I was reading a book and it asked the question, “What are you most afraid of for the next generation?”
I never gave much thought to this beyond the scope of what the mass media now presents to the public, versus when I was a kid. Maybe I was lucky enough to not have cable as a kid. At one point I really wanted cable TV (even to the point of tears), but that was only because I was missing out when nickelodeon would play hours of Looney Tunes every single day.
Endless Cartoons. That’s what I wanted. What worries me now can mostly be found in the encapsulated life of kids who ingest extreme doses of spongebob and sugar, left alone with blinders attached, until the only real human interaction that occurs involves rage-fits followed with being spoiled with parental-quenchings to their every impulse.
Ouroboros? Maybe. That may be the best metaphor of that situation, if I ever fully understood this symbol.
Allow me to be cliché and say that modern TV is bullshite for kids. When I was younger I recognized the trashiness of Barney and Teletubbies. When I was a kid it was Mister Rogers and Sesame Street (still weird for me), but those are pure gold compared to what’s aired today. I don’t know why I invest so much thought into the importance of child development with TV/Cartoons, but kids today are still soaking up 5 hours/day of television, and it still blows my mind that I did the same up until high school. For every 5 hours of television, there’s an hour and 15 minutes of commercials absorbed into a person’s brain. I’ve still retained multiple jingles from beer commercials, commercials for McDonald’s, and the catch phrases for the same, cereals my mom would never let me eat, the previews for baywatch (the best boob a kid could get pre-internet), learning new words like “constipated” and “douche” which quickly became a sources of amusement for my siblings and friends at school.
Humanity is presented in a way on TV, magazines, and newspapers that is still intertwined with self-dissatisfaction and shame. Shamefulness is taught to us early because of TV and then is reflected in our “authority figures” and peers at school. Reebok Pumps were a fad when I was in 4th grade, and to encounter the select few elite 9-year-olds who owned them struck a jealousy-chord in me, while my soul simultaneously told me that a child with divorced parents may have been wearing $100+ dollar shoes probably for other reasons.
Pull harder, mum!
It’s a memory like this that quickly helps me remember that the capacity for intelligence and understanding in a child should never be underestimated by the fear-ridden adults who spend their lives trying to tell kids who to be and how to live their lives, usually by a series of standards that are acquired within random institutions and lapped up by a de-volving demographic of human-beings. We can only pump our fists in the air and root for the few said “9-year-olds” who remain on their natural track towards genius and progress.
I never enjoyed how the majority of teachers looked at me throughout my school experience as a child. You can, no matter what phase of life, recognize when somebody sees the light in you or they don’t. Those who don’t see it in you (or your kid) are those you should be weary of. The greatest gift a person can give to a child is to offer an attention which brightens that light/brilliance within them in a way that makes their inner-intelligence feel acknowledged so they know that this intelligence is something real within them, something that can be embraced, and then can grow, expand and shine brighter into the world.
The natural creativity of a child is, and can be, the scariest thing for an adult to acknowledge when it has long been out of touch within themselves. It is, in my opinion, the duty of adults to feel it and recognize it again within ourselves, unleash our “inner-child” and inner brilliance, so that we may continue to evolve as a race, progress, and grow towards our potential as a whole. This inner brilliance and inner intelligence, I believe, is what is naturally intertwined in love, kindness, and compassion, and when activated can bring out the natural morality and good will within a child.
The mass media is on a path of de-evolution, quickly becoming a more pertinent source of the suffocation of human creativity, progress, and self-knowledge. Ceaseless cravings, consumption, and an accompanying sense of lack is a result of a block in humanity’s inherent light, intelligence, brilliance, genius, creativity, spirituality, whatever you want to call it. A source of information that is rooted in insecurity can do nothing more to help the progress of humanity but to eventually awaken a person to the overall ridiculousness of an over-dramatized induction of a sense of lack. It is my hope that those who have or have not remained rooted in themselves (their real selves) can be humble enough to learn from children, allow them to contribute to unlocking our inherent intelligence and creativity, and we return the favor to them through nothing more than developing the skill of intense, pure, conscious attention.
I may or may not have just blacked out.
