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When I was a child, folks called me many things. Gifted, mature, intelligent, an old soul, an indigo child. Romanticizing on a spectrum from IQ-fetishizing to bullshit magic (but I repeat myself), to avoid facing how traumatized and alienated I was, instead of doing something to improve my shitty, dangerous life.
An indigo child, for crap sakes. Folks wanted to believe the Next Generation, "homo superior" as the song said, would fix everything by virtue of superpowers from the stars.
I still haven't really internalized that attempted murder is not a normal childhood experience.
Do you suppose they thought that, by believing in such things, they were being activists? That by reading books about magical alien incarnations they were making the world a better place? That wouldn't be true no matter what you're reading. There's no media consumption that can make the world a better place. If creating media makes the world a better place, it is not because its consumption is itself anything valuable; it is the actions it inspires that matter, and nothing more. (And my sympathies to anyone who tries to inspire folks to stand up for us, and instead only inspires folks to pass laws to keep lineworkers from becoming part of the sausages. One can try.)
And lemme tell ya, I did not grow up to be anything that special. I'm one more unemployed, disabled trans woman who has panic attacks in grocery stores. If testing at 99.9 percentile in several fields of childhood development yields someone who barely graduates high school and on rare occasion writes angry rants on social media, I don't think testing does what it's intended to do. And perhaps intelligence, whatever that's supposed to be, is of little use if it was supposed to be something I had a lot of, and now I can't remember advanced algebra and have forgotten how to spell "desperate."
And no, I don't think this little shitty piece of media I'm writing is important either, nor is consuming it going to make anybody a better person. They have to choose that for themselves. By fucking doing something. Find some kid who has that faraway stare, whether they take tests well or not, and fight off the terrors that plague them. Listen to what they say, try to learn what is happening in their heads, in their lives, be there for them, but don't... don't just fucking build them up and tell them what amazing things they'll be. Don't hold parades for us and tell us how great we are and how the whole world will be our oyster and how we'll save lives and invent things and win at life for everyone. Don't tell us we'll overthrow the old regime and install a new, kinder and better world. Don't tell us we can't, but if you really want something like that to happen, do it yourself.
Bertholdt Brecht said, "Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon." A weapon does no good if you don't use it.
An indigo child, for crap sakes. Folks wanted to believe the Next Generation, "homo superior" as the song said, would fix everything by virtue of superpowers from the stars.
I still haven't really internalized that attempted murder is not a normal childhood experience.
Do you suppose they thought that, by believing in such things, they were being activists? That by reading books about magical alien incarnations they were making the world a better place? That wouldn't be true no matter what you're reading. There's no media consumption that can make the world a better place. If creating media makes the world a better place, it is not because its consumption is itself anything valuable; it is the actions it inspires that matter, and nothing more. (And my sympathies to anyone who tries to inspire folks to stand up for us, and instead only inspires folks to pass laws to keep lineworkers from becoming part of the sausages. One can try.)
And lemme tell ya, I did not grow up to be anything that special. I'm one more unemployed, disabled trans woman who has panic attacks in grocery stores. If testing at 99.9 percentile in several fields of childhood development yields someone who barely graduates high school and on rare occasion writes angry rants on social media, I don't think testing does what it's intended to do. And perhaps intelligence, whatever that's supposed to be, is of little use if it was supposed to be something I had a lot of, and now I can't remember advanced algebra and have forgotten how to spell "desperate."
And no, I don't think this little shitty piece of media I'm writing is important either, nor is consuming it going to make anybody a better person. They have to choose that for themselves. By fucking doing something. Find some kid who has that faraway stare, whether they take tests well or not, and fight off the terrors that plague them. Listen to what they say, try to learn what is happening in their heads, in their lives, be there for them, but don't... don't just fucking build them up and tell them what amazing things they'll be. Don't hold parades for us and tell us how great we are and how the whole world will be our oyster and how we'll save lives and invent things and win at life for everyone. Don't tell us we'll overthrow the old regime and install a new, kinder and better world. Don't tell us we can't, but if you really want something like that to happen, do it yourself.
Bertholdt Brecht said, "Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon." A weapon does no good if you don't use it.
