It feels like we’re setting our youth up to be moral $uic!de b0mber$. Adults won’t take the wounds of the fight for accountability, so children bear them instead. They immerse in the heart stopping horror because grownups won’t. They scream until they’re hoarse about it because the DOJ won’t. “Moral injury” and disillusionment should be reserved for grownups. We can shield them from the psychological self-harm of immersing in trauma, but someone has to go in. Someone has to.
I haven’t scoured the files. Sometimes I read something from it and my heart races. I spend the day in a stupor. That’s a real human child that was raped, mocked, made a target of sadism. It isn’t stuff you read about and go on about your day.
I’ll say it again. The kids are smart. The kids are informed. They are clear eyed. They are morally attuned. More so than my generation. A hell of a lot more than the boomers ever were or will be (a generalization, no offense intended).
In a very short time, we have made tremendous progress in how we raise children. We have seen how beautiful childhood can be. We have explored how healthy and strong children can grow, how far they can climb when cherished. Innocence is mythologized… but it’s still something powerful, and I fear we have allowed its destruction by being the only country on earth to not take this seriously.
Now, they need us to step up. They’re too smart and too morally aware to let this go unaddressed.
It is indeed sad that someone decided to make $$$$ from this evil. It is not the first time in history this has happen. Once upon a time "witches" were burned alive in Salem. Kings in England and France dictated that prisoners be decapitated or hung in a public place so the mob could look on jeering and celebrating the execution. There is a picture of the last lynching in Dallas, Texas somewhere out there (The prisoner was Black). A crowd gathered including small children. Wives and mothers brought picnic baskets. Men cheered.
Today, children have almost unlimited access to information due to the internet and Social Media outlets. A lot of good can come that. Sadly, a whole lot of evil can also be accessed. So the bottom line is that ultimately it is the individual choosing the path of good or sliding into the muck of evil.
Hopefully parents, teachers and friends will help by providing guidance. However, sometimes that help is not enough.
You are exactly right. But school districts need to have Chromebook carts in the classroom with every screen facing the teacher. Do not send them home anymore. Because eventually someone is going to hold the district that checked out that device to the student responsible. Parents will never take the responsibility.
And in those accounts of public executions and torture, there are also records of witnesses vomiting, crying, fainting. Empathy and morality are not recent inventions. Public violence has always come at a cost to health, cognition, and even economic output. Yes, people picnicked in vantage points to watch battles. Battles were the most acute of current events. Why wouldn’t they? They also didn’t know shit about psychology or neurology, and alcoholism and domestic violence were common means of processing trauma, so I’m not exactly eager to revisit that past with nostalgia. We have made progress, and progress needs no apology.
If kids are desensitized to violence, it is the violent to blame, not the kid with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex failing to resist looking at something lurid.
wow. I had no idea this would be on the minds of our teenagers. How sad that there is a game about this:(
Yes. It’s all over TikTok, their favorite platform. I was stunned when I saw the game. It’s worse than I can describe in words.
It feels like we’re setting our youth up to be moral $uic!de b0mber$. Adults won’t take the wounds of the fight for accountability, so children bear them instead. They immerse in the heart stopping horror because grownups won’t. They scream until they’re hoarse about it because the DOJ won’t. “Moral injury” and disillusionment should be reserved for grownups. We can shield them from the psychological self-harm of immersing in trauma, but someone has to go in. Someone has to.
I haven’t scoured the files. Sometimes I read something from it and my heart races. I spend the day in a stupor. That’s a real human child that was raped, mocked, made a target of sadism. It isn’t stuff you read about and go on about your day.
I’ll say it again. The kids are smart. The kids are informed. They are clear eyed. They are morally attuned. More so than my generation. A hell of a lot more than the boomers ever were or will be (a generalization, no offense intended).
In a very short time, we have made tremendous progress in how we raise children. We have seen how beautiful childhood can be. We have explored how healthy and strong children can grow, how far they can climb when cherished. Innocence is mythologized… but it’s still something powerful, and I fear we have allowed its destruction by being the only country on earth to not take this seriously.
Now, they need us to step up. They’re too smart and too morally aware to let this go unaddressed.
Couldn’t have said it better. Thank you.
It is indeed sad that someone decided to make $$$$ from this evil. It is not the first time in history this has happen. Once upon a time "witches" were burned alive in Salem. Kings in England and France dictated that prisoners be decapitated or hung in a public place so the mob could look on jeering and celebrating the execution. There is a picture of the last lynching in Dallas, Texas somewhere out there (The prisoner was Black). A crowd gathered including small children. Wives and mothers brought picnic baskets. Men cheered.
Today, children have almost unlimited access to information due to the internet and Social Media outlets. A lot of good can come that. Sadly, a whole lot of evil can also be accessed. So the bottom line is that ultimately it is the individual choosing the path of good or sliding into the muck of evil.
Hopefully parents, teachers and friends will help by providing guidance. However, sometimes that help is not enough.
You are exactly right. But school districts need to have Chromebook carts in the classroom with every screen facing the teacher. Do not send them home anymore. Because eventually someone is going to hold the district that checked out that device to the student responsible. Parents will never take the responsibility.
And in those accounts of public executions and torture, there are also records of witnesses vomiting, crying, fainting. Empathy and morality are not recent inventions. Public violence has always come at a cost to health, cognition, and even economic output. Yes, people picnicked in vantage points to watch battles. Battles were the most acute of current events. Why wouldn’t they? They also didn’t know shit about psychology or neurology, and alcoholism and domestic violence were common means of processing trauma, so I’m not exactly eager to revisit that past with nostalgia. We have made progress, and progress needs no apology.
If kids are desensitized to violence, it is the violent to blame, not the kid with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex failing to resist looking at something lurid.
Good Grief - I was horrified as I read this. Thank you for writing it and posting it. This is so important for people, not just parents, to know.