everyone at my junior high. Sometimes while leaving school to ditch and wandering off across the football field, I pictured the school blowing up behind me with everyone in it. It was a nice fantasy. One might argue that, had the web existed and therefore given me a means to stumble across some tasty bomb cookin' recipes, that the fantasy might have become reality. But, you know, I once brought knives to school because I was fantasizing about using them to stab people. Of course once the opportunity arose those silly qualms about hurting people no matter how much I felt they deserved it also arose, and then there was that fear of winding up in prison for the rest of my life. In the end, I never killed anyone. Because I wasn't capable of it. I might've, say, snapped and beaten up a few people in my life... but otherwise I turned it all inward and tried to kill myself, because that seemed to be the only person I was capable of killing. Or so I'd thought, in the end I wasn't even capable of that. And admittedly there was a time, in 7th grade I believe, when I decided to creep outside at midnight. I was dressed all in black, and concocted some dopey Satanic ritual for killing some enemies who were making me miserable. But, you know, I think if all kids took out their alienations in such creatively useless fashions because they saw one too many dumb Satanic horror movies, or whatever, we'd be doing okay. Some kids actually do get past the fears, obviously, and use actual guns and bombs as opposed to crumpled pictures in a black bowl. But these kids have some serious emotional problems going for them, something that extends way beyond anything they might've watched or read. It would've helped Klebold and Harris if people weren't such jerks to them at school. It probably would've helped if their parents had paid any attention to their viewing habits and expressed a willingness to discuss such things with them. But, in the end, they were messed up enough to appreciate the concept of putting shotguns to their own heads to avoid the legal ramifications. Believe me, as someone who wanted to hurt people and couldn't, and as someone who wanted to die but couldn't, it takes a heck of a lot more than watching some gory shoot-em-ups or listening to angst-filled music to push a person that far over the edge. While too many people were hating those two dead murderous kids, and arguing over what should be banned to keep such things from happening again, I was feeling severely depressed that they'd been pushed to that point and that it seemed no one had paid attention and cared enough to help them work through it. And afterward, nothing would change. Years ago I decided to dedicate myself to talking about how it feels to be on the edge, and the numerous (introverted or extroverted) outcomes it can have. The ways of coping, and of failing to cope. As I noted with the tikey and self-mutilation posts example, I get a lot of flack about it. From people who believe the problems won't be there unless they are mentioned. But they are there, and too many people are alone with them, and, as much as I appreciate the concerns, I'm just not buying it that it'll all go away if everyone shuts up about anything that isn't positive. When I was a freakish teen, the negative sides of art served as a friend and a catharsis. When I was depressed I would read/watch/listen to something equally depressed. And then I would no longer be alone. There would be relation. If I was angry, I would do the same but with angry art and have the same results. It taught me to channel my emotions into my own writing and creation, rather than letting them out in harmful ways. Or ways that I think would be more harmful than allowing a story I wrote about suicidal tendencies to be published. I would hate to think how I would've turned out without this cathartic friend. A Few Nauseatingly Idealistic Closing Thoughts As I mentioned before, I'm not saying we need to have texts about safe self-mutilation in public school libraries (public non-school libraries would be entirely another matter... you should be able to find just about anything through them). Only that these things should be out there somewhere, for the people who do need them. It could be taken into account in school that kids are going to take drugs and generally do other bad things, and that the only "role models" (TV, print, whatever) needn't only say "Don't do it." They could also say "But, if you are still going to do it anyway, please consider this..." Whenever I look at the Banned Books lists I'm in awe of the types of emotionally valid literature that is supposedly not suitable for reading. Most of it would fly over the heads of elementary kids, but could be a good developmental experience for kids in middle school and high school. We definitely should not ban art that is negative anywhere. There are always others, like myself, who need that because otherwise you can wind up feeling like you are the only person in the world who feels the way you do. Alienation is far more likely to cause violence and self- destruction than any movie, game, or book is. If schools and parents want to give an honest damn about reducing desensitization, they can introduce more emotionally valid books and movies about "bad things" into the minds of their children. Let them take a good look at violence and murder, with a heavy dose of the painful consequences. A look at the pain the families of the dead will suffer for the rest of their lives, at the agony that might've come to a person before death, at the guilt that might forever plague the murderer until they can do nothing more than destroy themselves. And if a kid seems to enjoy bashing their head against walls and sticking pins into their skin, consider letting them read the first-hand emotive accounts of self-destructive individuals so they can realize where it is coming from within themselves. Let them listen to depressed music, or to angry music that gives them something to shout along with because it's so much better than releasing anger in other ways. Let people feel, and find the validity in what they feel, and creatively deal with their emotions. Give guidelines for what they can and can't handle at any given time. And talk to them about what they have seen or heard so they can have a better understanding of it. If you can't do any of that, at least allow the freedom to figure out who they are and what they need to hold themselves together. Bad things don't go away just because no one wrote about them or made a movie about them. Instead they get bottled up inside, and simmer until they finally explode.  |
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