When I was a kid, we all let the dogs out.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

When I was a kid, everyone let their dogs out to roam. It was a barely-urban neighborhood on the fringes of town, and no one thought twice about opening the front door and giving their dogs freedom to roam. It was just what was done. Kids, too; mothers opened the doors in the morning to let the kids out to play, and we roamed the streets freely, kids from three on up, crossing over to knock on our friend's doors; can Kylie come out to play?

It is a time that is still mimicked in rural and small-town arenas across the globe.

Nowadays, that concept is anathema to any urban dwellers. Dogs are to be contained, fenced, leashed, and children too. We no longer range freely to the yards and parks in our neighborhood, constrained only to be within hearing distance of our mother's front-porch calls of "Kylie! Sarah! Dinner!"

And we feel constrained, so we idealize the times of complete freedom, and circulate emails about the era when we were free, and demonize the terrible constraints we feel we have been put under.

But time and sensibilities move on, and we forget about the times that a neighbor's dog was hit by a car, that a child was brutalized, that our friends died because they were not under a watchful eye. We forget that, just as gunfights were penalized as civilization marched across the West, parents learned from the times children were bullied, brutalized, abducted, murdered, that we learned from the mistakes that created casualties among our peers, that it is not the best idea to let our dogs roam among cars, that it is not the best idea to put children out into our streets unprotected. We remember our parents as the ones who survived unharmed, and we forget their friends and siblings who drowned, died in traffic or tractor accidents, who disappeared or were left maimed, and we create a fantasy in which we all were free to do as we we wished and remained safe anyway.

So we demonize the culture of protection, and fantasize about an imaginary culture of freedom in which no one was harmed. We forget about growing up with car-struck dogs and kids who died or were beaten or vanished, and we pretend that everything, in that idyllic imaginary time when everyone was free, was actually perfectly okay.

[East Coast Hustle]

I disagree. I never forgot the dogs that got run over and the kids that got bullied/maimed/whatever, but I think it's still a disservice to children to even attempt to protect them from all of that all the time. I know we all react differently when it's OUR kids that are being talked about, but the reality is that the ones that weren't quick/savvy/aware/whatever enough probably were better off getting out of the gene pool before they reproduced. the flip side of that coin is that if they're never given the chance/necessity to be that quick/savvy/aware/whatever, they're going to survive but never have developed those critical survival skills as well as they should have.

[East Coast Hustle]

short version: no matter what, the culture of protection is totally fucking whack.

[Nast]

I disagree. I never forgot the dogs that got run over and the kids that got bullied/maimed/whatever, but I think it's still a disservice to children to even attempt to protect them from all of that all the time. I know we all react differently when it's OUR kids that are being talked about, but the reality is that the ones that weren't quick/savvy/aware/whatever enough probably were better off getting out of the gene pool before they reproduced. the flip side of that coin is that if they're never given the chance/necessity to be that quick/savvy/aware/whatever, they're going to survive but never have developed those critical survival skills as well as they should have.

Uh...
Are you really suggesting that kids who get killed by cars are better off that way?

[East Coast Hustle]

no, I'm suggesting the rest of us are better off for them having died before they passed their unsuccessful genes on to another generation.

[Nast]

Oh good, because that's so much more pleasant a thought.

[East Coast Hustle]

I didn't realize that the merit of a thought was judged on whether or not it was pleasant.

[E.O.T.]

Um, OK

          in regards to the rural/ out-side of townishness-ness. YES, that's where I grew up, and I remember a time when shit just wasn't fucked up and scary like it is now. Neighbourhood 'bullies' were essentially older kids who scared us but who didn't give a shit about us cuz they were thinking about spin-the-bottle.

HOWEVER

          i do know for a fact that Nigel & i both grew up, basically in the fuckin woods, so we had to actually ride our bikes into town to encounter any newsworthy fuckupedness

AS RESPONSE

          I'm with ECH, i haven't forgotten the auto screach n yelps or empty horror. Bodybags. horror. oh, yeah, is that a gun shot or...

[Muir]

It not being my intention to put words in other people's mouths, but the way I'm interpreting ECH's words is that nature often culls the weaker genes through selection. Like, the baby bird who can't fly soon ends up lunch to a cat, a cat that can't hunt will soon go hungry and die.  Thus, the stronger, fitter, smarter beings live, while the weaker beings are taken out of the gene pool.

However, with regards to human children, the way I see it, is while we need to give them the freedom to learn from their mistakes and be put in "harms way" so that they can then learn to avoid the things which will harm them... at the same time, humans are idiots.  Children especially so.  but this isn't because they are "inferior" but rather because the adults (us) haven't taught them what is safe and what isn't.

when I was a child, I was taught to look both ways - twice - before crossing the street.  I was taught to not talk with people I had never met, unless my mom or dad knew them AND they said it was ok.  I was taught to NEVER go off with anyone, whether I knew them or not - unless, again, my mom or dad had told me beforehand that it was ok.

Kids aren't taught this now.  Instead, they are shoved out the door right after breakfast and made to fend for themselves, or they are "imprisoned" inside their own home for fear that "something" might happen to them.

Somewhere, somehow, the current generation of parents "messed up" and decided to not teach their kids "common safety" rules.  It's not the kids that are faulty/inferior - it's the adults.

[Reginald Ret]

I disagree. I never forgot the dogs that got run over and the kids that got bullied/maimed/whatever, but I think it's still a disservice to children to even attempt to protect them from all of that all the time. I know we all react differently when it's OUR kids that are being talked about, but the reality is that the ones that weren't quick/savvy/aware/whatever enough probably were better off getting out of the gene pool before they reproduced. the flip side of that coin is that if they're never given the chance/necessity to be that quick/savvy/aware/whatever, they're going to survive but never have developed those critical survival skills as well as they should have.

I agree with your conclusion but not with your reasoning.

99.99% of the kids that get hurt/killed are genetically equal or superior to those that survive, Natural selection doesn't care how many innocent bystanders it kills to improve the genepool.(Kai: yes i am anthropomorphizing natural selection, yes i know this is a bad habit, no i don't actually think of NS that way, I just think it's a more effective way of bringing the message across)
There is no reason that these kids get hurt other than increased probability due to riskier behaviour.
It's just dumb luck.

My reason for letting kids take risks is that keeping them locked up does more damage(to their personality and immmune-system) than letting them roam free.
People should learn what are acceptable risks and what aren't.
To prevent a 1 in a billion chance of something horrible think about letting them risk less bad things whose chance is about 1 in a million, but don't let them take near guaranteed emotional and physical damage.

It not being my intention to put words in other people's mouths, but the way I'm interpreting ECH's words is that nature often culls the weaker genes through selection. Like, the baby bird who can't fly soon ends up lunch to a cat, a cat that can't hunt will soon go hungry and die.  Thus, the stronger, fitter, smarter beings live, while the weaker beings are taken out of the gene pool.

However, with regards to human children, the way I see it, is while we need to give them the freedom to learn from their mistakes and be put in "harms way" so that they can then learn to avoid the things which will harm them... at the same time, humans are idiots.  Children especially so.  but this isn't because they are "inferior" but rather because the adults (us) haven't taught them what is safe and what isn't.

when I was a child, I was taught to look both ways - twice - before crossing the street.  I was taught to not talk with people I had never met, unless my mom or dad knew them AND they said it was OK.  I was taught to NEVER go off with anyone, whether I knew them or not - unless, again, my mom or dad had told me beforehand that it was OK.

Kids aren't taught this now.  Instead, they are shoved out the door right after breakfast and made to fend for themselves, or they are "imprisoned" inside their own home for fear that "something" might happen to them.

Somewhere, somehow, the current generation of parents "messed up" and decided to not teach their kids "common safety" rules.  It's not the kids that are faulty/inferior - it's the adults.

I don't think parents are a lot worse now than they were xx years ago, they've improved in some ways and worsenend in other ways.
It just seems like they have gotten worse because of how the media treats the extreme cases.
The horrible accidents get highlighted and no one is talking about how the rest of the kids are doing just fine.



If you want to give your children more freedom and at the same time make them safe, get to know your neighbours and get them to look after the kids in the street.
Social cohesion is the answer, oppression rarely is.

[Jenne]

This is a topic of some very heated debate in some of the highest parent organizations that I'm part of.  We just had the bodies of two young women who WERE independent-minded enough to walk to school alone or jog in a beautiful city park alone.  How dare they be alone? some asked.  Who leaves their CELL PHONE in their CAR when jogging at dusk? they asked.  When a predator comes, that cell phone really wasn't going to save them...but who can know for sure?

All I know is, my kids bike and walk to school in a VERY safe neighborhood (Suburbian Heaven, as I call it), where my neighbors refuse to let their own children walk or ride their bikes for fear of traffic, sexual/violent predators, lack of common sense of their kids, etc.  We walk with our kids when we can, but for the most part, they go alone, for about a mile, uphill both ways.  There is lots of traffic going to and from, but dammit, driving them is insane.

Maybe it's because I grew up in Suburbian Heaven myself, walking sometimes 3 miles to school, depending on where we lived at the time (I went to 11 different school districts we moved around so much).  Maybe it's because my kids' father grew up in Afghanistan during wartime...the things we see as "dangerous" here in middle class America he laughs at for the most part, though he does make a nod at the fact that life everywhere can be dangerous if you're not equipped with common sense.

So our 12 year old is a brown belt in karate...our 9 year old purple.  I hated letting them go to the BATHROOM by themselves, until they knew enough karate (remember THAT particular scare? letting your kids go pee in a restroom bathroom was like sending them down the 'Shaw at midnight).  I like to think I equipped my kids with enough sense and understanding that the bad guys are not always a hairy stranger in a beat-up van, sometimes they're your neighbor or your Uncle Joe.  Awareness is where your instinct can make up for a lot.

I don't think that "decreasing the gene pool" is a fine enough excuse or reason why one child's death isn't a tragedy.  However, I don't believe schools should be prisons and kids should have GPS monitors.  My kids don't have cell phones to let me know when they are walking home.  I didn't have a cell phone before the age of 18, they don't need one until they can pay for it.  It can be an accessory for the safety-minded, but we don't live where they need that kind of accessory.

I pay for the real estate I do for a reason, goddammit.

[LMNO]

I just had a thought...


Take two neighborhoods. 

N1 has a culture of protection.  Children are indoors at dusk, dogs are leashed, the streets and parks are quiet.  No one goes out at night unless they have to.  It's very safe, because the doors are locked, and there are bars on the window, and all is right inside the fortress.

N2 has an opposite culture.  Kids play until they are called home for dinner or they can't see the chalk marks on the sidewalk for hopscotch anymore.  Pets are allowed to roam freely, and people sit on their porches, having shouted conversations across the street to one another.



Now, imagine you're a predator.  Which neighborhood would be best for you to hide out in, waiting for an errant victim?



The busy, loud, boisterous one?

The quiet, empty, unobserved one?


Could it be that the very fear that drives people inside at night also engenders the conditions to bring that fear straight to them?

[Jenne]

Predators prey everywhere.  That's the lesson for the people who 1) don't think it will happen to THEM, but someone else or 2) the people that think it's CERTAIN to happen to them.

We are never as safe or as persecuted as we think we are, or perhaps it's just that we get used to a normative behavior and have trouble jogging ourselves out of it unless compelled strongly by outside events.

[Muir]

Regret:  That was kind of the point I was trying to make.  Parents aren't "bad" and children aren't really in any more danger now than they were 25 years ago (back when I was my son's age...damn i feel old now).  The media has always and will always play up the bad things and make drama out of pincushions.

But adults (all adults - teachers, parents, grandparents,etc.) have stopped teaching kids "street smarts" for some reason. And that is where the problem lies.  Take my neighbourhood, for example.  There are 4 year olds allowed to play outside in the evenings in my estate without any supervision.  That in itself isn't a problem - I was allowed to play out at that age.  But I wasn't allowed to leave my front or back yard unless my mom knew where I was going.  I was taught "street smarts/safety" from the time I could walk on my own.  These kids aren't.  I watched a four year old about to go off to the shops with a six year old the other night. (keep in mind that the local shops are across a VERY busy road with no zebra crossing or pedestrian lights)  Before they were able to walk off the estate, I yelled to the kids "Do your mom's know where you're going?"  The answer was "no" and I suggested to them that they better ask before setting off.  They each went to their respectives homes and 5 minutes later one of the moms knocked on my door to thank me for stopping her 4 year old from going off.  

[Cramulus]

On the radio today they were talking about some event in moscow that raised security in NYC. Apparently there were visibly armed cops on all the trains last weekend. It's a weird paradox, right? Because on one level, you're glad they're there protecting you. And on another level, you can't help but keep your distance from the guy brandishing an automatic weapon.

One of my best friends is a Discordian and a cop. I liked his insight on the dual nature of protection:

"We're out there to protect you. Cops' presence is supposed to make you feel safer. But when you see a cop behind you on the highway, you never think, Sweet, I feel really protected right now!"