Earlier quoted context omitted.
My statement on the feminization of society doesn't come from trauma. Global testosterone levels have been dropping for decades[1]. You can see it in old pictures: men were less fat, more competitive, and happier. Rates of sex and relationships among men and young boys have dropped precipitously. Speaking anecdotally, I feel most fulfilled when I embrace my masculine side and focus it on positive pursuits. Competitio…
> Rates of sex and relationships among men and young boys have dropped precipitously. Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but it sounds a lot like you want a return of pederasty? Let's assume you mean relationships and sex with people of similar ages, what ages should we imagine when you say "young boys"?
Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
221–230 of 281 posts
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
My reaction to these kinds of things (see also: the abuse of the Battle School students in Ender's Game ) is to think: (1) Perhaps it was the best way to teach certain things; but (2) I don't think the people who do such things usually rule out all the gentler methods first. It sounds like the "challenges" weren't necessarily intended to teach you what you learned, and you just happened to have a mind and mindset tha…
I didn’t like Ender’s Game and it’s portrayal of military boot camp. I had no idea what the training in Enders Game was about besides bullying and cruelty and very simplistic tactics. I went through US military training in the early 90s. A lot of it was bullshit but the intent was clear to weed out those who cannot handle an incredible amount of stress while you get little sleep or rest. There was no physical or verb…
I saw a guy piss himself from the verbal abuse in front of 100 other recruits in the squad bay. Another recruit vomited bile from being spurred to exhaustion by our "Kill Hat", again in public view of the rest of us and to the protests of the medic who pleaded with the Kill Hat to stop. He seemed a deeply sadistic man. There were so many of us for so few DIs it was possible to avoid their attention: my teenage self with a head full of fantasy called this the "eye of the malefactor".
I've never seen so much evil in my life but I also never made it to a conflict zone.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're surprised the US has free speech?
We (the US) are currently in a debate about banning the teaching of “critical race theory” in schools. Many history text textbooks downplay slavery to such an extent that most high-school graduates think the Civil War was about “states rights” when it was really about several states committing treason in defense of slavery. The genocide and ongoing mistreatment of Native Peoples is barely covered. In some states, tea…
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trauma is like a sunburn. Adversity will give your brain a "tan", letting you handle worse adversity over time, but too much at once and it's trauma. The problem is that the kind of teens who go into these programs are often the equivalent of ghost pale, and get traumatized by even mild adversity.
That’s a good analogy. It also covers the increased sensitivity to additional trauma/adversity that it seems many people can’t understand: If you already have a serious sunburn then just a little more time in the sun, something you could normally handle, can cause a lot of pain and damage.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
We (the US) are currently in a debate about banning the teaching of “critical race theory” in schools. Many history text textbooks downplay slavery to such an extent that most high-school graduates think the Civil War was about “states rights” when it was really about several states committing treason in defense of slavery. The genocide and ongoing mistreatment of Native Peoples is barely covered. In some states, tea…
Provide evidence. In Washington State the genocide of Native Americans and Black slavery was the topic from elementary through high school. I can't remember a single year either subject wasn't explored, critiqued and analyzed.
1: Only 8% of students understand that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
2: Here is a book that destroys the myth of the Alamo, and points out that the white people in Texas went to war twice to keep the institution of slavery.
3: There are lots results for problems with the way native history is taught in the US. I grabbed an interesting read as an example. As further evidence, until a few years ago, the Washington NFL team used a racist slur as its name
1: https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2018-02-...
2: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623832/forget-the-a...
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#226I went to one of these places when I was 13. Same thing, picked up in the middle of the night, and sent to a wilderness program that turned into 18 months of boarding school. The school was burnt down by the students a few years after I left and I got a couple thousand dollars in a class action lawsuit when it came out that they were hiring unlicensed therapists and admitting students who should have been in intensiv…
What do you think about your parents?
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
My reaction to these kinds of things (see also: the abuse of the Battle School students in Ender's Game ) is to think: (1) Perhaps it was the best way to teach certain things; but (2) I don't think the people who do such things usually rule out all the gentler methods first. It sounds like the "challenges" weren't necessarily intended to teach you what you learned, and you just happened to have a mind and mindset tha…
I think Ender's Game is the most compassionate protest against this kind of thinking - it is a thought experiment that demonstrates that with the right environment, even the most intelligent can be taught to use their skills in an utilitarian and amoral way - the book ends with Ender becoming the worst mass murderer in the history of the human race, despite representing the moral middle ground between his monstrous b…
You may need to dwell some more, because there's some higher order practical and moral contention there. Guilt over things done in pursuit of survival is the victor's luxury. If you lose, and die anyway you don't have that problem. This is one of the sharp divergences that tends to exist between the soldier and the pacifist. One fights today to repent and atone tomorrow. The other risks destruction, robbing one of a future in which one may possibly avoid making the same mistakes or committing the same atrocities as one's forbearers. In this sense, the weight of being a mass murderer is shared equally by the warrior and the poet. One through action, the other through inaction. No matter the outcome, somebody's hands are covered in blood. Ender did what he was uniquely equipped to do in the moment where it was necessary for him, and those under his guidance to do it. We live not only under our own instrumentality, but under the auspices and obligations to which we are bequeathed by accident of our own existence.
Ender's Game is an exquisite portrait of how the central theme of human existence is suffering. If you live to fight another day, you suffer those fights in the future, and the scars of the past you carry with you. If you acquiesce to destruction, your suffering stops, but the world moves on regardless.
To be human is to struggle and suffer. The trick is coaxing some positivity out of the entire affair while we're around to do so. This applies at all levels of human endeavor. We all struggle against our own adversities perpetuated upon us by the "other". The biggest difference from one bit of suffering and struggle to the next, is how you define the "other".
It's weird, but Ender's Game made a lot more sense after a reading of the Bhagavad Gita. I do not know if Card set out with that intent, but the two mesh with, and complement each other in ways few texts written at different time periods have. There's also good resonance with Martin Heidigger's thoughts on the nature of man being inextricably linked with the act of becoming or Being, the characteristic quality of Dasein. You cannot change your past, you can change the future, but only in as much as the road that has lead you to where you are allows.
The Philosopher is left to wonder if it could have worked out any other way, the Faithful have their answer even if they didn't know it, and even a Free Agent, determined to sail their own way must navigate the waters pushed by the natural forces around them.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Psychology. (Ortho)pedagogues. Even some psychiatrists. It's incentives versus how human minds work. https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820... You see, if you look things up you will find that psychology is good at exactly what you'd expect it to be good at if you look at their methods: describing behavior "in the large". Think "Of 100 drug addicts, 10 will commit crimes due to drugs", those typ…
> Especially with kids, the problem is the environment. Generally not the home environment, but the school. Yeah, no. I'm not living in the US so maybe you really have a weird bully culture like it was showed in TV shows ten years ago, but no, generally its the home environment. Some children DO have issues with schools and schoolwork, but the broken children i took care of when i was a youth camp counselor were brok…
This has been researched and the answer is largely no.
I would also like to point out those kids are repeating what social workers tell them to avoid trouble. At least half of it isn't true.
I want to repeat what I said before. It isn't because home situations are great. It's just how bad youth services are.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#229In Canada our government ran a program like this for all indigenous people for over a century, the goal of which was to "take the Indian out of the child". The children would be taken, often forcefully, and maybe allowed home for a visit one a year maybe not. They were beaten if they spoke their own language or indulged in their own culture. Often abused, sometimes killed. The goal was total cultural annihilation, an…
Happened in the United States as well (notoriously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_Indian_Industrial_Sch... ). I was genuinely surprised to learn this in high school (for me, 2017-2021 or so) - not because it's not a notable event in US history but because I was surprised my history teacher was allowed to teach it.
Re: Troubled teens left traumatised by tough love camps
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
My statement on the feminization of society doesn't come from trauma. Global testosterone levels have been dropping for decades[1]. You can see it in old pictures: men were less fat, more competitive, and happier. Rates of sex and relationships among men and young boys have dropped precipitously. Speaking anecdotally, I feel most fulfilled when I embrace my masculine side and focus it on positive pursuits. Competitio…
So then you'd be in favor of Universal Healthcare, subsidies for gym memberships for low income individuals, stricter regulations against lying/misleading in fast food/junk food, and stricter regulations/penalties for pollution?