6/3/2023 Consider Saying...
Speaking generally of children "acting out," or otherwise behaving in a way that makes their parents want to "sit down and have the discussion," I think that for the most part, the behavior is a manifestation of the psychological effect of the environment. Using the girl and father from my previous post as an example, when she sent him the picture of the henna tattoo then didn't reply to his question, "Is that permanent?" for an hour, like I said before, I think she knew what she was doing. The tattoo itself might not have been an act of defiance; lots of people enjoy decorating their bodies with inks and stains, permanent or otherwise, and she knew that with it not being permanent, her father wouldn't have any objections. When he found out it was henna, he didn't seem to mind, but he still would like for her to have discussed it with him first. At 15, she was probably able to predict all of this. She was "allowed," and she knew she wouldn't need permission first. This notion of the parents wanting to have discussions with their children before their children make decisions is presented as an opportunity for the child to benefit from the supposedly more advanced wisdom of the parent. I think it's really a disguise for making sure your kid isn't going to do something you don't want them to do. "Is that permanent?" says a lot more than just those three words.
Newsflash: in nature, the consequence of a decorative application of ink to the skin is a decorative application of ink to the skin. God doesn't strike you down for getting a tattoo. People do.
This reminds me a bit of a newsletter I once received from the organization called WarmShowers. To briefly summarize: WarmShowers is an online community that connects touring cyclists with potential hosts for a night or two as the cyclists make their tour. On the website, hosts can write reviews of guests, and guests can write reviews of hosts. The newsletter in question brought up the issue of how to write a review of a bad experience. They gave several examples, and I don't remember them anymore, so I'll just improvise.
What Not To Say: Our host worked until 6pm, and we arrived at 5pm starving, stinky, and sweaty. There was no spare key, so we had to wait a whole hour before they got home to get in and shower. Then we had to make our own dinner and wash the sheets ourselves the next morning when we just wanted to get back on the road. Consider Saying: Our host seemed to lead a busy lifestyle, so this stay was more of a "do it yourself" style of hospitality. For security reasons, they do not keep a spare key outside the house, so if you arrive a little earlier than expected, be sure to grab a bite to eat on the way. What Not To Say: Our guest was homeless, drank all of our beer without offering to pay for any of it, stayed up until 3 am playing music on his phone, and we think he brought bedbugs in with him!! DO NOT ACCEPT THIS GUEST!!!!! Consider Saying: Our guest seemed to be on an endless tour. He is fond of beer and music, so if you accept him into your home, be prepared for an energetic time. You might want to make sure you have a washer and dryer and shower to offer him first thing. What Not To Say: That better not be permanent because if it is, there will be consequences. Consider Saying: Is that permanent? As if the parent has the omnipotence to know what "the consequence" is for a decorative application of ink to the skin. Newsflash: in nature, the consequence of a decorative application of ink to the skin is a decorative application of ink to the skin. God doesn't strike you down for getting a tattoo. People do. People who pretend that god has spoken to them and have deluded themselves into thinking they know what god's will is for all other people. "Is that permanent?" implies "You should have discussed this with me first because even though I want to present the guise of being the type of parent who lets their child make their own decisions, I'd really rather you discuss everything with me first because I want to make sure that you aren't going to do anything that negatively affects my social standing." "Is that permanent?" implies "Even though I know you are smart enough to form your own opinions about the direction of your life and your general life choices, I'm legally required to force you to obey the law and I construe that as forcing my own ideals upon you because I pretend that I don't know any better." "Is that permanent?" implies "If that is permanent, I am going to suffer the social consequences, but I will enjoy the sympathy I get when I spin it to look like you did this on purpose to hurt me." The father's response came from a mixture of fear and a desire to force conformity that will be denied until the day he dies. When someone oppresses you, typically you become angry and hurt, and you want to escape. In many cases, the desire for retaliation arises, and most of the time, it is reinforced through subtle behaviors. People come home and complain to their spouses about their bosses, and in a fit of releasing anger, they say outrageous things that they mostly won't carry out involving things like bodily harm to their bosses. The children hear this, and they know what the words mean, they're not stupid. "Mommy, is Daddy really going to push Mr. Jenkins in front of a bus?" "No sweetie, Daddy was just angry." And now the child has learned that when they experience anger, the desire to want to push someone in front of a bus, and say so, is normal. Sometimes they come back with a machine gun and open fire. That's why security escorts people out and is put on alert for a few days afterward. Now that I think about it, I suppose it's possible that her lack of response for an hour wasn't a premeditated intention to hurt him. Maybe it was more the effect of her sadness and pain at having her happiness turned to dust yet again by the man who claims to have her best interests in mind. The more likely scenario is that regardless of whether the tattoo itself was an act of defiance, her sending him a picture then letting him dangle for an hour was. After all, as Adam reminded me, "15 year old girl" is pretty well outside the category of "Hey dad, look what I got" with the intention of sharing her excitement and then getting crushed by the response. Either way, it is a reaction to the environment she is in: one where she is not allowed by law to make her own decisions, and he got what he deserved. The natural consequence of oppressing your daughter is that your daughter will distrust you, and rightly so, and do things that are against your will for the simple fact that they are against your will. You said you didn't want to impose your will upon your child, but you did anyway, and now, they're not doing your will, just like you said you wanted, but they're not even doing their own will. They're just doing things that aren't your will, regardless of if it's theirs or not. So either way, you've now successfully erased the person that was your child from existence. Further evidence that she was reflecting the environment around her is exemplified by the fact that at some point later, hours, days, I don't know, she texted him a question, and he waited not one, but two hours to reply to her. Here we see the father going out of his way to take a jab at his daughter in retaliation for the pain she caused him previously. We can see where she gets it from. He then asked her, "How did it feel to be left hanging without a response?" to which she replied, "I didn't like it very much." Thinking that he was teaching her a valuable life lesson, he said, "Now you know how I felt when you didn't get back to me." He was teaching her a lesson alright, but not the one he thinks he is. All she learned was that her noose has just tightened a little bit more, and if she doesn't immediately respond to her father's demands, no matter what they are, he will punish her, and the punishments will only grow in severity with time. So you can see, if she did this purposely, she is really only behaving how she will be expected to behave as a grownup: punishing other people for the crime of not doing things the way she want them to. Really, he should have congratulated her. As it is, people can't stand seeing their reflections because they know how ugly they are, but they don't want to admit their guilt. It's painful, I know, but instead of behaving like adults and admitting their atrocities, they choose to behave like chimpanzees, and they punish people who act as the mirror. 5/30/2023 Parent Trap
I was in town the other day, volunteering at a food pantry, mopping the floor, when I overheard two of the other volunteers swapping stories about their kids. One story started off with the 11 year old kid asking for a banana, and I didn't hear most of the story, other than the kid telling the mom, "You need to calm down," and the mom, in relaying the story saying, "I'm always saying that to her: 'You need to calm down.'" So I have no idea what that was about, but I'd bet that, aside from just mimicking the mom, the kid had solid grounds for saying what she said.
The other volunteer's story about their kid involved his 15 year old daughter getting a henna tattoo (a type of temporary tattoo that is applied to the skin as a paste, and wherever the paste touches the skin, the skin becomes temporarily stained), texting him a picture of it, and then not replying for an hour when he asked if it was permanent. I could tell pretty much right away that the daughter knew exactly what she was doing, hates her dad, and wanted to jab him, so she purposely got the henna tattoo, knowing he wouldn't appreciate her not "discussing" it with him first, and left him hanging for an hour so that he'd sweat over it. If the children have ire toward the parents, here in the early 21st century, I'm going to go ahead and conclude that it's not without good reason, and the plot certainly thickened when I chimed in. I usually tend to stay out of these things and let the chimpanzees have their way with each other, but I guess I couldn't help myself this time. The conversation became pretty thick and steered toward the bible somehow. Apparently some people believe that the line about not changing your temple refers specifically to not getting tattoos. I shared my views about how I believe the bible was written by people in power so they could make all these laws to benefit themselves and people would have to follow them because "God said so." In relaying this story to Adam later, he offered that it wasn't about power, rather they were just liars. The bible was written by liars. I said this, in essence, to the other volunteers when one of them stated that the bible was transcribed by people to whom god was speaking. I replied that they only said god was speaking to them, but they were lying. They made it all up so that everyone else would have to do whatever they said. People also use their interpretations of the bible--rather the interpretations that are handed down to them by other liars--still to force others to bend to their will. So the example here, "Don't change your temple." Your temple could be anything. For people who don't want their kids getting tattoos, your temple is now suddenly your body. When pressed about what's wrong with getting a tattoo, other than their belief that the bible says it's wrong to get tattoos, which it doesn't, the answer then changed to, "Well there are legal ramifications for her." Her being the 15 year old girl as it is illegal to get a tattoo under a certain age without parental consent, and the age varies from state to state. He believes that in this state, it is age 16. I didn't get around to saying this, but saying that there are legal ramifications for her implies that he plans on turning her in if she gets a tattoo without his consent before she's 16. There are only legal ramifications if someone turns her in and presses charges. Not to mention the legal ramifications for the tattoo artist. No tattoo artist is going to risk their job for that. He then went on about the legal ramifications for himself because of how a parent is legally responsible for anything their child does until they are 18. Later on, I was revisiting the conversation in my mind, and it occurred to me that this is the exact argument my mother gave when she said she didn't want me to smoke marijuana. As a youngster, I remember being involved in a conversation about marijuana where she said flatly that it's illegal, she tried it a couple times, it burned like hell in her lungs, and she just didn't care for it. And supposedly, it being illegal and her dislike for it were supposed to be reason enough for me to not smoke it. I got news: I don't care for mushrooms on my pizza, but I don't try to convince other people that it's wrong to have mushrooms on their pizza because I don't like them, that's for goddamn sure. I'll even go a step further. The social factor. In many circles, smoking marijuana, or having tattoos, or both, whichever example you want to take, is considered taboo. Doing so or associating with others who do so would lower your social standing within that group. If there's one thing I know about people, one of their greatest fears is to be ostracized from their social group. Circling back to the parents: yes, I acknowledge that most people believe in and abide by laws that put the parents under pressure to keep their children from breaking the law due to the threat of their own imprisonment. However, I don't think it's the imprisonment that really scares them. It's the loss of their social status as a result of their imprisonment that scares them. They'll swear up and down that their sole concern is for the child's well-being: "I don't want her to get something permanent applied to her skin that she'll regret in 20 years." Trust me. At 15, as a child of normal mental development (I've met her a couple times), she's aware of the permanence of tattoos. In reality, it's not at all about the child's well-being. It's about the parent's social status, but no parent is ever going to admit this. Why, when it comes to Law, I have nothing to say, for laws were never meant to be understood, and it is foolish to make the attempt. 5/30/2023 bleeding out
All the time you spend tryin' to get back what's been took from you, there's more goin' out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it. 5/30/2023 breakin'da rools
Let me ask you something. If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule? 5/22/2023 Gun Show
In reading about gunshot wounds, I came across some interesting information.
From the wikipedia article on gunshot wounds: Firearms, globally in 2016, resulted in 251,000 deaths up from 209,000 in 1990.[5] Of these deaths 161,000 (64%) were the result of assault, 67,500 (27%) were the result of suicide, and 23,000 were accidents.
The article then lists 8 countries whose firearm induced deaths make up about half of the global total. The united states, is surprisingly not first but second behind brazil, although I suppose it's possible the countries are not listed in any particular order. I'm pretty sure they're excluding intergovernmental wars here and talking only about interpersonal shootings.
Then it says this: In the United States in 2015, about half of the 44,000 people who died by suicide did so with a gun.
Did you catch that? In 2015, 44,000 people died by suicide in the US alone, and 22,000 of them used a gun.
So let's just assume that the global number of suicides by gun between 2015 and 2016 were pretty similar. Those 22,000 in the US alone represent approximately 32.6% of the global suicides by gun. That's just by guns. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the romans lead the world in suicide rate. Another interesting tidbit I came across in my research is that Switzerland surprised me with their 27.6 to 41.2 guns per 100 inhabitants. Comparatively, the romans obviously blow everyone else out of the water with 120 guns per 100 inhabitants. After that, the next highest numbers from a good handful of countries all hover around 30 guns per 100 inhabitants, so behind the us switzerland is right there at the top. I guess after a neutral government, a neutral populace doesn't necessarily follow, although I hear switzerland is planning to de-neutralize themselves. Anyway, Singapore and Japan were the most gunless countries on the list with .5 and .6 guns per 100 inhabitants respectively. Even Italy, original home of one of the world's most widespread gangster networks lands at a surprisingly low 11.9 guns per 100 inhabitants, right along with Columbia which you'd think with their reputation for drugs and cartels would be higher than their 10.10 guns per 100 inhabitants, but there it is. Little landlocked, coo-coo clock switzerland outguns colombia and italy combined. The list did not look at every country worldwide, and the information ranged from being gathered in 2009 to 2019, so it's not quite an apples to apples comparison but still interesting nonetheless. 5/22/2023 Shots Fired
They came by shooting today. Being that we have generally been occupying remote areas of forest, hearing gunshots is not uncommon. Typically, best practice is to avoid areas that are clearly shooting ranges. Signs of a shooting range will be various appliances and/or furniture with bullet holes in them. Broken glass is also a good indicator that you might want to steer clear of that area, or at least not setup right there. These are general rules of thumb that we have followed.
We've been here for about a week now, and everyday, I've heard shots to the north. My figuring is there's an area over there that locals have claimed as their own personal shooting range. This is not uncommon and doesn't bother me in the slightest, and I know to avoid the area, at least for camping. Today, however, for the first time, I heard shots from the east-southeast where I recently saw a couple cars setup for camping. The main road in and out of the area is in that direction, so I find it unlikely that anyone would choose that area to go shooting, given the likelihood of hitting someone. Immediately after the shots from the east-southeast, they began coming from the east and sounded very nearby. Then I started hearing ricocheting bullets flying directly over the tent. I stood up and walked cautiously around to see if I could see someone with the intention that if they saw a human walking around in the area, maybe they would move to a different location. I did not see anyone, but the whizzing bullets continued for about 30-40 minutes. I heard a few smacking through the trees overhead before hearing them land about 50-60 feet behind me. Today they were fairly high overhead, but it did occur to me that if you were trying to murder someone and make it look like an accident, a ricocheting bullet in the woods would convince quite a few people unless, of course, the target was on to you and was very publicly vocal about it which would make it increasingly difficult to perform your task. In this case, the best you can do is intimidate and try to scare them into uprooting their lives. Nevertheless, I stopped what I was doing and looked up how to treat gunshot wounds. Not long after they stopped shooting at us, a very large, earth-shaking booming began to the north. Those shots were deep blasts that sounded like explosions. They occurred in two's. There would be a shot, a pause, another shot, then maybe a few minutes of pause before beginning the whole process again. The blasts continued for another 20-30 minutes. At this time, it occurred to me that if you wanted to murder someone and make it look like an accident, but you knew they were on to you which made it increasingly difficult to perform your task, you might want to intimidate them, to scare them, to make yourself appear and sound bigger, stronger, and more capable than you are. 5/20/2023 PSA
When you see someone who is obviously carrying all their possessions, it is, in my opinion, in poor taste, rude, and quite unoriginal to comment on the size and scale of their load. For example, even in a cheerful tone, "wow, you've got a....wide load there," is intrusive, judgemental, and downright not true. Unless you're also carrying all your possessions and have obviously less than the person you are calling attention to with ridicule, it is you, not he, who has the wide load.
Compared to his body, yes, his load might be wider, but that observation has the intelligence level of a 3 year old remarking, "it's daytime!" when the sun is out. No one's impressed that you can compare the size of a backpack to the size of a human. Ever try carrying your mattress, everything from the kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom, along with the walls, roof and floor all at once? No? Then it's best to keep your "wide load" comments to yourself. It's not a complement. It's showing off to everyone else within earshot how much better of a person you think you are because of your quantity of possessions so great you couldn't possibly carry it all at once. You might as well be kicking dirt in their face. |
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