Wednesday, February 27, 2008

[reality] welcome to the new child


Rearguard action from parents:

At times it has felt as if the only time the kids are turned off is when the tube is flicked on. During the school holidays the rules were no screens from 9am to 5pm and no screens after dinner. Our six-year-old spent far too much time asking how many minutes until 5 o'clock despite cupboards groaning with toys, books and bald plastic guys who look like extras from Prison Break. So No Screen February it was. And no, the kids weren't happy when we told them. And yes, we grown-ups were very, very scared.

There are plenty of conflicting studies about the effects of television, computers and screen toys on kids. And although their world will be one of digital information and entertainment, deep in my heart I'm with US psychologist Dr Aric Sigman who reckons telly is "recreational junk food for kids".

My television was stolen ten years ago and I never replaced it - the computer has all the news I need and films can be bought and played on it. It's a world in itself and yet there are things missing, such as the daily newspaper, sports results given live and so on.

More sinister is the world of games. Dave Johnson refers to board games:

Then it hits me. This has nothing to do with the act of playing games, and everything to do with the games we're playing. After pondering this I've come to the conclusion that most board games are microcosms that mirror our world; and the problem lies in the realization that these games are choosing to glamorize all the wrong aspects of that world.

Kids, by definition, originally have no life so they go out to get one and the first stop is their home computer. With parents abrogating their responsibility of subscribing to and instilling a moral code - it was thrown out along with the bathwater - in step the purveyors of the internet game.

So, minds which are still forming, influenced by glitter and simplistic solutions in a "revenge cycle", with added pornographic interpretations of gender roles - hell, I'm starting to write like a feminist - backed up by real porn which can be switched into at will - these are exploring and absorbing the New Reality.

One of my friend's sons is into it, as are all his mates too. Before coming over all "parental", we did similar things earlier. The urge to game is strong. Dungeons and Dragons was the thing way back when but that stuff is tame.

We had our own Game too, where twenty one people in seven separate houses played a game I'd devised about battles in three spheres - the ethereal, the temporal and hell - and all interrelated with each other. The game ran for three days and nights, washed down by liberal doses of substances liquid and otherwise.

So I'm not intrinsically against games per se and my real life is one big game but it does affect how todays new humans relate to the real world in any sort of normal sense. Give kids credit to differentiate between fantasy and reality but progressively the barriers are breaking down, generation by generation, values becoming diffused and warped, rampant across the late Gen X and Y's minds.

Gen Z is a whole new ball game and Hitler would have been delighted - this is the Aryan experiment taken to the limit - the New Child, based on no G-d, no rules, indiscriminate instant gratification of rage and lust as one wills, clawing one's way up the ladder and the worship of acquisition. In this world, the pesky parent is a barrier, a blockage to attainment of one's true enlightened self. Hence the need for state Mentors.

In the Brave New World, "I" is G-d and good human characteristics are channelled into pursuit of that goal. There are blogs all over promoting a twisted, seemingly utopian and beautifully worded but ultimately dystopian New Universe. We all know one or two of these and the sad thing is - in many cases it's not malice aforethought but lack of anything solid to latch onto into their own lives. So they invent a new reality.

Welcome to the child of 2010. Can he cope or as the Who put it in one of their songs about the cobalt blue New Child:

In suspended animation
My childhood passed me by
If I speak without emotion
Then you know the reason why

I have a feeling deep inside
That somethin' is missing
It's a feeling in my soul
And I can't help wishing

That one day I'll discover
That we're living a lie
And I'll tell the whole world
The reason why

Seems others feel the same way too.

3 comments:

  1. Great post but what is wrong with "writing like a feminist"?

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  2. Having experienced first hand just how television watching and video games can affect children, how i wish i could bring my children up similar to where i spent my childhood. We had tv but no video games and at the time we all thought we was hard done by and missed out. Much of our time was spent outdoors riding bikes, exploring, making cubby houses, spying in forts on the boys, fishing, beach combing etc. Video games are now banned from the house and the difference in behaviours is most noticeable.

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  3. Nothing, WCakes - nothing, nothing and I'm very sorry. :)

    Nunyaa - the trouble is if it's a lone action or if all parents do it.

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