Information Overload
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 22:45
VIEWED: 6362
PAGE 4 of 6
Frem
Please bump this up top tomorrow ok ? I have to leave soon.
But, briefly - most abuse is due to parents/ household adults. I just read (can't remember where) a study on neglected/ abused infants - most were neglected/ abused in the first week by parent(s) or another adult caregiver in the home, with neglect being more common than abuse. This is something you can't put on schools, or 'the system'.
I'm a strong believer in a safety net and oversight. Maybe in a small community it might be family or neighbors (though experience shows it is unreliable), but anywhere else it HAS to be organizational. Where families are scattered across continents and neighbors don't know each other, it is the only option left.
I would not like to see any abuse tolerated.
Given the limits we place on our government (don't provide paid parental leave - that's socialism, don't provide food stamps, heating assistance or jobs - that's socialism) it has to be about catching people doing wrong rather than helping them do right.
And so, we end up with what we have today.
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The most profound message to me in Buffy is that the main characters are always the out-crowd, and yet, in perspective, they are the most popular kids in school. Our main characters have people that are there for them when they need them, even in extreme circumstances, and moments of intense personal doubt. Note The "popular" Harmony clique drops Cordelia in a heartbeat when it looks like a good idea. I suspect this is also close to reality.
But don't you see - this is exactly what I'm talking about. You base this judgment of "popular" folks versus "unpopular" folks on a TV show. Have you ever tried getting to know popular people and forming an opinion based on your experiences with them?
Harmony turning on Cordelia was written by Joss Whedon, probably written specifically to show that Buffy's friendships are truer than the "clique-ships". But that's not REAL. That's one man's carefully constructed plot.
I'm not saying you don't have real experiences, but aren't you just feeding right into this "information overload" when the examples you give of relationships come from a TV show? The show may rock, the show may touch you (it touches me and I do love it!) but it's still a product that Joss was able to sell to a network because it could be sold to enough viewers to attract commercial sponsorship. It's just not real.
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There's that, Rue, I'm well aware of it, there's just so damned little I can *do* about that end, and it's not quite the monster-factory the other end is, usually.
In fact prolly 90% or so of abuse comes from inadequate parenting, but I do see that as a fixable problem - instead of waiting for them to screw up, being reactive, we need to be proactive and offer resources, assistance, hell, training if you wanna call it that.
But no politician is really willing to invest in something that won't pay off till they're retired and so, we have to push them, and it'd help a lot if folks left their own prejudices and agendas on hold while we got it to and focused on the universal things not to screw up, and I do believe we can DO that without getting into a brawl over what socio-religous mores and values get taught in the process cause for the most part that ain't our business - and that is where this concept always breaks down when we've ever gotten that ball rolling at all.
And you know, it always seems to come back to it, Family, and Community, the destruction thereof, or subjugation of it to the priorities of a Government, Corporation or Religion, part and parcel of the whole font of ills, and I been thinkin about it a lot lately, in combination with some of your earlier comments regarding productive vs humane societies...
My conclusion is that we need to redevelop a social clan/tribe system and rebuild our monkeyspheres in a fashion that envelops our communities with overlapping spheres.
Your block could be your clan, your city, the tribe, and so on and by stepping it like that you can include folks in stages rather than the ON/OFF switch we currently have between "US" and "THEM", you see ?
Instead of someone being automatically "THEM" they'd be "not my clan, but part of my tribe, so I'll give him a hand, unless he annoys me...".
In fact this has been in my mind a while too, and I really do see a solution in that, but how exactly to propose it, I wonder...
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Hey Frem
THANKS ! for the bump. For the most part, I agree with what you say. And yes, starting small seems more do-able than trying to redesign the whole society from the ground up.
But a random related thought passed through my mind, and I'm going to need time to consider it. And that is the concept of 'family'.
In small, stable groups everyone knows what a family consists of (however it may be constructed, I'm talking globally), and who is in which family. In the city, among dislocated people separated from their usual family, and strangers to everyone else, family tends to be what you make it. Maybe one thing we need to do is expand our legal concept of family ... requires some thought to see if it's relevant ...
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Well, this oughta be of interest then.
The concept of "Family by Choice"
http://www.protect.org/articles/vachss_parade_9803.shtml
http://www.udel.edu/PR/Messenger/97/2/family.html
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Choice-Creating-Family-Strangers/dp/09251
90926
Of course, that's easier for me, not having so strong a bond with other humans in the first place and being poly on top of it, but I don't see where a little extra effort wouldn't make it possible for others.
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Oh, Bump.
I'm interested just listening.
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And now, to carry this even further way, WAAYYYY off topic:
I think my friend's kid is autistic
I wish she'd consult a specialist, but she thinks she knows what's best.
By Cary Tennis
Dec. 18, 2008 | Dear Cary,
A few months ago I befriended a woman I'll call Susan. We have a lot in common, including similar educations, 3-year-old sons and "hippie" sensibilities. Over the course of the summer and fall we've spent a great deal of time together and once or twice a week we meet for play dates.
From the beginning it has been obvious that Susan and I have different views on "Western medicine." Although I'm somewhat cynical about Big Pharma, I generally believe that doctors and the medicine they practice can help us live longer, healthier lives. On the other hand, Susan is extremely skeptical of what she sees as "corporate medicine." While she has taken "Sam" to the doctor a few times when he was obviously ill with ear infections, she does not believe in vaccinations or checkups. As a result, it's been more than a year since Sam has seen a pediatrician.
Most of Susan's quirks I simply shrug off as reflections of her own laid-back personality, but as I've come to know Susan and Sam better, I am growing increasingly worried. From the beginning it was apparent to me that Sam is very, very different from most of the 3-year-olds I'm around.
Although he seems exceptionally smart in some areas (for instance, he knows his alphabet forward and backward and can point to the correct letter when his mom makes the sound -- pretty impressive for a 37-month-old), Sam only talks at the level of an 18-month-old. He screams if he is touched by anyone besides his parents (even a pat on the head or a touch by another child), refuses to make eye contact, regularly collapses screaming for no apparent reason, refuses to socialize at all with the other kids in our weekly play group, and favors strange repetitive play by himself. Other moms in our play group have noticed this. Even my grandmother, who met Sam at a birthday party, told me afterward, "Something's not right with that child." Susan has mentioned that a few people have suggested that Sam might be autistic, but she has taken great offense at this. Before I met her she had a job where she worked with special-needs kids, including many autistic kids, and she states clearly that she would "absolutely know if Sam had a problem." She credits his strange behavior as extreme shyness. I'm not so sure, and I'm worried; Sam clearly has a problem and I've read that autism may be much less severe if diagnosed early. I've tried to point out to Susan that checkups can diagnose a lot of hidden problems like lead poisoning. She's admitted halfheartedly that she probably should take him for a checkup "eventually," but so far she hasn't.
I'm not sure what else I can say to her. Her husband is very hands-off with Sam and generally defers to Susan on kid stuff. She plans on home schooling and says Sam is too shy for preschool, so there's no chance of a diagnosis that way. I should also mention that in all other ways Susan is a kind, attentive, conscientious mom who clearly adores her son. I suspect she's just in denial about this.
So here's my question: Do I simply butt out and hope, for Sam's sake, that Susan eventually admits there's a problem? Or do I force the issue, surely piss her off and lose this friendship? Or something else I haven't thought of.
Stymied friend
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Rue
Don't butt in and force the issue. This will not only ruin your friendship, but if successful, it will ruin Sam's life.
Sam is different, there's nothing wrong with that. He reminds me of myself. At 3, no one should be intervening in anything other than downes syndrome level of problem.
Sam appears to be an idiot savant. This probably means he'll have an above avg. IQ, and an awkward social life.
If you intervene, there's a slim chance that you can make him a medication dependent boring normal person, and much more serious chance that you will turn him into a human guinea pig.
I take perscription medications, and see doctors fairly often. So when I say "big pharm and medicine are evil" I mean that they are evil, or have evil in them. The biggest core of all evil is a deep conviction that you are right, the second key factor, is good intentions, and the third is the will to apply this knowledge and good intentions on others. If you have all three of these, you have the evil trifecta.
Mainstream medicine has the evil trifecta. That doesn't mean it doesn't perform a useful service, and that it's not a valuable assett to society. But like other organizations, corporations, the military, the law, govt. that have the evil trifecta, it is very dangerous.
They will experiment on Sam like they did on me not because they are nazis, but because they don't know what's wrong, want to find out, and "fix it."
I believe they had the same goal with me. To put anyone through that is torture, but to put a child through that is child abuse. Plain and simple. No grey area here.
When I was growing up there were actual autistic kids who couldn't talk at all. Not one of them turned out any less that absolutely fine. This kid is talking and relating, albeit poorly, that makes him automatically not autistic, see the dennis leary on jon stewart on "over labelling."
The kid could get a BS diagnosis like aspergers, but better to let Sam be Sam. Those people who have never been crazy do not recognize that crazy is a superior state of being in many ways. This is where our true genius comes from. Normalcy is a necessary evil that has to be mastered in order to deal with other people. Sam has many years to master that.
Finally, the mental health world is worse than the medical profession as a whole, no offense. When I think about the experiments they did on my sister, who is physically disabled, as a child, it was hell. Then I think of what they put me through, that was hell squared. Add those two together: Psychiatric experimentation on a three year old? It's hell cubed. My bet: You'll make a psychopath.
I know a ton about the subject of neurochemistry, and I could probably cure Sam in half an hour. I believe doing so is probably a crime against humanity and nature. My guess is that Sam has a gift, and that gift is getting in his way, in terms of relating to others. This can be dealt with without medical intervention.
If you put this kid on psychotropics, or give him to someone who will, those drugs affect a wide range of receptors, and during the early development years, that can permanently disable all sorts of higher brain functions, from memory, to the ability to reason to the ability to tell right from wrong.
Rule #1 of life: Don't f*^& with mother nature.
As for relating to others: If you know Sam personally, try, over the next few years, to get him to relate to at least one other person. Then, play two player games. Connect four, checkers, chess, go, battleship, whatever interests him.
Side question, does his mother smoke, or take any drugs, such as marijuana?
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I posted it b/c it was an interesting question not b/c of any personal connection to that child.
There is a spectrum ranging from abuse through criminal neglect through questionable parenting to people being people and doing the best they know how.
Beating, kicking, burning, starving, raping, imprisoning and otherwise torturing children - clearly that's abuse. The people who believed their daughter would get better if they prayed hard enough - and she died of appendicitis - was criminal neglect.
The post above is a gray area.
I know several children who are brain-damaged. I don't mean kids with 'soft signs' - I mean kids who had major, life-threatening brain bleeds, or who didn't breathe for extended periods of time after birth. Their lives as disabled children are more difficult, physically painful, frustrating and limited than their peers. As wonderful as these children are, as much as my heart goes out to them, I find nothing beneficial to them in their problems.
But again, the post is a grey area.
Finally, I know some children with Asperger's syndrome, and their parents. The children (many of whom are now in their early 20's) are frustrated by their inability to relate to others. They have the same emotional needs as you or I - for example, the need to be appreciated - but are socially unable to do the things they need to do to get that. Some have 'splinter skills', which means at least average or above average abilities in a specific area. All have a very limited focus on very specific topics. One I know knows all about trains, but very little about anything else.
If there was a method of treating them - not necessarily medication - but brushing therapy for the sensorially defensive, rapid-response therapy and/ or sign-language for the non-verbal, or other therapies along those lines - I think children should be given those treatments as early as possible. But it also takes attentive parents - those who are alert to whether or not any particular therapy is helping, hurting, or a waste of time. BTW, children I know who've been through those therapies don't seem to lose abilities, but they do seem to gain better overall function.
I guess I've concluded, in sum, it would be a shame if the boy were not treated with those therapies as early as possible.
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Carbon Unit...
De-process nonrelevant information .
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