The Jessaverse | Change and Exchange

On American television (and presumably British television as well), there is a programme called ‘Brat Camp’, which details the lives of several ‘unruly’ teenagers abducted from their home and taken to a behaviour-modification school since their parents are at their wits’ ends. The idea that these parents treat their children as property and have people abduct them into the night to be treated with abuse and ridicule at a behaviour-modification centre that is more like a gulag than a school is patently disgusting. What ever happened to individual rights?

I believe that the ideas promulgated by the adultist media and by autocratic parents are detrimental to youth self-determination. Youth are perfectly cognisant enough to make their own decisions as regards their own behaviour, and it is insulting to their intelligence and sense of self to force such barbarism upon them.

The reasons for sending the teenagers to the camps are also ridiculous. One was molested and was never the same again. Another had drug problems. Some others simply thought for themselves and wanted to live their own lives, rather than the ones their parents had mapped out for them. Here’s a news flash for the parents who want to live their lives vicariously through their children: They’re individuals! Don’t expect them to be like you. It’s perfectly fine for you to help and give them advice, but it is NOT fine to force them into your mould. And for the parents who throw their children into these programmes because they are on drugs: They don’t need to be tortured in order to get them off drugs! That’s what rehab is for! I think that these programmes don’t give any ‘real world’ training (as hard as it is to live these days, most Americans do not have to wander in the wilderness in order to be taught proper behaviour and humility) and they are demoralising and humiliating. And about behaviour changing if someone has been molested? Of course it’s going to change. Sexual abuse scars you for life. You’ll never see sex and sexuality the same way ever again, and you’ll fear that someone is going to harm you if you get too close.

If you want your children to learn from their mistakes, let them learn from trial and error, and then they will realise that they need to turn their lives around. Don’t make their lives worse than they already are.

I realised something…it seems when some sort of attack or breach of security happens in a western or westernised country like Great Britain or Japan, the mass media take the opportunity to publicise the event and remind the public of how terrible terrorism is. However, in the developing world, such things also occur, and the media only mention such events in passing, or in a blurb, or in an article at the back of the newspaper. Journalists spend so much time analysing how terror breeds in ‘civilised’ countries, but they pay little or no attention to what might be the catalyst for terror in developing countries unless someone from one of those countries attacks someone in Western Europe, Japan, China, the Koreas, or North America. For example, when the first set of attacks occurred in London, the mass media were all over it. News reports, magazines, and newspapers had London all over their leading articles and newscasts. In contrast, the recent attacks in Egypt received none of this publicity, even though more people died in the initial attack. It’s really saddening how the media are so biased. I think both events deserve equal publicity.

After I heard about the terrorist attacks on London yesterday, I started analysing the reasons behind the terrorist attacks — most terrorists or ‘freedom fighters’ seem to have some sort of purpose behind bombing buildings; they don’t do it nolens-volens. I personally think the root behind terrorism is intolerance and a lack of co-operation and cultural exchange. Fundamentalist Muslims feel very strongly that Western civilisation is evil because it is against what Allah mandated in the Koran, and they are also taught not to accept others’ beliefs. To retaliate against the inevitable tide of globalisation and ‘westernisation’, the fundamentalist Islamists issue fatwas, bomb buildings, and declare Western states like the US to be the ‘Great Satan’. If there were more acceptance of social reform in Islamic countries, I think that people would be more accepting of different ideas and would allow cultural exchange. I think that since their culture is a bit more stagnant than the ever-changing Western world, they are less accepting of change, and resist it whenever it materialises. I’m not prejudiced against Middle Eastern culture; in fact, the Middle East used to be the cultural centre of the world, and Islam once did support a thriving scientific and intellectual culture. Nowadays, the cultural centres of the world have shifted westward, but the Middle East hasn’t wanted to move along with them. Fundamentalists now are in charge of many of those countries, and they support cultural stagnation, an unfortunate result of extreme social conservatism.

The resistance to change, along with other factors, is one of the catalysts for this variety of terrorism.

This post serves to memorialise those who have perished in the terrorist attacks in London. Requiescat in pace.