Children in worship of Big Brother
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February 19, 2005
Billmon: Young Pioneers
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Orwell seems to be describing the sort of situation typified, in American cultural history, by the Salem witch hunts, where children informed against their parents. This, anyway, is exactly how Hawthorne, in Alice Doane’s Appeal, describes a mother headed for the gallows: she “looked behind, and beheld her peaceful dwelling; she cast her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly, yet with bitterest anguish; for there was her little son among the accusers”. Does Maher think this is happening now? Is a low level of political consciousness to be taken as a symptom of parricide or matricide? In fact I believe he thinks exactly this, and I also believe that he’s barking up the wrong (the paranoid) tree. The problem isn’t that kids (and their parents) are “out to get” Maher, but rather that kids (and their parents) aren’t out to get what they ought to be getting in the first place–namely some strong teaching about (for example) the Salem witch trials (the very point that Hawthorne makes at the end of his story). And this is a job for the parents….
Posted by: alabama | Feb 19 2005 15:40 utc | 1
Children are very easy to indoctrinate. Hey, that is how they grow up to be like us!
They like easy-to-understand, concrete symbols, such as flags, pictures of Jesus, statues, and will genuinely participate in the emotional fervor associated with them.
They also love relics, secret symbols, special stones…Who didnt have a secret treasure box?
They don’t understand the concept of free speech. To them, all speech is free – it can be bad or good, right or wrong, nice or mean, boring or interesting.
Free speech is a concept (principle, etc.) that has to be taught and discussed.
Without acculturation, children, and later teens and young people, will seek to surpress content they see as wrong or harmful. All young people have read or heard about newspaper articles (adults expostulate, complain..) that are downright disgusting, distort the facts, inflammatory, and so on. As they know they cannot themselves act on papers, they will request a higher authority do it. Here (CH) they usually blame the editor of the paper, and say he should be fired. In the US, Big Gvmt. is assigned the task. (Note that about 75% of interviewees thought that burning the US flag is a crime.) I would expect that in some other countries similar % would be found, with differences appearing only concerning the agent of control.
Teaching young people about free speech is fraught with difficulties. There is usually a smart kid in the class who will point to examples that reveal the hypocrisy of the idea. It is a hardy, committed, risk-taking teacher who can take that on. In the US (and elsewhere) today, it cannot be attempted: if done, it is but another indoctrination exercise (“You can say what you want and people should listen and take you serious but you cant say this or that, or if you do, expect to be corrected – or, here, arrested!”) For that reason, teachers avoid the topic; the best of them attack it indirectly (in English, reading or playing ‘The Crucible’, see alabama above) hoping that students will construct their own views.
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 19 2005 16:31 utc | 2
If society (meaning a large goup, e.g. national) is to be broken up into smaller groups defined by social class, position, education, ethnicity, religion, credit history, health, or even cross-over criteria like sex, to ensure confusion and competition, parents can *not* do the job of teaching their children about anything like free speech, the rights of man, the rules of war, ‘free’ choice in whatever area, the need for respect and tolerance, and so forth. It is against their interests, and their children’s interests, and they will not do it.
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 19 2005 16:47 utc | 3
It seems fewer young persons are oedipally moitivated to confront authority. I notice this all the time in the university. Deleuze & Guattari deconstructed Freud in Capitalism & Schizophrenia by exposing the reification of the oedipal complex as merely another reproduction of bourgeois paternalism mirroring capitalist social relations. But at least in Freud there’s a faith that children will say “no” to the father and to the state–that such confrontation is “natural” and quite desirable. Somehow, the imagination to confrtont authority has shrunk. Certainly, oedipalism is no longer an explanation for this pervasive hegemony. Is it, as alabama claims, a lack of political consciousness of baby boomer parents who left the lessons of the 60s behind them and now teach the children the pleasures of endless supplication to power?
All I know is the university students of today, most of them, reflexively rejoice their own submission to power. They adore their parents and respect the state unconditionally. Britney Spears: “You should just trust the president.”
But, maybe it’s always been this way, and I’m just old and bitchy.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 19 2005 17:33 utc | 4
A military draft would solve the problem of a lack of practical consciousness among American youth.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 19 2005 17:39 utc | 5
Another observation: The young students are aware of the ideology of conformism and placation to power, but they do it anyway. Gitlin calls this the culture of “savvinesss” and Sloterdijk calls it “cynical reason.” So, it’s not as if the explanation of false consciousness is entirely adequate. It’s as if the acknowledgment of the hooror of conformism, while conforming–this attitude of hip irony–is somehow a sufficient form of entirely useless rebellion.
Just trying to figure this weird shit out.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 19 2005 17:58 utc | 6
I need to think more carefully about my own understanding of the terms “political consciousness” and “false consciousness”. I think my understanding of those terms is indeed too narrow–too much a matter of received wisdom, and not responsive to the enigmas of the young (meaning anyone born around 1970 and after).
Posted by: alabama | Feb 19 2005 19:12 utc | 7
slothrop, yes. From CH (different from the US):
Young people adore (or petend to adore) their parents because they are financially dependent, and live in a specific sociologcal niche. (Son of doctor, rebel, artistic actress type girl, etc.) The people who have money are their elders, not them. Society offers them no place, no advancement, exept through the tribe. Possibly, countries like Iraq are less tribal and class – sex ridden than Switzerland and the US.
They placate to power, while understanding many of the mechanisms, because they have been trained to compete, been told over and over again that no job (salary, decent housing, marriage, children) will be forthcoming unless they do better than the average, better than their classmates, etc. They also know that if one challenges authority – not the police but the guardians of the modern, moral order, terrarism included – one must be ready to pay a very high price. Saviness or cynical reason or hapless muddled conformity sees to it that they bow down.
Here, number one cause of death in the 18 – 24 age range is suicide.
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 19 2005 19:16 utc | 8
alabama- anyone born after 1970-ish has never known an America in which the right wing did not rule. (excuse me, but Clinton, remember, pissed off the republicans by adopting their fiscal policies.) They were too young to be aware of Nixon. The first democrat they saw was Carter…and the October surprise courtesy of Reagan/Bush 1/Casey, etc.
They grew up with Reagan spouting how much we should all hate the government…Gingrich blathering about a “revolution” to kill the middle class and have them ask for it.
They’re too far removed from the era before civil rights, or the depression that others heard about from their grandparents.
They have been bombarded with tv advertisements all their lives. These ads have grown more and more sophisticated. They have been raised to be consumers. The pace of change in technology in the computer era has meant constant purchases to keep their computer systems compatible with existing applications.
McMansions are the norm. Who would only have one car, if you have more than one driver?
The poor are losers and Jesus is more like Rambo than Ghandi.
Posted by: fauxreal | Feb 19 2005 19:23 utc | 9
Well back in my time there was “The Green Berets” and there was “The Graduate”, and there was the draft. Redneck(bad faith consciousness american style) cultural impetuous, less developed then as now, also had the burden of real and immediate consequences, a bright light upon the vicarious vampire. Resistance, coalesced in parallel or as a “counter” culture whose impetuous went well beyond the immediate rejection of the former and advocated (if even only symbolically) its own fully independent culture and evaluative structure (whats cool or not) and language. Because youth are ALWAYS interested and attracted to power, it is no suprise that many, disconnected from personal risk, might be drawn to the radicality of the “new” right as the cutting edge of personal (and cultural) re-deffinition — as a path to their own maturation. Interestingly, as such a vicarious drift to the right gathers evermore steam the demand for real actionable participation will also increase, perhaps including those so willing to go along, trapped within the very real meat grinder, of their own implicit design.
Posted by: anna missed | Feb 19 2005 21:04 utc | 10
fauxreal: alabama- anyone born after 1970-ish has never known an America in which the right wing did not rule. (excuse me, but Clinton, remember, pissed off the republicans by adopting their fiscal policies.) They were too young to be aware of Nixon. The first democrat they saw was Carter…and the October surprise courtesy of Reagan/Bush 1/Casey, etc.
Unless their parents taught them, showed them, continued to point out how the backlash against the social justice/free speech/civil rights movement(s) was incredibly intense. I’ll just use my children as an example. I’m sure they are in no way the ONLY kids born in 72-77 who still have a bit of antiauthoritarian, non-right within them. I watched so many of my cohorts sell out to the seduction as they grew older. Mother Culture’s loudspeakers began to crank up the decibels on the “fear, fear, fear” during the 70s and 80s, until they reached the fevered pitch they are now. I watched it all aghast, and pointed it out to my growing children as the PR campaign that it was.
I will neither decry the entire cohort (my generation) nor that of our children. Oh, that it was that simple. But I feel as Mahrer does about the baby Stepford adults… Hitler youth, as the Junior Anti-sex Leaguers, worry me. I continue to be a constant radical thorn in my my now 32 and 27 year olds’ sides. They’ve had the eyeroll down pat since they were teens. But I know they’ve taken much in.
I’m sure there is much more to say. I’d love to tell you about how we tore about my kids’ history books when they were in school, but I’ll hush up for now. Here’s a nifty quote:
“Time counts and it keeps on counting.” (Savannah in Mad Max in Thunderdome)
Based on the above: “Time matters and it matters because it passes inexorably, and so part of [our] job is to keep a correct record of the past so new generations will know where they came from and understand”
Ken Sanes – Transparency Now,
IMHO, some of the best commentary on-line on Mother Culture’s influence upon what we (and our children) think, know, and remember. I’m not willing to surrender my kids and any future grandchildren to the maw of “civilization” just yet.
(Blather, blather, blather) 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 19 2005 21:28 utc | 11
They placate to power, while understanding many of the mechanisms, because they have been trained to compete, been told over and over again that no job (salary, decent housing, marriage, children) will be forthcoming unless they do better than the average, better than their classmates, etc. They also know that if one challenges authority – not the police but the guardians of the modern, moral order, terrarism included – one must be ready to pay a very high price.
This made quite an impression on me. I see myself in this description as the father of my children. I thought I was doing the right thing by giving them good advice. I had to figure this stuff out by myself coming from a rather poor family and I got a lot of hard knocks. The way Blackie puts it sounds awful. I don’t know why it sounds bad and I don’t know a better way of doing what parents are supposed to do.
How does one prepare children for the world? I figured it was best to instill Jesus style morales yet prepare them for the Pharisees. Probably my Lutheran background that screws me up.
Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 19 2005 22:12 utc | 12
Ooooh, Dan. Lutheran background. Here. (raising hand) I questioned when my kids were young if making sure that they knew the pitfalls of embracing the charms of the civilization was the “right” thing to do. Having been at mental odds with the world all my life, I wondered if I would be blessing them or cursing them. I did know down to my bone marrow that the thing I must never do is lie to them, and for the most part I held up that end of my bargain with myself. I spent ten years trying to divest my self and my mind of all that I could of the illusions that go hand-in-glove with “living” on the Happy Planet, USA sector… It was very painful, but something I would do again.
Gawd… too soon old, too late smart, as my Lutheran farmer mom and relatives might say. 😉
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 19 2005 23:08 utc | 13
The Age of Simulation: Phony Transcendence in an Age of Media,
Computers and Fabricated Environments (Ken Sanes, Transparency Now)
Posted by: Kate_Storm | Feb 19 2005 23:41 utc | 15
“Children are very easy to indoctrinate”
Heck, that’s how religion managed to survive for so many thousands of years!
Slothrop: Frankly, I’ve always assumed the whole “Oedipian complex” thingie was mostly a power fight. Kids get upset at the dominant male of the clan, the one who gives orders and can beat them silly. Since this has seriously diminished in many post-60s families, the origin of a conflict about authority inside the family disappeared – kids are allowed a lot of crap, just think of how kids can blame all their school failures on bad and biased teachers, when in previous decades the parents would just have backed the teacher even when the kid actually had done no wrong. I tend to think that in some cases, there’s a feeling of near-impunity which means that they can think they own the world and know everything, and will fall for the “individual responsibility” and “ownership society” bogus of the right-wing.
Blackie: “no job (salary, decent housing, marriage, children) will be forthcoming unless they do better than the average, better than their classmates, etc”
This the theory, but of course we know it’s a huge blatant lie. Teens may not yet realise it, but it’s a massive joke. We don’t live in an elitist system based upon meritocracy – if we were, and even if it’s not the best system possible, we would surely not be in the current massive shitstorm we’re all in, worldwide. The system really is a massive hereditary oligarchic crap, with the odd guy who managed to slip throught the tight net. Just look at Bush: he is preznit because of his family connections, not because of anything else. Just look at Berlusconi: is he billionaire and PM because he was the brightest kid in the class? Frankly, he probably was one of the worst troublemaker. Are people like Larry Ellison or Bill Gates billionaires because they’re better than average, because they’re hard-working, because they’re 1.000 times more clever than the average Microsoft or Oracle employee? Does Britney Spears make better music than Joy Division or Mozart did? Is Dan Brown a better writer than Poe? Are stockbrokers better than average? (hint: think of a system where everyone follows the advice of countless brokers, and try to think how their average performance couldn’t be different than the average) Yet even the worst is paid far more than any school teacher, nurse, bus driver, dairy farmer…
The truth is that the system is not based on how good you are, on your intelligence, but mostly on who your relatives and their acquaintances are. These guys just replaced the aristocacy of old. And from time to time they throw some bones at their most fiercely loyal Quisling-like slaves (think Von Hayek, think Gannon, think Thatcher, think Rush Limbaugh). Corrupt nepotism, favoring those of the tribe, your old buddies, however incompetent or braindead they may be, is the rule.
At the end of the day, capitalism is in the same league as the taliban regime: human achivements only matter when they bring money, otherwise they aren’t worth anything. Picasso only matters as long as you can speculate on his paintings. War has value because you can make big money with it. It doesn’t matter if you’re brilliant or thick as a brick, the only thing is that you should follow the utilitarian free-trade greed-is-good mantra. To put it shortly, capitalism is a massive insult to our intelligence. Any system that doesn’t value the human mind, its intelligence, Art, sciences, for themselves and not for the economic value, any system that doesn’t put these as ends worthy of seeking as such, and not because of external usefulness, should just die and go down to meet the rotting corpses of Nazism and Stalinism.
Dan: You didn’t screw up, but well, you should be honest: tell them that *whatever they do*, they’ll be screwed up by the system and won’t be in the top league. These fuckers just work through cooptation until they’re removed by people with guns and pitchforks and all hang on lampposts. Until this day, you just have 2 solutions, or you try to go with the system and say fuck the planet, fuck everyone, and lose your soul – the Vichy collaborationist way -, or you choose to follow your conscience and do your best not because it’s how you succeed (it’s not), but because you’re a decent person who doesn’t want to screw the whole planet, to steal from anyone, and you try to do your best for yourself, for your own personal contentment, because deep inside, you’ll know how good you really are, and you won’t have that pervasive sinking feeling of massive hypocrisy College Republicans have or are developing. In many cases, you still won’t have a shitty life, just a normal one with some crap, but not beggar-like. You should know your own worth, and you should know these fuckers for the pityful idiots and opportunistc parasites they truly are, even if it’s not PC to say so, even if society as a whole prefers to be blind and not to acknowledge who’s the better part of it. At the end of the day, we may well die now, unrecognised, still below, but they are doomed and ultimately history will avenge us. Sooner or later, the whole system will come crashing down and will take them out.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 20 2005 3:18 utc | 16
CJ
Kids get upset at the dominant male of the clan
I do believe that is a generalization spread way too thin. Many children as well as adults are quite content to be betas. When thrust into positions where they must make decisions they are uncomfortable. Rather, I would venture to say that some alpha types are upset by the dominant male. They have to come to terms with that as there will always be either an alpha male or female.
If children are allowed to blame the teacher for their own failings, the fault for that falls squarely upon the parent’s shoulders. I do not agree with backing the teacher blindly. I will make that decision to support on an individual basis. To do otherwise is truly submitting to the state. What I try to focus on is learning. If learning requires subordinating to a few odd mannerisms…..oh well.
The truth is that the system is not based on how good you are, on your intelligence, but mostly on who your relatives and their acquaintances are
I agree but, you can pull yourself up. Or at least it used to be possible. I know many people who are children of poor immigrants. They have subsequently put themselves through school and now work and live in the professional class as doctors and lawyers and such. One may not be able to become very powerful very quickly but you still can rise to the upper levels. Gates did have a big advantage in being born into a “good” family. His father was a political figure and his mother a lawyer. That does not take away from his very hard work and vision. He was lucky because of good decisions he took and bad decisions others made. Though I “hate” Microsoft for killing many very good products I can not hate Bill Gates. He is very generous and has given away billions toward very good causes. I do not think he is evil.
At the end of the day, capitalism is in the same league as the taliban regime
At first I thought “Nah, he messed that one up”. One is an economic system and the other political….apples and oranges. Then I realized you are making the point that both require submitting to a harsh set of rules where every infraction is punished according to your rank. Taliban women and poor capitalists are at the bottom and established clerics and old money at the top. Dumbing down is useful in both systems so that the little people don’t question stuff.
tell them that *whatever they do*, they’ll be screwed up by the system and won’t be in the top league
That sounds bitter. I won’t do that for a couple of reasons. First, if you set low expectations you are cheating yourself. Secondly, I do not believe in divine right. The Bushes, Greenspans, Berlusconis, and Prince Charles’ of the world are most likely human beings who are where they are due to actions of their ancestors. If they can do it so can I. Having said that, do not assume that I envy them, I do not. They are not free, they can not walk down the streets of Montmartre or sit in a little café’ or any of the simple spur of the moment pleasures that are available to me. You might call that rationalization or my way of coping with “failure”. Could be…but I sleep well and I do not have to remember which lies I told to each person I meet.
Posted by: dan of steele | Feb 20 2005 9:45 utc | 17
CJoe — I agree with almost all of what you say about some of the powerful around today, the importance of connections, etc.
However, most ordinary parents (Western World) want their children to be both happy, successful in some socially accepted measure, and good. Good, because parents want good children who are honest, etc. and good because having childen is a stake for the future and abandoning all morals or ethics is antithetical to the very fact of having children.
Parents idealise the world to their children and often try to shield the worst off; they also, increasingly, adhere to a competitive world-view (not wrongly) to both warn the child and encourage it to try, to work, to study, etc. One might call this ‘realising one’s human potential’ or ‘being personally responsible’ (!) or, more plainly, doing what is needed not to sink under.
No parent today will tell their son or daughter “Well you’ll never amount to much because I’m just a grave-digger / disabled supermarket cashier” or “The world is so corrupt your only chance of survival is to join the game.”
It would go against all ‘Western’ values. Parents have to believe they didn’t make a mistake putting children into the world, and they will thus gobble up whatever the present zeitgeist is, taking the positive on board and leaving off the negative.
Being a parent has become very difficult.
At the end of the day, capitalism is in the same league as the taliban regime: human achivements only matter when they bring money, otherwise they aren’t worth anything.
Yes (say, see dan…) But how to tell a child that? When Momma and Poppa have to work and play nice to get money to buy greens, ice cream, rent, doctors ?
CJoe, that was a good rant, thanks, I’ll remember it. But:
In many cases, you still won’t have a shitty life, just a normal one with some crap, but not beggar-like.
That is not realistic. It is based on the idea that in a ‘rich’ country any wacky unconventional young person with ideals can survive, find a way through the cracks, because of his or her charisma, artistic gifts, personal integrity, whatever.
It reinforces the stereotype of a tolerant society and the importance of individual achievement. It conjures up 60’s or 70’s supposedly unconvential types who live(d) fine, with their education, smarts, and yes, connections, in the sense of coming from backgrounds where they received far more than the minimum.
Posted by: Blackie | Feb 20 2005 18:10 utc | 18
Generalizations are of course unhelpful when unguided by info that produces a mean/medium of how x group believes in the world. So, the recent link provided by deanander (I think it was him) to the study showing alarmingly high acquiecense to authority among young Americans, justifies a general explation for this problem.
I want to suggest maybe comparing this kind of usual complacence of younger persons to 30s Germany is misleading. I say this because of the “savviness” of younger persons to the structural constraints on agency by pervasive commodification. Such savviness shows up in advertising (the Grant Hill Mountain Dew TV ad is an example) in which commodification is ostensibly ridiculed but simultaneously accepted by younger viewers. This ironic disposition to commodification seems to be the pose we might expect any fully animated commodity to make. If the commodity could speak, it would say: “I realize my autonomy is illusory, because my value is universalized in exchange, but, what’re going to do?” The savvinness of younger people and the general acceptance of totalitarian society is merely the expression of persons who know fully themselves as simple commodity-form.
This seems even more an insidious attitude than nazism because the “thingification” of life is viewed as fait accompli–the logic of the reification of humanity as commodity-form extended to everything(one). Unlike the orwellian fate of the Germans tied to the supremacy of aryans, this new fate reveals itself as total dehumanization.
Posted by: slothrop | Feb 20 2005 18:53 utc | 19
Dan: I’m with you for schools, obviously. I just wanted to show that it seems that some (many?) parents just can’t see the middle ground. Either the teacher’s always right (old rule), or the kid’s always right (current rule mostly), whatever they actually did. In both cases, it’s blind faith, or just people who don’t want to face the complex reality.
My indictment of capitalist was basically that like the taliban or the Nazis, or many other less brutal regimes, it doesn’t give a damn about culture, the mind, intelligence, and overall human achievements. Literature, painting, philosophy have no value and at the end of the day could disappear without these systems crying any bit about this. The Taliban system was obviously amoral and disgusting. I was just poking holes at the revered capitalist system, because imho it is just as amoral and as contrary to what human beings are; it is the negation of specificity, of the possible existence of several cultures, it is based upon the basis that it is the law (money rules), and every other system is by essence inferior. When you listen to these economists, they sound even more convinced of having the Truth than if they were explaining you the Laws of gravity. Capitalism is a massively failed system which doesn’t reward people according to their worth but according to some imaginary rules which make D/D 3rd set looks like a very sane description of how the real world works. Books aren’t valuable because they tell a good story; books with crappy writing are better if they sell more. Or, my bottom line is that the taliban regime, the Nazis and the capitalist system all define themselves as separated and opposed to the human mind and its creativity; at best, it’s a means to the system’s own perverted ends – greed and profits in capitalism – instead of either seeing it as something that merely is and should be for its own sake. Basically, these and many other systems see human mind’s freedom as a danger, as the enemy to crush, (notably but not only because it allows to see that things could work in another way).
Blackie: Well, I didn’t make myself clear there. I didn’t mean that the indie artist would have a good life. I meant that the kid who would try his best and work hard and try to be good at his job inside the system would have a not too crappy life, I don’t know, say, accountant, sport journalist in the local town paper, something like this. Which, compared to the top layer, should definitely be considered a low class – though one far higher than the jobless homeless guy who is at one of the lowest of the low classes. It’s the ridiculous notion that half the Americans think they’re in the 10% highest incomes (or something close to it, forgot the poll/stat specifics).
Slothrop: I think DeAnander is a “she”.
Posted by: Clueless Joe | Feb 20 2005 21:34 utc | 21
Give a young man good leadership and he’ll turn out to be just……erm
Class of May 1984 – where are they now?
Posted by: Doctor Spock | Feb 20 2005 22:20 utc | 22
I respect my kids. Born, respectively, in 1970, 1973, and 1982, each has a strong political conscience, and participates in healthy political causes. They read, they stay abreast of the news, and they ask searching questions. Could a parent fairly ask for anything more? But still, their style of thinking, or their priorities–these aren’t the ones I grew up with. They seem, for example, to find the concept of class warfare–an indispensable premise, I assume, for thinking about “political consciousness” and “false consciousness”–to be a rather alien or abstract proposition, as if I were producing a slide-rule for their inspection. But the Kyoto treaty, or the injustice of the war in Iraq–these they know about and feel keenly. (I should add that it’s not a lack of education that’s at issue here: one of three, who’s writing a dissertation on Hegel, knows more about Marx and dialectical materialism than I ever dreamed of.)
Posted by: alabama | Feb 20 2005 23:46 utc | 23