Saturday, May 19, 2007
Life is full of contrast that is far beyond our control. That was one of the lessons from Ecclesiastes yesterday at OCF. I reckon on some level we all already knew that fact, but we never really took our time to process it. That as an individual, our life will have its up and downs, and as a community, people will be at different points in their lives, a disparity between opinions is bound to occur, and surprisingly it would be most evident in the highly educated. I guess the more you know the more you have to say. Or is it?
I was watching a programme on television, A Current Affair, I guess many of you know what it is about, basically the show is like a documentary about issues that happen around Australia. It's not as formal as news, yet not as casual as David Letterman shows. One of the issues that was being discussed was where the line should be drawn for children when it came to fun. One opinion was that children should not be exposed to violence (i.e. toy guns), or dangerous activities(i.e. shaving cream off a balloon with a shaver blade) because they are children, even though it may be fun. No surprise that that came from the professionals who graduated with degrees in the relevant areas. And I need not elaborate on the other extreme, and who that came from since it's quite obvious.
So what do these pros' think children should play with? Read books, building blocks, toy trucks and cars. And when these children grow up do you not think they'll be shocked at the violence around them? Won't they wonder why this man is killing another? What will you say then? It is bad? Then comes the infamous children question "why?" How will you explain the concept of terrorism? How will you explain the concept of peace? When you grew up, did anybody teach you how to pour water into a cup? No, as you observed when you were young, you learned, and one day you did, and your parents hailed you a genius for pouring water. Psychologists have a theory for that, don't ask me, but it happens. You shield children now, but when you grew up, no doubt you had some of these "bad influences" exposed to you too, and you turned out as you are. How do you think you would be if you weren't exposed to these influences?
So back to the "safe" children. What if one day they threw the book like a frisbee at a fellow child? Or they hurled a building block through a window like a grenade? Or they ran toy trucks into the toy people like car bombs? You admit you cannot protect fully, nor can you protect them forever, but don't you think it'd be more important to protect how they perceive such issues, than to protect them from how you think they will perceive such issues? So when all's said and done, are you really protecting them or are you just protecting yourself from a future terrorist?
Dan
10:47 am
