beautiful monsters

guilt and graffiti

I’ve been studying so hard my head started to spin and I had to walk to the dairy and buy chocolate to calm myself down. Mmmm... chocolate. (I really need to address my relationship with sugar and caffeine. My favourite snack was once grated carrot wrapped in lettuce leaves – I was such a healthy child! Then it all went horribly wrong...) Anyway, I was in the Dairy, and the guy behind the counter was staring at my t-shirt, and then he said "what’s this GE Free thing?" So I explained to him what Genetic Engineering is and why I don’t think it should be happening in Aotearoa, feeling very proud of myself for encouraging discussion and awareness. Then I walked outside and realised that someone had sprayed GE Free stencils all around the Dairy. Great. Now the nice man at the dairy thinks that I’m a graffiti spraying eco-terrorist. Not that I have anything against political stencils. In fact, the ones around the dairy were my designs, my slogans. But I didn’t put them there. For that matter, I don’t even know who did spray them. They put heaps on the footpath right outside our house too. It was probably someone I know, a friendly gesture, "hi, we were in your neighbourhood." But because we are the only ones in the street with a GE Free sign on the letterbox, it looks really incriminating. One day someone will come banging on the door and accuse me of vandalism, and I will plead my innocence, fall do my knees and beg them to believe me... and they will look down on me and say with the utmost scorn and sarcasm "Yeah, right."

***

BLACK / WHITE and thinking in colours (RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!)

Each week the teaching at our church is based on a story from the bible. When I take the kids for Sunday school I try to get them thinking about ideas that are (fairly loosely) related to the story of the week. Today the scripture was Mark 1:21-28. Jesus is teaching in the temple, he drives an "evil spirit" out of a man, and everyone is amazed at his authority.

I get really uncomfortable when people start talking about "evil." It’s a word that President Bush uses a lot... and he’s a pretty scary man. "We're certain that even though the 'evil empire' may have passed, evil still remains. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." Geez, that guy has been watching too many American movies.

This year I am doing a workshop on writing for children, so of course I have to do lots of "research." This involves spending hours curled up in bed reading kids books. Oh, the strain! It’s alarming how many children’s stories are based on an absolute dichotomy between Good and Evil. The bad guys live in a world of darkness, and they are totally, utterly, unquestionably Evil. Of course, the good guys always win. What kind of morality are we teaching our children when we present them with such black and white fantasies? I was discussing this with a friend recently, and he said it was because that’s how children think, they can’t get their head around anything more complex.

Well, I think children are perfectly capable of accepting complex ideas, so I decided that today we would discuss a few questions. What is evil? What is authority, and who has it? The kids told me that "evil" is doing horrible things like killing people. But people only do evil because of things that have happened to them in the past, and because they make bad choices. Then one of the littlest kids piped up. "We think the bad guys are evil, but they think that we’re evil, so it’s really hard to know who are really the bad guys and who are the good guys." Ha! Don’t try and tell me that kids can’t understand complex ideas. The other kids started talking about how evil "goes both ways." One of the kids said that during the Second World War, most countries thought that Germany and Japan were evil... but Germany and Japan probably thought that the other countries were evil. Then they decided that people aren’t evil, but sometimes they do evil things, like fight wars. Wow. Somebody please get these kids an audience with the President!

Then we started talking about authority, and how it’s often used to hurt people, but it can also be used in a loving way. We talked about people who have authority, and the kids came up with teachers, God, politicians... then someone said Dumbledore had authority. I started to make this big analogy, where Harry Potter had authority because he doesn’t let go of the stone, and he defeats Voldemort, and it’s a bit like Jesus having authority over evil spirits. That idea didn’t really catch on – the kids just stared at me blankly, and I couldn’t remember the details of the story. By this stage the kids with ADHD were bouncing off the walls and screaming, the two-year-old was wailing for his mother, several children were trying to burn down the church with their candlemass candles, while others kicked each other in the head or ran from room to room slamming doors. I was starting to lose my voice trying to make myself heard, and the only thing I could think about authority was that I didn’t feel like I had any at all.

Before next Sunday I am going to memorise the entire 20th Anniversary Updated Edition of "How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk." I will be the world’s most respectful and supportive teacher, and then the children will have to respect my authority.

Quotes of the day

"The world is a dangerous place - not because of the few who do evil, but because of the many who stand by and let them." - That great human rights activist, Albert Einstein.

"This brings us to one of the really cool things about fantasy – identifying with a side that’s 100 percent good. You can revel as they utterly annihilate foes who deserve to be exterminated because they are 100 percent distilled evil... The urge to crush some demonized enemy resonates deeply within us, dating from ages far earlier than feudalism. Hence, the vicarious thrill we feel over the slaughter of orc foot soldiers at Helm’s Deep. Then again as the Ents flatten even more goblin grunts at Saruman’s citadel, taking no prisoners, never sparing a thought for all the orphaned orclings and grieving widorcs. And again at Minas Tirith, and again at the Gondor Docks and again … Well, they’re only orcs, after all... Am I pulling your leg? You bet! I don’t take speculations about fictional villains quite that seriously. My real point is more general... Don’t just receive your adventures. Toy with them. Re-mold them in your mind. Keep asking "What if …?" It’s how you get practice not just being a passive consumer, or critic, but a creative storyteller in your own right." - Extracted from "J.R.R. Tolkien, Enemy of Progress," by David Brin.

Posted by Fionnaigh at February 2, 2003 05:08 PM