THW not cut off ties to one’s family and kin if they misbehaved

 

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Week 17

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Alienation and estrangement hurts the elder person more, and that’s why it should not be imposed lightly or at all.

Motion: THW cut off ties to one’s family and kin if they misbehaved
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)

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The Economist reported that a record number of people are cutting their ties off to family (or relatives) due to differing views on major issues, such as children, culture, economics, lifestyle, politics, religion and worldviews. One of the reasons is that people have grown independent of their relatives, as they get their income, perks and purpose in life from the digital sphere, nation-state or workplaces. The social fabric created by family and relatives has grown insignificant and thin. Typical of today is that if people travel to their relatives, they may stay overnight at a hotel instead of their relatives. That is how much standards of living have risen since 1981.

Conservative Parents Raising Liberal Children
The most obvious case of estrangement revolves around children who turn liberal during their college years and who turn their backs on their conservative parents. That’s what happens all the time between people who vote for Democrats or Republicans. It is probably less common that conservative children turn their backs on their liberal parents, but that could also happen apparently. In Europe, where the partisan system is more florid and patchwork (displaying different political colours), this development is less pronounced, but it can happen in Europe, too, as parties are wont today to form either leftwing/rightwing blocks or Con vs. Lib blocks. Anyone may end up in the “wrong” block. Populist parties provide a reason to disown their voters, but if their collective adherents now count in the millions, they cannot either be dismissed today as “rightwing extremism”. Extremism per definition involves less than 1 % of people.

Another big watershed is heteronormativity vs. other leanings in people’s reproductive lives. If a child is gay and a parent is straight (straight obviously for having born or sired the child in the first place), it may cause a rift in the relationship, if the parents are overly critical of the lifestyle of their offspring that does not focus on settling down, for instance. In its own right, I do not think that a bigger percentage of children born today are gay, but the figures are comparable with the past. It is just that the LGBT+ community has become far more vocal than what it was in the past and that may cause some friction.

Other Breakable Relations
Relations to aunts, cousins (once, twice or thrice removed), siblings and uncles are not frictionless, either. The same reasons that break up filial–parental relationships may cause breakup between horizontal relatives. Another layer is breakups that follow from breakups. When one family member breaks up ties with someone, the whole family may follow that example and cut ties to all in that other family. Which is wrong, of course. When we have a criminal in society, we only send that one person to a penitentiary and not his or her kin. The same should go for rifts between individuals. The only type of relatives that ends up unscathed is in-laws. They are usually protected by the fact that there is a relationship between two people with their respective families and that sends a protective “magnetic shield” over most members of the other person’s family.

A fairly good depiction of different family ties was in the TV show The Sopranos, where a lot of the Italian families had different kinds of feuds, fondnesses or frictions with each other. Tony Soprano did not get along with his sister Janice or mother Livia. Made men were often each other’s cousins or uncles. If someone died, all the others turned up for a funeral. The roots of all of that ran deep, all the way to the time when the families’ founding fathers had first immigrated to the US.

The Dance of Disinheritance
Like our leader on our side said, it is not like parties in estrangement are toothless. Cutting ties is a drastic measure, often given without prior warnings as a one-off punishment, and therefore it is inherently unjust. People cut off ties to each other easier than they would be, say, sacked from their tenure or workplace. There, their treatment would be much more clement. For these reasons, we do not see it unjustified that a parent who gets cut off – and cannot get back what once was severed, after several attempts – is entitled to disinherit his or her children due to the other one’s unilateral unjustness. Just like alienation and estrangement send a passive-aggressive signal, disinheriting a relative sends a countersignal.

How disinheriting goes about is another matter entirely. In some nation-states, disinheriting is far easier by the law than in others. But everywhere it is possible to bequeath or will at least a part of one’s fortune to someone else than family or relatives. Sangios crassior aqua, and that’s what people seem to have forgotten. With family and relatives, we need to have a thicker nose and skin than with others, because they’re the only ones we’ve got, as opposed to the myriad possibilities in other human relations.

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Perustelu(t)&puolustelu(t): Kokemuksia ja mielipiteitä jakavassa aiheessa pidän sukulaisten puolta vaistomaisesti. Edelläni kulkeva puhuja voi hehkuttaa perhe- ja sukulaisuussuhteiden hyviä puolia ja jäljessäni kulkeva voi hehkuttaa edelleen perinnöttä jättämisen helppoutta, mitä en itse käsittele kovin tarkasti. Näin koko puolen paketti on valmiina.

THW not crack down on corporal punishment in bringing up offspring in certain regions

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Week 44

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It looks bad but the intention may be good, or, hum, primitive – more meaningful than mean.

Motion: THW crack down on corporal punishment in bringing up offspring in certain regions
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)

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It has not been legally possible to punish children corporally since 1984 in this country. Similar legislation is probably in place in most Western countries of the world, and the UN, Unesco and WHO have also in all likelihood issued guidelines about the subject matter to parents across the world, especially in the 2nd and 3rd world. For all that, the issue is far from done and dusted. Corporal punishment exists – but, even if it does not have to be accepted – it can be understood.

Aggression in One Particular Area
The issue was discussed recently in a radio program by the Swedish-speaking FBC. It turns out some parents willingly or willy-nilly punish their children especially in the Chile-shaped (🇨🇱) province of Ostrobothnia in the country. What is the region like? Well, it could be likened to the Central Valley in California (places like Bakersfield, Eureka, Modesto, Sacramento or Stockton) or the Texas Panhandle, as it has a disproportionate amount of agricultors, farmers, fishermen, hunters and small industrialists among the population. A certain level of aggression and straightforwardness characterise the people there. The area is completely flat – like the Netherlands (🇳🇱) – so it is ideal for cars, motorbikes and trains.

This area probably does not have any more unruly children than big cities, but parents over there have a better chance of disciplining their children corporally, as the next-door neighbour may be two miles away and parents in general have less time to spend on childrearing than in cities. They have to earn bread for the family, so it is somehow understandable that their fuse is blown occasionally, while they do not necessarily want to be mean or narrowminded.

Reminder of the Monopoly on Violence
Parents’ wielding of punishing power, from isolating a child to a sauna to spanking it on the buttocks to an unfriendly slap on the back of the head, takes many forms, but what unites the means is that they somehow remind of the Nation-State and how it wields absolute power over citizens. Forms of punishments from petty fines all the way to the death penalty cannot always be overturned, so adults also have to live with this kind of arbitrary subordination; sometimes downright suppression and oppression, if we talk about autocracies and non-Western dictatorships.

Therefore, it is not such a bad idea to discipline or chastise a child every now and then, just to keep it in mind for him or her that there are powers bigger than a child, and they can come down like a ton of bricks. If a child does not get any boundaries or setbacks in life, there is a real threat that s/he thinks those limits won’t exist from then on either in an adult future. And it would be a wrongful conclusion. Parents would act not in loco parentis, in the place of parents, but in locum civitatis, in lieu of the nation-state and its much more formidable powers.

Summarisation: If You’re Compelled to Do It, Do It Impulsively
What, then, is the “ethical” way to punish a child corporally? Is there an Ethical way? It goes without saying that it should not be a bog standard everyday situation, where nobody is breaking up any rule or thing. There should be extenuating circumstances. Either the child would need to be very unruly for a prolonged period of time or the parent(s) very sleep-deprived or stressed-out, except for the parents of small babies and toddlers, who are habitually sleep-deprived but cannot take it out on the child. Let’s say we talk about pre-/school-aged children between 5 and 15. It’s pretty pointless to punish older or younger children. So, if one snaps in such a situation, one could forgive oneself. Forgiveness could take this form: “I did it then, but I would not do it now.” Like a Catholic confession. [You may stop here, if time has run out.]

I have not punished any children corporally ever, except for my younger sibling, but that does not count. There was once a situation which is the remote cousin of punishing a child corporally. I was alone in a house with a cat. I found out it had puked or s**t on the floor of its hosts. Instinctively, I got mad and slapped it on the bum with a karate chop. Then I scooped up the [whatever] before anyone else turned up. It was a wrong move, because the cat was old and could not control itself as much as it could in its younger days – but it was just my primitive reaction. I would not do the same now, as I understand cats and myself better and that punishments do not help, when it comes to animal behaviour. But, I can also forgive myself: “I did it then, but I would not do it now.”

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Tämä on varmaankin vaikein aihe, mistä olen kirjoittanut puheen – pitkään aikaan. Tuntuu kuitenkin hyvällä tavalla haastavalta olla paholaisen asianajajana, ja mielestäni se näin onnistuukin: etsimällä lieventäviä asianhaaroja ja uskomalla siihen, että realiteetit ovat kuulijoidenkin mielessä. Annan parilleni sen ohjeen, että hän voi puhua maapallon kirjavasta käytöntökentästä, jossa ruumiillinen kuritus on mahdollista aivan eurooppalaisissakin valtioissa.

THB living under one’s parents’ roof as an adult is OK

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Week 35

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Life is like a hammock when grown-ups live with seniors.

Date: 1st Sep 2022
Motion: THB living under one’s parents’ roof as an adult is OK
Role: Deputy (gov.)

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The topic of living under the same roof with one or both of one’s parents is tawdry and tough to most in this room, as the distance to one’s teenage is not so great, and even if it was, the “taboo” might be even greater. As our PM said, the Japanese have probably the most evolved vocabulary on this topic. A hikikomori is an adolescent who does not want to leave his or her residence or room, who is combining the “vices” of teenage with the hard determination of adulthood and a serious social phobia and/or depression. An otaku is someone obsessed with visual popular culture. A parasaito shinguru is a young adult who lives with his or her parents but saves up for the future and lives socially while not having plans of leaving for the time being.

What unites today’s such people is that they probably spend those waking hours on the internet more or less, as that is the go-to method of getting “out of the house”. In the next, I want to develop some ground rules for three kinds of such people: those who a) never left home after some elementary, middle or high school (at the outset 13–19 year old but aging) b) studied for a vocation/profession but returned (at the outset 22–30 year old but aging) and c) studied, graduated and went even to work, often in one’s own city or vicinity, but who still live with their parents (at the outset 18–25 year old but aging). What are the ethics for these three groups, then?

An Extra Pair of Ears, Eyes and Hands Needs to Be There
One of the points of living together at large is that people assist each other, even in small ways. It is familiar from living in a family. Children help their parents in many ways. They mow the lawn, take out the trash or take the dog for a walk, sometimes in exchange for pocket money. A parent needs to know that a daughter or son would do something necessary, when push came to shove. If for nothing else, then at least to guarantee that the living arrangement would continue, because the younger person also feels entitled to carry it on.

One’s Mere Slumbering Presence May Be Helpful
This second thing does not concern so much living in a block of flats in the city but living on a farm or in a detached one-family house in the suburbs or the countryside. Anyone who has spent a night in such a house apart knows how sinister and spooky it can get in the dark of the night, when one is there completely alone without the presence of even a pet. The thought immediately arises that someone might break in and commit house invasion. Usually there are few ways to prevent that from happening. But, as if by magic, the mere presence of someone else helps in this matter. That person’s character is immaterial, a mere presence takes care of it. When people inhabit a home together – two people at the minimum – provided that the area is safe in general, they cease to fear a potential burglar.

The Daughter or Son Has to Pay to Stay
It is necessary that a daughter or son pays for their stays. Sometimes the only income a person has is a benefit or pension of some sort, but that too can be shared with a parent, let alone a salary or wages from a workplace. It is important that the parent sees money transfers on her or his bank account from other sources than just the old ones so that (s)he feels a gratitude for a child who is staying and helping with the expenses of living. It gives a kind of satisfaction that a parent never encountered when (s)he was younger, more middle-aged and had to take care of everything out of one’s own pocket. People often report that they were at their most miserable when they were parents and their children were under 10 years of age.

The funny thing is that these requirements can be met by almost all “diagnostical” cases. Those serious cases of parent-dependents who were developmentally, mentally, motorically, neurologically or physically maladjusted growing up have probably already been pushed away to nursing homes, other facilities and/or state-assisted living, as the stress would otherwise have become too much for the parent(s) to take. The typical person living at home is not unfit to live (with) there, just very dysfunctional or original. Online, together amongst their cohort, familiars and peers, these people probably project a level of sanity.

But, let’s not get too medically-minded, mired in psychobabble or patronising. People can choose to live with their parents – or even aunts, cousins, grandparents or uncles – if they wish. It just needs to be ethical and moral, that’s all I want to say. It is a by-product of today’s cold, competitive society, but just like we endorsed hippies and long hair at the beginning of the culture revolution, we may now approve of or endorse adults who live with their parents, for the wellspring of these two phenomena is about the same.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Melko tasaveroisessa sosiaalisessa haasteessa on mahdollista asettua kummallekin puolelle menestyksekkäästi. Rakennan puheeni parini kanssa aasialaiselle eksotiikalle. Meidän jälkeemme tuleva saa valita omanlaisensa reitin, johon hän saa rakennusaineita ja vinkkejä (sivu)lauseistamme. Lisäjännitystä omalle puolellemme liikenee siitä, että aloitteen muotoilun voidaan katsoa tarkoittavan myös niitä tilanteita, joissa lapsi asuu vanhempiensa omistamassa mutta ei asuttamassa (kakkos)asunnossa ja maksaa vuokraa omista rahoistaan.

Studio Communal Squabbles

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Viikko 16

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Participants

• Cornelius Colliander, municipal civil activist
• Carita Henriksson, member of town council
• Julia Kuokkanen, child protection specialist
• Patrik Nygrén, town mayor
• Hostess

Headline of the Debate
“Barnskydd” (‘Child Protection Services’)

Premise
The kernel of the debate lies in the fact that Pargas Municipality has lost 4 of its 9 child-custody workers in a short time and as a protest. In the words of the resigned this is down to the absence of or dysfunctional leadership. It did not become clear if dysfunctional leadership is bad resourcing, bad custody policies, bad atmosphere, bad recruiting or colleagues bullying. Part of the obscurity comes from the common classification of information in child protection services and, of course, from attempts at saving face.

Others’ positions
Mr. Colliander and Ms. Henriksson support the rank and file of child-protection services in a leftist spirit, for they would seem to have a Liberal-Leftist background in politics. Mr. Nygrén talks in roundabout terms about leading and caring but in reality does not take stand on anything in real terms. Ms. Kuokkanen represents the third sector, member associations of which do not even perhaps want to interfere with the failures of a specific municipality but only with child-protection services on the level of principle.

This is where I’d place myself around the now invisible round table.

Own positions
The basic question is: Do I identify in a small community’s troubles with the role of the child-protection worker or the person who is the unwilling customer of those said services and who thus probably has an already hostile view of the whole activity and process, where one’s parental skills and means are called into question? I’d rather put myself in the pants of the child-protection worker, for I have spent next to no time with children or matters revolving around them during adulthood.

The majority of child-protection service customers view with dissatisfaction all of those measures and decisions where their children are taken away from them, to be placed in foster families or state-sponsored foster homes manned by social workers. I think that town leaders should pull rank on behalf of child protection for two reasons. These growing children are either future taxpayers or social-service customers, and it shows in the balance sheet which side they fall on. Furthermore, if a child is taken away from its biological parents, they should have a “Wall” of powerful adults facing them, so that they couldn’t single out individual social workers as the targets of their ire. Different municipal quarters should also listen to outsiders’ reports about child abuse, molestation and neglect with a keener ear.

For all that, each and every adult should have the right to rear one’s own child(ren), if (s)he can keep in check his or her own a) finances, b) intoxicants and c) sanity, also d) temper. There is “silent knowledge” in child-protection circles about what kind of people make the grade in parenthood as planned.

THW fix problems in schools by restricting the roles of parents, politics and technology

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Viikko 28

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Motion: THW fix problems in schools by restricting the roles of parents, politics and technology
Role: Minister (gov.)

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Today, schools are faring worse than before, because or despite of advances made in the technological landscape. It’s harder to be a kid nowadays due to the fact that “silence” and “focus” and “boredom” seem to be in part things of the past, no longer existing historical curiosities.

One of the big issues is the equation in which learning (something schools are for, in two senses of the word) has been turned upside down or on its head. In the past, kids learned from their teachers and their peers. Today, parents and the Internet are the foremost authorities for pupils and students. Parents supply their wisdom on what is right and correct and the Internet supplies data, facts or information. This creates an atmosphere where moral guidance is biased, self-centered and lopsided and there is an information overload. Progressive growth within limits becomes difficult to attain.

Schools should be allowed to be the self-regulating ambiences they once were. They can be oppressive, frightening and dark places to their goers, but that kind of pressure creates backbone, resilience and self-esteem, whereas its opposite, the parent-monitored school creates depression, AD/HD and behaviour featured in the spectrum of autism. Eating disorders are the only unifying link between old-school schools and new-school schools.

I would also roll some of the guilt onto the very schoolgoers. As stated, they do not let their peers educate themselves. The eternal question goes, “Who will I spend my recess with today and tomorrow?” The right answer is to spend it with whoever happens to be available for friendly banter and exchange of ideas. There are two reasons for this: a) those people won’t be available or seeable after school years and b) they will provide the broadest spectrum of competing ideas about the world and what there is in it. The wrong strategy is to spend every recess with the same people or the ugly and socially neglected rejects due to self-esteem issues that say “I am not worth more.”

School years should be an era of art, culture, discovery, enjoyment and wonder. It is important to understand that this period in life will not recur or come back in any form whatsoever. Therefore, it should be lived as fully as possible. Otherwise one will be doomed to repeat the failures, unredeemed promises and vagaries of those school years in a loop long afterwards. A successful schooling does not beg for a repeat even though repetition is said to be the mother of learning.

What is the root cause, on the other hand, of teenagers’ awkwardness? This may have to do with brain structure. Theirs is a brain that is like a computer circuitboard with a CPU. Everything is decided centrally and information passes there back and forth very rapidly and incessantly. An adult’s is different: information can travel around and around without going through the centre. This interconnectedness or neural cohesion creates a heightened self-image, -esteem and -sufficiency and also -containment that a teenager would find most useful during her youth’s travails and troubles. Alas, it can only come after a lot of struggle and passing of time.

Because the brain is like a circuitboard, it should be fed rational, logical and mathematical things instead of the incessant supply of “culture” that is now being the norm. Culture, manners and language are learnt through “osmosis”, on the sly and little by little, so it is not so useful to spend hours and hours of valuable school time on something that is a civic necessity. School time should be devoted to things that are future-oriented and benefit from tutoring, mentoring and the focus that a classroom can endow.

I would like to wind up my speech in saying that all education culminates in a vocation or a profession at the end. When you choose your vocation or profession, try to pick a major or a field which is not a school subject at all. Applied knowledge can help us out of this ongoing recession, monetary woes and societal problems. Don’t forget about critical thinking, ever. Thank you.

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Puheen kesto: 5 min 8 sek
Arvio: * * * ½. Puhe alkaa lupaavasti, ja se suomii sitä ansaitsevia tahoja eli oppilaita, vanhempia ja poliitikkoja. Loppua kohti tulee kuitenkin ns. uutta uutta ainesta, joka voi viedä terää kokonaisuudelta. Kokonaispituus on kuitenkin juuri oikea.