Category: Social Media

Shouting in Frustration about Back-to-School Stress!

The problem with writing blogs is you can’t shout.  All the words on the page get the same weight; none of them stand up before God and everybody, throw their heads back and holler, “What the hell is going on here?”  So, all you can do is delicately present what you know to be true and hope at least one person pays attention.  It’s frustrating work, but somebody’s got to do it.  Either that or we’re all going to end up sliding down some cosmic bunny hole and the Red Queen’ll be calling the shots.  This is one of those times when something is so messed up I just wish I could scream from this page.

What I am about to tell you is absolutely true.  No sane person could possibly make any of this up.

Recently, Angus Reid, those annoying people who always phone exactly at dinner time, conducted a poll.   They wanted to know — and many people told them — if kids were getting anxious about going back to school.  Easy question, simple answer: “My kid’s eight.  How hard can this be?”  Not so fast!  Apparently, 42% of children are not only anxious about it, they’re stressed right out.  Forty two percent!  That’s nearly half!  And that’s the national average!  Where I live, the percentage goes up to 47!  I’m running out of exclamation marks!!   Can you believe this?  I have no idea about the methodology of the poll — who responded, what the questions were etc.  However, I do know one thing, without even looking: Angus Reid didn’t talk to one single kid.  If they had, that 42% would have dropped to practically nothing – 4% max.   And that’s what makes this poll so scary.

Here’s what’s actually going on.  Angus Reid talked to parents and nationwide, 42% of those people who answered the online survey have no business having children.  They’re unfit parents.  Either that or they’re so ego-blasted on 80s entitlement that they don’t realize those munchkins who show up for breakfast every morning are their responsibility — they’re not just there to make adult life miserable.  Regardless, somebody should call social services immediately because these parents are not doing their job.  Let me explain.

First of all, ordinary kids do not come by stress naturally – especially in North America.  They just don’t.  Yes, I’m sure there’s anecdotal evidence to the contrary.  There’s probably some little person out there somewhere whose dad is a crack addict and whose mom’s doing covert ops in Afghanistan or something, but that’s not the norm, and that’s my whole point.  Stress comes from extraordinary circumstances.  Normal, everyday life does not cause stress.  If it did, we’d all be renting condos in the Valley of the Loons.  Besides (and I’m pretty sure about this, also) kids haven’t bought into the extra curriculars of life yet — things like mortgages, car payments, a rat-faced, inconsiderate boss or an idiot spouse who answers surveys.  They only get stuff like that from parents who are contagious.  These are adults who haven’t made the simple connection that kids can’t fully handle a lot of information yet.  They haven’t figured out there are ways of sharing life’s little difficulties with a nine-year-old — without freaking him out.  Unfortunately, most inhabitants of the 21st century think stress is a natural condition.  So, when it comes to their children, they treat it like an accomplishment that should be passed along.  Stress is taught in the home like sharing your toys or tying your shoes.  And when it shows its ugly little head, it’s rewarded with lots of close personal parental attention.

Next, kids go to school.  That’s normal.  It’s what they do, and they do it for years.  It’s like the cycle of the seasons to primitive tribes.  They measure their little lives by it.  Every September is a rite of passage – another rung in the ladder to adulthood.  I know people who haven’t been near a school in a generation, but the rhythm of their childhood is so ingrained that they still think of Labour Day as a kind of Everyman’s New Year.  And here’s another newsflash: despite what they’ve been conditioned to tell you, kids love it.  Why?  ‘Cause kids are sponges.  They soak up everything around them and process it.  Everything is new and exciting.  Electricity and magic carry the same weight with them because they don’t know the difference yet.  Every piece of knowledge is a mighty discovery.    And there’s no better place to quench that thirst than at school.  It’s the one place whose sole purpose is to explore the world and get in touch with all kinds of new stuff.  This isn’t just confined to the classroom, either; the socialization of recess or lunchtime friendships are just as important.  Children keep this sense of wonder for years — until it’s kicked out of them by inept and preoccupied adults.  Find a kid who says, “Been there; done that.” and you’re doing something wrong.

Finally, kids are tough little beasts.  They’re made to withstand the harsh realities of growing up.  Here’s how it goes: take away an adult’s most cherished dream and you run the risk of destroying their ego, their joy, their purpose — for life.  On the other hand, tell a kid that Santa Claus is…well… kind of a spiritual thing, and it might set them back for a day or two but pretty soon they’re on to the next adventure.  Kids face the Santa Claus type discovery over and over, year after year, and the vast majority of them shake it off and keep on moving.

Parents who see signs of back-to-school anxiety in their kids are looking in the wrong places.  Either that or they’ve already conditioned their children to be timid and needy.  Kids naturally look forward to a new school year just because it is new: it’s exciting, it’s more and different and part of that bigger life they’re growing into.  Parents who don’t understand this and foster it are raising a generation of young people made of spun sugar, so breakable that every bump in their future mundane lives is going to be a setback, an injury or an occasion for angst and foreboding.  These parents are stealing the wonder from innocent lives and they ought be ashamed.  I’d like to grab that 42% by the collective collar, get right in their face and shout, “Stop it!” but I can’t.  I just wish I could.

Group Think: A Slow Motion Mob

When I was a kid, long before Disney rewrote Hamlet into The Lion King, there were African nature programs.  They were all pretty much the same.  They featured one or two hairy somethings, with human personalities, waddling around, having adventures.  At some point, before the first commercial, an anonymous zebra would get eaten — just to prove things were serious.  Then the creature, whoever he was, would get into a couple of close scrapes himself.  In the end, however, the hero would survive, learn the tricks of the trade, and a new crew of little hairy somethings would emerge from the den.   Basically, it was the circle of life, Grasshopper — with a jugular and some big, ugly teeth.

The one I liked the best, though, was the one about the migration of the gnus (wildebeests, if you’re South African.)  It still wows me that one minute there’s this big herd of gnus, just hanging out on the Serengeti.  Then, one of them turns to his buddy and says, “Man, this place is totally lame.  I’m going south.”  Suddenly a couple of million herbivores are on the move.  Without thought or discussion – they’re just going — and dragging zebras and antelope with them.

The group mind is fascinating in its simplicity.  I’ve seen this happen with people.  You’re standing in line, waiting for a movie or a bus, and one guy shuffles a half-step forward.  Everybody in the line suddenly perks up and readjusts (even the people in front of him, where it doesn’t matter.)  Agitate that line and the people will start to bunch up towards the front; irritate them, and they’ll start banging on the door; piss them off, and you’ve got a mob.  It’s all just group think accelerated.  More importantly, though, the reverse is also true.  Group think it’s really just a mob in slow motion.

The problem with a mob, regardless of what speed it’s travelling at, is it doesn’t think.  You’ve never heard of a lynch thoughtful discussion.  When somebody’s about to swing, it’s always a mob who’s holding the rope.  Those townspeople going after Frankenstein with torches and pitchforks aren’t about to listen to reasonable arguments for and against; they’re out to put a hurtin’ on somebody – or something.  The crowd screaming for the blood of Christ didn’t care if they had to suck up to the eternally-hated Romans to get it, and flogging wasn’t going to be good enough because they’d already bought the hammer and nails.  A couple of centuries later, everybody’s sorry about that (After all, the “Do onto others…” thing is a pretty cool philosophy) but at the time, crucifixion seemed like a grand idea.  But group think isn’t just about frustration and shouting and spur-of-the-moment homicide.  It runs deeper than that.  Group think bends the rules of reasonable discussion.  It turns secular examination into religious fervour.

The very best example of this?  A couple of hundred years ago, in September, 1793, Robespierre and some of his amis were sitting around Paris with a revolution on their hands.  They formed the Committee of Public Safety and started chopping off heads.  By the time they were done, somewhere between 20 and 40 thousand people had been whacked; ironically, most of them peasants.  What we now call The Reign of Terror, ended only when it began to eat its own and Robespierre himself had to kneel before Mademoiselle La Guillotine and lose his head.   But for ten months, the Committee murdered people (There’s no other way to say it) relentlessly, day after day – and here’s the kicker – in full view, and with the public’s approval.  This is group think at its worst.   This isn’t the flare of a mob breaking innocent windows.  It’s the body politic, so intoxicated with its own righteousness that it calmly, carefully, convinces itself that it holds the moral authority to anoint the saints and punish the sinners.

When group think controls the agenda of a nation, honest people are fooled into believing the words of the demagogue.  They abandon rational thought for the fears and tears of emotion.  They hold no reference to reason but follow the wild-eyed cries of the crowd, metaphorically rending their garments.   As the tumult of the time builds, otherwise discerning people follow the loudest voice.  The slow and thoughtful sounds of logic are shouted down by misplaced passion.  Thinking itself staggers under the weight of the tyranny of thoughtless, unexamined belief.

Here in Canada, we maintain our good name in the world (despite what some would tell you) precisely because we are a discerning people.  We do not rush to adorn our dead with saintly shrouds or hurl our reason on the funeral pyres of our heroes.  We are not swept away by the tenor of our times.  We do not chase the worship of every newly-minted Golden Calf.  We are a slow, deliberate people, loving, hopeful and optimistic; and although we need to be reminded of that sometimes, we are not so brutish that these ideals have eluded us.

But mostly Canada’s good name in the world rests on the fact that we understand that we’re all in this together.  We know that the secrets of our future are not the exclusive province of one man or one group or one philosophy. We are not the puppets of carefully crafted presentations.  It is not in our nature to build pedestals for heroes or shrines for saints, so when we do, we risk being fooled by shimmering platitudes; truisms that seek to exploit our good intentions.  They would have us forsake our reason to blindly follow the single most persistent voice. When we do that, we are nothing more than a slow motion mob — no matter how well-meaning.

Top Ten Jokes of 2011

There’s enough going wrong in the world this week that even we optimists are getting the Windex out to clean our rose-coloured glasses.  Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse – they did.  People are starting to read Kafka for laughs and Cormac McCarthy is beginning to look downright light hearted.  However, rather than dwell on the obvious let’s stop for a moment, pour a beverage and relax.

Remember, August is that time of year when the local folks of Edinburgh rent their houses out for mucho dinero and bugger off to Spain; chased out of their town by the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  For those of you who’ve never heard of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, that’s too bad because it’s the greatest mish-mash of all-things-considered in the world.  The Edinburgh Fringe is actually several coexisting arts festivals that run amok, day and night, through the streets of Edinburgh for the entire month of August.  It was started in the late 1940s by some university students, and even though it’s become internationally huge, it still maintains its undergraduate Alphagetti-for-breakfast air.

One of the biggest parts of The Fringe is comedy; some good, some bad, some awful.  And for the last few years, it has produced a Top Ten list of the funniest jokes of the Festival.  This is this year’s offering.  So, as the world continues to spin, tune out for a second and remember we’re still the funniest species on the planet.

10) DeAnne Smith: “My friend died doing what he loved … Heroin.”

9) Andrew Lawrence: “I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can’t even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails.”

8) Mark Watson: “Someone asked me recently – what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I’m not falling for that one again, wife.”

7) Alan Sharp: “I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure.”

6) Sarah Millican: “My mother told me you don’t have to put anything in your mouth you don’t want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.”

5) Matt Kirshen: “I was playing chess with my friend and he said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So we stopped playing chess.”

4) Tim Key: “Drive-Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought… once you’ve hired the car…”

3) Hannibal Buress: “People say ‘I’m taking it one day at a time’. You know what? So is everybody. That’s how time works.”

2) Tim Vine: “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”

And the Number One funniest joke of the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival is:

1)      Nick Helm: “I needed a password eight characters long, so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

Okay, back to our regular programming!