RE: Tranquility

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 19:44:26 MDT

  • Next message: Damien Broderick: "Re: Cutting Taxes to Spur the Economy"

    Justin Corwin writes

    > I've resisted posting on this subject because my viewpoint is largely
    > anecdotal, and I don't have a great deal of grounding in the real
    > statistics of the situation.

    Well, each account helps.

    > My sister was sent to one of the programs related to Tranquility.

    ...

    > I have never been so insulted in my life as when my parents
    > invited me to comment on the 'positive changes' in my sister.
    > She talked slowly, detailing all the wrongs she had visited
    > on me, without ever taking her eyes off the floor. I read
    > their textbooks, which were a mix of deprecating language
    > on adolescence, and evangelical Christian theory....

    > I have never been more proud of my younger sister, as the
    > day that my parents told me she had fought her way out of the
    > center, and made good her escape into the blue sky, and left
    > a string of black eyes and clawed guards in her wake. She
    > did not return for a year, after my parents promised to never
    > betray her like that again.

    I would like to know what caused the parents to have a
    change of heart.

    > I'm not sure how I would have reacted, had my parents done
    > the same to me. I'm glad I never had to find out(possibly
    > because at the time I was growing up, my parents didn't have
    > the means to do so.) and I don't think that anyone should
    > have to. These 'centers' and 'schools' are nothing but abuse
    > allowed because children can be beaten without cause. As the
    > policeman who handcuffed my sister and led her away early one
    > Saturday said 'you're under eighteen, you only have the rights
    > your parents decide to give you'. I didn't know then what she
    > was in for. If I had, maybe I would have spoken up. I'm sorry
    > that I didn't anyway.

    Well, you weren't very old yourself. Just how bad had her
    behavior been?

    As I agree with you and the others on the easier cases,
    let's take a hard one. The following is entirely made
    up, and is only loosely based on ideas in the article
    that began this thread.

    A Hard Case

    Before us sits a 25 year old man, who testifies as follows
    as to the effectiveness and propriety of kidnapping actions
    taken against him by his parents and their employees when
    he was fifteen:

    "Listen, I am not the same person that I was then. I was
    an arrogant little asshole, who utterly had failed to
    develop properly. Ask my brothers and sisters, if you
    don't believe me. Unlike my parents' other six children,
    something had to be wrong with me. The third youngest,
    from everyone's earliest memories I simply could not get
    along with other people, be it here at home or in school
    or at church.

    "I think now that myelination happened in me pathologically
    slowly (though I am not a medical person and have had no
    training), but somehow I just could not see other people's
    points of view. It was a complete lacuna. Not only was I
    in every way inconsiderate of others, but some demon in me
    would actually cause me to go out of my way to torment them
    and to, to put in in a word, cause trouble. I enjoyed it.
    I needed the attention and the stimulation. The harm alone
    that I inflicted on myself is almost unbelievable, and yet
    I could not stop. I did not want to stop.

    "Fortunately, through their love for me, my family and their
    friends bought the very best. Sadly, it had to be out of our
    country, because busybodies in the state capitol have enacted
    laws wherein they can meddle in family business, in ways that
    do not concern anyone outside our family. This was very
    expensive, and I want personally to do what I can to repay
    my friends and relatives who helped me.

    "Now, you are undoubtedly asking, 'Why should we believe you
    and not the 15 old that you were'? It's true. I did happen
    to be very articulate as a 15 year old, and would have passed
    all the usual measures of ability given to adults. In a sense,
    you have destroyed the person that was, and I have been born
    instead. I am not the same person, but you may ask, how is it
    that your actions against who I was can in any way be justified?

    "It is because of the destruction that I was committing against
    everyone, against myself, and against everything and every
    institution that I could think of. As a humanitarian, you ought
    to take that into account when pushing your vaunted "principles".
    There is a reason that human societies have traditionally had
    at least two classes of people demarked by age: adults and
    children. It is the wisdom of our current civilization that
    adults are given privileges that are denied children. I am
    not against all experimentation, but I can see in my own case
    the benefits of the actions that the people who love me took."

    Well, so who are we going to believe? Him, or his 15 year old
    former self? How are we in our infinite wisdom, going to
    implement the laws and agencies to oversee what happens between
    members of private groups of individuals/citizens?

    Lee



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jul 05 2003 - 19:53:30 MDT