A Local View: Tell libraries to ax porn by voting ‘no’

Re:I perceive the confusion

So what happens when the child becomes an adult: the ultra-con parent flicks a switch at the age of majority …

As near as I can tell, yes, but only in theory. The ultra-conservative bent is toward authoritarianism. The ultra-conservative would still maintain control over the adult child even after flipping that switch. You can see that in the fact that the person under discussion isn’t happy with allowing full adults access to porn. What adults are allowed to access must also be controlled in the name of protecting the children. This action is the diametric opposite to anarchy. What makes you a free person is that you have sole authority over and responsibility for your own self. And authority and responsibility are concomittants; you can’t have one without the other. In anarchy, individuals practice authority, but abdicated responsibility. In authoritarianism, the state takes upon itself authority over your life, but apportions to you responsibility for failing for to live up to the standards of the state.

Re:I perceive the confusion
Hi, Chuck.

Found some time during the day to answer the rest of your points.

> Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to conclude that it is certain that

> they did figure it out.

What factors can you point to that suggest I should have concluded otherwise?

Look, Chuck, this is not rocket science. Tweet was newsworthy for her stance,
and probably exploited the broadcast media to get her message out. Given what
else I know about adolescent behaviour (some of which is covered in Satanic
Panic) and factoring in Occam’s Razor, the conclusion that the assailants were
elementary school children who performed a random act of stupidity is beyond the
pale.

> or did you assume it to be the case?

Ah. So you didn’t make assumptions about the intelligence of the assailants
but everybody else is making assumptions about this incident? Sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander, don’t forget.

It’s a conclusion. An assumption based on an assessment of the evidence, as
opposed to an assumption based upon one’s opinion.

> Again, the op-ed piece says nothing about teens or young adults, and

> frankly that stunt sounds a lot more like middle school kids to me than

> high school kids.

Depends on how you define young adults, I suppose. I eschew artificial
distinctions such as “legal adult” except when it is necessary to invoke such a
distinction. For me, adulthood does not start when a person has hit some magic
number in their age bracket, it is a matter of biological development. A person
stops being a child and becomes an adult biologically at menarche, for girls,
and the start of nocturnal emissions, for boys. And I bet that I am almost
certainly the only person in North America to make such a distinction.

Then too, there is the matter of neotony, which you can read about in The
Human Zoo, by Desmond Morris. Due to sociological factors, we operate almost
completely at odds with neotony. In anthropology, this is the length of time an
individual specimen grows and develops to attain maturity and independence. It
used to be twelve to fourteen years for humans, and there are echoes of that
recognition still extant today. Particularly in the Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah
where the prospective adult stands up in f ront of friends and congregation and
proclaims: today, I am an adult. Juliet Capulet was thirteen when her father
said, in Act I scene iii I think it was, that it was past time that girl was
getting married. In those days, children were raised to be functioning adults by
the time they were old enough to breed. Contemporary society is too complex to
allow for raising children by that method, but the species hasn’t evolved new
coping mechanisms yet, and will never be able to do so because society evolves
too quickly, and the artificial distinction created by a “legal” age of majority
violates neotony by extending that period an additional four to six years.

Personally, I put the blame on teenage suicide squarely on these factors.
That’s how bad I think the consequences are. At any rate, it puts a great deal
of stress on young adults who ought to be recogized as adults and contributing
members of society. Because they are not granted full authority over
themselves, they tend to kick back. That stunt is perfectly in keeping with
these ideas.

Also, the young adult demographic for the publishing business starts at age
12.

> > That’s pretty much seems to be what her attitude was: “They’re just kids,

> > so how intelligent can they possibly be?

> That’s interesting. You seem to think that ultra-cons like Tweet equate

> moral & ethical maturity with intelligence, and moral immaturity with

> stupidity.

That has been the consistent pattern of behaviour which I have discerned.
Censorship by ultra-conservatives is almost invariably based on the idea that
people are too weak in the mind (read: vulnerable) to be able to deal with
“porn” or “objectionable” material. The censorship advocate always assumes,
however, that he or she is quite strong enough to root out such material without
suffering psychic or spiritual damage.

That has changed marginally since the passage of COPA six years ago. Since
about that time, the movement to censor what adults view has been based less
upon adults being wickedly influenced by it and more upon the “Harmful To
Minors” assumption. That’s because efforts to ban material on the grounds that
adults were influenced by porn invariably failed First Amendment challenge.

> I don’t know how else to explain what I quote from you immediately above.

> In my experience, ultra-cons like James Dobson seem to place more weight on

> emotional maturity than they do on intellectual maturity.

We are probably at odds over a nuance on that score. According to a study
Teri Apter cited the overwhelming majority of people do not mature emotionally
beyond sixteen years old. Of course, most everybody assumes that older
automatically denotes wiser.

> I’m sure you agree that rights and responsibilities should grow with a

> child’s maturity. An 8-year-old shouldn’t be permitted to handle firearms

> unsupervised.

No, of course not, but the key word there is “unsupervised”. Let us assume
for the sake of this discussion that a group of gun control nuts say that you
are forbidden to teach your eight year old weapons handling because he’s too
young. Who is better qualified to decide whether your child is in fact old
enough; you or them? By what right do they usurp your parental perogative to
make a choice with which they do not agree? Now let’s take the exercise a step
further and have the gun control nuts say that y ou are not allowed to handle a
weapon because some crimes are committed using handguns. This is analogous to
what Ms. Tweet wants by requiring your surfing to be filtered.

> A 12-year-old shouldn’t be entrusted with the vote.

Probably not, but a fourteen year old can be if he is raised to be able to
vote by 14 from the very start. I would certainly have allowed my daughter to
vote as an adult when she was 14.

> 16-year-olds shouldn’t distill corn liquor without adult supervision.

Sixteen year olds certainly can be entrusted to distill corn liquor safely if
you’ve taught them how to. Most any farm boy should able to cook up a batch of
mash without blowing himself to perdition or drinking himself blind. Farm boys
are generally raised doing “man’s” work.

> Oddly enough, the ultra-conservative families I know seem to operate on

> this principle. I hadn’t noticed that their children were essentially

> non-entities until they reached majority. But doubtless your powers of

> observation are keener than mine.

Probably not; I have been studying the censorship movement for several
years now. I have a head start and a broad database against which to measure
current incidents.

> I am grateful for the recommended reading, by the way. I have a personal

> interest in the topic and I will add these books to my reading list. I may

> end up forming a different judgement of their correctness from yours–would

> that make me evil, stupid, or ultra-conservative? Or would I still be okay?

All I ask of anybody is that they make up their own mind, but to do that they
must necessarily first think. Most folks prefer to simply react. Actually
considering new evidence and changing a preconceived notion is a resource
intensive task. Lots of folks simply can’t afford the time and energy. Those who
are going to agitate for changes in society, activists, must learn how to think
as part of their efforts. The thing about ultra-consveratism is that actually
thinking is antithetical to it. The only way to actually think is to question
what you know. Ultra-conservatism in particular is based on blindly accepting
what you are told and never doubting or questioning it.

If you’re willing to read the books then you are way ahead of the game.
Formulate your own opinions and be damned what anyone else has to say.

> I realize every kid is different, but at about what age in your estimation

> do kids typically reach the point when they are mature enough […]. Does

> adult judgement play any role in deciding when they are old enough to do

> these things if they choose, or is it incumbent upon adults to accept the

> child’s say-so that they have reached that age?

As you say, each child is different. And that means that each child must be
judged according to his or her own merits. That’s an ideal, however, and I’m not
sure we can do that. It would be terribly resource intensive and would
necessitate retooling the entire educational system. Hell, we can’t even get
those idjits in gubmint to fund education properly.

For my money, though, the age of majority should be set to an apprenticeship
system with rights to vote and have sex at fourteen and various other
responsibilities apportioned with the end of full franchisement. Even that
little is not going to happen either, however. Makes too much sense.

> If a child of convinced pro-choice parents decides for whatever reason that

> she opposes abortion and must, in order to be ethically consistent, picket

> abortion clinics, are the parents showing contempt for the child if they

> seek to prevent her from doing so?

At the very least they are failing to respect her right to her own opinion.
All too often we try to live vicariously through our children and/or expect them
to be perfect carbon copies of ourselves. I think, however, that the key to your
question is: how did this young woman come to have her own opinion in the first
place? Her parents must have brought her up to think for herself.

Taking those factors into consideration, I would probably say, “no”, they are
not showing contempt for her; they’re just ticked off. But then, it depends on
what lengths they go to to try to stop her and to punish her for having ideas of
her own.

Re:I perceive the confusion

Am I an ultra-conservative?

Irrelevant. You can be as ultra-conservative as you want to be as long as you do not expect me to live according to the dictates of your conscience. I am free to be as sinful or as ultra-conservative as I wish and it’s nobody’s business but mine. This is where the authoritarians screw up. They are not satisified with just the authority to run their own lives, they want to run everybody else’s too.

then you must reject the notion that the state ever has a right to punish a person for rape, murder, theft, etc.

No, I do not. When you inflict yourself on someone else that is a crime. When you inflict yourself on yourself, like by mainlining heroin or snorting coke up your nose, that is not criminal, that is only stupid.

I’m guessing that you’ll find a lot of anarchists who disagree with this statement.

I’m sure I will. I don’t care two figs on a barren tree if I do. It’s a handy frame of reference I use when juggling complex concepts. When I come up with a better term I’ll use that new one instead.