Everything Wants To Be Noticed

Ever notice how, on family sitcoms, that children seem to invent wild and crazy plans to get in or out of trouble? Somehow sneaking on a train to Los Angeles to be on some silly reality show, or using lifelike wax figures of the kids to be in bed while they go off to some big party (Shake it Up and ANT Farm respectively) And no matter how inept the parents are (and believe me, some of the Disney Channel parents are incredibly inept, almost too much so), they find out about the deception and the kids get in trouble.  Of course, there's the inevitable finding out about whatever trouble-making is going on.  Let's take Good Luck Charlie as an example. Gabe (Bradley Steven Perry) releases crickets into the library (one of the best lines delivered on that show, "Library's quiet, crickets are noisy... you try things."), or he pours superglue on his neighbor's front porch. He doesn't really think he's gonna get away with it, does he? Gabe does it for the attention, to be noticed. It's obvious the reasoning is that he's the middle of 4 (or 5) kids, so he does mischievous things to stand out. Then there's the older two, PJ (Jason Dolley) and Teddy (Bridgit Mendler), who try throwing parties when their parents are out of town.  A social ploy, hoping to get noticed in high school. Course, all that ever happens is the parents punishing them.  I remember giving my brother a haircut... all over the kitchen floor.  Course, I didn't think I was going to get into trouble then (probably because I wasn't thinking.), but I did.  If there's one thing that Disney Channel shows have in common, it's that actions have consequences. Inevitably, the kids on those shows do the right thing, even if it takes them a while.



The truth is, as Art Garfunkel and Buddy Mondlock sang on the song, everything wants to be noticed. Its the reason pain is there, a cry for help in the nervous systems in the body.  It's why the clunks and clangs of a car before it breaks down, the grinding of the break pads. Ignore them, and the heart gets worse, the car breaks down.  And people feel the need to be noticed, too.  Even if it means doing something negative, they are noticed.  I feel so badly for those actors who, when they think their careers aren't going anywhere, or not fast enough, do something outrageous to get noticed by the press. The media become the enablers who broadcast stupidity around the world.

Speaking of stupidity, there's a group of child "stars," who feel that being noticed is the apex of their lives.  The internet is quite willing to help them.  Youtube lets us see into the everyday lives of people all around the world.  Amazing, to some extent, as you're able to see how people live in different countries, to see the beauty of mankind and of nature.  Let's focus on one kid, Sam Porttorff, who is famous just for blabbering on Youtube.  He's part of a group of "youtubers" called "Our Second Life."  This is not to say they don't have talent, but they haven't got picked up by any agencies for movies or music or anything.  They stay online and talk about their lives.  Sam has quite a bit of talent, but I think he's going to wasted it trying to get noticed. Take a look at this video, of a trip with his friends to San Diego.  It's the camera work that's amazing, the perspective of the world through the lens.  It brings you along with him, to the beaches and the boardwalks of that California city.



Now go look at any of the related videos afterward, of him chugging Arizona Tea until he vomits, or the endless lip-syncing of the latest Justin Beiber hit.  It's a complete waste of his talent, just so the girls will oogle over him.  And when he grows up? What then? When the teens fall away to some other pre-shaven pre-adolescent whose only desire is to look cute and to be noticed? He will have nothing but the desperation to have what he once had, which drives those like Lohan to act out in negative ways.  Or he can take the gifts he has now and develop them into artwork, into something truly special.  It's his choice, and he'll probably make more money just having girls oogle over him, but at the cost of what happiness?

To return to being noticed... social media does a lot to exacerbate that feeling.  Detectives often find the perpetrators of crimes through their bragging on Facebook or Twitter.  Acts of vandalism here in my county are often solved, and the people arrested, because they brag about spray painting the football field on their social media sites, and someone turns them in.  People do bad things to be noticed, and it's remarkable, since the Internet is triumphed as a place of anonymity.  Be free to say anything you want! Do anything you want to do! No one's watching! Create fake accounts to cyber-bully those in your school, causing undue harm upon them.  Shout obscenities at celebrities who are only trying to reach out to their fans, and do it just because.... to see what happens.  It's all done to see the results of those actions.  To brag to friends, "Look what I did! He/She deleted his/her Twitter account, all because of me! What power I have!!" They want to be noticed.

Davis Cleveland (Shake it Up) has had even worse problems, with someone actually hacking into his social media accounts and taking them over, and worse, effecting his bank accounts and other personal property. And since, supposedly, you can be anonymous online, they can't be caught.  Or so they think.  Most people don't take into consideration that the trail we leave online is traced, logged, and stored in massive databases in case the police need to use it as evidence.  Even if someone uses a VPN server, it's still possible, with a lot of work, to track through the real IP address of the person involved.  In fact, in today's world, I doubt that the people involved in hacking Davis' accounts failed to recognize that fact.  I think they wanted to be noticed.  To say, "This is what I've done!! Look at me!" even while they are led off to jail. The problem is, they will get noticed, but for the very opposite from what they  wanted.

At the end of every Disney show, after the shenanigans and the mischievousness, friends make up, parents and children hug, even after the grounding, and everything's okay.  To look at it through a Christian's eyes, it's about forgiveness.  It's about hoping that these people, who are so full of desperation and negativity, will be noticed by people who love them, not who hate them.  We all need to be loved by someone, by family, friends, our Lord.  And we are, but never seem to realize that.  It would be interesting to see who the person behind Davis' hacking was, why they did it, and what their lives are really like. I think we would see that it's not hate from the world they want, but love from the few people around them.

On Hatred: Intro, and The Jungian Argument

[ I'm dividing this series up into different parts, as the blog got way too long as a whole. I'll post one a day for the next 4 days. It deals with evil, hatred, bullying, and how they all come from the same state, whether it be terrorism or cyber-bullying, or late night humor.]

http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/news/2013/apr/02/rockdale-receives-national-bullying-prevention/

So apparently the Rockdale County Public Schools won an award for installing what amounts to an anonymous text program that allows students to report bullying and other issues to authorities without being labeled a snitch. A great tool for students to use whenever they are being victimized.  However, I look about all the "anti-bullying" awareness today, from commercials to efforts by the president...etc..., and I wonder, where was all this 25 years ago?  There were bullies back then, there were victims, there just weren't teachers and a public who cared.  It's become a hot-button topic, and that's fine, it will help many of the students today to recover from some of the awful things that I experienced many years ago.  What is the difference between today's bullying and that of two decades ago?  One thing is that we have the technology to report it, through video cameras in our cell phones (which, when given to the media, makes an instant story and makes the school system look bad, and in this litigious society, opens them up for lawsuits).  We also have social media which is a double edged sword, for it brings the acts of bullies to light, as well as allows those bullies into our own bedrooms.
***

Actually, I've been stuck at that paragraph for quite a while now.  Especially over the past week, with the Boston events showing the world how evil people can be.  The problem that I've been having, I think, apart from general depression (which has nothing to do with the topic on hand), is that the social labels we're giving these people,  "terrorists," "bullies," "victims," are all complicated, and complicating, the actual issues here.  What makes people behave the way they do?

The Jungian Argument

Brief psychology lesson here.  According to Carl Jung, there are three parts of the human mind. The id, a subconscious being that communicates base desires to us.  It wants what it wants, and it will do anything to achieve it.  Sex, food, violence, revenge, those temper tantrums you see kids throw when they don't get the toy they think they want.  That's all id.  The superego is also a subconscious being, comprised of the morals of society, the lessons taught from parents and natural consequences, the natural assumption of right and wrong.  If a baby sticks his finger on an iron (or even a teenager, for that matter.... don't ask) and burns his finger and has to keep it in ice cold water while he gets his hair cut, the lesson learned from that is stored in the superego.  Thus, he never will stick his finger on  an iron again (although, come to think of it, that was the car cigarette lighter...)  The third part is the ego, the conscious mind.  It decides, based on the id, and the superego, and from reason, emotion, and other thought processes, and decides what is right and what is wrong, and thus, what action should be taken.  Take any of these out, and you have a problem on your hands.

It's obvious now, if the superego is lacking, then the only thing the ego (you) has to hear from is the id.  An example.  In 1999,  the Columbine High School shooting (although, technically, there were a few before that, but this was the big one) put into everyone's minds the idea that it's possible to enter a school building and start shooting people. For the shooter to enter the high school, the superego either  hadn't existed, or it was so feeble that the shooter's ego didn't listen. So overpowered it was by the urges of the id to enact violence against his peers.  The superego must learn the lessons taught the person by pain, punishment, or parents.  If discipline at home doesn't exist, then there's nothing to influence the ego (the conscious mind) into thinking anything other than what the id tells it to. If the information that the brain digests from the outside world is nothing but action movies, violence, and pleasure-seeking, there's no societal values to counteract the id either.  Thus you have materialistic, self-centered, self-serving feral beings that will do whatever they want no matter the consequences, because consequences don't mean anything.  There is no one in the home to spank them if they do wrong.  When they become adults and are sent to jail, there's little punishment, except four walls, bad food, and roommates of questionable character.  They can be trained, a superego formed, around the societal norms of a jail cell. They are brainwashed into thinking that blowing up buildings and killing Christians is a good thing.  All this because the superego wasn't formed in time.  And people can see it, they know it, and can brainwash them into doing whatever they want.  It's why many of the school shooters are upper class kids whose parents threw money at them instead of discipline, and thus they weren't taught right from wrong at the very beginning.  How many children, even on a smaller level, have that same attitude? Even those in the poorest ranks, whose parents just aren't there, aren't getting the lessons they need to counteract the base desires the id throws at them every day.

Davis Cleveland and the Chaos of Twitterverse

Sounds like a book, doesn't it? Actually, it's a serious problem that is obviously more rampant than most parents and adults know about.  First, a brief introduction.  Davis Cleveland is a Texas-born actor who plays "Flynn," Bella Thorne's mischievous little brother on the Disney sit-com Shake It Up.  His storylines are, in my opinion, too short (pun intended,) and he was born to play the role.  The banter he had with "Henry" (Buddy Handleson) was hilarious, some of the best lines on Disney in the past year or two.  A couple of clips here:

 

The clip on the left actually brought about some interesting events outside of television, and, like uncovering bugs from under a rock, it uncovered a not-so-nice side of children these days.  The episode in question had Cece and Rocky going to a party hosted by "Shake it Up Chicago" moderator Gary Wilde. There were at the party supermodels who took an instant liking to Flynn when he shows up with his mom, busting the party.  There are a couple of jokes made about how the supermodels don't eat, etc...  Well, turns out that former Disney actress Demi Lovato saw the episode, and, having had bouts with eating disorders, among other things, went onto Twitter and http://www.nickandmore.com/2011/12/24/demi-tweets-disney-pulls-episodes/">criticized Disney for not having girls of all sizes on the shows.  Davis tweeted back, http://demelzellion.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/twitter-drama-davis-cleveland-vs-demi-lovato/"> taking up for the show. I'm not trying here to analyze who was right or wrong.  Notice that the Tweets were done shortly before Christmas, 2011.  From that point until now, fans of Demi Lovato have been barraging Davis' twitter account with threats, curses, and insults, most of which have overshadowed his efforts to help out fans with Cystic Fibrosis, and more recently, helping out the (far too late) cause of preventing bullying at school.  To show a demonstration, and to warn you, it does contain vulgarities:

Now, everyone's up to date.  To analyze this mess, we have to see how the Internet has changed our way of thinking, of communicating.  For, as Neil Postman famously said, "The Medium is the Message."  The Internet has created an instant communication relay, allowing anyone and everyone to talk about anything without regulation or censorship.  It has, as Postman talked about in The Disappearance of Childhood, taken away the ability of parents to control what information children receive. It is now entirely possible for kids, or anyone, to find out about anything instantly, from terroristic ideas to pornography of every variety.  It also has the ability, through Twitter and Facebook, to provide an instant open communication between a child and potentially every person on Earth.  This has brought the teasings and insults that children would normally get in school (and believe me, I've been the target of many of them), and launches them into the privacy and safety of the child's bedroom.  Thus the recent suicides due to cyber-bullying.  

What I want to understand, however, is exactly why this happens.  The internet effectively removes all barriers between children and the outside world.  In a place where everyone is equal, where social media makes everyone closer than they could possibly be before, it also isolates people to be utterly alone.  People are at once surrounded by friends, and totally alone.  Isolated and anonymous.  As if they were stranded on some far off island.

Which is what brings me to Davis' situation.  The girls who have insulted Davis can be easily compared to the boys stranded on the island in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.  Without rules, the boys slowly turn into feral beings, turning on friends and companions and wishing their deaths.  And Piggy, the sole voice of conscience in the story, is killed when a boulder is dropped on his head.  It is only when adults show up in the end and rescue them that the boys start to weep, to show remorse for all that's happen.  The island was set on fire by the boys, trying to get their enemies flushed out, and thus the place where they enjoyed freedom becomes a nightmare and unlivable. 

Twitter has become much like that island for some children, where vile insults and, honestly, death threats, are launched through the twitterverse without repercussion.  There is no thought of right or wrong, simply of entering text and pressing "Enter."  And since the idea of anonymity is so strong online, there are no consequences for any thought or word placed in cyberspace.  Thus the rumors of RIP(insert famous person here), or the cyber-bullying of students and the outright lies that float around on the Internet ocean like so much Flotsam.  

There are no boundaries on the Internet.  Now, the question is, how to fix the problem?  Parents can try to monitor and provide regulations for their children on what can be done and said online.  The websites could try some sort of technical restrictions on Facebook accounts, especially of famous people and television shows most likely to be followed by children. I say this because the amount of disgusting things hurled at iCarly's Facebook posts every day is amazing.  You should check them out.  It's very easy to get around age restrictions, but certainly something can be done.  But for the most part, it's up to the children online to regulate themselves.  Why would children like those above say those things?  It makes no sense.  But if kids were taught ethics, right from wrong, instead of being set free in the midst of the world's ideas without a single road to follow, maybe a lot of this mess could be controlled.  I guess it's up to the discipline given out by the parents.  And I've been a teacher and a retail worker long enough to know that parents' able to discipline their children effectively are getting fewer and fewer.  It's also up to children, in the online community, to understand the technology they are operating. Facebook can be easily controlled so that those who would say harmful things are blocked.  And if those insulting things are said by people that you don't know (I would say that all of the people hurling insults at Davis have never even met him, nor he them. ), just ignore them.  Take them as part of the static and noise that covers the Internet. Davis is ignoring them, while showing the world how, without rules, children become feral monsters, taking down anyone with lies, vulgarity, even threats.  It is good that Davis is as strong as he is, and that he realizes that very few of these kids will ever meet him.  Notice that the threats that are pictured above happened in February, some two months after the original exchange.  It's my advice that some of these people get help, from their parents, or from psychologists.  Without rules, these girls will wind up becoming adults with major problems, and words will become actions.  We don't need this.  

What we need to do is laugh.  Thankfully, Disney, Davis Cleveland and his crew, as well as most of the other shows are there to make us forget about some of this junk.  If only life were more like some of these episodes, with all the problems taken care of in 22 minutes.  But, alas, in today's world, it's just not to be. 

Sanction of the Victim

*{An addendum to the last post.]

This is a delicate topic. Upon thinking about my previous post, I started applying the philosophies of Ayn Rand to my life, and saw that, as a "Victim," I had let certain avenues open to the people bullying me. I saw it clearly this morning, how in some respects the permission of the victim is needed before he or she can become the victim. Most people will disagree with me. Heck, I'll disagree with me. But in some cases, I believe this to be true.

My mom told me to ignore it and it would go away. I did just that...in fact, I did more than that, I ignored everyone. There was a time when I would not talk to anyone but my teachers for a whole day. The potential friends I alienated, the people that thought I was strange... I became, to the bullies, an inanimate object. Something worse than a "victim" because at least the bully can have a relationship with that victim. But in my case, I wouldn't even let them do that. I became a stone, a rock, an island. And nothing touched me. But with all the pain I suffered through middle school, the punches, the being kicked in the nuts, multiple times, I didn't let it show at all. No one could get inside the walls I had built for myself. I lived in whatever fantasy worlds I had created for myself at that time, and, not having a whole lot of family life to support me, I became a caterpillar (if you don't mind me switching metaphors). Walled up in a cocoon that would be impossible to break (at least, while I was in middle school, but that's another story.) By ignoring them all, I wasn't telling them "NO!" I wasn't yelling at the top of my lungs.. "STOP IT!!" I never told them, "Get the Hell out of my way!" I simply took it.

Is that not just the same as Hank Reardon facing his family at the table, withstanding the constant jabs by his mother, his wife, his brother? Reardon took it, knowing that he could. He could just ignore it and take the pain and never have to worry about the lies they told him. Or to the industrialists of the novel (and to some extent, to the businessmen and entrepreneurs of today's world), they could just ignore the constant taxes being leveled on the rich and productive, because they could always stand to lose a little profit for the sake of the country. For the people.

Because not saying no is the same as telling them, "Go ahead, beat me up... I can take it." And it shouldn't be that way. The victims of today's high schools and middle schools, the ones that are bullied daily, they do not yell "STOP IT!" They simply accept the social standards of the world they live in. They have to take it because that's how the world works. Men must be men and not cry. Bullies must enact their Darwinian responsibility to bring down everyone that might be greater than they are, just so they might look as good as possible for the people they are trying to impress. And the bystanders... they are just as a participant as the victim getting beaten. Do you think that those that stand around watching are saying, "Cool, look at the schmuck getting beat up? No. They are saying, "I'm glad it's not me." Only, they know, that in some cases, it could be them. So they stay out of the way, out of the line of fire, and keep their heads down, hoping not to be noticed by the teachers, by the bullies, by anyone.

This is not everyone, of course. But for the people that care about individuality, the need to protect that is more important than being friends with someone, than fitting in with the masses. When society turns against you, you must find your own standards of living, and you must hold on to those standards no matter what, else you face destruction.

Think of all the school shootings that have happened lately. Those students, that, when the time came, broke down, and their standards became compromised. So instead of yelling "Stop!", they used other, more physical methods. And seeing that they had become the people they despised, they ended it themselves, turning the anger that had enveloped them on themselves. (The idea of Anger is one I have touched on before, both Here and Here.) In relation, the recent suicide by a student in Dekalb County, Georgia, who hanged himself because of the bullying that he received in his 5th grade class. He didn't cry out, "NO!" and was not strong enough to take the years of bullying he was to receive afterward. What makes me furious was that the school system, upon review of the whole incident, found no bullying had taken place. And I am not surprised. The standards by which students live by say that nothing like this could ever be reported by students, for fear of retribution. They would much rather see a student die than to admit that there was a problem going on, one that existed in the very core of the rules in which they live. The teachers, for fear of being accused of not reporting anything, that something like that would happen on their watch, said nothing either. And so the whole thing was swept under the rug. This was exactly what happened in Atlas Shrugged with the Taggart Tunnel disaster. No one was willing to take the blame, or to stop what they knew would be a disastrous situation, for fear of the repercussions that might happen. So nothing gets done about, and people die.

So when I say that "it all worked out." in my last blog, it needed further explanation. Only through the friends that I had in Rolling Green, like Chris and Lane, and Brad and Ford, was I able to exist in a microcosm that let me be myself. It provided a safety valve that made the Hell I went through bearable. And because of this, once I got to Heritage High, and joined the marching band (yet another safety valve.), things got better. I was able to make friends, like Amanda and Rachel. It was this that kept me from becoming like the Columbine shooters, or like the boy in Dekalb County.

The sanction of the victim is actually necessary for them to become a victim. I'm sure that every psychologist will say something similar. A wife being beaten has to say, "NO! I'm not going to live like this!" The battered women's shelters are places of sanctuary, much like John Galt's valley. But this is so hard for most people to do. The victims give in to the rules of society because they see no other way to live. They decide that they can take it. That all they have to do is to escape into some other realm and all will be better. And for the most part, today, with World of Warcraft, and multitudes of Fantasy novels, and the Internet...etc... it is very possible for people to do just that. What they don't want to do is to continue in reality, take charge of their own lives, and change the standards in which they live, and force others to see that the rules that they live by, that of Victim and Bully, of Bystanders and Apathetic losers, is WRONG! Not by force, obviously. Violence only confirms that society's rules are valid. Society must be made aware of the underlying principles on which those standards are based, and then be forced to change them. Or else the Victim should escape, in Reality, to someplace where the bullying can not happen. This is not to say they should become hermits in their own house, but rather some kind of Microcosm, like Rolling Green was for me, should be formed so that, even if going to the same school is still necessary, a safety valve can be created where the child can have time to be themselves, instead of the person that society wants them to be.

In a later blog, I want to look at the school's role in protecting individuals, in producing individuals, instead of mass-creating the clones that they believe should be made in a free, public educational system. Also,the steps that parents can take to support individuality are just as important as the schools. I do not think that bullying can be ended forever. It's in human nature for the strong to overcome the weak. Nor do I suppose that the weak, that sometimes need to be weeded out, must be held in a higher regard than the strong people in this world. But a society that destroys the good, the brilliant, the truly talented in place of the mediocre, the mundane, the multitudes of muscles and obedience, that should not be allowed to happen. Give the victims a chance to grow, and, as individuals, they can become like Bill Gates, or Christopher Paolini, or Einstein, to name a few. Woe to the people that repress those who would be victims in our society, and force them to be the same as everyone else, only to squash the amazing future that we might all have as human beings. But equal woe to the victim that lets them do it without shouting to the hills for his own life, and slumps down in his seat rather than be the human being he was meant to be.