Be aware of your surroundings, quarantine edition

One difficulty with online friendships is that a parent isn't as likely to have casual conversations with their child's friends as they carpool to school or have lunch at home, and a child isn't likely to have casual conversations with their friends' parents, meaning significant distortions in logic can develop by bouncing around the echo chamber of a teenage clique. Bigotry, like drain fungus, grows best when never confronted with personal relationships or at least unemotional logic. Many young people have been getting "red-pilled" by their online, low-responsibility relationships, private misogyny exploding into public violence without any indication of a trigger ... just like the parent of a child groomed for sexual exploitation, the parent of a person groomed for domestic terrorism never has any idea that it was going on.

To be clear, this is in no way intended to be a presentation of judgement, merely observation that there is a common danger young teens have to deliberately, consciously avoid, especially ones who are socially awkward or bullied, such as diagnosed and undiagnosed autistics. In the same way that we teach our younger siblings, "don't let them take you to a second location, always watch your drink, make sure there's a second exit that leads to a public location, don't scream 'rape' - scream 'fire'!" we need to teach our older siblings, "don't let them make you believe violent acts and hatred benefit you in any way, always check the method of statistic collection, be aware that someone else's personal experience is their reality, don't repeat fallacies and buzzwords - analyse the original content for yourself."

(Photo by Gabby K. from Pexels. Used with permission. Text free to share and repost with credit, "cc-by ori neu")

Comments

interdependence and apples

》　It really saddens me that it only takes one bad apple to ruin a bunch for most people. The reason the saying is, "one bad apple ruins the bushel/barrel" is that because of the way apples rot, they emit a gas that causes all the apples around them to rot as well. When talking about how people interact, a person did not develop their personality by accident or by chance; they were enabled by so many people that there's almost no way of picking out any particular influence. For instance, if you read the book about Trump by his niece, she points out that nearly every troubling behavior he has was initially caused by the extremely high desire he had to earn his own father's affection, and was subsequently reinforced by celebrity-dom and the trappings of wealth. Similarly MLK Jr., who was a reverend for some time before he became a celebrity, was strongly influenced by his own understanding of the Word of God and the unconditional support of his loved ones, ev...

the value of exploitation

》　 Income of black slaves? You clearly don’t realize slavery almost abolished itself because of hoe **nonprofitable** it was until the cotton jin Growing cotton has never profited from slavery. In fact, paid laborers were more profitable than slave laborers even after the cotton gin was created; although the question of whether the paid laborers were not also being exploited is certainly apparent. The country was divided on the matter of slavery from the very start - northerners, influenced by Quaker ideals, tended to express the belief that all men are equal under God, whereas white southerners, for what reasons I cannot fathom, tended to express the belief that the color of someone's skin displayed the color of their soul, or something to that poetic effect. Letters from 1775 show that white southerners *believed* slavery to be more profitable, to be a biological necessity, even held some kind of religious concern about it and definitely had concerns that the kingdom ...

Unintentional Abuse

Questioner: [what do you mean by] Unintentional grooming? Questioner: explain further pls cuz i’ve thought about that but never like- processed it fully >> I am doing my best to avoid getting really psychological here, but the basis of the concept is that the human mind avoids thinking about things that threaten your sense of self and reality. This is a well-documented and extremely strong instinct. So like, people don't automatically assume that they are doing something bad. Nearly every person will seek out and find justifications for everything they do. A 40 yo isn't going to suddenly get up and say, "I've never had an interest in younger people before, but I suddenly want to take advantage of someone's naivety." Becoming an asshole like that is a process shaped by exposure to the abuse of others (not usually direct abuse, surprisingly) and being enabled by social expectations and unfettered access. They do not believe that they are doing anythin...

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