I'm kinda tired of the way people treat the idea of child birth. Parenthood in general, really. I appreciate that some people need to breed, carry on the species or whatever. But, its a hugely preventable fucking nuisance. If you want kids, fine have kids. Have kids that you're financially, emotionally, and biologically prepared to have. If you don't meet those criteria there are plenty of ways to avoid being host to a vicious parasite that will someday turn into a person that your unready ass probably fucked up. I'm not saying the unprepared or unwilling can't cobble together a reasonable facsimile of a person, hell I manage to walk on two legs and use full sentences most of the time and my parents were seventeen and surprised. But its mighty fucking difficult to create a life that isn't broken, even without starting at a deficit.
Children are not a blessing, they are an enormous burden with the potential for a high emotional payout. Having a child isn't just the (still preventable) consequence of an action; its inflicting the consequences of that action on the whole fucking world until entropy takes its course and someone has a tragedy. If you did well, and got lucky, that child will probably at least not make anyone really unhappy, they might even make some people happy. But if you fuck them up, if the wrong kind of accident happens, if you don't have your shit together, or fuck forbid you get unlucky, chances are that every life the life you created touches will be hurt. Fucking up a kid doesn't just fuck up the kid, every shitty kid makes the world a worse place and every shitty parent is responsible for it. Not just the evil ones, the abusers and neglectful. The smug cunts that show their children that its okay to be an entitled piece of shit, the emotionally distant workaholics, the passive-aggressive shitfuck who tries to live vicariously through their six year old. They make fucked up people, and those people fuck up other people.
We have to stop treating the creation of a fucking life like its just a thing that happens and isn't one of the most complex, daunting, and far reaching (wholly fucking optional) tasks a person can possibly undertake in their life. We need to stop just letting shitty people inflict their shitty kids on the rest of us and then acting like it was unavoidable, and parents need to stop acting like its their right to inflict their shitty kids on us because they can't manage their ejaculate responsibly.
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Monday, February 1, 2016
Monday, March 30, 2015
Shit-Swilling Subhuman Sonsabitches
This is going to be a short post so I don't devolve in to a crazy-eyed chainsaw-wielding redneck. So swatting is a thing apparently. It's been a thing for a while and it has always been fucked up beyond anything like acceptability. If you hit that link up there you might note that when the police discussed the penalty of the Nov. 6 2014 swatting as a fine and, possibly, a year in prison.
People die in SWAT raids. I've covered it before, but SWAT actions terrorize civilians, ruin lives and, occasionally, melt babies. So calling in a bomb threat or hostage situation on someone to fucking troll them makes you not a fucking person anymore. The idea that these fuckers get anything less than dropped in a fucking hole is disgusting to me. Many swatters are apparently kids. That doesn't change my opinion at all. If your shitty fucking kid is willing to fuck up someone's life this badly they don't get to try again, and you probably shouldn't either.
People die in SWAT raids. I've covered it before, but SWAT actions terrorize civilians, ruin lives and, occasionally, melt babies. So calling in a bomb threat or hostage situation on someone to fucking troll them makes you not a fucking person anymore. The idea that these fuckers get anything less than dropped in a fucking hole is disgusting to me. Many swatters are apparently kids. That doesn't change my opinion at all. If your shitty fucking kid is willing to fuck up someone's life this badly they don't get to try again, and you probably shouldn't either.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Athletics, Advertising and Apathetic Naming Conventions
So there was the SuperThing yesterday that everybody and their dog got their dicks hard about. My apathy resounds on that specific front. I don't particularly care that a bunch of grown men got together to try and kill each other in tight pants, or that an obscene number of people chose to live vicariously through strangers to forget the unyielding, soulless monotony of their existence. I don't even really care that the standard response I receive when I tell people I'm not a "sports guy" is a cross between sneering derision and knee jerk hostility. You know what I do care about? Fucking Katy Perry's Halftime performance. Or better yet, did you see that one commercial that cost as much as the GDP of Jamaica?
There's a point here I promise. See I'm not alone in not being big on watching sports, lots of people abstain from the sportitude, the unrepresented population here seems to be those of us who don't think sports are particularly special. Its not that I don't think that what they do is impressive to some extent, its that the physical talent athletes demonstrate has more to do with the fact that they've spent their whole fucking lives pretty much just playing a game than any thing else. There is talent involved certainly, hell they even serve a degree of social good. Sports brings communities together and that is definitely a net gain. The issue that arises for me is that while I don't have a problem with people who enjoy sports I also don't really care about all of the shit that surrounds sports culture. Its fucked up that that one guy ran a dog fighting ring or whatever, but no more fucked up than the fact that that happens anyway. I find it sickening that that dude beat the fuck out of his wife, just like it is when anyone does it.
"Oh", you may well find yourself saying, "but they're role-models, Children look up to them, so what they do matters more". First, no; they're grown men who get carte blanche because they run real fast and can take the rock to the goal or whatever. Second, children look up to them because they make a shit ton of money for playing the same games they play after school. Children aren't great at recognizing their best interests, that what parents are supposed to be for. Children would also look up to somebody who got rich from eating cake, little fuckers love cake.
Athletes can be fucked up and sports people weird me, but what is worse to me is the people who make a big deal out of demonizing them and talking about how they don't watch the sportsing, and then in the same breath start a dissertation on SuperThing ads and halftime shows. Fuck those people, they are the worst violators of the "if you don't like it, don't look" rule. These are the same class of fuckheads who watch reality shows ironically. They are on par with anorexics bitching about how unhealthy fat people are, sure they aren't fat but they're just as unhealthy and weird about food. Hell, events like the SuperThing make as much money off of random assholes tuning into the commercials as they do from asses in seats. I don't care for sports, so when the SuperThing or the Series of the World (in very small considerations of what "world" means) is on, I fucking do something else. None of that something involves even tangentially the event in question. My thinking is that if enough of us just don't bother at all maybe they'll finally fucking go away. It worked on the Jocks in highschool, maybe I'll get lucky.
There's a point here I promise. See I'm not alone in not being big on watching sports, lots of people abstain from the sportitude, the unrepresented population here seems to be those of us who don't think sports are particularly special. Its not that I don't think that what they do is impressive to some extent, its that the physical talent athletes demonstrate has more to do with the fact that they've spent their whole fucking lives pretty much just playing a game than any thing else. There is talent involved certainly, hell they even serve a degree of social good. Sports brings communities together and that is definitely a net gain. The issue that arises for me is that while I don't have a problem with people who enjoy sports I also don't really care about all of the shit that surrounds sports culture. Its fucked up that that one guy ran a dog fighting ring or whatever, but no more fucked up than the fact that that happens anyway. I find it sickening that that dude beat the fuck out of his wife, just like it is when anyone does it.
"Oh", you may well find yourself saying, "but they're role-models, Children look up to them, so what they do matters more". First, no; they're grown men who get carte blanche because they run real fast and can take the rock to the goal or whatever. Second, children look up to them because they make a shit ton of money for playing the same games they play after school. Children aren't great at recognizing their best interests, that what parents are supposed to be for. Children would also look up to somebody who got rich from eating cake, little fuckers love cake.
Athletes can be fucked up and sports people weird me, but what is worse to me is the people who make a big deal out of demonizing them and talking about how they don't watch the sportsing, and then in the same breath start a dissertation on SuperThing ads and halftime shows. Fuck those people, they are the worst violators of the "if you don't like it, don't look" rule. These are the same class of fuckheads who watch reality shows ironically. They are on par with anorexics bitching about how unhealthy fat people are, sure they aren't fat but they're just as unhealthy and weird about food. Hell, events like the SuperThing make as much money off of random assholes tuning into the commercials as they do from asses in seats. I don't care for sports, so when the SuperThing or the Series of the World (in very small considerations of what "world" means) is on, I fucking do something else. None of that something involves even tangentially the event in question. My thinking is that if enough of us just don't bother at all maybe they'll finally fucking go away. It worked on the Jocks in highschool, maybe I'll get lucky.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Status Quo Part One: Book Leanin'
I may be a day late and somewhat deficient of appropriate remuneration, but insomnia is a hell of a thing. If possible, I'll try to make up for doubling up on Brian's day with all the wit and vigor sleep deprivation affords me. Its been suggested that I discuss problems I have with the idea of a status quo. I like that idea, but in order to do it proper justice I need cover a fair bit of additional ground. I've chosen to start this little journey by exploring education.
My first target here is standardization. On paper, setting a standard is great; it seeks to ensure maximum saturation and retention of information while minimizing the percentage of the population abandoned to hopeless ignorance. The problem (as has been discussed ad nauseam by everyone from ivory tower academics to the self-congratulatory "wont someone think of the children" idiots) is that the size and relative complexity of our society demands that focus be placed on that second part. This means that in order to keep that percentage of failure low, the limited resources of our education system tend to be funneled into greater standardization. Some of this is problematic because those standards tend to define success at progressively lower levels of retention, dragging the whole system ever closer to incompetence. We manage this by taking a page from capitalism and rewarding success. We give more subsidies to schools that have a higher pass rate on standardized tests (more on this next time) which allows them to afford better teaches and more classroom resources, it also leaves schools that were already struggling pretty well fucked. As more of these schools start to suffer the habit is then to essential only teach children how to pass the relevant tests, forgoing anything like actual education. More schools "succeed" but the actual value and density of the information students receive has less context and less use outside of passing a given test. But, rather puzzlingly, that isn't the part I find most disturbing. High level standardization of education demands an increasingly rigid structure in the classroom. Which would be great if childhood wasn't a thing.
Think for a moment about all the things that are going on for a child. They are (hopefully) starting to develop the awareness of other people as people, dealing with these newly extant people, learning empathy, constantly expanding a rudimentary understanding of a massive and complex world and themselves, growing and changing at a frankly terrifying rate, and trying to construct a conceptual universe that can justify all of those experiences. That is completely ignoring any schooling and all but denying anything other than an optimal home life. Now imagine how a fucking disgustingly high percentage of these children are dealing with some form of abuse at home. Oh, and all the while they're being told that if they lack focus in class it could ruin their lives. In the midst of this clusterfuck of, what is to them, completely new and complex experience we tell them to sit down, forget all of that and focus on poorly contextualized facts and over-abstracted maths for between four and eight hours a day, depending on age. Now pack thirty or forty of these things into desks together and see how many of them "fail to perform to expectations".
The other major concern I have with the bastion of competing ideology that is education is just that, we can't seem to agree what its supposed to accomplish. Some people argue that schooling is meant to make children into well rounded adults, others argue that it's supposed to prepare children for the "real world" usually meaning the job market. Now, I'll reign in from the bile-spewing polemic about children spending all their time learning how to best sell themselves into slavery and try to only address these issues in themselves. If the idea is to produce well rounded adults then school would be more of a guided discussion with teachers and students interacting with concepts and generally progressing toward relevant details. Alternately, if the goal of education was to prepare children for the "real world", there would be a much greater emphasis on understanding social roles and the mechanics of various industries. The really tricky part is that either interpretation on its own would demand a higher regard for practical application. Unfortunately, the prevailing combination of the two is a gross maladaptation where general concepts and contextualization are largely ignored and the realities of economies and market factors are denied in favor of either hollow optimism or cynical resignation. Practical skills are all but left out entirely.
We place so much weight on the importance of education that these holes in the system don't just fuck with our children, they end up tearing at society as a whole. Because we don't really give children the opportunity to become real people, we end up with a population where many of us never get past stupid high school bullshit. Because we can't agree on what purpose education ought to serve, it largely ends up doing nothing for those twelve mandatory years, and even if you pursue high education you'll still have to fight through the shit to get anything out of it.
I know this might not seem like it leads into a critique of status quo mentality, but give me a couple posts to work through the details and I'll try to lead us into a coherent narrative.
My first target here is standardization. On paper, setting a standard is great; it seeks to ensure maximum saturation and retention of information while minimizing the percentage of the population abandoned to hopeless ignorance. The problem (as has been discussed ad nauseam by everyone from ivory tower academics to the self-congratulatory "wont someone think of the children" idiots) is that the size and relative complexity of our society demands that focus be placed on that second part. This means that in order to keep that percentage of failure low, the limited resources of our education system tend to be funneled into greater standardization. Some of this is problematic because those standards tend to define success at progressively lower levels of retention, dragging the whole system ever closer to incompetence. We manage this by taking a page from capitalism and rewarding success. We give more subsidies to schools that have a higher pass rate on standardized tests (more on this next time) which allows them to afford better teaches and more classroom resources, it also leaves schools that were already struggling pretty well fucked. As more of these schools start to suffer the habit is then to essential only teach children how to pass the relevant tests, forgoing anything like actual education. More schools "succeed" but the actual value and density of the information students receive has less context and less use outside of passing a given test. But, rather puzzlingly, that isn't the part I find most disturbing. High level standardization of education demands an increasingly rigid structure in the classroom. Which would be great if childhood wasn't a thing.
Think for a moment about all the things that are going on for a child. They are (hopefully) starting to develop the awareness of other people as people, dealing with these newly extant people, learning empathy, constantly expanding a rudimentary understanding of a massive and complex world and themselves, growing and changing at a frankly terrifying rate, and trying to construct a conceptual universe that can justify all of those experiences. That is completely ignoring any schooling and all but denying anything other than an optimal home life. Now imagine how a fucking disgustingly high percentage of these children are dealing with some form of abuse at home. Oh, and all the while they're being told that if they lack focus in class it could ruin their lives. In the midst of this clusterfuck of, what is to them, completely new and complex experience we tell them to sit down, forget all of that and focus on poorly contextualized facts and over-abstracted maths for between four and eight hours a day, depending on age. Now pack thirty or forty of these things into desks together and see how many of them "fail to perform to expectations".
The other major concern I have with the bastion of competing ideology that is education is just that, we can't seem to agree what its supposed to accomplish. Some people argue that schooling is meant to make children into well rounded adults, others argue that it's supposed to prepare children for the "real world" usually meaning the job market. Now, I'll reign in from the bile-spewing polemic about children spending all their time learning how to best sell themselves into slavery and try to only address these issues in themselves. If the idea is to produce well rounded adults then school would be more of a guided discussion with teachers and students interacting with concepts and generally progressing toward relevant details. Alternately, if the goal of education was to prepare children for the "real world", there would be a much greater emphasis on understanding social roles and the mechanics of various industries. The really tricky part is that either interpretation on its own would demand a higher regard for practical application. Unfortunately, the prevailing combination of the two is a gross maladaptation where general concepts and contextualization are largely ignored and the realities of economies and market factors are denied in favor of either hollow optimism or cynical resignation. Practical skills are all but left out entirely.
We place so much weight on the importance of education that these holes in the system don't just fuck with our children, they end up tearing at society as a whole. Because we don't really give children the opportunity to become real people, we end up with a population where many of us never get past stupid high school bullshit. Because we can't agree on what purpose education ought to serve, it largely ends up doing nothing for those twelve mandatory years, and even if you pursue high education you'll still have to fight through the shit to get anything out of it.
I know this might not seem like it leads into a critique of status quo mentality, but give me a couple posts to work through the details and I'll try to lead us into a coherent narrative.
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