Category: The Shadow Knows

Better late than never

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

VIDEO: Atlantic Ocean Might Be To Blame For Global Warming 'Pause'

Author Robert Jay Lifton says people are starting to acknowledge global warming:

AMERICANS appear to be undergoing a significant psychological shift in our relation to global warming. I call this shift a climate “swerve,” borrowing the term used recently by the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt to describe a major historical change in consciousness that is neither predictable nor orderly.

The first thing to say about this swerve is that we are far from clear about just what it is and how it might work. But we can make some beginning observations which suggest, in Bob Dylan’s words, that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” Experience, economics and ethics are coalescing in new and important ways. Each can be examined as a continuation of my work comparing nuclear and climate threats.

The experiential part has to do with a drumbeat of climate-related disasters around the world, all actively reported by the news media: hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts and wildfires, extreme heat waves and equally extreme cold, rising sea levels and floods. Even when people have doubts about the causal relationship of global warming to these episodes, they cannot help being psychologically affected. Of great importance is the growing recognition that the danger encompasses the entire earth and its inhabitants. We are all vulnerable.

This sense of the climate threat is represented in public opinion polls and attitude studies. A recent Yale survey, for instance, concluded that “Americans’ certainty that the earth is warming has increased over the past three years,” and “those who think global warming is not happening have become substantially less sure of their position.”

Extreme helicopter parents: Kids shouldn’t be allowed to play on their own

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

helicopterparents

I am so happy that I was born when I was, and got to go off on my adventures:

A whopping 68 percent of Americans think there should be a law that prohibits kids 9 and under from playing at the park unsupervised, despite the fact that most of them no doubt grew up doing just that.

What’s more: 43 percent feel the same way about 12-year-olds. They would like to criminalize all pre-teenagers playing outside on their own (and, I guess, arrest their no-good parents).

Those are the results of a Reason/Rupe poll confirming that we have not only lost all confidence in our kids and our communities—we have lost all touch with reality.

“I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, anytime, that underestimates children’s abilities more than we North Americans do today,” says Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn, a book that advocates for more unsupervised play, not less.

In his book, Gray writes about a group of 13 kids who played several hours a day for four months without supervision, though they were observed by an anthropologist. “They organized activities, settled disputes, avoided danger, dealt with injuries, distributed goods… without adult intervention,” he writes.

The kids ranged in age from 3 to 5.

Of course, those kids were allowed to play in the South Pacific, not South Carolina, where Debra Harrell was thrown in jail for having the audacity to believe her 9-year-old would be fine by herself at a popular playground teeming with activity. In another era, it not only would have been normal for a child to say, “Goodbye, mom!” and go off to spend a summer’s day there, it would have been odd to consider that child “unsupervised.” After all, she was surrounded by other kids, parents, and park personnel. Apparently now only a private security detail is considered safe enough.

Harrell’s real crime was that she refused to indulge in inflated fears of abduction and insist her daughter never leave her side. While there are obviously many neighborhoods wrecked by crime where it makes more sense to keep kids close, the country at large is enjoying its lowest crime level in decades.

Too bad most people reject this reality. The Reason/Rupe Poll asked “Do kids today face more threats to their physical safety?” and a majority—62 percent—said yes. Perhaps that’s because the majority of respondents also said they don’t think the media or political leaders are overhyping the threats to our kids.

Less than human

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I don’t normally get into the Fox News insanity, because it’s so self-evidently insane, right? But every once in a while, I like to remind people of the kind of anti-human propaganda that’s getting spooned into the open yearning brains of their regular viewers:

Fox News’ morning program questioned a Texas official about providing emergency services to undocumented migrants, asking whether 911 calls from immigrants must be answered “even though for the most part, when you get there, you realize they’re not even American citizens.”

On July 23, Fox & Friends centered a discussion on how undocumented immigrants in Brooks County, Texas are “bombarding” the police department with 911 calls. Host Brian Kilmeade set up an interview with the Texas county’s chief deputy by claiming that “illegal immigrants are learning the hard way there’s a deadly cost to crossing the border.” Kilmeade suggested Brooks County emergency response services might be strained because, “not only are they understaffed and lacking resources, now they’ve got to deal with illegal immigrants who have no business being here.”

As an example, the program aired two emergency calls from Spanish speakers each identified on-screen as “Immigrant.” In the first, a distressed male requests emergency assistance for his cousin, whom the man described as “turning blue.” Another call featured a man and woman explaining to the 911 operator that they have not had access to water in three days.

Via immigration attorney April Cockerham.

Yes

~ susie

This trend toward punitive attacks on mothering styles has a lot to do with lost ground in women’s rights, to the point where a female parent’s decisions are open to criticism and criminal charges from everyone else:

I grew up in the ’70s, when we kids were expected to entertain ourselves, which meant, largely, that we were left on our own. I sometimes walked home from elementary school by myself; when my mother was pursuing her undergraduate degree at the same time, we were often left for long periods under the supervision of my teenaged brother. Being home alone after school was routine for my latchkey friends. The tiny county jail would not have been able to fit all the moms who left kids napping in the car while they ran into the grocery store.

A beloved professor told me that in order to get her PhD while being the mother of five, she had to take her youngest to school with her — and she let him play in the halloutside the lecture room while she attended class. “What else was I supposed to do?” she said. She laughed, also, surveying the no-trimester-is-too-early-to-start-the-Baby-Einstein-tapes of women of my generation. “We didn’t even talk to babies back then — we thought they wouldn’t understand!” Her children survived and even went to Harvard. Her parenting strategy 20 years ago showed pluck, can-do-ness, and other admirable traits, not unlike my mother’s letting my brother cook us no-bake cheesecake for all our meals for weeks at a time.

Continue reading “Yes” →

Regrets of a stay-at-home mom

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Saving The Ponies (Help Us Reach 10,000 Comments)(Trying To Break The Flickr Commenting Record)

Yadda, yadda, yadda, blah blah blah.

Yes, this stay at home mom regrets that she shot herself in the foot financially, and now that’s she’s divorced, she’s really struggling to find work.

But what I wish she’d said is that money issues aside, mothering is not enough. It just isn’t.

I’ll use the example closest to home: My mom. My mom, the smart, witty woman who really wanted to be a singer and a writer. She did neither of those things. She blamed us. (And seemed really incredible annoyed that I managed to do both those things, even with children.) She kept telling us how much she loved being a mother, but she was depressed, and seemed to drink a lot. She seemed a lot happier after we all grew up and left.

My dad did not believe in working mothers (although he had one, so go figure). He said it was the man’s job to provide, and women should stay home. So I can blame him — and I can blame my mom for knuckling under. Some things (like your sanity) are worth fighting for.

And it would have been nice to see my mom happy.

Well, it was another time and another place. But the women who are Professional Mommies now should know better. Some strange retro things have happened in society where, just like the Fifties, Motherhood is Sacred. It is the pinnacle, goddamn it. (I notice most of the Professional Mommies drink. A lot. Just look at their Facebook and Pinterest pages!)

How do I put this nicely? I think they are lying through their teeth, to themselves and to their children.

Instead of attachment parenting, my friends and I practiced detachment parenting. “Mommy’s on the phone, don’t interrupt me unless someone’s bleeding. Here’s a cookie, go watch Nickleodeon.” We always had a book in one hand, and no, we didn’t care that much if our kitchen floors were a little sticky. And we loved our kids. We were “good enough” parents, we weren’t trying to bolster our self-esteem in some imaginary Perfect Mommy competition. (There were some women like that, but we ignored them.)

So the thing I think when I read pieces like this is, “Where was your self-respect? What were you thinking?” Were you thinking your kids would be grateful? Think again. Your kids weren’t asking you to sacrifice every last bit of yourself. You were.

The women I’ve known like this were deeply insecure (frequently but not always with distant, withholding husbands), and tried to make up for it with the best Halloween costumes or the most creative birthday cakes. (I mean, who cares? It’s a cake! Just eat it!) When I see young mothers like that now, I want to slap them.

Part of this is grounded in my firm conviction that making kids the center of the universe is very bad for them. A lot of experts agree with me. So I think this is Mommy’s need, not the children. And it sets up some creepy “aren’t I the best mommy, so now you really owe me” kind of subtext that disturbs me.

At least in some cases, it’s a refusal to grow up and try your abilities in the adult world.

‘My heart is broken’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Very, very sad that things are at the point where he was moved to do this:

A 79-year-old retired minister in Texas killed himself via self-immolation in an effort to protest what he described as lingering racism in his childhood home — his final effort in a career marked by social activism, the Dallas Morning News reported.

“I would much prefer to go on living and enjoy my beloved wife and grandchildren and others,” Rev. Charles Moore wrote in a note left for authorities. “But I have come to believe that only my self-immolation will get the attention of anybody and perhaps inspire some to higher service.”

Authorities in Grand Saline, about 70 miles east of Dallas, said Moore drove there from his home in Allen on June 23 and pulled into a Dollar General parking lot before puring gasoline on himself and setting himself on fire. After a witness put out the flames with a fire extinguisher, Moore was hospitalized in Dallas, but died as a result of his injuries.

“I have never seen anything like this in my entire career in law enforcement, which includes my years as an arson investigator for the Mesquite Fire Department,” police chief Larry Compton told the Tyler Morning Telegraph, which posted a photo of Moore’s suicide note.