Pete
2006-04-03 21:46:38 UTC
I didn¹t write this, but I centainly enjoyed it.
One of the things I enjoy is deconstructing common phrases to try to
discern what they really mean. For instance, at his Inaugural in 1961,
there's the John Kennedy quote, "ask not what your country can do for
you, but what you can do for your country." On the surface, it sounds
patriotic and wholesome, but when you take it apart, it has no real
meaning. Robert Ringer's comments on this about 20 years ago were rather
telling. In effect, he said, what's a "country?" A country is collection
of 250 million people, all with different needs and wants and desires
and motivations. You're going to ask 250 million people what you can do
for them? Nope. Boil it down a bit, and "your country" translates to
"your government." And "your government" tends to mean "those currently
in power." What Kennedy might have been saying then, cynically, might
be written as, "don't ask those of us in power to do anything for you.
Instead, what can you do for those in power?" Doesn't sound as
wholesome and all American, does it?
There are piles of these phrases: America: Love It Or Leave It. Does
that mean, "Don't question the status quo?" Hugs Are Better Than Drugs.
Not always. And drugs aren't always bad, even illegal ones. Just Say No.
You want me to not think, but just exhibit a knee jerk reaction based on
your social values? (this last one is a cousin to "Better Dead Than Red."
So now, there's this phrase you hear broadcast over and over, uttered by
well meaning people who probably never thought about what it means:
Children Are Our Future
Sit down a while and I'll try to take this phrase on Children are our
future. What? What do you mean by that?
My future, as well as the future of every adult now walking the planet,
is a pine box. With the lid nailed on. This includes all those people
who make those statements, print the bumper stickers, and stick those
bumper stickers on their minivans, Your future, folks, is your own
eventual death. That is the only certainty about "your future." This
future, as with all of our lives, is a highly individual thing. To think
of a collective "our" in this way is ridiculous. My future is largely in
my own hands, yours is largely in yours, random chance, fates, or gods
(as you prefer) notwithstanding. In some ways, I suspect that this
phrase means, to many people, "the people who are children right now are
the ones who will be running the world when we get old and incapable of
doing so." To others, this might mean, "children are stuck with the task
of fixing all the things we adults screwed up." Still to others, it's a
more personal, "my children are my old age support." Why are you
defining your own "future," let alone the "future" of these small
humans, in such ways? Let me toss some ideas out here.
Stop screwing the world up. That way, "children" won't be stuck with
fixing our mistakes. They won't be immune from making their own, of
course, but at least they can spend their lives fixing their own errors
and not ours, thus forcing their own children to address their foul-ups.
Stop paving every flat surface. Stop discarding things instead of
repairing and reusing them. Stop exploiting the rain forests and
trashing oil fields and overfishing the seas. Stop spending the
government into penury. Stop doing all the things that will cause
problems your children will be condemned to undo. Take care of your own
life.
Your children are not an old age pension. They are humans. How much care
did you really invest in your parents in their advanced years? That
little? Hmm. Yet you think that suddenly these children, whom you have
fobbed off on daycare, schools, colleges and all the other
institutions designed to allow you to avoid having to actually devote
real effort to your children, will get all misty eyed in their later
years and take care of you even though you barely took care of them and
apparently took no steps to care for ourselves? It will not, in most
cases, happen. You'll be sitting in some Medicaid nursing home, waiting
for visits from children who'll be too busy un dorking the world to come
and see you. Take care of yourself. Plan for retirement.
Plan for catastrophic illness. Arrange for probate. Stop smoking.
Exercise a little. Don't live for your children's eventual care, take
care of yourself. Stop making assumptions about the lives and needs of
others. You may want to depend on your children. I don't, and am making
plans to ensure that I won't need to. Your children have no distinct
place in my future. The only role I anticipate for them is that they
eventually will be clogging the highways I use, will be forcing the
construction of houses and malls I don't want and can't use, and will be
electing their own slate of morons into positions of power to push their
own agendas. The choice you made to have children is not a factor in my
life in any other way.
What I'm getting at is what I think the core of this slogan might be.
There's a word missing in the slogan: it's "my." And there's a word that
should be changed. And, if I'm cynical, which I am, there's a phrase
missing. My Children Are My Future, So I Should Get Special Privileges
From Society As A Whole. Sounds a lot more whiny and self interested,
doesn't it? But it has merit. The original phrase is vacuous enough that
you can't hang much real meaning on it, but when you couple it with the
actions and statements that are done and made in its name, the picture
becomes clearer.
We Need To Build A New Middle School because children are our future.
Great. In other words, force me to be taxed more to build a facility I
will never directly use, because those of you who had the children who
will attend there cannot possibly afford it on your own.
We Need To Clean Up Smut On The Internet because children are our
future. In other words, because you didn't want to take the time and put
up with the uneasiness of actually telling your children about the
different forms of sexuality that exist in the world, and because you
don't have a mind open enough to understand and accept the likes and
preferences of other adults, you want to infringe upon my right as an
adult citizen to view, present and write whatever I find appropriate.
We Need To Execute Drug Dealers because children are our future. That's
priceless. Because you don't know any way to give your kids a personal
reason to not get high, because you don't know about drugs and you don't
want the schools to teach your kids the reality about drugs, and because
you want to kill the messenger rather than face up to the message they
bring, you want to shoot first and ask questions (about human rights,
racism and civil liberties) later.
We Have To Pass An Ordinance About... [fill in blank] because children
are our future. This is kind of the catch all thing. Let's invade the
privacy of daycare workers, bus drivers and teachers by forcing them to
submit to drug tests, background invasions, and other violations of
civil rights on the pretext that they might "corrupt" our "youth."
Let's ban anything we don't find pleasant and inoffensive so that our
children can grow up isolated from the reality of America in the late
20th century, leaving them unprepared at 20 or 21 when they're thrown
out into it and can't cope except to ban everything their parents never
told them about .
Over and over, this slogan banner is used as an emotional lever to
promote collective, societal action that will benefit only the minority
who have children or who take some emotional interest in children, at
the cost of all of us, and often at a substantial personal penalty to
some other group. Society itself has no particular interest in children.
If no one had children, starting tomorrow, eventually humans on earth
would disappear. The planet doesn't really care. Individuals within
society with narrow, personal agendas, have every reason to be
interested in children. Children as future voters, children as future
criminals, children as future workers and taxpayers, children as
consumers, children as converts to religion, children as police and
military foot soldiers.
In short, "children as future force of numbers." Sorta takes the
emotional gut out of it, doesn't it? You make your own future. Your
children will make theirs. I will make mine. The planet doesn't care.
One of the things I enjoy is deconstructing common phrases to try to
discern what they really mean. For instance, at his Inaugural in 1961,
there's the John Kennedy quote, "ask not what your country can do for
you, but what you can do for your country." On the surface, it sounds
patriotic and wholesome, but when you take it apart, it has no real
meaning. Robert Ringer's comments on this about 20 years ago were rather
telling. In effect, he said, what's a "country?" A country is collection
of 250 million people, all with different needs and wants and desires
and motivations. You're going to ask 250 million people what you can do
for them? Nope. Boil it down a bit, and "your country" translates to
"your government." And "your government" tends to mean "those currently
in power." What Kennedy might have been saying then, cynically, might
be written as, "don't ask those of us in power to do anything for you.
Instead, what can you do for those in power?" Doesn't sound as
wholesome and all American, does it?
There are piles of these phrases: America: Love It Or Leave It. Does
that mean, "Don't question the status quo?" Hugs Are Better Than Drugs.
Not always. And drugs aren't always bad, even illegal ones. Just Say No.
You want me to not think, but just exhibit a knee jerk reaction based on
your social values? (this last one is a cousin to "Better Dead Than Red."
So now, there's this phrase you hear broadcast over and over, uttered by
well meaning people who probably never thought about what it means:
Children Are Our Future
Sit down a while and I'll try to take this phrase on Children are our
future. What? What do you mean by that?
My future, as well as the future of every adult now walking the planet,
is a pine box. With the lid nailed on. This includes all those people
who make those statements, print the bumper stickers, and stick those
bumper stickers on their minivans, Your future, folks, is your own
eventual death. That is the only certainty about "your future." This
future, as with all of our lives, is a highly individual thing. To think
of a collective "our" in this way is ridiculous. My future is largely in
my own hands, yours is largely in yours, random chance, fates, or gods
(as you prefer) notwithstanding. In some ways, I suspect that this
phrase means, to many people, "the people who are children right now are
the ones who will be running the world when we get old and incapable of
doing so." To others, this might mean, "children are stuck with the task
of fixing all the things we adults screwed up." Still to others, it's a
more personal, "my children are my old age support." Why are you
defining your own "future," let alone the "future" of these small
humans, in such ways? Let me toss some ideas out here.
Stop screwing the world up. That way, "children" won't be stuck with
fixing our mistakes. They won't be immune from making their own, of
course, but at least they can spend their lives fixing their own errors
and not ours, thus forcing their own children to address their foul-ups.
Stop paving every flat surface. Stop discarding things instead of
repairing and reusing them. Stop exploiting the rain forests and
trashing oil fields and overfishing the seas. Stop spending the
government into penury. Stop doing all the things that will cause
problems your children will be condemned to undo. Take care of your own
life.
Your children are not an old age pension. They are humans. How much care
did you really invest in your parents in their advanced years? That
little? Hmm. Yet you think that suddenly these children, whom you have
fobbed off on daycare, schools, colleges and all the other
institutions designed to allow you to avoid having to actually devote
real effort to your children, will get all misty eyed in their later
years and take care of you even though you barely took care of them and
apparently took no steps to care for ourselves? It will not, in most
cases, happen. You'll be sitting in some Medicaid nursing home, waiting
for visits from children who'll be too busy un dorking the world to come
and see you. Take care of yourself. Plan for retirement.
Plan for catastrophic illness. Arrange for probate. Stop smoking.
Exercise a little. Don't live for your children's eventual care, take
care of yourself. Stop making assumptions about the lives and needs of
others. You may want to depend on your children. I don't, and am making
plans to ensure that I won't need to. Your children have no distinct
place in my future. The only role I anticipate for them is that they
eventually will be clogging the highways I use, will be forcing the
construction of houses and malls I don't want and can't use, and will be
electing their own slate of morons into positions of power to push their
own agendas. The choice you made to have children is not a factor in my
life in any other way.
What I'm getting at is what I think the core of this slogan might be.
There's a word missing in the slogan: it's "my." And there's a word that
should be changed. And, if I'm cynical, which I am, there's a phrase
missing. My Children Are My Future, So I Should Get Special Privileges
From Society As A Whole. Sounds a lot more whiny and self interested,
doesn't it? But it has merit. The original phrase is vacuous enough that
you can't hang much real meaning on it, but when you couple it with the
actions and statements that are done and made in its name, the picture
becomes clearer.
We Need To Build A New Middle School because children are our future.
Great. In other words, force me to be taxed more to build a facility I
will never directly use, because those of you who had the children who
will attend there cannot possibly afford it on your own.
We Need To Clean Up Smut On The Internet because children are our
future. In other words, because you didn't want to take the time and put
up with the uneasiness of actually telling your children about the
different forms of sexuality that exist in the world, and because you
don't have a mind open enough to understand and accept the likes and
preferences of other adults, you want to infringe upon my right as an
adult citizen to view, present and write whatever I find appropriate.
We Need To Execute Drug Dealers because children are our future. That's
priceless. Because you don't know any way to give your kids a personal
reason to not get high, because you don't know about drugs and you don't
want the schools to teach your kids the reality about drugs, and because
you want to kill the messenger rather than face up to the message they
bring, you want to shoot first and ask questions (about human rights,
racism and civil liberties) later.
We Have To Pass An Ordinance About... [fill in blank] because children
are our future. This is kind of the catch all thing. Let's invade the
privacy of daycare workers, bus drivers and teachers by forcing them to
submit to drug tests, background invasions, and other violations of
civil rights on the pretext that they might "corrupt" our "youth."
Let's ban anything we don't find pleasant and inoffensive so that our
children can grow up isolated from the reality of America in the late
20th century, leaving them unprepared at 20 or 21 when they're thrown
out into it and can't cope except to ban everything their parents never
told them about .
Over and over, this slogan banner is used as an emotional lever to
promote collective, societal action that will benefit only the minority
who have children or who take some emotional interest in children, at
the cost of all of us, and often at a substantial personal penalty to
some other group. Society itself has no particular interest in children.
If no one had children, starting tomorrow, eventually humans on earth
would disappear. The planet doesn't really care. Individuals within
society with narrow, personal agendas, have every reason to be
interested in children. Children as future voters, children as future
criminals, children as future workers and taxpayers, children as
consumers, children as converts to religion, children as police and
military foot soldiers.
In short, "children as future force of numbers." Sorta takes the
emotional gut out of it, doesn't it? You make your own future. Your
children will make theirs. I will make mine. The planet doesn't care.
--
Build a man a fire, he's warm for a night, set a man on fire, he's warm for life
Build a man a fire, he's warm for a night, set a man on fire, he's warm for life