0:00:00.040,0:00:03.200
So people have been yelling “Grow Up!” 
at us a lot lately.

0:00:03.200,0:00:05.440
And it's in a really weird context.

0:00:05.440,0:00:07.160
Maybe you've been hearing
“grow up” a lot too,

0:00:07.160,0:00:09.040
and maybe you'll recognize the context.

0:00:09.040,0:00:09.840
Quick background:

0:00:09.840,0:00:12.080
We recently made a video about the author
Neil Gaiman,

0:00:12.080,0:00:14.800
and how there's really good reason
to believe he committed sexual assault

0:00:14.800,0:00:17.800
and so we do believe that.

0:00:17.800,0:00:21.120
And distributed through the general
excuse-making

0:00:21.120,0:00:25.080
and denial and apologia
that you'd expect was a theme.

0:00:25.160,0:00:27.880
People yelling “Grow Up!” at us

0:00:27.880,0:00:31.000
all, apparently independently, 
coming up with this thing

0:00:31.000,0:00:33.480
that we really needed to hear.

0:00:33.560,0:00:36.680
The problem is that you guys
glorify entertainers to a hero status.

0:00:36.720,0:00:38.720
You brought that on yourself.
Grow up. Grow up.

0:00:38.720,0:00:40.000
Children have heroes.

0:00:40.000,0:00:42.160
Adults should not aspire to 
be another adult

0:00:42.160,0:00:43.560
Grow Up!
Acknowledging that people

0:00:43.560,0:00:46.680
that move our hearts and minds have human
flaws, too, is a sign of growing up.

0:00:46.680,0:00:48.480
You don't even know what this video is
about.

0:00:48.480,0:00:49.520
Go back to college

0:00:49.520,0:00:50.920
Heroes are for children.

0:00:50.920,0:00:54.160
This is only a problem
in an infantile civilization.

0:00:54.240,0:00:55.960
The Infantilisation of Western Culture.

0:00:55.960,0:00:57.280
Published August 1st.
2000 and ugh

0:00:57.280,0:00:58.960
I'm not reading all that
F***ing hell

0:00:59.480,0:01:00.360
You get the idea!

0:01:00.360,0:01:04.680
They say we're not being realistic,
that we're being immature.

0:01:04.680,0:01:05.400
We're children

0:01:05.400,0:01:09.000
either for having heroes or
for thinking that everyone isn't a r*pist

0:01:09.200,0:01:12.680
or for thinking that celebrities
are perfect or that they're not human,

0:01:12.920,0:01:13.720
whatever that means.

0:01:13.720,0:01:18.080
Basically, if you've got an issue
with sexual assault, you need to grow up.

0:01:18.160,0:01:19.760
But why??

0:01:19.760,0:01:21.960
like this bothered me
so much! Why?

0:01:21.960,0:01:23.880
Why “grow up”
and I know

0:01:23.880,0:01:25.800
mean people being mean
on the Internet

0:01:25.800,0:01:28.000
blokes who disbelieve 
women and defend r*pists

0:01:28.000,0:01:30.200
What's the mystery? They're just nasty.

0:01:30.200,0:01:31.920
They're just nasty men.

0:01:31.920,0:01:35.400
There's no sense in us setting up
a whole Rube Goldberg machine in here

0:01:35.400,0:01:36.640
with a chandelier and a net

0:01:36.640,0:01:38.840
and then pulling the mask off the ghoul
to discover that

0:01:38.840,0:01:41.440
Oh, it was nasty men all along.

0:01:41.440,0:01:42.560
Surely this is

0:01:42.560,0:01:45.480
as so many videos make obvious
before you've even clicked on them

0:01:45.560,0:01:46.840
The f*cking patriarchy,

0:01:46.840,0:01:47.160
*JINKIES!*

0:01:47.160,0:01:50.560
And yet grow up feel so specific,

0:01:50.800,0:01:55.320
so particularly fine tuned to pick on
certain vulnerabilities and flaws that we

0:01:55.320,0:01:59.560
maybe all feel as less than perfect adults
or as not quite normal folk.

0:01:59.560,0:02:02.520
It picks on those sensitivities
while simultaneously

0:02:02.520,0:02:05.520
seeming to have so little
to do with s*xual assault.

0:02:05.640,0:02:06.920
So we were curious

0:02:06.920,0:02:08.720
and we asked some of our 
YouTube friends

0:02:08.720,0:02:10.840
if they'd noticed and well...

0:02:10.840,0:02:11.640
Pillar of Garbage:
Grow Up!

0:02:11.680,0:02:15.320
The Hogwarts Legacy controversy
slash boycott failed

0:02:15.320,0:02:18.440
because the sane people
have finally had enough of you

0:02:18.440,0:02:21.000
terminally on the internet
freaks and

0:02:21.000,0:02:22.280
Hoots:
Grow Up, will you!

0:02:22.320,0:02:25.560
If we were needed to ban
every children story that seemed

0:02:25.560,0:02:28.560
outdated and problematic -
Open your eyes!

0:02:28.560,0:02:29.520
Grow up. 
(grow up)

0:02:29.520,0:02:30.320
Talis: 
Grow up.

0:02:30.320,0:02:33.280
So then, seeing that these examples
also seemed to have

0:02:33.280,0:02:36.360
something to do with naivete
and wanting to change the world

0:02:36.360,0:02:40.920
and pushing back against injustice,
we were frankly even more confused!

0:02:41.080,0:02:43.960
Now, why we're all these people
saying Grow Up?

0:02:43.960,0:02:47.320
What are we doing exactly
when we deploy insults like these?

0:02:47.480,0:02:51.600
Why, without just taking the answer for
granted, is being grown up good?

0:02:51.760,0:02:54.480
And why is not being grown up bad?

0:02:54.480,0:02:56.920
What do people mean
when they invoke maturity?

0:02:56.920,0:02:58.880
It seems that
if you put yourself out there

0:02:58.880,0:03:02.200
with even the vaguest of gestures
towards justice: Boom!

0:03:02.200,0:03:05.480
there will be a great deal of naysayers
angry at you,

0:03:05.720,0:03:10.280
waiting to criticize you
in a very specific and predictable way.

0:03:10.360,0:03:12.240
Sarah’s voice:
Your children.

0:03:12.320,0:03:12.880
Exactly.

0:03:12.880,0:03:14.280
They'll say that you’re children

0:03:14.280,0:03:18.400
Sarah:
No, Neil. Your children, the baby.

0:03:18.480,0:03:19.800
Oh, yes.

0:03:19.800,0:03:24.560
We have children and we just had a baby
and we quite like the baby.

0:03:24.640,0:03:25.520
The baby is brilliant.

0:03:25.520,0:03:27.000
And it got us to thinking

0:03:27.000,0:03:31.520
Why come people think
that being childlike is bad?

0:03:31.920,0:03:33.080
So.

0:03:33.560,0:03:34.000
yeah.

0:03:34.000,0:03:39.760
🎵 frantic high energy 
Jazz drum solo 🎵

0:03:39.760,0:03:41.080
🎵 snare roll  🎵

0:03:43.880,0:03:49.520
🎵 drums continue 🎵

0:04:04.920,0:04:08.680
🎵 tension on the drums builds 🎵

0:04:11.120,0:04:14.520
Have you ever said it? 
Yelled at someone “Grow Up!”

0:04:14.520,0:04:17.800
or said it sincerely, like,
“I think you need to grow up.”

0:04:17.880,0:04:19.040
I have.

0:04:19.040,0:04:21.360
So I'm guilty as charged.

0:04:21.360,0:04:22.760
And I think a lot of us have.

0:04:22.760,0:04:24.800
I think it's a very normal putdown.

0:04:24.800,0:04:29.320
It's possibly the most succinct way
of saying I big and good

0:04:29.360,0:04:33.680
you small and bad,
but that doesn't mean it's ineffective.

0:04:33.760,0:04:35.160
It's quite maddening

0:04:35.160,0:04:38.440
and sometimes pretty hurtful
and usually incredibly frustrating

0:04:38.520,0:04:39.440
to get these comments.

0:04:39.440,0:04:42.440
And I think it's fair to say
they're difficult to counter.

0:04:42.600,0:04:43.680
Let's look at this example.

0:04:43.680,0:04:47.880
You are simply children who can't fathom
the fact that people are multifaceted.

0:04:48.000,0:04:51.400
I mean, dude, your hair says it all.

0:04:51.480,0:04:54.760
This is in response to a video
about credible r*pe allegations.

0:04:54.840,0:04:57.680
What kind of person looks at the 
despair and anger

0:04:57.680,0:04:59.440
that inevitably follows 
a high profile

0:04:59.440,0:05:00.800
s*xual assault case and says grow

0:05:00.800,0:05:02.880
Woman:
Don’t you wave your hand at me!

0:05:02.880,0:05:04.960
I wave my hand at you

0:05:04.960,0:05:06.360
Senator: 
when you grow up I’ll be glad to

0:05:06.400,0:05:07.720
Women:
“When you grow up??”

0:05:07.720,0:05:11.760
That was Senator Hatch dismissing a group
of women who opposed his endorsement

0:05:11.760,0:05:16.720
of Judge Brett Kavanaugh because Kavanaugh,
you remember, credible r*pe allegations.

0:05:16.720,0:05:21.040
So this is a high profile
example of invoking grow up to shut down

0:05:21.040,0:05:23.040
a conversation about s*xual assault.

0:05:23.040,0:05:28.600
But it is also an example of grow up as an
expression of power within a hierarchy.

0:05:28.680,0:05:31.040
You've got a sitting white male senator.

0:05:31.040,0:05:34.240
He's up here operating within the grossly
unjust system,

0:05:34.240,0:05:36.080
and you've got this group
of activist women

0:05:36.080,0:05:38.800
Grassroots. Speaking with nothing
but their own voices,

0:05:38.800,0:05:40.840
attempting to call 
the system into question.

0:05:40.840,0:05:43.000
It seems to be the case that “grow up”

0:05:43.000,0:05:46.600
or more accurately, references
to childlike behavior are common

0:05:46.840,0:05:50.880
when someone in a hierarchy is speaking
to someone from a group below them.

0:05:51.120,0:05:54.600
This is illustrated quite comprehensively
by legal scholar and professor

0:05:54.600,0:05:59.200
of Constitutional Law Ruth Colker
in her paper The Power of Insults.

0:05:59.280,0:06:00.560
In it, she argues that

0:06:00.560,0:06:02.920
Legal Kimchi: the economic
and political power elite

0:06:02.920,0:06:06.600
has effectively hurled insults
at civil rights activists,

0:06:06.680,0:06:11.240
plaintiffs and their lawyers
to undermine civil rights reform.

0:06:11.240,0:06:14.040
I think most of us can recognize
that activists, lefties

0:06:14.040,0:06:16.760
and basically anyone trying
to create positive change in the world.

0:06:16.760,0:06:21.360
Those trying to push civil rights reforms
have to put in much more work

0:06:21.360,0:06:24.280
than the power elites
sitting on their status quo,

0:06:24.280,0:06:27.240
and Overton Window-ing 
their way into oblivion.

0:06:27.240,0:06:28.800
But as Colker says

0:06:28.800,0:06:31.520
Legal Kimchi: insufficient
attention has been paid to how the power

0:06:31.520,0:06:35.920
elite uses the cultural tool of insults
to undermine these reforms.

0:06:35.920,0:06:40.280
As she points out, insults are part
of a long tradition of class reproduction.

0:06:40.360,0:06:44.320
She takes us back to the early years
of the USA, to the 19th century,

0:06:44.520,0:06:47.920
the time between the revolutionary
and civil wars, which was a particular

0:06:47.920,0:06:51.480
hotspot for duels of honor, a time
in which

0:06:51.480,0:06:53.640
FD Signifier:
many respectable, educated men

0:06:53.640,0:06:56.680
eagerly avenged
even the slightest of insults by

0:06:56.680,0:07:00.600
repairing to the local field of honor
and blasting holes in each other.

0:07:00.720,0:07:03.880
A lot of men,
some of them very famous, were shot

0:07:03.880,0:07:06.880
in some duel over some petty insult.

0:07:07.080,0:07:11.480
I am Alexander Hamilton
and I'm a fragile little gentleman.

0:07:11.560,0:07:13.200
But duels weren't universal.

0:07:13.200,0:07:16.200
If some upstart from the lower classes
happened to insult

0:07:16.200,0:07:18.880
the honor of a gentleman,
this would not be followed by a duel.

0:07:18.880,0:07:19.800
Oh, no, no, no.

0:07:19.800,0:07:20.760
This would be followed

0:07:20.760,0:07:25.480
by beating the wretch with a cane
or lashing the reprobate with a horsewhip.

0:07:25.480,0:07:28.040
And funnily enough,
not funny at all, actually.

0:07:28.040,0:07:31.760
This is also how children have been
historically disciplined in respectable

0:07:31.880,0:07:33.160
Western societies,

0:07:33.160,0:07:37.000
in educational and religious institutions
up until very recently.

0:07:37.000,0:07:41.080
It's arguable that like the impoverished
lower classes of the 19th century

0:07:41.320,0:07:45.600
children have historically
also had no honor to defend.

0:07:45.680,0:07:47.360
But anyway, insults!

0:07:47.360,0:07:49.800
Colker points out
how, just like in the 1800s,

0:07:49.800,0:07:53.320
those currently in power exist
in a completely different world

0:07:53.440,0:07:55.240
in terms of how insults work.

0:07:55.240,0:07:56.760
She points out that insults function

0:07:56.760,0:07:59.280
both as a distraction
from civil rights reforms

0:07:59.280,0:08:02.200
and that those insults are more likely
to be successful

0:08:02.200,0:08:05.360
because of the preexisting weakness
of the civil right in question.

0:08:05.400,0:08:09.760
That is, if someone is lower on the social
hierarchy, they have to do a great deal

0:08:09.760,0:08:14.560
more proving themselves of worth
as part of their response to an insult.

0:08:14.640,0:08:16.640
Putting it my own way, I would say that

0:08:16.640,0:08:20.200
if a disempowered person
is dealing with the gallery, the audience

0:08:20.200,0:08:21.320
...

0:08:21.400,0:08:25.200
over insults and slings and arrows,
then they have far less control

0:08:25.200,0:08:28.200
of the narrative
than the person with power.

0:08:28.240,0:08:31.280
This means that the insult itself
causes group based harm

0:08:31.280,0:08:35.040
and it fuels negative stereotypes
about that disempowered group

0:08:35.120,0:08:38.600
and it deflects attention away
from their struggles.

0:08:38.640,0:08:43.200
So surprise, surprise! There are countless
examples of Trump doing this.

0:08:43.240,0:08:44.560
Did we want to...? Do you wanna...?

0:08:44.560,0:08:46.200
We want to talk about Trump?

0:08:46.200,0:08:47.520
Are we are we talking about this?

0:08:47.520,0:08:49.240
Have we heard about this?

0:08:50.760,0:08:51.480
Trump.

0:08:51.480,0:08:53.760
This is the neo-fascist playbook.

0:08:53.760,0:08:58.440
Insult anyone with integrity over and over
and get the client media to report on it

0:08:58.440,0:09:01.520
and ham it up and repeat it
until no one remembers

0:09:01.520,0:09:06.000
anything about that person of integrity
except the insult that you made up.

0:09:06.080,0:09:10.520
Most people remember Trump impersonating
and mocking journalist Serge Kovaleski

0:09:10.760,0:09:14.280
at a campaign rally in 2015,
flapping his arms and such.

0:09:14.520,0:09:17.520
But what Colker points out in her paper,
and I'd forgotten this,

0:09:17.680,0:09:21.120
is that that whole thing started
because Trump had made a false claim

0:09:21.360,0:09:23.320
that the Muslim community in New Jersey

0:09:23.320,0:09:27.160
was cheering as the World
Trade Center fell on 911.

0:09:27.240,0:09:32.200
And Kovaleski,
being a journalist, had published words

0:09:32.200,0:09:34.200
that said, No, they didn't.

0:09:34.200,0:09:37.920
The whole situation devolved into
“Will this boorish behavior

0:09:37.920,0:09:39.480
derail Trump's campaign?”

0:09:39.480,0:09:44.560
Instead of spotting that Trump had used
ableism to Trojan horse Islamophobia,

0:09:44.640,0:09:47.000
he did it again when he mocked NFL players

0:09:47.000,0:09:49.240
for taking a knee
during the national anthem.

0:09:49.240,0:09:50.680
Successfully distracting from

0:09:50.680,0:09:54.040
the major issue of police
brutality against Black Americans.

0:09:54.040,0:09:57.080
And again, when he described Haitian
and African immigrants

0:09:57.240,0:10:01.000
as coming from, quote, ‘shithole countries’
and describing Mexican-Americans

0:10:01.000,0:10:05.440
as drug dealers, and r*pists, all as cover
for his administration rescinding DACA

0:10:05.640,0:10:09.280
a policy that allows certain individuals
who came to the United States as children

0:10:09.480,0:10:10.480
to stay in the country.

0:10:10.480,0:10:11.760
Remember that?

0:10:11.760,0:10:13.920
No. Neither does anyone else.

0:10:13.920,0:10:17.560
And all of that maybe feels like old news
when at time of writing Elon Musk

0:10:17.560,0:10:20.960
and a bunch of fortune gobshite
cronies are locked in some government

0:10:20.960,0:10:26.280
vault, pressing Control
plus A, Delete on America.

0:10:26.360,0:10:30.360
But it's very relevant because the elite
deploying insults and slander

0:10:30.360,0:10:34.360
and dehumanization is at its most rampant
and shameless right now.

0:10:34.440,0:10:37.080
Returning to the nomination of Brett
Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,

0:10:37.080,0:10:38.360
a Trump appointee.

0:10:38.360,0:10:40.080
At a time
when there was ongoing

0:10:40.080,0:10:43.680
investigations into credible allegations
of s*xual assault against Kavanaugh.

0:10:43.760,0:10:46.840
Trump, of course, 
mocked the alleged victim,

0:10:47.080,0:10:48.960
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

0:10:48.960,0:10:49.880
Trump:
How did you get home?

0:10:49.880,0:10:50.640
I don't remember.

0:10:50.640,0:10:51.320
How did you get there?

0:10:51.320,0:10:53.880
I don't remember.
Where is the place? I don't remember.

0:10:53.880,0:10:55.000
How many years ago was it?

0:10:55.000,0:10:55.560
I don't

0:10:55.560,0:10:58.280
Once again, using insults
to gain political advantage.

0:10:58.280,0:11:02.080
That is, another conservative
Republican judge on the Supreme Court

0:11:02.160,0:11:05.440
now is not quite the same thing as
telling me to grow up?

0:11:06.040,0:11:07.280
Yes.

0:11:07.920,0:11:08.680
No.

0:11:09.280,0:11:09.760
kind of.

0:11:09.760,0:11:10.720
It would be a mistake

0:11:10.720,0:11:13.720
to think that insults are just the thing
that the bad guys do

0:11:14.040,0:11:15.280
many voices:
Grow Up!

0:11:15.360,0:11:19.600
There is growing division
among general online leftish folk

0:11:19.600,0:11:21.200
over whether using certain insults

0:11:21.200,0:11:25.320
is necessary to express ourselves
and show some urgency and strength

0:11:25.560,0:11:28.560
and to make our points
well and uncompromisingly.

0:11:28.680,0:11:33.000
Or maybe insults are pretty much
always hierarchy reproducing and

0:11:33.120,0:11:37.920
Elon Musk won't see your body shaming
tweets, but your dad bod friends will.

0:11:38.000,0:11:40.560
And obviously there's
always been an ideological difference

0:11:40.560,0:11:44.240
between those who believe to whatever
extent that the politics of identity

0:11:44.240,0:11:48.280
should come second to and are
a distraction from the politics of class.

0:11:48.480,0:11:50.520
At it's most cliched
and stripped of nuance

0:11:50.520,0:11:53.120
That's a blue haired wokey
arguing with a tankie

0:11:53.120,0:11:55.880
both of which are insults
that never seem to actually land

0:11:55.880,0:11:59.560
or hurt anyone because, you know,
they're very silly.

0:11:59.640,0:12:01.840
Communists respond to 
being called “Tankies”

0:12:01.840,0:12:04.360
the way that gay people respond
to being called “sodomites.”

0:12:04.440,0:12:07.040
Like, what did you just call me?

0:12:07.040,0:12:08.440
It's so cute.

0:12:08.440,0:12:12.320
A Tankie?? 
Oh,  I'm a sodomite!

0:12:12.400,0:12:12.960
Yeah, I am.

0:12:12.960,0:12:14.280
So given that bit of noise,

0:12:14.280,0:12:17.520
there are actually only a few things
that I can say definitively about insults.

0:12:17.520,0:12:19.920
One, this is not a well-studied area.

0:12:19.920,0:12:21.600
We basically can't say
with any confidence,

0:12:21.600,0:12:24.560
whether it's practice to go low
or it's counterproductive to go high.

0:12:24.560,0:12:25.920
We just don't seem to know.

0:12:25.920,0:12:30.480
Another is, as I said earlier, that
insults are a useful tool for power elites

0:12:30.600,0:12:33.120
and that they are deployed
by the enemies of the working class

0:12:33.120,0:12:37.920
and of disenfranchized people to distract
from and sabotage civil rights reforms.

0:12:37.920,0:12:40.920
So it is interesting that Ruth Colker
in her conclusion,

0:12:40.920,0:12:44.080
doesn't fall one way or the other on
the go low go high dichotomy.

0:12:44.200,0:12:48.400
She doesn't recommend that we do insults
or that we do not do insults.

0:12:48.440,0:12:51.440
She recommends a contextual approach.

0:12:51.480,0:12:54.920
She suggests that we ask,
what is the context of the insult?

0:12:55.000,0:12:56.360
What are we trying to achieve?

0:12:56.360,0:12:57.480
And I think that's smart.

0:12:57.480,0:12:58.400
Adding to that,

0:12:58.400,0:13:02.280
I can infer from her paper
that it might be smart for us to hold onto

0:13:02.480,0:13:06.720
and focus on the original struggle
before the Trumps and Musks of this world

0:13:06.880,0:13:11.280
turn any given emancipatory thing
into a nonsense ad hominem game.

0:13:11.400,0:13:14.640
So we should learn from what happened
with Serge Kovaleski and keep our eyes

0:13:14.640,0:13:17.720
on the goal as it existed
before all the distraction tactics.

0:13:17.720,0:13:18.840
But importantly,

0:13:18.840,0:13:22.240
as much as we don't know whether insults
unambiguously reproduce hierarchy,

0:13:22.440,0:13:26.400
we can say with some confidence
that they reproduce social groups

0:13:26.480,0:13:28.400
in-groups and out-groups.

0:13:28.400,0:13:31.320
Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

0:13:31.320,0:13:33.480
It is not necessarily a good thing.

0:13:33.480,0:13:35.200
It is a thing thing.

0:13:35.200,0:13:38.000
As professor of psychology,
Karina Korostelina puts it:

0:13:38.000,0:13:40.080
Hoots: An insult is a social act

0:13:40.080,0:13:42.400
constructed mutually 
by social groups

0:13:42.400,0:13:44.320
on the boundary between them.

0:13:44.320,0:13:45.800
Which is to say,

0:13:45.880,0:13:48.480
one of the ways that we create
and reinforce social groups

0:13:48.480,0:13:51.920
and the differences
between those groups is through insults.

0:13:52.000,0:13:53.800
Which got me to thinking.

0:13:53.800,0:13:55.880
When someone says Grow Up.

0:13:55.880,0:13:58.920
What is the in-group?
And what is the outgroup?

0:13:59.160,0:14:01.480
It's not adults and children, right?

0:14:01.480,0:14:04.560
I don't think that these commenters
are accusing Sarah and I

0:14:04.560,0:14:07.560
of being actual children, especially since

0:14:07.640,0:14:11.400
Sarah was visibly pregnant
and I look f***ing old.

0:14:11.480,0:14:14.240
Have you seen these new video essayists
they've got these days?

0:14:14.240,0:14:18.000
Tirrrb and José María Luna?
Skin like baby angels.

0:14:18.040,0:14:19.880
No they're not saying that we’re
children.

0:14:19.880,0:14:23.800
They're saying we're something else,
something child like.

0:14:23.880,0:14:27.480
And so they tell me to grow up
that everybody in the world is corrupt.

0:14:27.480,0:14:28.880
So hush and shush.

0:14:28.880,0:14:29.520
And if you're trying

0:14:29.520,0:14:33.120
to push for justice, rest assured
we can't because it's just the world.

0:14:33.240,0:14:35.400
So you better get more mature.

0:14:35.400,0:14:38.600
Sarah, I feel like an awful tosser doing
all this Hamilton stuff, I really, it's

0:14:38.840,0:14:39.840
tremendously cringe.

0:14:39.840,0:14:43.160
So I once again looked through
the comments and tried to find a theme.

0:14:43.200,0:14:44.760
I know I'm a glutton for punishment,

0:14:44.760,0:14:48.760
but it was important to understand
what “Grow Up” means.

0:14:48.840,0:14:50.080
And then I remembered.

0:14:50.080,0:14:50.800
I've said it.

0:14:50.800,0:14:52.200
I have.

0:14:52.200,0:14:53.320
What did I mean?

0:14:53.320,0:14:56.280
And I remember I meant grow up like

0:14:56.280,0:14:59.560
be more Irish, be more like me.

0:14:59.640,0:15:03.880
It had been during a fight with Sarah
about parenting because Sarah is American

0:15:03.880,0:15:07.640
and I'm Irish, and American culture
seems to put romantic partners

0:15:07.640,0:15:09.480
and offspring on an equal footing.

0:15:09.480,0:15:11.800
Whereas, like, Irish culture
is a little more oriented

0:15:11.800,0:15:13.360
around babies and reproduction.

0:15:13.360,0:15:17.480
So we value the children in a family
kind of over the adults, it seems to me.

0:15:17.640,0:15:18.600
Sound off in the comments

0:15:18.600,0:15:20.760
if you think I'm wrong about that,
or if you think one or the other

0:15:20.760,0:15:23.640
of those two cultures is repugnant.
I think it's just a difference.

0:15:23.640,0:15:26.120
At least, 
I think it’s just a difference

0:15:26.120,0:15:28.320
when I'm not arguing 
 with someone about it,

0:15:28.400,0:15:31.400
but when someone else is saying
that my culture is wrong

0:15:31.480,0:15:33.840
and I have to argue
that their culture is wrong,

0:15:33.840,0:15:36.760
there is a tool at my disposal
well within reach.

0:15:36.760,0:15:38.080
Grow Up.

0:15:38.080,0:15:40.280
There's only one objective answer here.

0:15:40.280,0:15:42.600
The one that the grown ups
are willing to admit to.

0:15:42.600,0:15:46.600
And with that insight, I could see that
these comments did fit a pattern,

0:15:46.680,0:15:48.560
not an immediately obvious pattern,

0:15:48.560,0:15:52.000
but one which revealed a lot about
our implicit understanding of society

0:15:52.200,0:15:55.080
and the world. 
Hierarchies we share in common

0:15:55.080,0:15:58.240
so deeply and unknowingly
that we rarely glimpse them.

0:15:58.800,0:16:00.640
Grow Up,
as it turns out

0:16:00.640,0:16:02.760
is a very special kind of insult.

0:16:02.840,0:16:05.720
But in order to understand why,
we need to move on to the next

0:16:05.720,0:16:10.120
most obvious question,
why is it even a problem to be childlike?

0:16:10.200,0:16:11.360
Why is this an insult?

0:16:11.360,0:16:12.160
Why is it bad?

0:16:12.160,0:16:15.960
Why? Of all of the possible ways
that we could group people together,

0:16:16.040,0:16:18.280
do we hate this group?

0:16:18.360,0:16:19.800
Children.

0:16:19.960,0:16:22.360
🎵 bass note 🎵

0:16:22.440,0:16:24.200
So why get bent out of shape

0:16:24.200,0:16:26.440
about being told to grow up?

0:16:26.520,0:16:27.720
No, this is actually bollocks.

0:16:27.720,0:16:28.320
🎵  Jazz drum solo 🎵

0:16:28.320,0:16:29.240
This is actually bollocks

0:16:29.240,0:16:31.520
because by the time we get to
the conclusion,

0:16:31.520,0:16:34.280
we're not going to be talking about
insults at all.

0:16:34.280,0:16:35.680
It's like a red herring, you know.

0:16:35.680,0:16:37.400
Sarah: Why don't you 
talk about something positive?

0:16:37.400,0:16:38.800
Insults are just a negative bit.

0:16:38.800,0:16:41.440
we need something uplifting.

0:16:41.520,0:16:42.200
Neil: I mean, look.

0:16:42.200,0:16:44.960
we're going to
talk about nice, hopeful love things.

0:16:45.000,0:16:48.960
It's just that and the first comment
that we're going to get is going to be

0:16:48.960,0:16:51.560
why are you talking about this
when the world is on -

0:16:51.560,0:16:53.400
this shouldn't be here, sweetheart.

0:16:53.400,0:16:58.840
Why are you talking about childism when,
like, you know, we're all going to die?

0:16:58.920,0:16:59.960
I don't mean - I'm sorry 
Sarah: besides

0:16:59.960,0:17:02.560
if we set ourselves up
to only talk about the worst things.

0:17:02.560,0:17:04.200
That's all we'll ever talk about.

0:17:04.200,0:17:06.760
And people still won't be happy.

0:17:06.760,0:17:08.880
🎵  jazz hihat 🎵

0:17:08.960,0:17:11.960
You're getting
too caught up in the commenters again.

0:17:12.000,0:17:13.640
Both:
Just talk about children.

0:17:19.920,0:17:22.240
Have you noticed that
it's kind of socially acceptable

0:17:22.240,0:17:26.400
to say you hate children
or at least to say you don't like them?

0:17:26.480,0:17:29.920
It's definitely socially acceptable
to say that you don't want them around

0:17:30.000,0:17:31.520
to shoot a look of disdain

0:17:31.520,0:17:35.480
at a traveling companion because you've
spotted a baby on an airplane.

0:17:35.560,0:17:39.160
Or to judge the parenting of a child
who's crying at the grocery store,

0:17:39.160,0:17:43.360
or to suspiciously keep an eye
on a group of teenagers at the movies.

0:17:43.440,0:17:46.920
Adult-only spaces are normative,
and even spaces which allow children do

0:17:46.920,0:17:48.720
so only if they're well-behaved.

0:17:48.720,0:17:50.640
Is itsocially acceptable
for a crying baby

0:17:50.640,0:17:53.080
to be in a fancy restaurant?
Or would you expect that

0:17:53.080,0:17:55.920
their mother would whisk them out
until they calmed down?

0:17:55.920,0:17:59.440
Maybe judge her for bringing a baby
there in the first place?

0:17:59.520,0:18:00.280
Look it up.

0:18:00.280,0:18:05.880
Search the phrase I hate children
because I did that and it wasn't good.

0:18:05.960,0:18:07.320
People are mean.

0:18:07.320,0:18:10.040
People are mean to babies.

0:18:10.040,0:18:13.280
I found screeds at various levels
of professionalism, disliking children

0:18:13.280,0:18:17.120
for being boring or loud.
Disliking them, for taking up space,

0:18:17.120,0:18:20.680
blaming parents for being too lax
about discipline, opining that children

0:18:20.680,0:18:24.880
should not be allowed in public
until they learn to act properly.

0:18:24.960,0:18:26.360
So here's an example.

0:18:26.360,0:18:29.400
A paper out of Australia documented
that during a public debate

0:18:29.400,0:18:32.640
about whether dogs should be allowed in
cafes, the conversation

0:18:32.640,0:18:36.520
quickly turned from dogs
who were ultimately doing fine to children

0:18:36.720,0:18:42.200
who were seen as the real threat
to peace, enjoyment and public order.

0:18:42.280,0:18:44.680
The paper quotes
one person's take on the matter.

0:18:44.680,0:18:46.320
Talis:
I'd really like to see it go further

0:18:46.320,0:18:49.040
and remove all children from public areas.

0:18:49.040,0:18:51.640
Holiday spots and traveling options
should be classed as

0:18:51.640,0:18:53.640
for and not for children.

0:18:53.640,0:18:57.240
Make these disgusting things, travel
in their own special carriages and planes

0:18:57.240,0:18:58.920
and live in their own areas.

0:18:58.920,0:19:00.600
The world would be a much better place

0:19:00.600,0:19:04.360
if all children were just locked up
until they were old enough to behave.

0:19:04.440,0:19:07.160
This idea that children 
a class of people

0:19:07.160,0:19:10.800
should be confined to private
spheres is somehow not controversial.

0:19:10.840,0:19:13.080
For young children,
this discrimination is justified

0:19:13.080,0:19:16.080
by evoking their disruptiveness
or vulnerability.

0:19:16.120,0:19:19.040
Either that they're too unruly
to be allowed access to public space

0:19:19.040,0:19:21.440
or that they're too vulnerable, 
easily corrupted

0:19:21.440,0:19:24.520
or stealable or otherwise hurt
by being allowed in public.

0:19:24.600,0:19:29.200
Older children, however, are not seen
as vulnerable, but instead as criminal.

0:19:29.280,0:19:30.440
As one paper puts it:

0:19:30.440,0:19:32.840
Rohan Davis:
after around age twelve

0:19:32.840,0:19:36.960
adult society recognizes
children, particularly children of color,

0:19:37.040,0:19:42.480
no longer as helpless pieces of property,
but instead as the reckless criminals

0:19:42.480,0:19:45.480
devoid of any sense of responsibility

0:19:45.600,0:19:48.560
or understanding of their lives.

0:19:48.560,0:19:53.400
As a result, young people are driven
out of public spaces.

0:19:53.480,0:19:58.480
Teenagers are routinely overtly profiled
or kept from accessing public space.

0:19:58.560,0:20:01.960
Think of the Mosquito, a device
which emits a high pitched ring

0:20:01.960,0:20:04.560
which teenagers can hear but adults can't.

0:20:04.560,0:20:05.840
Installing the Mosquito

0:20:05.840,0:20:09.760
in parks or outside of buildings
prevents teenagers from “loitering.”

0:20:09.840,0:20:12.360
You know, the crime of appearing in public
without spending money.

0:20:12.360,0:20:15.360
This is a particularly impactful
limitation for teenagers

0:20:15.360,0:20:19.440
who tend to have very little money
and very few places to go.

0:20:19.600,0:20:23.920
The mosquito is widely used in Australia,
North America and Europe,

0:20:24.000,0:20:26.720
despite the fact that it contravenes
articles on human

0:20:26.720,0:20:29.720
rights from both the European Convention
on Human Rights

0:20:29.720,0:20:33.800
and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,

0:20:34.000,0:20:37.720
and that it's capable of causing children
physical harm

0:20:37.880,0:20:42.880
with symptoms such as dizziness, headache,
nausea and sensory impairment.

0:20:42.960,0:20:47.720
The risk is greatest for non-speaking
children and infants who may be exposed to

0:20:47.720,0:20:51.800
the sound for prolonged periods of time
by parents who can't hear it themselves.

0:20:51.800,0:20:54.480
And so they don't know why
their child is in distress.

0:20:54.480,0:20:55.760
And yes,

0:20:55.760,0:20:59.920
this bias against children is impacted
by other mechanisms of marginalization,

0:20:59.920,0:21:01.840
especially race and class.

0:21:01.840,0:21:04.560
Spaces that privileged children 
can access freely

0:21:04.560,0:21:06.880
like parks or schools 
are often inaccessible

0:21:06.880,0:21:08.560
to children from minority groups.

0:21:08.640,0:21:09.600
Here in Ireland,

0:21:09.600,0:21:13.320
Traveler children are technically invited
to attend public schools,

0:21:13.400,0:21:17.960
but they face persistent discrimination
ranging from more benign erasure,

0:21:18.000,0:21:21.000
their culture and language is absent
from the Irish curriculum

0:21:21.080,0:21:24.880
to the more extreme forms of hostility
from classmates and teachers.

0:21:24.960,0:21:26.600
The result means that 
Traveler children

0:21:26.600,0:21:29.040
are incentivized
to leave school at an early age.

0:21:29.080,0:21:30.400
As one traveler put it:

0:21:30.400,0:21:32.360
Caelan Conrad:
my parents wanted me to go to school,

0:21:32.360,0:21:36.480
but because of the discrimination
that there was in secondary school, I left

0:21:36.480,0:21:38.760
after six months of secondary school.

0:21:38.760,0:21:40.440
I just couldn't stick it.

0:21:40.440,0:21:41.920
I was really good at school.

0:21:41.920,0:21:43.360
I was never in trouble.

0:21:43.360,0:21:45.480
I was never sent home.

0:21:45.480,0:21:47.200
They used to call me (slur)

0:21:47.200,0:21:49.760
Or you're a dirty (slur)

0:21:49.840,0:21:51.120
Go wash herself.

0:21:51.120,0:21:55.840
Racialized children are, in fact,
frequently denied childhood altogether.

0:21:56.000,0:21:58.040
Elliot Sang: 
Racial bias treats Black children

0:21:58.040,0:21:59.360
as physically stronger,

0:21:59.360,0:22:03.560
more sexually knowledgeable,
less innocent, less sensitive to pain,

0:22:03.560,0:22:06.560
and more culpable than white children.

0:22:06.600,0:22:11.480
This exclusion shows that entitlement
to the ideal of childhood is not a given,

0:22:11.480,0:22:16.560
but is instead a privilege that is largely
exclusive to white children.

0:22:16.640,0:22:18.680
This is something
we should all be familiar with

0:22:18.680,0:22:21.800
through high profile cases 
like 12 year old

0:22:21.800,0:22:26.120
Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun
in a park when police officers shot him.

0:22:26.200,0:22:29.800
Or Trayvon Martin,
a 17 year old walking in public shot

0:22:29.800,0:22:33.520
by a vigilante for the crime
of walking home from a convenience store.

0:22:33.640,0:22:36.600
The man who shot him, George Zimmerman,
who in his spare time paints

0:22:36.600,0:22:39.920
images
like this, was acquitted of all charges.

0:22:40.000,0:22:43.840
The jury clearly agreeing
that an unarmed black child walking

0:22:43.840,0:22:48.480
out of the store constituted behavior
suspicious enough to justify murder.

0:22:48.520,0:22:53.520
Seemingly paradoxically, Black adults
are often viewed as more childlike.

0:22:53.760,0:22:56.200
Showing the mutability
of these categories.

0:22:56.200,0:23:01.680
How we invoke adulthood to make racialized
children appear dangerous

0:23:01.760,0:23:04.480
but invoke childhood to make adults seem

0:23:04.480,0:23:08.040
as if they're undeserving of rights.

0:23:08.120,0:23:10.800
In either case, we're using age

0:23:10.800,0:23:15.240
as a mechanism of control and terror.

0:23:15.320,0:23:16.640
But thankfully,

0:23:16.640,0:23:20.920
there's a philosophical movement meant to
question the morality of this assertion.

0:23:21.000,0:23:23.760
It's called Childism, and it's exciting.

0:23:23.760,0:23:24.680
It's new.

0:23:24.680,0:23:26.760
It's compatible with leftist goals.

0:23:26.760,0:23:28.040
And it feels congruent

0:23:28.040,0:23:32.000
with a lot of the stuff we've been
exploring over the last couple of years.

0:23:32.160,0:23:36.240
But before we go on in the style of better
video essays,

0:23:36.320,0:23:38.480
we must outline the term

0:23:38.480,0:23:41.840
so childism can refer 
to two distinct concepts.

0:23:42.080,0:23:44.560
The first is discrimination
against children.

0:23:44.560,0:23:47.240
That's an “ism”
the way that racism describes

0:23:47.240,0:23:49.800
discrimination against 
people of different races.

0:23:49.800,0:23:52.800
The second conception of childism 
is a philosophy

0:23:52.800,0:23:55.360
one that proposes more 
egalitarian relations

0:23:55.360,0:23:56.920
between adults and children.

0:23:57.000,0:24:00.840
This is an “ism” in the way that feminism
proposes more egalitarian relations

0:24:01.000,0:24:02.600
between genders.

0:24:02.600,0:24:07.560
In this essay, when we say childism,
we'll be referring to the philosophy

0:24:07.640,0:24:09.840
to the foundational idea
that children are people

0:24:09.840,0:24:14.000
and more importantly, the responsibility
that we have to reconfigure society

0:24:14.160,0:24:17.120
so that it serves
the needs of both children and adults.

0:24:17.120,0:24:19.240
Because right now
it only serves the latter.

0:24:19.240,0:24:20.840
And children are people.

0:24:20.840,0:24:22.280
Really take that in for a second.

0:24:22.280,0:24:24.600
Children are people.

0:24:24.600,0:24:27.560
It doesn't sound revolutionary
to say that children are people,

0:24:27.560,0:24:31.360
but when you stop to consider the way
we currently operate, it becomes clear

0:24:31.520,0:24:33.720
that we don't see children as people.

0:24:33.720,0:24:37.280
We see them as future adults
or almost people.

0:24:37.360,0:24:40.960
This goes all the way back to Aristotle,
who argued that an organism's

0:24:40.960,0:24:45.160
mature form is its definitional form,
fulfilling its actual purpose.

0:24:45.240,0:24:48.760
All of the stages leading up to that
are oriented to the goal of adulthood.

0:24:49.000,0:24:52.640
Though rather than seeing this as an
Aristotelian conception, we're likelier

0:24:52.640,0:24:55.800
to view children through a lens
of developmental psychology.

0:24:55.880,0:24:59.080
As someone who has not yet
developed their full capacity

0:24:59.080,0:25:02.280
for empathy
or their real eyesight abilities,

0:25:02.480,0:25:07.640
this is how Piaget described children
as existing at various stages of being.

0:25:07.800,0:25:13.480
Where those stages are defined by deficit
when compared to an imagined adult norm.

0:25:13.560,0:25:17.360
And even if we don't consciously
think of children as deficient adults,

0:25:17.520,0:25:20.880
we often see them as beings
in the process of becoming

0:25:21.080,0:25:24.440
who should be nurtured in that process
by those of us in power:

0:25:24.480,0:25:28.800
Adults. Until such a time that
that child develops their full abilities

0:25:29.000,0:25:31.880
and crosses the threshold
into adulthood themselves.

0:25:31.880,0:25:33.400
Grows up.

0:25:33.480,0:25:36.720
We often think of the child
as a sort of evolution in miniature.

0:25:36.920,0:25:40.000
First, you're a baby
and you can't see well,

0:25:40.000,0:25:42.200
you can't speak, you can't walk, etc.

0:25:42.200,0:25:43.440
Then you're a toddler.

0:25:43.440,0:25:45.400
You can speak, You can walk a bit,

0:25:45.400,0:25:49.080
but you can't really engage with long term
plans or complex operations.

0:25:49.200,0:25:51.920
And then you're a child, then a teenager.

0:25:51.920,0:25:54.920
Always there are developmental milestones
you are supposed to hit.

0:25:55.080,0:25:56.640
And finally, adulthood.

0:25:56.640,0:25:58.440
You've reached your final form.

0:25:58.440,0:26:02.240
This is a philosophical concept
called recapitulation, that the development

0:26:02.240,0:26:06.440
of an individual child mirrors
the phylogeny of the human species.

0:26:06.520,0:26:09.960
And like with the modernist misconception
of evolutionary theory,

0:26:09.960,0:26:12.720
we believe that the ultimate form 
is the best one,

0:26:12.720,0:26:14.400
the one to strive for

0:26:14.400,0:26:15.840
the Blastoise

0:26:15.960,0:26:17.760
This is the reason people
tell us to grow up.

0:26:17.760,0:26:21.000
It's unseemly for us to
still not have progressed to adulthood.

0:26:21.240,0:26:24.640
But it's a mistake to view evolution
hierarchically.

0:26:24.720,0:26:26.160
Apes are not better than monkeys.

0:26:26.160,0:26:28.400
They are adapted
to different environments.

0:26:28.400,0:26:31.440
And there's actually
no such thing as a Blastoise

0:26:31.520,0:26:33.480
Likewise, 
Social Darwinism

0:26:33.480,0:26:35.520
was a misapplication
of evolution.

0:26:35.720,0:26:36.880
Viewing some societies

0:26:36.880,0:26:40.840
as more evolved than others
when they were just differently adapted.

0:26:40.920,0:26:44.640
The idea that you are not a person
until you have hit these developmental

0:26:44.640,0:26:48.640
milestones is essentially the same
as you not being a person.

0:26:48.840,0:26:52.440
If you're non-normative
and have, for example, a disability,

0:26:52.520,0:26:54.800
maybe you have poor eyesight
like an infant,

0:26:54.800,0:26:57.360
maybe you have poor social skills
like a young child,

0:26:57.360,0:27:00.600
maybe you have poor emotional management
skills like a teenager.

0:27:00.640,0:27:04.800
Ableism interacts with Adultism
so strongly that they start to feel like

0:27:04.800,0:27:06.120
almost the same thing.

0:27:06.120,0:27:11.520
The idea that respect is only earned
via growth to this ideal of adult,

0:27:11.600,0:27:15.560
a physically
and emotionally independent being.

0:27:15.640,0:27:17.560
Zoe Bee: 
Childism dissolves this

0:27:17.560,0:27:19.640
dichotomy of independent adults

0:27:19.640,0:27:23.920
and dependent young children
by emphasizing mutual dependency

0:27:23.920,0:27:27.800
on various levels
as a fundamental to human existence.

0:27:27.880,0:27:30.040
Human beings, emotions,
and agency

0:27:30.040,0:27:33.000
are shaped through relations
to other human beings

0:27:33.000,0:27:37.240
and to their emotions and agency,
as well as to non-humans.

0:27:37.320,0:27:40.800
That is, animals, microbiomes,
the climate, etc..

0:27:40.800,0:27:45.160
This challenges the notion of liberty
and freedom and raises the question

0:27:45.240,0:27:49.480
what does freedom actually
mean in the light of the understanding

0:27:49.480,0:27:54.120
of social and more than social relations
as characterized by interdependence

0:27:54.200,0:27:58.800
and in light of children's experience
and practices of this interdependence

0:27:58.800,0:28:03.080
between human beings as well as between
humans and non-human species,

0:28:03.080,0:28:08.560
and materiality, child ism asks us to stop
equating dependance with subservience,

0:28:08.800,0:28:11.560
but rather to see all of us
as partially dependent

0:28:11.560,0:28:16.800
and partially independent
in ever changing webs of interdependence.

0:28:16.880,0:28:20.760
Even the most independent person
is still dependent on human society,

0:28:21.000,0:28:24.840
and any period of relative independence
is going to be brief.

0:28:24.920,0:28:28.440
Sandwiched between starting off as babies
and experiencing

0:28:28.440,0:28:30.120
increasing forms of disability.

0:28:30.120,0:28:34.320
So why not abolish the hierarchy
and embrace the fact that nothing we do

0:28:34.320,0:28:35.640
is ever really independent?

0:28:35.640,0:28:38.560
Even for babies,
as I've just learned with breastfeeding.

0:28:38.560,0:28:40.080
It's a cooperative effort

0:28:40.080,0:28:44.040
between the baby and I, with both of us
learning and adjusting for the other.

0:28:44.160,0:28:45.680
In order for it to work.

0:28:45.680,0:28:48.840
It's not something that I can impose on
the baby.

0:28:48.920,0:28:52.360
Childism at its most basic points out
that children are people.

0:28:52.400,0:28:53.280
Children are people.

0:28:53.280,0:28:54.480
My baby is a person

0:28:54.480,0:28:58.840
with a physical experience of the world
and a social experience of the world.

0:28:58.920,0:29:02.400
They have needs that differ
from adult needs and that does not make

0:29:02.400,0:29:04.360
those needs any less important.

0:29:05.400,0:29:09.000
They have a right
to express themselves socially

0:29:09.000,0:29:13.200
without that expression
being taken as distasteful,

0:29:13.200,0:29:16.800
without their social experiences, needs
or self-expression

0:29:17.040,0:29:21.960
being reduced to some inconvenience
for whatever adults are nearby.

0:29:22.040,0:29:27.120
So if we are really ready to wrestle
with this, what would it look like?

0:29:27.360,0:29:31.200
To say that children have rights
that babies have rights?

0:29:31.400,0:29:34.400
In some ways it makes us
rethink what we mean by rights,

0:29:34.640,0:29:38.640
because I don't think my infants should be
casting a ballot in the voting booth.

0:29:38.720,0:29:41.440
Not only because I don't think
that that would benefit society,

0:29:41.440,0:29:43.680
but because I don't think
it would benefit them.

0:29:43.680,0:29:47.200
I don't think that when a kid wants
to exclusively eat ice cream, their parent

0:29:47.200,0:29:52.000
is violating their foundational human
rights if she makes them eat some carrots.

0:29:52.080,0:29:54.440
But those examples reflect
a misconception of rights

0:29:54.440,0:29:57.440
that is very individualistic
and taken to their extreme.

0:29:57.600,0:30:00.000
They lead us to some 
very uncomfortable places.

0:30:00.000,0:30:03.360
I frequently cite Firestone
de Beauvoir and Foucault on this channel,

0:30:03.600,0:30:05.440
and while I really like
a lot of their work,

0:30:05.440,0:30:09.040
they all tackle this phenomenon
and end up in, frankly, the wrong place.

0:30:09.080,0:30:11.160
All of them are uncomfortable
with hierarchy

0:30:11.160,0:30:13.120
and all of them
want children to be our equals.

0:30:13.120,0:30:16.760
But they seem to get stuck on the idea
that treating children as equals involves

0:30:16.760,0:30:18.320
giving them free rein

0:30:18.320,0:30:20.520
because in many ways they 
conceive of freedom

0:30:20.520,0:30:22.000
as the benchmark right

0:30:22.000,0:30:23.160
And some of their writing

0:30:23.160,0:30:26.360
gets unconscionable when they, 
to different extents,

0:30:26.360,0:30:30.520
explore this in the context of adult
and children sexual relations.

0:30:30.680,0:30:33.360
And I know that all philosophy,
when taken to an extreme,

0:30:33.360,0:30:34.240
can sound problematic,

0:30:34.240,0:30:37.880
but Simone, Shulamith, Michele,

0:30:37.920,0:30:41.160
So what if instead of valuing freedom
or independence

0:30:41.160,0:30:44.480
as the ultimate benchmark of respect,
we pick different rights?

0:30:44.480,0:30:45.320
Like Care?

0:30:45.400,0:30:48.240
the right to be cared for, 
the right to have one's needs met.

0:30:48.240,0:30:49.880
That right is the same,

0:30:49.880,0:30:51.880
whether we’re talking about 
an adult or a child,

0:30:51.880,0:30:53.520
we all need shelter, 
food, connection

0:30:53.600,0:30:56.600
or what about the right to community?

0:30:56.720,0:30:58.760
So the right to have
your needs be considered

0:30:58.760,0:31:01.760
when making group decisions,
the right to access spaces,

0:31:01.760,0:31:03.720
the right to
have your voice hear

0:31:03.720,0:31:06.160
the right to be 
a participant in the world

0:31:06.240,0:31:08.720
rather than just have the world
impact you.

0:31:08.720,0:31:09.800
So how would this look?

0:31:09.800,0:31:13.760
Well, I'm an immigrant
and so my assumptions about how life works

0:31:13.920,0:31:16.840
get challenged all the time
because certain

0:31:16.840,0:31:20.120
aspects of life
work quite differently here in Ireland.

0:31:20.200,0:31:25.040
And children are treated much differently
here than they are in the US.

0:31:25.120,0:31:29.520
As an example, let's look at that
very Irish center of community:

0:31:29.600,0:31:30.600
The Pub.

0:31:30.600,0:31:33.520
Pubs have the same components
as bars in the US.

0:31:33.600,0:31:36.160
They may have racks of hard alcohol.

0:31:36.160,0:31:38.400
They may have televisions playing sports.

0:31:38.400,0:31:40.200
They may have music.

0:31:40.200,0:31:43.680
They certainly have the regulars
who may or may not have

0:31:43.680,0:31:45.360
substance use disorders,

0:31:45.360,0:31:47.320
but they also have children,

0:31:47.520,0:31:50.600
and not even necessarily
the well-behaved children.

0:31:50.760,0:31:54.480
But children who run around
underfoot, children who cry,

0:31:54.640,0:31:58.080
children whose parents aren't reining them
in at all.

0:31:58.080,0:32:01.920
Last year, I wandered into the pub,
not realizing that

0:32:01.920,0:32:06.400
it was confirmation season 
and I found tons of kids.

0:32:06.480,0:32:10.200
They were dressed up
in their best outfits, running from one

0:32:10.200,0:32:15.480
end of the pub to the other, shrieking
happily while their parents got sloshed.

0:32:15.680,0:32:17.320
This wasn't a private event.

0:32:17.320,0:32:19.040
The pub wasn't rented out.

0:32:19.040,0:32:21.720
It's just socially acceptable here
for kids,

0:32:21.720,0:32:25.680
even kids hyper on sugar
and special event energy

0:32:25.760,0:32:27.440
to share a social space with adults.

0:32:27.440,0:32:31.680
Children here are closer to having
the right to community recognized.

0:32:31.760,0:32:35.160
Another example: let's look at Japan.

0:32:35.240,0:32:39.000
The extent to which the built environment
is structured to meet

0:32:39.000,0:32:42.000
the needs of children
is really different there.

0:32:42.000,0:32:45.520
I remember moving to Japan
and seeing for the first time

0:32:45.600,0:32:48.360
a five year old 
confidently walking down

0:32:48.360,0:32:51.440
the sidewalk alone, 
not a parent in sight.

0:32:51.480,0:32:53.640
Having been a preschool teacher in the US.

0:32:53.640,0:32:57.880
Walking my classroom anywhere
outside of the building was terrifying.

0:32:57.880,0:33:00.360
An event we minimized as much as possible.

0:33:00.360,0:33:03.680
But in Japan, 
even in major cities,

0:33:03.680,0:33:04.760
kids walk alone.

0:33:04.840,0:33:06.240
Don't mistake this for the idea

0:33:06.240,0:33:10.600
that Japanese children are more mature
or better behaved.

0:33:10.600,0:33:12.840
instead, Japan has cultural

0:33:12.840,0:33:17.160
and structural differences
which allow children to be out in public.

0:33:17.240,0:33:19.680
The sidewalks are broad and generous.

0:33:19.680,0:33:21.120
Speed limits are low.

0:33:21.120,0:33:23.120
Children are taught to raise their arms

0:33:23.120,0:33:26.120
as they cross the street
in order to make themselves more visible.

0:33:26.280,0:33:31.000
But all the same drivers expect children
to be in the crosswalks,

0:33:31.240,0:33:33.960
so they watch for children
in the crosswalks.

0:33:33.960,0:33:37.960
During times when children are likely
to be commuting to or from school.

0:33:38.040,0:33:43.000
Networks of volunteer adults place
themselves along well-traveled routes

0:33:43.080,0:33:46.080
so that they can watch out for anything
dangerous.

0:33:46.200,0:33:48.440
There's a popular 
Japanese TV program

0:33:48.440,0:33:50.680
called Hajimete no otsukai

0:33:50.880,0:33:53.880
which documents
the right of passage of children

0:33:54.120,0:33:57.040
going on their first solo errand.

0:33:57.040,0:34:01.440
So cameramen follow these children
ranging from ages 2 to 5

0:34:01.600,0:34:06.240
as they navigate crowded city centers
or wild rural countrysides.

0:34:06.400,0:34:09.760
to bring home a packet of fish
or to bring cookies

0:34:09.760,0:34:13.200
to their grandma.
They do this completely on their own.

0:34:13.440,0:34:16.440
And the show is really, really charming.

0:34:16.560,0:34:18.040
I would recommend
you watch

0:34:18.040,0:34:20.000
public infrastructure
in Japan

0:34:20.000,0:34:22.720
is designed to some extent
with children in mind.

0:34:22.800,0:34:26.560
This feels very different from how we live
in the English speaking world.

0:34:26.600,0:34:28.160
As one paper puts it:

0:34:28.160,0:34:30.040
Cogito:
parents across socioeconomic

0:34:30.040,0:34:31.840
backgrounds in Western cities

0:34:31.840,0:34:36.600
consider public space unsafe
for children, a concern fueled by media

0:34:36.600,0:34:41.720
hype around stranger danger
and an increasingly risk averse society.

0:34:41.960,0:34:45.960
Hence, children who are still seen out
about in the street with an adult

0:34:46.160,0:34:49.320
are often regarded
with a mixture of suspicion and worry.

0:34:49.440,0:34:54.040
These paradoxical positions share a view
that children should remain in child

0:34:54.040,0:34:58.440
friendly places such as school, home
organized after school activities

0:34:58.640,0:35:00.040
or the playground.

0:35:00.040,0:35:03.040
This was from a research paper
called No Messing Around,

0:35:03.120,0:35:06.360
which looked at how children view
public spaces in Dublin.

0:35:06.560,0:35:10.440
So don't let my romantic view of the pub
influence you too much.

0:35:10.440,0:35:13.800
Children here are still quite 
marginalized when it comes to

0:35:13.800,0:35:15.640
access to public spaces.

0:35:15.640,0:35:18.800
Beyond those 
explicitly carved out for them

0:35:18.800,0:35:23.320
with special deterministic functions
like a formalized playground

0:35:23.320,0:35:27.840
with literal boundaries
versus a large car free avenue,

0:35:27.960,0:35:31.600
which would facilitate more 
free creative play.

0:35:31.680,0:35:34.840
And God, does Dublin need that?

0:35:35.040,0:35:37.640
I'm sure many people from the US
who've been to Ireland

0:35:37.640,0:35:41.440
and by Ireland
they just mean Dublin are thinking.

0:35:41.680,0:35:44.040
But is it Dublin just idyllic?

0:35:44.040,0:35:46.080
And that's precisely the problem.

0:35:46.080,0:35:49.440
Dublin is so solely focused on tourism,

0:35:49.560,0:35:53.200
on presenting this quaint little 
twee image of Ireland

0:35:53.400,0:35:57.120
so that it can extract as much money
as possible from said tourists.

0:35:57.320,0:36:01.400
That it fails locals in general,
and especially fails children.

0:36:01.440,0:36:05.600
A few years ago, security
at the Temple Bar, a pub famous

0:36:05.600,0:36:09.520
for having the most expensive
drinks in Ireland and for being a place

0:36:09.520,0:36:13.000
that no self-respecting
Irish person would ever set foot in.

0:36:13.080,0:36:19.240
Well, they got upset that children,
a 13 year old and 16 year old specifically

0:36:19.320,0:36:23.800
were skateboarding on the 
pedestrianised street outside of the pub.

0:36:23.880,0:36:28.400
So, you know, being in public,
using the street,

0:36:28.400,0:36:30.160
presumably making 
the atmosphere

0:36:30.160,0:36:33.840
less conducive to selling 
thirty euro pints or whatever.

0:36:34.000,0:36:38.000
So now the pub is also famous
as one where the security guards

0:36:38.240,0:36:43.720
assault children for having the audacity
to play in the public space.

0:36:43.880,0:36:46.600
Seriously. 
Boycott the Temple Bar.

0:36:46.600,0:36:48.360
But it's grim in other places too.

0:36:48.360,0:36:52.520
A paper on children in urban spaces
focused on a neighborhood in L.A.,

0:36:52.640,0:36:58.040
specifically the neighborhood around South
Central Avenue, southeast Los Angeles,

0:36:58.160,0:37:01.600
which is a primarily low
income, high density area

0:37:01.600,0:37:05.080
where residents are majority
Latin-American and Black.

0:37:05.160,0:37:09.000
Children are marginalized in the same way
that we've mentioned before.

0:37:09.200,0:37:14.160
Few places to congregate, streets
that are unsafe for commuting, etc., etc..

0:37:14.160,0:37:17.720
You get the idea,
but also by factors unique to the area,

0:37:17.800,0:37:21.200
like through criminalization
and institutionalization.

0:37:21.400,0:37:23.520
The paper's author,
Meredith Abood,

0:37:23.520,0:37:25.000
documents how children
move through

0:37:25.000,0:37:26.760
regimented spaces, 
each day.

0:37:27.000,0:37:29.720
The majority of children
go to afterschool programs,

0:37:29.720,0:37:32.120
which means that they are
in an institutional setting

0:37:32.120,0:37:36.600
from 7:30 a.m.
until 6 p.m. each day.

0:37:36.600,0:37:41.560
But when surveyed, only 9% of fifth
graders like their after school programs

0:37:41.760,0:37:46.120
and based on Abood’s writing,
I don't blame them for disliking them.

0:37:46.200,0:37:47.600
José María Luna:
The children in the program are

0:37:47.600,0:37:50.600
for the most part, institutionalized,
disciplined and controlled.

0:37:50.640,0:37:53.240
Students are commonly
told to put their hands on their heads

0:37:53.240,0:37:56.200
until the room is silent, often
for upwards of 20 minutes,

0:37:56.200,0:37:59.480
or told they cannot go play
until they learn to make a perfectly

0:37:59.480,0:38:02.520
straight line, meaning
they are often standing still in a line

0:38:02.520,0:38:06.280
for 15 minutes until they are released
and given permission to play.

0:38:06.360,0:38:10.240
Students who misbehave because they refuse
to silently work on their homework

0:38:10.240,0:38:14.040
or do not put their hands on their head
for the entire 5 minutes are “benched”

0:38:14.040,0:38:15.080
and spend the majority

0:38:15.080,0:38:17.800
of the three hour block
sitting alone with their heads down.

0:38:18.040,0:38:21.120
If they are lucky, they just have to
pick up 50 pieces of trash

0:38:21.320,0:38:23.920
as if they are convicted
criminals serving probation.

0:38:23.920,0:38:26.240
Remarkably, however, 
students rarely question

0:38:26.240,0:38:28.000
the hyper-disciplined 
environment because

0:38:28.000,0:38:30.760
they cannot conceive 
of anything else

0:38:30.760,0:38:33.120
in a built environment
that constrains their play,

0:38:33.120,0:38:34.680
autonomy and freedom,

0:38:34.680,0:38:37.600
where  police can search children 
and youth without cause

0:38:37.600,0:38:40.840
and where more money is spent 
on prisons than schools,

0:38:40.920,0:38:43.000
Children often do not even realize

0:38:43.000,0:38:45.880
they can ask for or 
expect anything more

0:38:45.960,0:38:49.560
I think it's particularly noteworthy
that this demographic of children

0:38:49.560,0:38:52.720
is also primarily made of 
children of color.

0:38:52.720,0:38:54.760
Children who 
are not awarded

0:38:54.760,0:38:58.320
the same premise of helpless 
innocence as their white peers.

0:38:58.320,0:39:00.440
As a paper on Black girlhood puts it

0:39:00.440,0:39:04.200
Ember Green:
racialized gender and sexuality, i.e.

0:39:04.200,0:39:08.760
Black genders and sexualities
in and under white supremacy

0:39:08.760,0:39:12.480
and colonization, 
negate and obliterate

0:39:12.480,0:39:15.480
the very idea of the subject position.

0:39:15.720,0:39:21.280
And the categories of 
child, childhood, girlhood and human

0:39:21.400,0:39:23.600
in tow of
such configurations

0:39:23.600,0:39:25.320
is the denial of innocence

0:39:25.320,0:39:29.760
in the traditional sense of the word,
where Blackness blots out

0:39:29.760,0:39:34.280
naivete, not knowing 
and exemption from responsibility.

0:39:34.320,0:39:37.120
Or, to put it more crudely,
children of color aren't given

0:39:37.120,0:39:41.000
the presumption of innocence
that white children are routinely granted.

0:39:41.080,0:39:47.000
We are dominating and subordinating
young people just because we can.

0:39:47.080,0:39:51.880
And in the cases of racialized children,
we are even more cruel and harsh,

0:39:52.080,0:39:55.000
potentially creating a scenario 
where kids go

0:39:55.000,0:39:57.720
from institutionalization 
on the basis of their age

0:39:57.720,0:40:00.840
to institutionalization
on the basis of their race.

0:40:01.080,0:40:03.440
The school to prison nexus.

0:40:03.440,0:40:06.960
And I ask you genuinely,
Is this how we want to treat people?

0:40:07.040,0:40:09.480
Is this how we want our society to run?

0:40:09.480,0:40:11.320
Have you heard the 
baby in the background?

0:40:11.320,0:40:13.800
Neil actually just 
ran out with them.

0:40:13.800,0:40:15.720
But I think you might have heard
a little bit of it.

0:40:15.720,0:40:19.640
They're here and we're not doing that
because we're showing off.

0:40:19.680,0:40:20.760
I mean, 
maybe you think

0:40:20.760,0:40:24.360
that I'm trying to monetize them
or make a shift to mommy blogger,

0:40:24.360,0:40:26.000
but I'm not. Don't worry.

0:40:26.000,0:40:28.040
I don't plan to make videos
which feature them.

0:40:28.040,0:40:29.400
We're not that sort of channel.

0:40:29.400,0:40:30.800
And like many of you,

0:40:30.800,0:40:32.320
I would worry about the ethics

0:40:32.320,0:40:35.520
of exposing someone to a public life
that they didn't consent to.

0:40:35.760,0:40:41.120
But this is also my job, and I think
children should be allowed at workplaces.

0:40:41.200,0:40:44.200
And I know there might be
some loss of productivity.

0:40:44.400,0:40:46.440
There's been some 
loss of productivity today.

0:40:46.440,0:40:50.520
And sure, maybe not every job,
certainly not the dangerous ones.

0:40:50.600,0:40:54.080
But the system we have now 
requires institutionalization.

0:40:54.160,0:40:56.880
The system we have 
requires carers to either

0:40:56.880,0:40:58.800
give up their 
careers entirely

0:40:58.800,0:41:02.120
to focus on their children,
or to segment their day into sections

0:41:02.120,0:41:06.000
where they're isolated from their children
and their children are in care.

0:41:06.240,0:41:08.520
And I don't want to do either of those.

0:41:08.520,0:41:12.240
I really like that most European countries
have generous maternity leave,

0:41:12.400,0:41:13.840
but I'd also be 
pretty miserable

0:41:13.840,0:41:16.640
if I spent every second 
of maternity leave

0:41:16.640,0:41:19.960
focused solely on the baby
and completely neglecting

0:41:19.960,0:41:24.520
my own need for intellectual stimulation
or to participate in society.

0:41:24.720,0:41:27.960
Babies should be allowed in public
for their own sake, but doing so

0:41:27.960,0:41:31.680
would allow their parents
to maintain their public access as well.

0:41:31.920,0:41:33.800
And that's why the baby's here

0:41:33.800,0:41:36.000
Because they're a newborn 
and they can't be left alone.

0:41:36.040,0:41:38.760
Because I'm breastfeeding 
every few hours,

0:41:38.760,0:41:41.400
because I don't
want to put them in daycare.

0:41:41.400,0:41:44.680
And if you take me less seriously
as a thinker or as a professional,

0:41:44.680,0:41:47.520
because I've got a baby 
strapped to my chest,

0:41:47.520,0:41:49.240
that's your Adultism showing.

0:41:49.320,0:41:50.680
Everything I've discussed today

0:41:50.680,0:41:54.480
gets extra depressing
when you see what children want

0:41:54.560,0:41:58.840
and how easy it would be for us
to give it to them.

0:41:58.960,0:42:01.600
when they're asked,
children want to be integrated

0:42:01.600,0:42:03.640
and valued in their communities.

0:42:03.720,0:42:05.400
They want to feel safe

0:42:05.400,0:42:08.000
and they want to be able to move
through their neighborhoods.

0:42:08.000,0:42:09.360
They want to be able to conduct

0:42:09.360,0:42:13.600
a variety of activities
like playing sports or exploring.

0:42:13.680,0:42:15.120
They want public art.

0:42:15.120,0:42:16.840
They want green spaces.

0:42:16.840,0:42:19.360
They want tangible 
interactions with nature.

0:42:19.360,0:42:22.600
They want spaces
where they can meet up with their peers.

0:42:22.800,0:42:25.080
And this one was especially heartening.

0:42:25.080,0:42:27.720
Spaces where they can 
mix with kids from different

0:42:27.720,0:42:30.480
ethnic and religious 
backgrounds than their own.

0:42:30.480,0:42:34.760
So, like, they want what we all want
but shaped like them.

0:42:34.920,0:42:36.360
Usable for them.

0:42:36.360,0:42:38.880
Public sculptures that they can climb on.

0:42:38.880,0:42:41.160
Adequate lighting for dark areas.

0:42:41.160,0:42:42.120
Bird feeders.

0:42:42.120,0:42:44.520
Graffiti walls
where they're allowed to paint.

0:42:44.520,0:42:46.680
Seating protected from the elements.

0:42:46.680,0:42:48.320
Doesn't that sound nice?

0:42:48.320,0:42:51.480
I hesitate to give many concrete examples
of what changes

0:42:51.600,0:42:53.160
that we should make for children.

0:42:53.160,0:42:54.720
Because I'm not a child.

0:42:54.720,0:42:56.040
I'll just be designing

0:42:56.040,0:42:58.320
around an idyllic image of a child.

0:42:58.320,0:43:00.040
But children aren't an idea.

0:43:00.040,0:43:01.480
They're a cohort.

0:43:01.480,0:43:03.400
They can tell us what they want.

0:43:03.400,0:43:07.040
We should invite children to the table
and not tokenistically

0:43:07.040,0:43:11.280
but with the intention of actually 
engaging and taking them seriously.

0:43:11.320,0:43:16.640
Otherwise, we'll keep perpetuating an
unfair adult framework, as Abood puts it.

0:43:16.680,0:43:18.040
José María Luna:
If children and youth

0:43:18.040,0:43:20.280
do not have a way to 
empower themselves

0:43:20.280,0:43:24.120
and shape their communities,
they will remain victims of an adult world

0:43:24.120,0:43:27.920
that has continuously demonstrated
that it does not care.

0:43:28.080,0:43:29.520
I like children.

0:43:29.520,0:43:31.960
I like having children 
sharing my commute.

0:43:31.960,0:43:34.960
I like having children
running underfoot at the pub.

0:43:35.160,0:43:38.440
I don't think children should be 
confined to a narrow range

0:43:38.440,0:43:41.520
of child friendly spaces
like fenced in playgrounds.

0:43:41.720,0:43:45.320
But whether you like
or don't like children shouldn't matter

0:43:45.400,0:43:48.520
because they're people.
They have just as much right to be

0:43:48.520,0:43:53.400
in public life as you do, regardless
ofyour feelings on that matter.

0:43:53.400,0:43:55.240
🎵 bass note 🎵

0:43:55.760,0:43:57.880
We can't make
anyone watching

0:43:57.880,0:43:59.600
care about children.

0:43:59.600,0:44:00.440
We can't make -

0:44:00.440,0:44:02.520
(Loud Click)

0:44:02.520,0:44:03.440
Neil, what happened??

0:44:03.440,0:44:04.560
🎵 jazz drums 🎵

0:44:04.760,0:44:05.520
Neil: 
I don't know.

0:44:05.520,0:44:08.280
We don't have 
Philosophy Tube’s budget, do we?

0:44:08.640,0:44:10.400
🎵 more drums 🎵

0:44:10.680,0:44:13.440
Recently,
I spent some time in a maternity hospital.

0:44:13.960,0:44:15.360
It was interesting.

0:44:15.360,0:44:20.680
There was an atmosphere of tension
and of excitement and magic, actually,

0:44:20.760,0:44:26.640
and horror and grossness and mundaneness
and occasionally tragedy.

0:44:26.720,0:44:29.240
We had some time to soak up all of it.

0:44:29.240,0:44:33.000
Sarah was in there for almost ten days,
having the baby.

0:44:33.080,0:44:34.320
Her labor had to be induced.

0:44:34.320,0:44:37.520
And unfortunately,
it wasn't a very successful induction

0:44:37.720,0:44:41.040
and little Bábóg had some trouble
coming out into the world.

0:44:41.200,0:44:45.240
Basically, contractions, but no dilation,
no progression, just a little baby

0:44:45.440,0:44:47.960
stuck in there getting 
squished by a womb,

0:44:47.960,0:44:51.480
displaying increasingly distressed 
and distressing vital signs.

0:44:51.720,0:44:56.000
And of course, Sarah in absolute agony,
but kind of for no reason.

0:44:56.120,0:44:57.320
We had very good care.

0:44:57.320,0:44:59.880
There is very good
maternity care in Ireland,

0:44:59.880,0:45:01.600
and that was particularly striking
for Sarah

0:45:01.600,0:45:05.480
coming from the States where there are
statistically poor maternity outcomes.

0:45:05.560,0:45:09.960
In fact, the death rate isn't just high
in the US, it's actively increasing.

0:45:10.080,0:45:14.040
And it felt like the staff there
in Galway, a combination of doctors,

0:45:14.040,0:45:17.600
nurses, medical students and midwives
all were fully in it.

0:45:17.840,0:45:20.760
Hearts invested,
life purpose being fulfilled,

0:45:20.760,0:45:23.120
at least from my perspective,
it felt like

0:45:23.120,0:45:25.880
and I may be come across
as a little bit of a wanker

0:45:25.880,0:45:28.280
putting it this way, 
but it felt so authentic.

0:45:28.360,0:45:32.040
It's just such an authentic experience
having a baby.

0:45:32.120,0:45:33.400
I mean,

0:45:33.480,0:45:35.440
when they held up our baby,

0:45:35.440,0:45:39.600
our new shining
nexus of unimaginable potential and beauty

0:45:39.720,0:45:43.600
and the boundaries of reality were
as wishy-washy as my tear-veiled vision

0:45:43.720,0:45:45.600
and the force of love itself,

0:45:45.600,0:45:47.160
which had taken 
such a deep breath

0:45:47.160,0:45:49.400
finally exhaled.

0:45:49.800,0:45:52.320
It felt authentic, you know, like it
felt like something was happening.

0:45:52.320,0:45:54.240
But anyway,
that's not the point of the story.

0:45:54.240,0:45:57.120
There was a different bit to that bit

0:45:57.120,0:46:02.200
There was a bit where I stood outside of
the hospital and I was holding burritos.

0:46:02.280,0:46:04.560
I just bought these mediocre burritos
right?

0:46:04.560,0:46:06.040
And I felt
as I stood there

0:46:06.280,0:46:09.040
that I was standing between 
two very different worlds.

0:46:09.120,0:46:11.760
On the one side was this magical

0:46:11.760,0:46:15.440
hospital place where people fulfilled
their life's purpose.

0:46:15.520,0:46:18.480
This really rather difficult
and involved and body-horror-infused

0:46:18.480,0:46:21.920
and emotionally fraught business of birth
and medicine and care.

0:46:22.000,0:46:25.600
And on the other side, past the pedestrian
crossing and the busy road

0:46:25.880,0:46:27.280
was Tesco

0:46:27.360,0:46:28.280
and Burritos

0:46:28.280,0:46:30.520
and chain pubs and moneylenders.

0:46:30.600,0:46:35.280
And we're sort of expected
to think that these two are the same world

0:46:35.280,0:46:38.520
and that in fact the hospital world
depends for its survival

0:46:38.520,0:46:41.600
and viability on the Tesco and burrito
and money lender world.

0:46:41.760,0:46:43.480
But this is of course not true.

0:46:43.480,0:46:45.160
We've been caring for each other

0:46:45.160,0:46:48.880
for a lot longer than we've been selling
assembly line burritos.

0:46:48.960,0:46:52.560
Ireland almost has a public healthcare
system, and Sarah and Bábóg

0:46:52.560,0:46:55.560
basically got free care
for the duration of the pregnancy.

0:46:55.800,0:46:58.560
And it feels right, actually,

0:46:58.560,0:47:01.400
that that should be something
that society exists to do.

0:47:01.400,0:47:06.200
It feels right that we all collectively
should be simultaneously protective

0:47:06.280,0:47:10.320
and welcoming towards Bábóg
and that we should be challenged

0:47:10.320,0:47:14.440
in an outward radius from Bábóg’s
needs to reevaluate the world.

0:47:14.640,0:47:19.800
It feels deeply wrong to think of
their future welfare being based on money.

0:47:20.040,0:47:24.480
And so following that logic, it should be
deeply morally wrong that any child

0:47:24.480,0:47:28.520
or any person should have their future
welfare, be based on their economic value.

0:47:28.760,0:47:33.560
Their value in reality, in a moral sense,
is coming from somewhere else.

0:47:33.640,0:47:36.360
So I want to circle the block

0:47:36.360,0:47:39.840
of this Childism philosophy thing

0:47:39.840,0:47:44.000
with exactly that dichotomy
in my mind, a society of children,

0:47:44.080,0:47:48.360
which is a society of schools
and hospitals and playgrounds

0:47:48.360,0:47:52.840
and mutual interdependence
and so forth, versus a society of adults,

0:47:52.920,0:47:58.800
which is money and exploitation,
and Tesco and techno feudalism.

0:47:58.880,0:48:02.320
See, no matter how lofty or far
reaching or academic this gets,

0:48:02.320,0:48:06.240
ultimately this is still a story
about a baby in the world,

0:48:06.240,0:48:09.720
just like how your story is ultimately
about a baby in the world.

0:48:09.720,0:48:10.680
That's you.

0:48:10.680,0:48:11.280
And you know

0:48:11.280,0:48:15.960
the movie Three Men and a Baby
is actually about Three Babies and a Baby,

0:48:16.040,0:48:17.720
if you think about it.

0:48:17.720,0:48:19.800
(embarrassed laugh)

0:48:19.880,0:48:20.280
Okay.

0:48:20.280,0:48:22.600
So one of the things

0:48:22.600,0:48:26.280
that we could accidentally do here
that we might want to, you know, not do

0:48:26.360,0:48:29.240
is to build a whole picture of
childism that makes you think,

0:48:29.240,0:48:30.120
oh, I get it!

0:48:30.200,0:48:34.680
This is like “children are brilliant.
The Philosophy.”

0:48:34.680,0:48:35.680
This is wrong.

0:48:35.680,0:48:36.480
That isn't it?

0:48:36.480,0:48:39.720
That would be as silly as coming
to the conclusion that feminism is.

0:48:39.840,0:48:41.920
“Women are brilliant.
The Philosophy.”

0:48:42.080,0:48:45.000
which I'm aware, is a conclusion 
that some people do come to,

0:48:45.200,0:48:46.560
and I wish they wouldn't.

0:48:46.560,0:48:49.560
Some people get these sorts of things
wrong on purpose, actually,

0:48:49.560,0:48:52.200
and they quite actively
throw a spanner in the works

0:48:52.200,0:48:54.360
by responding to 
feminism with,

0:48:54.360,0:48:56.600
“Well, men are great too!”

0:48:56.600,0:49:00.560
or “are you saying
women never do anything wrong??”

0:49:00.560,0:49:03.440
and thus participate at whatever level
in a sort of ratcheting

0:49:03.440,0:49:07.400
of misinterpretation that tends towards
making feminism look silly?

0:49:07.400,0:49:10.400
And much like 
our discussion of insults earlier,

0:49:10.400,0:49:14.520
erases productive conversations 
about problems like

0:49:14.520,0:49:16.560
patriarchy or gender based violence.

0:49:16.600,0:49:20.600
Similarly, people interpret
critical race theory as this kind of

0:49:20.680,0:49:23.640
inelegant, half-assed 
exaltation of non-white

0:49:23.640,0:49:27.440
racial identities or some kind of cult
of Negative Nellies who hate the whites,

0:49:27.440,0:49:31.480
which you'd have to be pretty generous
to actually interpret as misunderstanding.

0:49:31.480,0:49:32.680
But I digress.

0:49:32.680,0:49:37.080
This is important, though, because as I
now start to talk about the details

0:49:37.080,0:49:40.200
of things like democratic representation
for children,

0:49:40.200,0:49:42.040
political participation for children,

0:49:42.040,0:49:46.080
youth activists, equality for 
children imagined in new and concrete

0:49:46.080,0:49:49.840
ways, you might find yourself
somewhere on that spectrum of

0:49:49.920,0:49:52.320
“But we can't really be serious
about all of this.”

0:49:52.320,0:49:55.800
“We're not really considering children
as people in this way, are we?”

0:49:56.000,0:49:58.920
And this is just something
I would ask you to be aware of as we go,

0:49:58.920,0:50:02.920
because there is such a thing
as invisible ideology.

0:50:02.920,0:50:04.320
ideas that you hold

0:50:04.400,0:50:07.960
that you didn't come up with
that don't even necessarily serve you,

0:50:08.080,0:50:12.360
that you nonetheless reproduce
on the behalf of your oppressors.

0:50:12.480,0:50:14.880
This is part of what makes a status quo,

0:50:14.880,0:50:18.040
however unjust and dysfunctional
that status quo is

0:50:18.040,0:50:22.400
more comfortable than 
particular imaginable alternatives

0:50:22.400,0:50:23.840
in John Walll's paper.

0:50:23.840,0:50:28.600
Can Democracy Represent Children?
Towards a Politics of Difference

0:50:28.600,0:50:31.800
He points out that history regards
the political role of children

0:50:31.960,0:50:34.840
in often more generous ways 
than we do now

0:50:34.840,0:50:36.480
That Dang Dad:
In the past, children have been kings

0:50:36.480,0:50:39.600
and queens played important roles
in the labor movements, marched

0:50:39.600,0:50:43.600
with Gandhi to liberate India, helped
desegregate the United States South,

0:50:43.840,0:50:47.480
and been involved in one way or another
in all manner of political movements.

0:50:47.640,0:50:51.520
Have you ever heard of the
Newsboys Strike of 1899?

0:50:51.600,0:50:54.040
It's a long and storied
and controversial tale

0:50:54.040,0:50:56.240
that we can't fully indulge here today.

0:50:56.240,0:50:59.280
But basically, newspaper
hawkers of the time, young men

0:50:59.280,0:51:03.480
and boys had a strike for two weeks
which effectively halved the circulation

0:51:03.480,0:51:07.240
of the papers of both Pulitzer
and William Randolph Hearst.

0:51:07.480,0:51:09.840
Now, they didn't
exactly succeed in their aims.

0:51:09.840,0:51:13.160
Neither Hearst
nor Pulitzer agreed to pay them more,

0:51:13.160,0:51:16.560
but they did leverage buybacks
for the papers that they didn't sell,

0:51:16.560,0:51:20.600
so they successfully impacted
their own poverty at the expense

0:51:20.800,0:51:23.920
of those famously miserly 
capitalists c***s

0:51:23.920,0:51:25.560
And that's a win for the little fella.

0:51:25.560,0:51:29.000
It's all somewhat faithfully recreated
in the Disney film Newsies

0:51:29.160,0:51:33.360
and the Broadway musical of the same name,
neither of which I've seen,

0:51:33.440,0:51:34.920
but Biz Berkeley has.

0:51:34.920,0:51:37.400
So you can just watch the video
that she did about it

0:51:37.400,0:51:39.080
🎵 swelling music 🎵

0:51:39.160,0:51:41.160
🎵 When I Dream 🎵

0:51:41.160,0:51:44.480
Anyway, the news
hawkers were an exploited workforce.

0:51:44.560,0:51:45.280
Absolutely.

0:51:45.280,0:51:49.120
And it sucks that children were part
of an exploited workforce,

0:51:49.200,0:51:52.600
but they also organized
and used collective action.

0:51:52.800,0:51:56.560
This gets referred to as “Youth Activism”
now because of course

0:51:56.560,0:51:59.720
it's different to just activism
because they're children.

0:51:59.880,0:52:01.080
It's so cute.

0:52:01.080,0:52:02.600
They think that they're people.

0:52:03.240,0:52:05.440
But I'm going to put a pin in this

0:52:05.440,0:52:06.000
(pin!)

0:52:06.000,0:52:07.320
and it's a lynchpin,

0:52:07.320,0:52:10.120
it’ll be really quite important
and have something to do with

0:52:10.120,0:52:12.720
Youth Activism and kids
fighting for the whole world.

0:52:12.720,0:52:14.120
You'll see it's a whole thing

0:52:14.120,0:52:16.160
because children, it would seem,

0:52:16.240,0:52:20.160
are the cohort most patently aware
of how f*cked the world is

0:52:20.320,0:52:23.320
and just how urgent and necessary it is

0:52:23.320,0:52:27.200
to stop playing adult games
and unf*ck the world immediately.

0:52:27.200,0:52:31.520
But as I say, we’ll pin that because that
is children outside of the establishment.

0:52:31.680,0:52:35.960
No matter how Other a group is, it's
possible to picture them outside the gates

0:52:36.120,0:52:37.640
yelling and saying, “This Sucks!”

0:52:37.640,0:52:40.240
Even children don't get
their usual erasure from that scenario.

0:52:40.240,0:52:44.360
But if we turn our attention instead
to children sitting in the big chairs,

0:52:44.440,0:52:46.480
in the big rooms,
making the big decisions

0:52:46.480,0:52:49.160
Like Bossy Baby baby 
or Blank Check or whatever

0:52:49.160,0:52:50.960
then it does start to sound 
a bit weird, right?

0:52:51.160,0:52:54.560
If we look at the various instances
where there has actually been an attempt

0:52:54.560,0:52:58.120
to integrate children into democracy,
to facilitate their participation

0:52:58.120,0:53:01.560
in the establishment,
then our preconceptions,

0:53:01.560,0:53:03.520
our clichéd 
mental images

0:53:03.520,0:53:06.360
and our cognitive biases
kick right back in again.

0:53:06.440,0:53:09.120
But it's true that attempts have been made
at this very thing,

0:53:09.120,0:53:13.200
this more liberal version
of representing children in politics.

0:53:13.200,0:53:16.480
And by looking at some of the examples
of children's democratic

0:53:16.480,0:53:19.920
participation, hopefully
it will help us to understand how,

0:53:20.040,0:53:24.640
One, the issues with involving children
in democracy are actually quite arbitrary.

0:53:24.840,0:53:28.640
And Two,
those issues are also really similar

0:53:28.720,0:53:32.520
to the issues that face
everyone who gets excluded from democracy.

0:53:32.520,0:53:37.600
So again, drawing from John Wall's paper,
there is something of a shift around 1989

0:53:37.800,0:53:40.400
with the establishment of the Convention
of the Rights of the Child,

0:53:40.400,0:53:43.560
with various countries
struggling to interpret or pay lip service

0:53:43.680,0:53:47.160
to listening to children
without that actually being a concrete

0:53:47.160,0:53:50.760
legal obligation, you have New Zealand,
South Africa, even Israel

0:53:50.880,0:53:54.200
establishing consultative 
bodies for children.

0:53:54.280,0:53:55.320
In more recent years,

0:53:55.320,0:53:58.880
many countries go a step further
by introducing children's parliaments,

0:53:59.120,0:54:02.280
the idea being that adults assumptions
about the needs of children

0:54:02.440,0:54:05.880
can be supplemented
or challenged by children themselves.

0:54:05.880,0:54:08.960
But as Wall and others have pointed out,
there's a few issues here.

0:54:09.160,0:54:10.600
He clears up the picture

0:54:10.600,0:54:14.920
of democratic participation for children
by splitting it into three categories:

0:54:15.000,0:54:17.920
Agency, Interdependence 
and Difference

0:54:17.920,0:54:19.240
Okay, first: 
Agency.

0:54:19.440,0:54:23.160
That idea that you can just give children
the vote, give them the microphone,

0:54:23.160,0:54:25.080
give them something, give them agency.

0:54:25.080,0:54:28.200
Some of the problems with this,
we actually touched on already

0:54:28.200,0:54:30.080
First: which children?

0:54:30.440,0:54:33.640
that is, wealthier children from 
good schools are overrepresented in

0:54:33.640,0:54:36.640
even the most benevolent forward
thinking of organizations.

0:54:36.800,0:54:40.920
Agency has the problem of simultaneously
holding open doors for certain

0:54:40.920,0:54:44.520
kinds of people and closing doors
for other kinds of people.

0:54:44.680,0:54:48.800
It tends to be that those who most closely
resemble the existing power elites

0:54:49.000,0:54:53.480
will have disproportionately
greater “agency” in political participation.

0:54:53.480,0:54:55.920
If we're talking about adults,
they'll be the sort of people

0:54:55.920,0:55:00.560
who have the ear of the powerful, or
they'll be part of existing institutions.

0:55:00.560,0:55:03.200
They'll have access to education,
they'll have property,

0:55:03.200,0:55:06.640
they'll have savings, technology,
other forms of cultural capital.

0:55:06.640,0:55:10.560
And if we're talking about children,
even once you've gotten past the razors of

0:55:10.560,0:55:13.680
which kids, rich kids, the right kids,
the white kids?

0:55:13.680,0:55:15.600
you still have the problem 
that they will be

0:55:15.600,0:55:18.040
the children who 
most resemble adults

0:55:18.240,0:55:21.560
and at that most resemble wealthy
and powerful adults.

0:55:21.720,0:55:23.520
On top of that, you have Tokenism.

0:55:23.520,0:55:27.320
This idea that whatever diversity you
is mostly decorative.

0:55:27.400,0:55:31.400
Now, at time of writing,
most everyone even remotely left of center

0:55:31.560,0:55:34.680
is crying out for some 
decorative tokenism in the US

0:55:34.680,0:55:38.960
because it's better than the beady-eyed 
Ku Klux Klan bloodthirsty whitewashing

0:55:38.960,0:55:41.280
evisceration of the 
Republican Party under Trump,

0:55:41.280,0:55:42.800
and none of them have any eyebrows.

0:55:42.800,0:55:45.720
But we can still,
I hope, recognize that sticking

0:55:45.720,0:55:50.520
some marginalized people in a committee
does not actually emancipate them.

0:55:50.600,0:55:54.160
This is extra true of sticking children
in a committee

0:55:54.280,0:55:55.320
That Dang Dad:
as suppressed groups

0:55:55.320,0:55:59.320
throughout history have found citizenship
in name can differ from citizenship

0:55:59.320,0:56:03.560
in reality. For example, children
in civic councils in the UK report

0:56:03.560,0:56:06.560
feeling that, while they can 
participate and have a voice.

0:56:06.800,0:56:08.440
These councils are really controlled

0:56:08.440,0:56:12.240
by larger institutional structures
that are run by adults.

0:56:12.320,0:56:15.680
There's a basic structural issue
with the concept of agency,

0:56:15.680,0:56:16.920
as Wall puts it.

0:56:17.000,0:56:18.120
That Dang Dad:
The problem is that

0:56:18.120,0:56:20.480
agency itself is a political norm

0:56:20.480,0:56:22.920
with historically adult-centered biases.

0:56:22.920,0:56:26.880
So he outlines his next category:
Interdependence.

0:56:26.880,0:56:29.920
A different form of participation
that isn't contingent

0:56:29.920,0:56:33.400
on hierarchical skills
and knowledge and various forms of capital.

0:56:33.520,0:56:35.280
Now, interdependence is a term

0:56:35.280,0:56:36.880
we've already thrown around once or twice,

0:56:36.880,0:56:40.360
but we might now take a moment
to actually understand

0:56:40.360,0:56:41.360
That Dang Dad: 
children can be

0:56:41.360,0:56:44.040
included as full
rather than second class citizens,

0:56:44.040,0:56:47.560
the argument goes
If citizenship is broadened to include

0:56:47.560,0:56:51.520
relational ties and social
and political interdependencies,

0:56:51.600,0:56:54.520
that is persons simultaneously active

0:56:54.520,0:56:58.040
independence and passive dependance.

0:56:58.120,0:57:03.040
We exist in webs of relationships
with different dependencies.

0:57:03.120,0:57:06.880
Drawing on other thinkers, John Wall
points out that the idea of an independent

0:57:06.880,0:57:10.680
participant in democracy
is kind of a fallacy in the first place.

0:57:10.680,0:57:12.680
Individuals,
just like, y’know

0:57:12.680,0:57:16.520
your parents or your neighbors,
the people commenting on our last video,

0:57:16.600,0:57:19.800
they cannot necessarily 
grasp political concepts,

0:57:19.800,0:57:22.080
economic or ecological problems,

0:57:22.080,0:57:25.800
clearly, they cannot grasp issues
of public health and so on.

0:57:26.040,0:57:29.480
We need each other
in order to outsource expertise.

0:57:29.560,0:57:32.760
And therefore, citizenship
is a dynamic process

0:57:32.760,0:57:36.240
of active independence
and passive dependance.

0:57:36.240,0:57:40.720
The idea of any category of person
who is granted the respect to make salient

0:57:40.720,0:57:44.280
political decisions because of that
category has always been silly.

0:57:44.320,0:57:49.760
Whether the category is landowner or man
or white person or f***ing Baron or Duke

0:57:49.840,0:57:54.760
And that idea doesn't stop being silly
just because now the category is adult.

0:57:54.920,0:57:57.480
Have you met adults?

0:57:57.480,0:58:01.120
As I will really emphasize later,
a key missing component of functional

0:58:01.120,0:58:04.480
and benevolent democratic 
participation is education.

0:58:04.480,0:58:08.760
This idea that we must learn or outsource
learning would require a willingness

0:58:08.760,0:58:13.600
to suspend entitlement when you don't know
and to admit when you don't know,

0:58:13.600,0:58:16.920
to get good at 
accessing the experience of not knowing

0:58:17.040,0:58:19.960
and therefore knowing when it is
that you are not capable of showing

0:58:19.960,0:58:22.680
greater judgment
than someone who doesn't speak English

0:58:22.680,0:58:24.720
or someone with a mental illness
or someone

0:58:24.720,0:58:28.000
with an intellectual disability,
or indeed a child.

0:58:28.080,0:58:29.680
Sometimes you don't know
better than a child.

0:58:29.680,0:58:33.400
That itself would radically 
transform democracy,

0:58:33.480,0:58:35.120
as Mark Jans puts it in

0:58:35.120,0:58:39.320
Children as Citizens: Towards a 
Contemporary Notion of Child Participation.

0:58:39.400,0:58:40.800
Babila: 
This citizenship of children

0:58:40.800,0:58:42.800
is based on a continuous learning process

0:58:42.800,0:58:44.960
in which children and adults
are interdependent.

0:58:44.960,0:58:47.800
In this interdependency,
the playful way in which children

0:58:47.800,0:58:50.800
give meaning to their environment
has to be taken into account.

0:58:50.840,0:58:51.680
The play of children

0:58:51.680,0:58:54.920
cannot merely be considered
as socially unimportant child play.

0:58:55.000,0:58:57.840
But there's still an underlying issue
with interdependence,

0:58:57.840,0:59:00.840
and that is that it represents
a failure of imagination

0:59:01.000,0:59:05.080
and will tend to bring us right back
to situations that favor adults.

0:59:05.160,0:59:07.280
Usually, 
advocacy.

0:59:07.280,0:59:11.280
as in hey group that is dependent 
on us to represent them.

0:59:11.440,0:59:12.480
What kind of ice cream

0:59:12.480,0:59:15.680
would you like with this legislation
that increases funding for the police?

0:59:15.680,0:59:19.480
Would you like Biden Genocide
or Harris Genocide?

0:59:19.720,0:59:24.080
Interdependence as much as it is
very much along the right path,

0:59:24.160,0:59:27.200
still has this implicit
hierarchical order of things

0:59:27.360,0:59:31.880
in which power kindly squats down
next to non-power asks it

0:59:32.040,0:59:34.760
how many sugars it would like in its tea,
and then

0:59:34.760,0:59:37.040
defunds the committee 
in charge of tea

0:59:37.040,0:59:40.720
in order to begin to get around this
and other issues with interdependence,

0:59:40.920,0:59:44.280
Wall proposes a third category: 
Difference

0:59:44.280,0:59:46.400
and this is the real 
blow-it-all-up

0:59:46.400,0:59:49.800
change our mindsets
anti-colonial childist radicalism

0:59:49.800,0:59:50.880
That Dang Dad: 
on this model,

0:59:50.880,0:59:54.800
democracy means striving 
against historical norms of power

0:59:54.800,0:59:59.320
for the inclusion of the greatest possible
diversity of social differences.

0:59:59.400,1:00:01.000
This isn't DEI,

1:00:01.000,1:00:02.880
this is f***ing

1:00:02.880,1:00:04.240
Die.

1:00:04.320,1:00:06.120
That's a bad joke.

1:00:06.120,1:00:09.720
In its simplest form,
we can say that an inclusive democracy

1:00:09.960,1:00:12.920
should represent
the specific needs of different groups

1:00:12.920,1:00:16.800
in their specific and different ways
that those groups interact

1:00:16.800,1:00:20.640
with and understand society
differently to each other.

1:00:20.760,1:00:24.440
This is the exact opposite of the Euro-
Americananian norm

1:00:24.440,1:00:27.160
that if anyone should dare
to try to make a life for themselves

1:00:27.160,1:00:31.440
in one of these golden imperial lands
of the free, then they had better curtail

1:00:31.440,1:00:36.480
their bloody culture and adapt to the many
horrible norms in said land of the free.

1:00:36.720,1:00:40.120
Conformities understood
through the rhetoric of its richest

1:00:40.280,1:00:43.560
and most powerful
and most c***-like

1:00:43.560,1:00:45.520
different cultures, be they
from

1:00:45.520,1:00:47.400
foreign lands
or minority religions,

1:00:47.400,1:00:51.000
or they're queer, or they have different
needs or different neurotypes, or indeed

1:00:51.000,1:00:55.600
they are simply children
should be represented in that difference,

1:00:55.840,1:00:59.440
by that difference,
different democraies should be different.

1:00:59.480,1:01:02.480
Public spheres should be plural
and many and different.

1:01:02.480,1:01:04.640
And the people watching 
who already know a thing or two

1:01:04.640,1:01:07.800
about decolonialism
will know what I'm dancing around

1:01:07.800,1:01:12.640
is that the process of “civilizing”
or “developing democracy”

1:01:12.720,1:01:17.360
is the same as the process of conforming
to the will and design of the colonizers.

1:01:17.360,1:01:18.400
More on that later.

1:01:18.400,1:01:21.840
Because in the more macro,
all encompassing complex high

1:01:21.840,1:01:24.960
end of this idea, some childists
are proposing that in order

1:01:24.960,1:01:29.240
to do fair representation
and utopia properly, democracy itself

1:01:29.240,1:01:32.360
should be deconstructive
rather than consensus-oriented,

1:01:32.360,1:01:35.640
and the role of the citizen
should be antagonistic towards power

1:01:35.720,1:01:38.520
rather than part of the mechanism
that creates it

1:01:38.520,1:01:39.040
(sound of chair)

1:01:39.120,1:01:42.560
and the people watching who already know
a thing or two about political anarchism

1:01:42.560,1:01:48.240
will also be saying
Yes, yes, we know more on that, etc.

1:01:48.960,1:01:49.720
(chair)

1:01:49.800,1:01:52.760
But for me, 
while that's all huge and inspirational.

1:01:52.760,1:01:55.240
It's not quite substantive
or actionable enough,

1:01:55.240,1:01:58.240
or at least it doesn't yet
compose a material set of tools

1:01:58.320,1:02:00.960
and guidelines
and things we can do

1:02:00.960,1:02:02.680
for that, I must
draw your attention

1:02:02.680,1:02:06.080
back to this here pin, 
because I promise

1:02:06.160,1:02:08.640
there's actually a way of 
doing all of this,

1:02:08.640,1:02:10.640
at least an imaginable way.

1:02:10.680,1:02:12.520
In the meantime,
what you’re probably

1:02:12.520,1:02:15.640
currently imagining as the
democratic representation of children

1:02:15.840,1:02:19.080
is probably still somewhat
mired in tokenism

1:02:19.080,1:02:21.480
and playing pretend 
and ultimately, at best,

1:02:21.480,1:02:24.720
advocacy with extra steps 
by adults for children.

1:02:24.720,1:02:27.440
I mean, this essay is in many ways
no different.

1:02:27.440,1:02:28.440
It is adults.

1:02:28.440,1:02:32.680
Sarah and I thinking about what
children need and speculating

1:02:32.680,1:02:36.480
on what young people think and advocating
for what young people would say,

1:02:36.680,1:02:38.720
if only there was some way
to listen to them.

1:02:38.720,1:02:42.320
Because let's face it,
when you're not imagining these idealized

1:02:42.320,1:02:45.960
four foot tall activists and advocates
who all look like Greta Thunberg

1:02:46.200,1:02:49.160
and speak six languages, 
and you instead imagine

1:02:49.160,1:02:51.160
actual children!

1:02:51.160,1:02:53.840
children you have met,
I mean, like a crowd of them.

1:02:53.920,1:02:58.440
It's just a cacophony of chewing gum
and monster energy drink and references

1:02:58.440,1:03:00.720
to Bluey, and it's impossible
to make out a single word

1:03:00.720,1:03:02.160
Right?

1:03:02.160,1:03:03.880
No, obviously,
that's bollocks.

1:03:03.880,1:03:07.720
But still, we do default to the adult-
centric frame quite readily,

1:03:07.880,1:03:10.760
and it seems to be
an irresistible worldview.

1:03:10.760,1:03:12.080
There seems to be a pattern

1:03:12.080,1:03:16.200
to the excuses we use to rationalize
the disenfranchisement of kids:

1:03:16.360,1:03:20.360
Children can't engage with the political process,
children can't articulate themselves.

1:03:20.520,1:03:23.280
Children aren't good at judging
their own needs and so on.

1:03:23.280,1:03:28.160
And again, these excuses,
when we set aside for a moment

1:03:28.240,1:03:29.400
that they're about children,

1:03:29.400,1:03:33.360
may be strikingly familiar
to those who are disempowered in general

1:03:33.560,1:03:37.440
for trans people, for disabled people,
for people with chronic illnesses.

1:03:37.480,1:03:43.080
“Oh, you're not understanding the system,
you're extremist, naive-ists

1:03:43.080,1:03:44.560
and you're pushing people 
away from your cause!”

1:03:44.760,1:03:46.640
for mentally ill people, 
for pregnant people.

1:03:46.840,1:03:48.880
“You're not actually able
to judge your own needs!

1:03:48.880,1:03:50.880
Have you been talking to Doctor
Google again?”

1:03:50.880,1:03:52.680
for immigrants, for refugees,

1:03:52.760,1:03:56.640
for people on minimum wage, for anyone
basically who stands outside

1:03:56.640,1:03:58.360
of the establishment halls of power,

1:03:58.360,1:04:00.840
No matter how perfectly
you articulate your needs

1:04:00.840,1:04:04.440
and no matter how incontrovertibly
you understand

1:04:04.440,1:04:08.400
and know your own needs, you don't
get to actually represent yourself.

1:04:08.520,1:04:10.000
And it's familiar, right?

1:04:10.000,1:04:13.000
that even the people
that do come close to representing you

1:04:13.080,1:04:16.920
are the richer, more educated, prettier
and more urban version

1:04:16.960,1:04:20.160
of you and the means
by which the participants are

1:04:20.160,1:04:22.680
then Disenfranchized is,
of course, familiar too!

1:04:22.680,1:04:26.280
Participation transformed 
into manipulation, decoration and tokenism.

1:04:26.280,1:04:29.760
In fact, much of the language
used to describe disenfranchisement

1:04:29.760,1:04:36.120
has the adult child dynamic baked into it
Infantilizing, belittling, patronizing.

1:04:36.240,1:04:39.240
They're making it difficult for me
to draw a parallel here.

1:04:39.400,1:04:42.520
And so, of course,
when people seek meaningful change,

1:04:42.520,1:04:46.680
they get told to grow up,
which is particularly unfair

1:04:46.760,1:04:51.000
on the cohort of literal children
and young people who, when they grow up,

1:04:51.200,1:04:55.280
will no longer
have the political concerns of children.

1:04:55.360,1:04:59.640
Of course, that's the idea
because having just gone full circle,

1:04:59.800,1:05:03.240
we now see that 
the traits that make them children

1:05:03.240,1:05:06.600
are the very things that we otherize
and objectify in the first place.

1:05:06.840,1:05:10.760
These otherized,
objectified, childishnesses

1:05:10.760,1:05:13.880
are the things that become problems,
whether they are

1:05:14.120,1:05:17.680
value neutral traits or needs
or just phenomena peculiar to a cohort.

1:05:17.880,1:05:21.320
The idea is “come back to me
when you're an adult!”

1:05:21.320,1:05:24.760
Very similar to “come back to me
when you're no longer trans”

1:05:24.760,1:05:28.320
or you can lean in or talk
like a white person, or you can

1:05:28.520,1:05:30.720
get out of that f***ing wheelchair
or whatever.

1:05:30.720,1:05:33.480
And it may be, as ugly
as it's going to feel,

1:05:33.480,1:05:37.200
that the things you think of
as annoying about children are exactly

1:05:37.200,1:05:40.960
those otherized, socially undesirable,
economically unproductive

1:05:40.960,1:05:44.320
and generally needy and vulnerable traits
which your oppressor

1:05:44.320,1:05:47.000
wants you to hate 
about children

1:05:47.000,1:05:49.800
wants you to objectify
and villainize and pathologize.

1:05:49.800,1:05:54.120
Ugh, children on planes, children
in restaurants, children needing

1:05:54.120,1:05:58.120
things, costing money, being born,
bringing more misery into the world,

1:05:58.360,1:06:02.320
taking over my friends’ lives!
As ugly as it might feel,

1:06:02.400,1:06:05.400
it may be that your oppressor
wants you to hate those things

1:06:05.520,1:06:10.640
because those are the things
that he hates about you.

1:06:10.640,1:06:18.040
(footsteps exiting the stage)

1:06:18.120,1:06:21.280
I bet there's a part of you right now
that's thinking, okay,

1:06:21.360,1:06:25.880
this is great in theory, but in practice
this is kind of hippie nonsense.

1:06:25.880,1:06:27.440
Maybe you're willing to go along with me

1:06:27.440,1:06:31.240
when I say that we're interdependent,
that makes some intuitive sense.

1:06:31.240,1:06:33.600
No one does anything truly alone.

1:06:33.600,1:06:38.040
But what if I ask you to picture
someone with no agency,

1:06:38.120,1:06:44.120
someone who has no active independence,
someone who only takes and doesn't give?

1:06:44.160,1:06:45.600
Like, what about infants?

1:06:45.600,1:06:46.440
It's all well and good

1:06:46.440,1:06:49.440
to say that relationships with older
children are reciprocal.

1:06:49.600,1:06:52.640
They can report on themselves,
they can be reasoned with.

1:06:52.640,1:06:55.160
They can help come up with solutions
when there's a problem

1:06:55.160,1:06:57.480
that they're facing,
even they still need

1:06:57.480,1:06:59.040
your involvement
for some of it.

1:06:59.040,1:07:01.640
They can even provide
moments of care for adults.

1:07:01.640,1:07:04.920
Like one night
I was up with the baby at 2 a.m.

1:07:04.920,1:07:06.000
and my 14 year old

1:07:06.000,1:07:07.800
step kid peeks their head in the door

1:07:07.800,1:07:09.200
because they thought they heard me

1:07:09.240,1:07:13.400
and they wanted to offer me
a cup of herbal tea, which in that hazy,

1:07:13.400,1:07:17.160
sleep deprived state,
it sounded like my absolute salvation.

1:07:17.200,1:07:19.920
So they made it for me
and they brought it to me.

1:07:19.920,1:07:21.720
I was up because I was breastfeeding.

1:07:21.720,1:07:23.520
They were up because they're a teenager

1:07:23.520,1:07:27.160
and they did a sweet thing for me
at a time when I really needed support.

1:07:27.240,1:07:30.240
But they're 14.
What about younger children?

1:07:30.280,1:07:33.480
What about infants? What about my newborn?

1:07:33.560,1:07:37.560
I think many people would argue
that my newborn isn't even a person yet.

1:07:37.560,1:07:38.520
Not really.

1:07:38.520,1:07:40.560
They’d argue that
newborns are completely dependent.

1:07:40.560,1:07:43.520
They can't give back.
They can't even reciprocate.

1:07:43.520,1:07:47.280
They're just creatures of instinct
with no thoughts or feelings of their own.

1:07:47.360,1:07:49.880
They can't feel stress.
They can't feel pain.

1:07:49.880,1:07:51.400
You think they're smiling?

1:07:51.400,1:07:53.880
That's actually just gas.

1:07:53.880,1:07:55.480
Except it's not.

1:07:55.480,1:07:57.760
Because newborns do feel stress.

1:07:57.840,1:08:00.000
And though
they have a limited set of tools

1:08:00.000,1:08:04.000
with which to address it,
they can do things like avert their gaze

1:08:04.000,1:08:08.120
from the object of stress in order
to help regulate their heartbeats.

1:08:08.120,1:08:12.360
Newborns do feel pain, something we didn't
learn until as late as the 1980s,

1:08:12.520,1:08:16.040
before which we were still sometimes
doing surgery on newborns

1:08:16.040,1:08:19.160
without pain relief and wondering
why they were dying of shock.

1:08:19.200,1:08:22.560
Recently, The Lancet, the world's
most prestigious public health journal,

1:08:22.800,1:08:26.400
had to put out an article
calling on doctors to properly medicate

1:08:26.400,1:08:30.440
newborns undergoing painful
medical procedures as the current practice

1:08:30.560,1:08:34.360
of giving them sugar water 
doesn't actually address pain

1:08:34.400,1:08:37.680
and the repeated experiences
of feeling pain, even in a baby

1:08:37.680,1:08:41.000
so young, is so disruptive
that it can lead to brain damage.

1:08:41.000,1:08:44.360
And yes, mountains of relatively 
recent scientific evidence

1:08:44.440,1:08:47.440
overwhelmingly lead to the conclusion
that newborns smile

1:08:47.520,1:08:51.040
not just as a reflex, but as a meaningful
sign of social connection.

1:08:51.120,1:08:54.120
They do this as early as 36 hours old.

1:08:54.160,1:08:57.560
That's how long it takes for them
to observe their caregivers smiling,

1:08:57.640,1:09:00.280
understand that this 
is a tool of social connection

1:09:00.280,1:09:02.640
and then reflect it back themselves.

1:09:02.640,1:09:06.000
In fact, they are so good at this
that even during the pandemic,

1:09:06.000,1:09:09.480
researchers tested whether they could 
detect smiles under masks.

1:09:09.600,1:09:13.760
The results of the trial showed that even
with the mouth part of a smile covered,

1:09:13.840,1:09:17.280
babies were able to observe
the rest of the face enough to determine

1:09:17.480,1:09:21.320
that they were being smiled at
and reciprocate by smiling themselves.

1:09:21.360,1:09:24.960
Babies, even when they're hours
old, are already people.

1:09:25.080,1:09:26.960
They're not just biological computers

1:09:26.960,1:09:30.120
coded with instincts, dictating
when they eat, sleep or poop.

1:09:30.360,1:09:32.640
They're already learning,
taking in the world,

1:09:32.640,1:09:34.080
making connections with it.

1:09:34.080,1:09:35.200
They are people.

1:09:35.200,1:09:37.080
Just as valid as any one of us.

1:09:37.160,1:09:39.000
This isn't a moral imperative.

1:09:39.000,1:09:40.960
This is a scientific reality.

1:09:40.960,1:09:42.760
We see this same bias with animals.

1:09:42.760,1:09:45.320
Serious scientists have to 
put out papers saying,

1:09:45.320,1:09:48.440
“Actually, animals do love. 
Animals do mourn.”

1:09:48.440,1:09:49.800
as if that were a revelation.

1:09:49.800,1:09:50.680
A few years ago,

1:09:50.680,1:09:54.440
a whale named Tahlequah carried
the body of her dead calf for weeks,

1:09:54.680,1:09:57.800
not because she thought it was alive,
but because it was her calf,

1:09:58.000,1:09:59.240
because she was mourning.

1:09:59.240,1:10:02.960
She's actually recently lost another calf
and carried its body with her again

1:10:03.040,1:10:05.520
long days pushing a dead baby around

1:10:05.520,1:10:08.640
because it's her baby,
because she lost someone she loved.

1:10:08.880,1:10:10.080
This has captured headlines.

1:10:10.080,1:10:12.160
“Isn't it incredible that whales mourn?”

1:10:12.160,1:10:15.480
But animal studies
tell us that lots of animals mourn.

1:10:15.560,1:10:18.880
Maybe even most, if you're brave,
look up how dairy cows

1:10:18.880,1:10:21.960
react when their babies are taken away
to go to slaughter for veal.

1:10:22.120,1:10:26.360
The standard practice in dairy farms so
that we can take cows milk for ourselves.

1:10:26.520,1:10:30.720
Listen to the noise that mothers make
or the way they thrash the footage of cows

1:10:30.800,1:10:34.560
chasing slaughter down the road
to get their calves back.

1:10:34.760,1:10:39.000
At the cat rescue I worked at, we dealt
with a situation where some scumbag

1:10:39.000,1:10:40.760
took neonatal kittens away 
from their mother

1:10:40.760,1:10:42.840
and the way that cat 
screamed for her babies

1:10:43.000,1:10:46.600
circled the house endlessly, 
desperately trying to get in.

1:10:46.680,1:10:49.440
I genuinely don't know why
we feel that something

1:10:49.440,1:10:53.120
so obvious as “animals
love each other” is surprising.

1:10:53.200,1:10:55.360
I don't know why
we need studies to validate it

1:10:55.360,1:10:57.240
Or why, for a century at least,

1:10:57.240,1:11:00.600
we've dismissed the idea 
that newborns do, in fact

1:11:00.920,1:11:01.680
smile.

1:11:01.680,1:11:04.280
But a lot of harm has been done
on the basis of this misconception,

1:11:04.280,1:11:06.440
or more cynically:
fabrication.

1:11:06.600,1:11:10.720
What if we go further and consider that
the environment itself should have rights?

1:11:10.840,1:11:12.240
Lawyers in various countries

1:11:12.240,1:11:16.440
have tried to get personhood status
for notable areas like the Ganges River

1:11:16.560,1:11:19.680
or Mount Taranaki, but to me
it seems that environmental rights

1:11:19.840,1:11:21.320
are inherent in childism,

1:11:21.320,1:11:24.320
even without considering the 
personhood of the natural world,

1:11:24.360,1:11:26.480
let's picture a small 
area of native forest

1:11:26.480,1:11:28.800
here in Ireland. 
We only have 1% of those.

1:11:28.800,1:11:32.240
Most of the forests you see here 
are ecologically dead farms

1:11:32.240,1:11:36.160
of Sitka Spruce and the rest of the land
has been clear cut to raise cows and sheep

1:11:36.360,1:11:38.280
for us to consume dairy and milk,

1:11:38.280,1:11:39.720
but maybe you live in an area

1:11:39.720,1:11:43.200
where there is some native forest
and that land goes on sale and you buy it.

1:11:43.400,1:11:46.560
Under an individualist
framework, a buyer can get said land

1:11:46.680,1:11:50.040
clear cut the established forest
and plant it with Sitka Spruce

1:11:50.200,1:11:53.360
to begin the process of growing, clear
cutting and selling.

1:11:53.360,1:11:55.560
Through a childist framework,
however,

1:11:55.560,1:11:58.280
you must consider the web
of things dependent on that forest.

1:11:58.320,1:11:59.840
The trees themselves, sure,

1:11:59.840,1:12:03.320
but the animals, plants and fungi
dependent on those trees.

1:12:03.440,1:12:07.200
And if there are humans who use
the forest, you need to consider them too.

1:12:07.280,1:12:09.880
Is this forest a play area for children?

1:12:09.880,1:12:11.840
A picnic spot for families?

1:12:11.840,1:12:13.040
How would they feel,

1:12:13.040,1:12:15.440
If you clear cut it and 
fence it in?

1:12:15.440,1:12:17.720
How would they feel
about the increase in pollution

1:12:17.720,1:12:19.520
they're going to experience
from the machines that

1:12:19.520,1:12:23.120
you're going to be using to clear cut
or the increased carbon released

1:12:23.120,1:12:26.760
from burning wood,
the increased soil erosion, or the runoff

1:12:26.760,1:12:30.120
from fertilizer, which will cause algae
blooms in the nearby lake, c

1:12:30.520,1:12:34.520
killing more wildlife and making
it dangerous for humans to swim in.

1:12:34.600,1:12:37.400
Shouldn't you be obligated
 to ask locals how they feel?

1:12:37.400,1:12:40.120
Is it genuinely fair
that you are able to impact

1:12:40.120,1:12:43.680
a community of humans and animals
just because you have the money to do so?

1:12:43.760,1:12:47.640
Is it fair that any of us can trade
some socially meaningful paper money

1:12:47.840,1:12:50.160
for socially meaningful paper deeds?

1:12:50.160,1:12:51.920
and then just do whatever 
the f*** we want?

1:12:52.080,1:12:54.120
Yeah, it might feel constraining
to have to consider

1:12:54.120,1:12:56.760
every factor before you act,
because for a lot of people

1:12:56.760,1:12:59.400
that's going to mean
their actions are more limited.

1:12:59.400,1:13:02.680
For someone used to individuality,
it can feel chafing.

1:13:02.680,1:13:04.000
But it's also right.

1:13:04.000,1:13:07.080
It's just right from a moral perspective
to view things from the lenses

1:13:07.080,1:13:10.600
of interdependence and difference
rather than through power and capital.

1:13:10.760,1:13:12.120
Because we need each other,

1:13:12.120,1:13:16.360
we need disabled people, we need children,
we need a biodiverse ecosystem.

1:13:16.360,1:13:17.800
We need a livable planet.

1:13:17.800,1:13:21.000
Luckily, it's not up to adults to solely
get their shit together.

1:13:21.240,1:13:26.800
Many children are already acting to
bring us closer to this more just world.

1:13:26.880,1:13:28.360
Foreign Man in a Foreign Land:
There are two key questions

1:13:28.360,1:13:29.560
consistently raised by 
children and youth

1:13:29.560,1:13:30.440
consistently raised by 
children and youth

1:13:30.680,1:13:34.960
since the onset of the school strikes
for climate in 2018 in the Global North.

1:13:35.040,1:13:37.960
Why study for a future
which may not be there?

1:13:37.960,1:13:40.400
Why spend a lot of effort
to become educated

1:13:40.400,1:13:44.400
when our governments
are not listening to the educated?

1:13:44.920,1:13:46.320
You remember those protests?

1:13:46.320,1:13:48.720
the School Strikes for Climate
seven years ago

1:13:48.960,1:13:50.920
Greta Thunberg and all that.

1:13:50.920,1:13:53.880
Yeah, that was back
when Greta was in the media all the time.

1:13:53.880,1:13:57.320
But around about the time 
that she set her focus

1:13:57.320,1:14:02.120
on capitalism and colonialism,
the media started to lose interest.

1:14:02.200,1:14:06.640
And by the time she was protesting
Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza,

1:14:06.720,1:14:09.960
getting assaulted and arrested by police,
the media was so silent

1:14:09.960,1:14:11.480
that, well.

1:14:11.720,1:14:12.800
(pin drops)

1:14:14.040,1:14:17.160
So that quote, There are two key questions
Why study for a future?

1:14:17.160,1:14:18.280
Why get educated?
and all that

1:14:18.280,1:14:19.800
is from the 
beginning of a paper

1:14:19.800,1:14:22.960
by associate professor of pedagogy
at the University of Stavenger

1:14:23.120,1:14:25.960
and foundational thinker
in the philosophy of childism

1:14:25.960,1:14:27.120
Tanu Biswas

1:14:27.120,1:14:30.560
Biswas is like the, uh, decolonial
“let’s fix the future, education

1:14:30.560,1:14:33.960
and the planet” childist.
A very interesting thinker.

1:14:34.160,1:14:37.120
That paper is called
Becoming Good Ancestors,

1:14:37.120,1:14:41.920
A Decolonial Childist Approach to gGobal
Intergenerational Sustainability.

1:14:41.920,1:14:44.120
And it starts
with some very good questions.

1:14:44.120,1:14:46.920
Why study for a future
that may not be there?

1:14:46.920,1:14:49.960
Why be obedient
on the educational production line

1:14:50.120,1:14:52.080
to said non-existent future?

1:14:52.080,1:14:55.000
Why value truth and knowledge
when the systems and the people

1:14:55.000,1:14:59.080
with decision making power
do not at all value truth and knowledge?

1:14:59.080,1:15:01.800
To me, this feels
like the same frustration

1:15:01.800,1:15:03.800
and puzzlement 
I feel when I see everyone

1:15:03.800,1:15:08.760
just carrying on as normal, ordering stuff
from Amazon and booking holidays.

1:15:08.760,1:15:11.520
During this increasingly 
proximal climate crisis.

1:15:11.520,1:15:13.040
What's everyone doing?

1:15:13.040,1:15:14.400
What am I doing?

1:15:14.400,1:15:15.600
What's wrong with all of us?

1:15:15.600,1:15:19.160
This willingness to stand in the queue
or fill in the form

1:15:19.160,1:15:23.200
while the building is literally on fire
feels really quite adult, doesn't it?

1:15:23.280,1:15:27.480
But these troublemaking children back in
2018 create a really quite the disruption

1:15:27.480,1:15:29.840
of a really quite deceptively
important thing

1:15:29.840,1:15:31.200
as Biswas puts it:

1:15:31.400,1:15:32.560
Foreign: 
a pivotal institution

1:15:32.560,1:15:35.600
of modern childhood
and one of the foundational pillars

1:15:35.600,1:15:40.480
for sustaining an intergenerationally,
unjust capitalist economy -

1:15:40.560,1:15:42.040
the contemporary school.

1:15:42.040,1:15:45.240
Now, before I get into my own critiques
of the contemporary school,

1:15:45.240,1:15:47.760
and some people are already 
vibrating in anticipation.

1:15:47.760,1:15:49.360
over here, they're like, 
(gasp)

1:15:49.360,1:15:52.440
there's already enough conspiratorial
anti-intellectualism out there.

1:15:52.440,1:15:54.760
What are ya doin Cooks?? 
Don't come for the schools!

1:15:54.760,1:15:59.920
And over here they're like, Yes, validate
my resentment towards elementary school.

1:16:00.000,1:16:01.680
I hate you, Mrs. Doherty!

1:16:01.680,1:16:04.120
But before we actually do it
and we will, we should make

1:16:04.120,1:16:07.360
an important carveout 
on behalf of educators

1:16:07.360,1:16:08.960
because those who teach

1:16:09.040,1:16:12.640
so often seem to be doing it
for complete ideological reasons.

1:16:12.640,1:16:17.680
They're rarely financially incentivized.
Underpaid US public schoolteachers,

1:16:17.800,1:16:20.960
English as a foreign language teachers
who actually like being English

1:16:20.960,1:16:25.000
as a foreign language teachers, lifelong
semi impoverished academics

1:16:25.000,1:16:29.800
searching for one really specific thing
and then discovering to their delight

1:16:29.920,1:16:33.120
that it's actually a million
specific things.

1:16:33.240,1:16:37.400
Those people seem to live
in a world of their own with its own rules

1:16:37.480,1:16:40.800
similar to the world I stood outside
with my burritos

1:16:40.800,1:16:42.680
but I'm getting ahead of myself.

1:16:42.840,1:16:43.800
How do we sort this out?

1:16:43.800,1:16:47.680
Well, Biswas draws a helpful distinction
between two concepts:

1:16:47.760,1:16:50.760
education and schooling.

1:16:50.760,1:16:53.520
Education, Biswas sees as 
geared towards the future,

1:16:53.520,1:16:55.560
composed of its own pedagogical aims

1:16:55.560,1:16:59.120
and disruptions and endless reimaginings.
We can all be engaged in education.

1:16:59.280,1:17:02.840
Education is a foundational 
human endeavor.

1:17:02.840,1:17:05.720
Schooling, on the other hand,
Biswas calls a

1:17:05.720,1:17:07.520
“co-conspirator of capital”

1:17:07.680,1:17:11.160
a place to put children that is like work
and teaches them about work

1:17:11.280,1:17:14.800
and teaches them how 
not to be trouble at work, she says.

1:17:14.840,1:17:17.160
Foreign: A key analytical 
 and decolonial step

1:17:17.160,1:17:20.040
I took was to recognize 
‘Western schooling’

1:17:20.280,1:17:25.240
as a specific mode of learning,
a conspirator of capitalism deeply rooted

1:17:25.240,1:17:30.520
in philosophical racism and contributing
to a global epistemological loss.

1:17:30.600,1:17:34.200
If we're going to be honest,
we need to admit that a large part

1:17:34.200,1:17:38.960
of the purpose of education
all over the world is employability.

1:17:39.040,1:17:41.600
That itself is an injury against children.

1:17:41.600,1:17:43.000
But it quickly becomes worse than that

1:17:43.000,1:17:46.000
when we realize that this employability
often serves the purpose

1:17:46.080,1:17:48.040
of colonial wealth extraction,

1:17:48.040,1:17:50.760
creating middle management 
for the colonies

1:17:50.760,1:17:53.880
supervisors, civil engineers, 
tour guides and teachers

1:17:54.040,1:17:58.800
to expedite the theft of raw materials
and capital from the developing world.

1:17:58.840,1:18:02.560
See, neither nor myself is being some glib
lip service lefty

1:18:02.560,1:18:04.120
when we say “colonial”

1:18:04.120,1:18:06.960
it is in this case
a very real and material

1:18:06.960,1:18:09.000
and fucked up phenomenon.

1:18:09.000,1:18:11.520
You ever heard of the term 
“school in a box?”

1:18:11.520,1:18:14.160
Yeah. It's not as cute as it sounds.

1:18:14.160,1:18:17.280
Bridge International Academies,
the world's largest

1:18:17.280,1:18:21.880
for profit primary education
chain, has around 750,000 students

1:18:21.880,1:18:25.040
in its schools in India, Kenya, Liberia,
Uganda and Nigeria.

1:18:25.080,1:18:26.200
Bridge is the brainchild

1:18:26.200,1:18:30.320
of two white American entrepreneurs,
Shannon May and her husband Jay Kimmelman.

1:18:30.400,1:18:33.360
They saw an opportunity
to undercut and outcompete

1:18:33.360,1:18:35.360
the schools in the city of Nairobi

1:18:35.360,1:18:37.680
for some of the world's
most impoverished children.

1:18:37.680,1:18:40.680
And then from there, they continued
to spread all over the developing world.

1:18:40.920,1:18:43.960
They successfully raised investment
from some of Silicon Valley's finest

1:18:43.960,1:18:46.280
Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar
amongst them.

1:18:46.280,1:18:47.520
As May herself said:

1:18:47.520,1:18:49.760
Shannon May: 
it was straight commercial capital

1:18:49.840,1:18:53.520
who saw, like wow, there are

1:18:53.600,1:18:55.320
a couple billion people

1:18:55.320,1:18:58.720
who don't have anyone 
selling them what they want

1:18:58.720,1:19:01.200
in order to successfully undercut

1:19:01.200,1:19:03.760
the existing private schools 
in Africa and Asia,

1:19:03.760,1:19:06.320
they needed to scale up 
ridiculously fast

1:19:06.320,1:19:08.960
and have irresponsibly outlay.

1:19:08.960,1:19:11.280
So, like, cutting the costs of classrooms,

1:19:11.280,1:19:14.680
of classroom supplies
and teacher salaries, which they can slash

1:19:14.840,1:19:19.320
by having curricula centrally 
produced and distributed on tablets

1:19:19.400,1:19:22.400
so the teachers 
are high school graduates.

1:19:22.440,1:19:24.560
This is what it is to be a 
school in a box

1:19:24.560,1:19:26.280
Lola Sebastian:
with scripted lesson plans

1:19:26.280,1:19:28.160
delivered by tablet,
which detail

1:19:28.160,1:19:31.720
what teacher should do
and say at every moment of each class.

1:19:31.800,1:19:36.080
The tablets are also used to monitor
lesson pacing, record attendance

1:19:36.240,1:19:37.400
and track assessment.

1:19:37.400,1:19:39.560
Nicola Ansel's 
Shaping Global Education

1:19:39.560,1:19:42.440
International Agendas and Governmental 
Powers uses the example

1:19:42.440,1:19:45.240
of another school in a box:
Omega Schools

1:19:45.480,1:19:47.000
Lola:
a chain of for-profit schools

1:19:47.000,1:19:50.720
serving, 12,000 students from nursery
to junior high school in Ghana.

1:19:50.720,1:19:53.680
Teachers are senior high school graduates
who receive one week

1:19:53.680,1:19:57.720
of pre-service training and 2 to 3 days
per term of in-service training.

1:19:57.720,1:20:01.360
Both Bridge and Omega are among 22 private
school chains supported by

1:20:01.360,1:20:04.200
the Center for Education Innovations,
which is funded by

1:20:04.200,1:20:06.760
the UK's Department
for International Development.

1:20:06.760,1:20:11.200
Despite the seemingly low cost of such
provision, studies suggest low cost

1:20:11.200,1:20:16.000
private education exacerbates inequality,
with children from rural areas and lower

1:20:16.000,1:20:20.240
socioeconomic backgrounds underrepresented
and a widening gender gap.

1:20:20.320,1:20:22.320
But it's not just low cost crapness

1:20:22.320,1:20:24.360
Bridge was opening schools so fast

1:20:24.360,1:20:27.880
that sometimes they weren't
even obtaining approval to do so legally.

1:20:27.960,1:20:31.680
The Kenyan government
had to close ten bridge schools in 2014

1:20:31.800,1:20:33.600
for violating children's
basic safety.

1:20:33.600,1:20:37.240
At one school in Nairobi
at least 11 girls were sexually assaulted

1:20:37.240,1:20:40.040
In 2019 at another school in Nairobi,

1:20:40.120,1:20:43.360
A kid was fatally electrocuted
by an exposed livewire,

1:20:43.360,1:20:45.920
and Bridge reached a settlement 
with the child's mother,

1:20:45.920,1:20:48.160
which did require 
them to apologize.

1:20:48.200,1:20:51.600
Shannon May and her 
entrepreneurial stroke of genius

1:20:51.600,1:20:55.200
Bridge International Academies 
has received funding from the World Bank,

1:20:55.440,1:20:58.960
glowing praise from the New York
Times and sits as the gold standard

1:20:58.960,1:21:02.280
for the future of for profit education
the world over.

1:21:02.400,1:21:08.040
And I'm just going to let that sit
with you at this time in this age

1:21:08.160,1:21:12.760
where we know that the plan is definitely
not to make the Global South richer,

1:21:12.840,1:21:16.600
it is to make the poor everywhere poorer.

1:21:16.680,1:21:19.400
Tanu Biswas
a self-avowed child ist with a penchant

1:21:19.400,1:21:22.680
for the anti-colonial, has other ideas
about what the f*** we should do.

1:21:22.800,1:21:25.560
A different imaginable world.

1:21:25.560,1:21:29.440
She lays out four strategies 
to reimagine education

1:21:29.440,1:21:30.840
in no particular order.

1:21:30.840,1:21:32.440
One: 
move away from capitalism

1:21:32.440,1:21:35.600
as the modus operandi
for which schooling is in service.

1:21:35.600,1:21:38.040
Forget bullshit jobs and employability.

1:21:38.040,1:21:41.160
Stop trying to create capital
out of young people.

1:21:41.200,1:21:44.640
Foreign: the paradox of a global 
education agenda geared towards

1:21:44.640,1:21:48.040
generating human capital
employable on a job market

1:21:48.200,1:21:52.000
is that most of those jobs,
if at all, they will be there, continue

1:21:52.000,1:21:55.800
serving the very economic system
that is threatening the right to life,

1:21:55.800,1:21:59.000
health, culture,
especially for indigenous communities

1:21:59.160,1:22:02.920
and the best interests of future
generations on this planet.

1:22:02.920,1:22:04.480
Two: restructure and reclaim

1:22:04.480,1:22:06.960
the spacio-temporality
of global childhoods.

1:22:07.000,1:22:08.040
What does that mean?

1:22:08.040,1:22:11.200
it means that different places 
are different to each other.

1:22:11.200,1:22:14.560
And education should take place
in community by community.

1:22:14.640,1:22:19.680
What Biswas calls, quote, adapting
formal education to local realities.

1:22:19.720,1:22:23.440
See schooling takes children
out of community and assimilates them

1:22:23.440,1:22:25.640
into standard capitalist aims.

1:22:25.640,1:22:27.960
Colonial wealth extraction
molds them in the

1:22:27.960,1:22:31.720
Western norm of the 
employable upward climber.

1:22:31.960,1:22:36.000
Examples like Bridge and Omega show
that a lot of the time standardizing

1:22:36.000,1:22:38.880
has less to do with 
meeting a high pedagogical standard

1:22:38.880,1:22:42.000
than it has to do with establishing
an acceptable lowest standard.

1:22:42.120,1:22:46.560
Large scale standardized
education is often an homogenizing force

1:22:46.680,1:22:50.560
self-replicating and modular
and production line-esque

1:22:50.560,1:22:52.800
Even in the best of 
free education systems,

1:22:52.800,1:22:56.240
often schooling is fundamentally
putting children in boxes.

1:22:56.480,1:22:59.680
This means that the differences
between children can become a problem

1:22:59.760,1:23:02.840
and the differences between 
cultures equally so.

1:23:03.000,1:23:07.080
This is why Sami children in Norwegian
schools have their culture brushed over

1:23:07.160,1:23:11.480
First Nations people in Canadian schools,
Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals.

1:23:11.640,1:23:14.360
This is why
Traveler children in Irish schools

1:23:14.360,1:23:16.880
don't get recognized
as a different culture

1:23:16.880,1:23:19.880
except when they're being 
called slurs, of course.

1:23:20.040,1:23:21.800
Like there's a story from one paper

1:23:21.800,1:23:24.600
of a school in Ireland
putting on an Intercultural Day

1:23:24.840,1:23:26.520
and they invited
the media and everything,

1:23:26.520,1:23:28.560
and it was probably the 
only time in the whole year

1:23:28.560,1:23:30.400
that the Polish kids 
or the Ukrainian kids

1:23:30.400,1:23:32.880
or the kids from Nigeria
had their culture celebrated.

1:23:32.880,1:23:36.440
But they had the traveler kids lumped in
with the settled kids.

1:23:36.440,1:23:40.120
Like, officially categorizing
them as not a culture

1:23:40.120,1:23:43.080
worthy of celebration 
or even recognition.

1:23:43.160,1:23:48.200
This absolute cultural vandalism
that permeates global education

1:23:48.200,1:23:51.840
and “development” is the same 
phenomenon that allows a couple

1:23:51.840,1:23:54.120
like Shannon May 
and Jay Kimmelman

1:23:54.120,1:23:56.800
who, if you'll forgive
just a wee bit of editorializing,

1:23:56.800,1:24:00.400
are a disgusting pair of white, 
money-hungry colonizer

1:24:00.400,1:24:04.200
Silicon Valley loveless c*** c***s
who think they can just rock on over

1:24:04.200,1:24:08.320
to Kenya with zero cultural connection,
zero curiosity and just pump out shit

1:24:08.320,1:24:12.320
standard schools, endangering
children, ruthlessly profiteering,

1:24:12.320,1:24:14.760
all for the benefit of their investors
and the future investors

1:24:14.760,1:24:17.760
in a more employable
and exploitable Africa.

1:24:17.800,1:24:21.920
While Biswas cautions very directly
against forces like nationalism

1:24:22.040,1:24:26.320
and xenophobia in embracing the community
and culture side of education,

1:24:26.440,1:24:29.640
she nonetheless encourages
indigenous teaching practices

1:24:29.880,1:24:33.600
and the school
as a center of cultural celebration

1:24:33.800,1:24:37.920
and integration, which dovetails
nicely with her next strategy.

1:24:38.080,1:24:42.840
Simply, make existing institutions
and educational systems work.

1:24:42.920,1:24:46.240
So here we immediately
step back into the science of pedagogy,

1:24:46.320,1:24:49.600
the best practices in education,
the study of childhood.

1:24:49.680,1:24:51.360
There are things that work.

1:24:51.360,1:24:55.560
There are many things that work
that schools the world over do not do

1:24:55.800,1:24:58.000
because they haven't caught up
with the recent research,

1:24:58.000,1:25:01.080
or they're too expensive
or they would work

1:25:01.080,1:25:05.440
but other things would have to be in place
in the community for them to work.

1:25:05.520,1:25:08.600
And this is probably the broadest
of all of Biswas’ strategies,

1:25:08.600,1:25:11.560
but that's because it runs the 
gamut of some really important stuff.

1:25:11.560,1:25:13.960
things like apprenticeship practices

1:25:14.080,1:25:17.560
and passing on skills,
involving the community in teaching.

1:25:17.720,1:25:21.560
Helping parents to help kids, to help
teachers, to help kids, to help parents.

1:25:21.640,1:25:23.680
As Biswas herself says:

1:25:23.680,1:25:25.640
Foreign:
Existing institutional settings

1:25:25.640,1:25:30.520
such as kindergartens and old homes,
can be used as intergenerational learning

1:25:30.520,1:25:35.320
sites to combine education and care
for children and aging populations.

1:25:35.400,1:25:39.960
So finally,
rethink the inseparable imaginations

1:25:39.960,1:25:42.560
of childhood and education afresh.

1:25:42.560,1:25:48.320
That is, completely blow up the invisible
ideological assumptions of education.

1:25:48.320,1:25:51.480
Blow up the aims of children's advancement
through that system.

1:25:51.680,1:25:55.800
Completely reimagine
the life you want for these kids.

1:25:56.000,1:25:58.240
Foreign:  Broadening 
epistemological horizons

1:25:58.240,1:26:00.320
on living a good life
could enable

1:26:00.320,1:26:03.400
diverse forms of intergenerational 
relating with children

1:26:03.520,1:26:07.760
so that their learning is responsive
to the broader cultural, socioeconomic

1:26:07.920,1:26:11.320
and political changes
within their societies and beyond.

1:26:11.400,1:26:15.080
Like, we're going to be putting
our little baby in school at some point.

1:26:15.280,1:26:17.760
I don't want Bábóg to
have their imagination

1:26:17.760,1:26:20.960
curtailed by the goals that 
society invents for them.

1:26:21.040,1:26:25.280
I want to engender a very broad idea
and a functioning broad idea

1:26:25.280,1:26:27.360
of what a good life is.

1:26:27.520,1:26:30.960
And I want this child to teach me
what a good life can be.

1:26:31.120,1:26:34.320
And I want my dear baby's 
education to be an endless

1:26:34.560,1:26:38.040
unfolding of the possibilities 
of a good life.

1:26:38.240,1:26:42.520
So we're we're away with the fairies now,
but in for a f***ing penny, right?

1:26:42.760,1:26:44.680
With a view to all of these strategies,

1:26:44.680,1:26:49.680
Biswas proposes we re-imagine education
as community formation

1:26:49.680,1:26:51.920
Foreign:
to foreground the intrinsic value

1:26:51.920,1:26:56.760
of learning and realign the entangled
purpose of education, economy

1:26:57.000,1:27:01.280
and community livelihoods with the overall
purpose of life on this planet.

1:27:01.360,1:27:05.280
I propose reimagining education
by redefining development

1:27:05.440,1:27:11.160
as nurturing diversity and expanding
the scope of intergenerational life.

1:27:11.240,1:27:12.560
And I'm saying

1:27:12.560,1:27:13.960
Yes And

1:27:13.960,1:27:18.000
let's reimagine learning and teaching
and discovering and nurturing

1:27:18.200,1:27:21.960
as the foundational unit of 
human existence,

1:27:21.960,1:27:23.880
like, go with me here,

1:27:23.960,1:27:25.840
What are we doing?

1:27:25.840,1:27:27.240
What is life?

1:27:27.240,1:27:30.480
What is the purpose of this 
society thing that we've built?

1:27:30.560,1:27:32.800
Is it “line go up”?

1:27:32.800,1:27:36.000
like “our investments are
currently relatively well future-proofed?

1:27:36.240,1:27:38.480
We're all very excited about AI.

1:27:38.480,1:27:39.440
All it's taking,

1:27:39.440,1:27:42.640
killing all the poor and filling everyone
with murderous rage for outgroups

1:27:42.640,1:27:43.360
and just generally

1:27:43.360,1:27:46.360
a complete ideological brainwashing
of whole generations of human

1:27:46.440,1:27:48.560
such that they will lose their very souls.

1:27:48.560,1:27:49.920
Price Of eggs a little high.

1:27:49.920,1:27:53.840
But price of gasoline surprisingly
affordable, all things considered.”

1:27:54.520,1:27:56.600
Like, what are we doing?

1:27:57.320,1:28:00.880
Even when we propose these 
alternate theories of economic value

1:28:00.880,1:28:02.840
and I'm not a Luddite 
coming for Marx,

1:28:02.840,1:28:04.800
a lot of our work
has a marxist underpinning.

1:28:04.800,1:28:08.480
But I'm actually just asking
some childlike questions like why

1:28:08.560,1:28:13.680
in order to produce alternate
imagined ways of structuring things.

1:28:13.680,1:28:16.040
And a big part of the reason
why I'm so excited

1:28:16.040,1:28:17.560
by philosophical childism

1:28:17.560,1:28:19.360
is because, well,  
One: we've been saying

1:28:19.360,1:28:20.480
a lot of this stuff for years.

1:28:20.520,1:28:25.320
And two, you know, I kind of always had
a suspicion that children were people.

1:28:25.560,1:28:29.920
But three, and most importantly,
when I read those words,

1:28:30.000,1:28:34.080
“reimagine education
as community formation”

1:28:34.160,1:28:38.560
I was transported back to that hospital
car park where I stood

1:28:38.640,1:28:42.200
on the threshold between an economic 
world and a nurturing world.

1:28:42.440,1:28:43.720
And instead of that nurturing world

1:28:43.720,1:28:47.400
just vaguely existing in a cozy,
but directionless utopia,

1:28:47.400,1:28:50.760
suddenly in my imagination,
we had something to be doing:

1:28:50.760,1:28:53.080
learning and discovering and teaching

1:28:53.080,1:28:56.440
that already is a foundational 
human endeavor.

1:28:56.560,1:29:00.520
What if that were the
basis of our entire society?

1:29:01.720,1:29:03.560
and I know what you're going to say.

1:29:04.400,1:29:06.200
It's not.

1:29:07.080,1:29:08.680
So grow up.

1:29:08.680,1:29:10.800
🎵 frantic jazz saxophone 🎵

1:29:10.880,1:29:13.880
Sarah: well, I think 
you'll have  a conclusion now.

1:29:13.960,1:29:15.720
Neil: 
Yeah, uh, will I?

1:29:15.720,1:29:17.240
Will I have a conclusion?

1:29:17.240,1:29:21.160
because from where I'm sitting, we kind of
just did the same thing we always do

1:29:21.240,1:29:25.880
where we raise the stakes, and it's all
very urgent and important and inspiring.

1:29:25.880,1:29:27.760
But you know, 
what we didn't do actually?

1:29:27.760,1:29:30.360
is we didn't answer 
the f***ing question.

1:29:30.480,1:29:31.320
uh

1:29:31.840,1:29:34.960
“Why do people think being
childlike is bad?”

1:29:35.040,1:29:36.760
Sarah:
Neil It's video essay.

1:29:36.760,1:29:38.360
They have framing devices.

1:29:38.360,1:29:41.560
We don't necessarily need to have
an answer to that question

1:29:41.560,1:29:42.960
Neil: but we could!

1:29:43.040,1:29:47.520
We could sit with people in their messy,
embarrassing feelings

1:29:47.680,1:29:52.000
about kids, like the actual source
of the nasty things that people say.

1:29:52.080,1:29:56.440
And we could like empathize with that
and then come through it.

1:29:56.520,1:30:01.080
And you know, if we're worth listening to,
we can still make a compelling case

1:30:01.080,1:30:04.960
for this philosophy
with some love intact or whatever.

1:30:05.040,1:30:10.360
But if all we're actually
dealing in is idealism, then it's just

1:30:10.440,1:30:12.560
set decoration.

1:30:12.560,1:30:16.000
Imagined worlds, but not much else.

1:30:16.000,1:30:17.760
(slam)

1:30:20.040,1:30:21.600
I have a pet theory,

1:30:21.600,1:30:25.200
a suspicion really, that a lot of people's
discomfort with children

1:30:25.280,1:30:28.480
is that things in the world in this dark

1:30:28.480,1:30:32.480
timeline are so grossly out of
whack with our things are supposed to be

1:30:32.680,1:30:35.760
that children existing in this world
is not as it's supposed to be.

1:30:35.760,1:30:37.920
And so your relationship with children
is not as it should be.

1:30:37.920,1:30:42.160
And so by extension,
the children themselves should not be.

1:30:42.240,1:30:43.800
It's similar to the cliché.

1:30:43.800,1:30:48.640
I remember when all of this was trees
as far the eye could see, except it's

1:30:48.720,1:30:53.400
I remember when childhood 
wasn't disgusting.

1:30:53.400,1:30:55.440
And there's a great deal
I can empathize with

1:30:55.440,1:30:57.800
the way that parents 
become unreachable,

1:30:57.960,1:31:01.600
whether that's friends,
like essentially ceasing to exist

1:31:01.600,1:31:06.720
as their own people or strangers seemingly
parsing their entire existence aroundchildren

1:31:06.800,1:31:10.240
or it’s parents
asserting their rights as parents

1:31:10.440,1:31:16.560
to dominate and dictate all of society
up to and including their own children.

1:31:16.640,1:31:18.200
And you!

1:31:18.200,1:31:20.960
I can sympathize with not knowing
how to interact with children.

1:31:20.960,1:31:25.600
It's not your fault that Western society,
and particularly white American society

1:31:25.680,1:31:30.400
decided to be so age-segregated
and gave you every reason to be ashamed

1:31:30.400,1:31:33.280
of your inherent childish qualities
and therefore to race ahead

1:31:33.280,1:31:35.120
and escape childhood

1:31:35.120,1:31:37.680
while giving you zero tools 
to then engage

1:31:37.680,1:31:40.680
with the new children that,
yknow, keep coming into existence.

1:31:40.800,1:31:44.560
I can sympathize with struggling
with noise or with sensory stuff

1:31:44.560,1:31:48.600
because I'm autistic and I often find
exactly those things rather difficult.

1:31:48.800,1:31:50.800
I find it especially difficult at first

1:31:50.800,1:31:53.200
when I'm interacting with a child
that I haven't met before.

1:31:53.200,1:31:55.640
And even though I think 
people would say I'm good with kids,

1:31:55.640,1:31:59.160
I think I put on a good show
and I put in effort.

1:31:59.160,1:32:01.400
But internally I'm struggling.

1:32:01.400,1:32:03.240
Adults would say that I'm good with kids.

1:32:03.240,1:32:05.960
Kids can see through my bullshit.

1:32:06.040,1:32:07.880
I mean, it's deconstructed, which is good.

1:32:07.880,1:32:09.400
I can especially sympathize right now

1:32:09.400,1:32:11.880
because I haven't slept in 13
f***ing weeks!

1:32:11.880,1:32:12.920
having a baby

1:32:13.000,1:32:15.120
I mean, this baby's remarkably chill,

1:32:15.120,1:32:16.720
but that doesn't mean
that it's not screaming

1:32:16.720,1:32:18.720
and puking and pooping and all the rest.

1:32:18.720,1:32:23.160
And in between, it's the most disarming
smiles and chuckles you've ever seen.

1:32:23.280,1:32:27.880
I assure you, newborns can smile socially
and it's just as f***ing well.

1:32:27.960,1:32:29.080
See, I'm Irish. I don't.

1:32:29.080,1:32:32.160
I don't have to make sure that I'm coming
across as positive or diplomatic.

1:32:32.320,1:32:38.200
You maybe don't know if I'm joking
when I say that all children are bastards.

1:32:38.280,1:32:39.800
Pains in the arse!

1:32:39.800,1:32:41.280
But you know,

1:32:41.280,1:32:44.200
I'm actually doing something
by admitting to myself

1:32:44.200,1:32:46.240
that I have negative thoughts
about kids sometimes

1:32:46.240,1:32:48.360
or that I'm crap with kids sometimes

1:32:48.360,1:32:50.560
I'm being honest and frank
and a bit ugly

1:32:50.760,1:32:53.240
not in order to escape
a social responsibility,

1:32:53.240,1:32:57.360
but in order to understand why I find
that social responsibility difficult.

1:32:57.560,1:32:59.960
Because I'll let you in 
on a little secret here.

1:32:59.960,1:33:02.120
I don't like adults either.

1:33:02.120,1:33:03.880
I don't like any of
my social responsibilities.

1:33:03.880,1:33:04.760
I'm a recluse!

1:33:04.760,1:33:06.200
My favorite way to talk to people

1:33:06.200,1:33:09.240
is curated monologues 
uploaded to a YouTube channel.

1:33:09.400,1:33:11.560
I know that people's discomfort
with people,

1:33:11.560,1:33:13.440
even with categories of person

1:33:13.440,1:33:17.600
comes from a place, has reasons
that people think are justified.

1:33:17.640,1:33:18.720
And my suspicion

1:33:18.720,1:33:19.440
(smashy)

1:33:19.440,1:33:23.120
is that this growing discomfort
generally towards children generally

1:33:23.120,1:33:25.840
comes from a combination
of our segregating them,

1:33:25.840,1:33:27.920
our alienation from community

1:33:27.920,1:33:30.680
and our disgust more  generally 
at the world that we live in

1:33:30.680,1:33:33.040
which is really f***ed up
because those issues

1:33:33.240,1:33:35.280
really negatively impact children.

1:33:35.280,1:33:36.880
you and the children,

1:33:36.880,1:33:40.280
you are oppressed by common 
enemies on all of those fronts.

1:33:40.360,1:33:43.360
And I think if anyone was going
to be disgusted by anyone,

1:33:43.440,1:33:46.080
it's children should be disgusted by us.

1:33:46.080,1:33:49.200
And when children
and those that remind us of children

1:33:49.200,1:33:53.280
ask why the world is this way,
how do we respond?

1:33:53.360,1:33:54.120
Grow up.

1:33:54.120,1:33:56.760
It's not a million miles away 
from “Shut up” is it?

1:33:56.760,1:33:59.120
Oh, my God. Sarah. Cormac,
we've got a conclusion.

1:33:59.120,1:34:01.160
I've got a conclusion now!
I can do a conclusion.

1:34:01.160,1:34:02.320
Conclusion!

1:34:02.320,1:34:04.440
(anticlimactic scarpering)

1:34:04.440,1:34:06.560
🎵 bass note 🎵

1:34:06.560,1:34:10.240
So why get bent out of shape 
about being told to grow up?

1:34:10.320,1:34:11.480
It's no big deal.

1:34:11.480,1:34:13.080
It's actually not a big deal.

1:34:13.080,1:34:14.280
We're admitting it 3 hours later.

1:34:14.280,1:34:15.880
Show's over, everybody! 
Byeeeee!

1:34:15.880,1:34:17.840
Turns out, grow up,
it just wasn’t a big deal

1:34:17.840,1:34:19.640
It’s not a big deal.

1:34:19.640,1:34:22.640
Do you think we'd have gotten this far
if we couldn't handle an insult or two?

1:34:22.720,1:34:24.720
We made a video about being vegan.

1:34:24.720,1:34:26.400
We can handle being insulted.

1:34:26.400,1:34:28.560
And “Grow Up”
isn't even really an insult, is it?

1:34:28.560,1:34:29.800
It's just a

1:34:29.800,1:34:30.760
...

1:34:30.760,1:34:32.640
thing people say?

1:34:32.640,1:34:37.000
I maybe it would wound someone if they
were particularly sensitive or vulnerable.

1:34:37.080,1:34:41.000
I mean, it's it's
probably not nice to say, but an insult?

1:34:41.080,1:34:42.960
Had you thought about that before today?

1:34:42.960,1:34:45.400
Had you thought about what people mean
when they say grow up?

1:34:45.400,1:34:48.400
Had you questioned
what people generally think of children

1:34:48.520,1:34:51.520
and what people think of the qualities
of being childlike?

1:34:51.520,1:34:54.520
Had you examined your own 
attitudes to those things?

1:34:54.600,1:34:57.560
Because in reality, grow up is an insult.

1:34:57.560,1:35:02.200
It's just an insult which polices
very popular social conformities

1:35:02.280,1:35:04.720
And people do really think
very little of children

1:35:04.720,1:35:08.640
and take a particularly dim view of
the childlike qualities of vulnerability,

1:35:08.640,1:35:12.560
dependance, imagination and any 
insistence on asking the question “Why”

1:35:12.800,1:35:16.680
But, like with Grow Up, these are also
very popular social conformities

1:35:16.920,1:35:19.560
I'm still not sure where I stand
exactly

1:35:19.560,1:35:22.880
On the whole, going low going high thing

1:35:22.880,1:35:24.000
because, I mean, in the ridiculous

1:35:24.000,1:35:26.960
arena of politics on the Internet,
I've definitely fired off

1:35:26.960,1:35:30.720
my share of insults,
many of which I am frankly still proud of.

1:35:30.800,1:35:34.440
But know that I firmly stand
by interrogating my own attitudes

1:35:34.440,1:35:37.560
and keeping an eye
on what those insults are about.

1:35:37.640,1:35:41.160
These are insult heavy times.
Far from duels of honor,

1:35:41.280,1:35:45.120
it just seems like the lowest common
denominator of Twitter honourlessness

1:35:45.240,1:35:50.080
has taken over every other sphere
of, in particular, American society.

1:35:50.320,1:35:53.880
It makes me wonder what will 
be considered childish tomorrow?

1:35:53.920,1:35:56.960
What level of injustice
and violence and cruelty

1:35:57.080,1:36:00.000
will we be told next is just normal

1:36:00.000,1:36:03.480
and that instead of fighting it,
we should just grow up?

1:36:03.560,1:36:06.360
What will be the next shifting
of the goalposts, you know,

1:36:06.360,1:36:09.360
so that even more of the thoughtful,
curious people

1:36:09.520,1:36:14.560
get mischaracterized 
as unrealistic children?

1:36:14.640,1:36:16.400
Sarah: 
drinking tea again

1:36:16.400,1:36:17.800
if you know, you know.

1:36:17.800,1:36:19.320
In caring for a baby,

1:36:19.320,1:36:22.320
I'm supposed to feel very adult,
but I don't.

1:36:22.440,1:36:27.480
That's because “adult” is a social construct
and “child” is a social construct.

1:36:27.560,1:36:28.360
Like, we know this.

1:36:28.360,1:36:30.720
Children face more lenient 
sentences in court.

1:36:30.720,1:36:34.040
So if a crime is bad,
we decide to charge a child as an adult

1:36:34.200,1:36:38.520
we just wave a rhetorical wand, and now
they're more complicit in their actions.

1:36:38.520,1:36:42.400
And when a white 20-something athlete
sexually assaults someone,

1:36:42.480,1:36:45.400
we plead for mercy
by calling him a college kid.

1:36:45.400,1:36:49.520
The frame of child or adult carries weight
and biases our perceptions of reality.

1:36:49.520,1:36:53.880
And based on that misunderstanding,
we make decisions that should horrify us

1:36:53.960,1:36:56.960
like separating calves
from their screaming mothers or giving

1:36:57.000,1:36:59.920
infant children medical procedures
without pain meds.

1:36:59.920,1:37:01.560
We have power over some people.

1:37:01.560,1:37:03.400
Some people are weaker than us.

1:37:03.400,1:37:06.320
Adults have power over children,
but children's dependance

1:37:06.320,1:37:07.720
doesn't mean they're lesser.

1:37:07.720,1:37:11.960
The fact that they can be so utterly
dominated does not make it moral to do so.

1:37:12.160,1:37:14.000
And you don't need to like children.

1:37:14.000,1:37:18.160
You don't need to enjoy the setting
of an Irish pub during communion week.

1:37:18.160,1:37:22.480
I would advise you not to hate them
though, because prejudice is stupid

1:37:22.640,1:37:24.000
and there are probably a lot of children

1:37:24.000,1:37:27.520
who fall outside of whatever
stereotyped vision you have of them.

1:37:27.600,1:37:29.840
But I can't tell you how to feel.

1:37:29.840,1:37:32.720
I can tell you that you can't
discriminate against them.

1:37:32.720,1:37:34.360
and that doesn't mean 
you can’t get

1:37:34.360,1:37:36.560
accommodations for your own needs.

1:37:36.560,1:37:41.520
I think we can come up with all kinds
of clever solutions for competing needs.

1:37:41.640,1:37:44.040
If you're someone really 
struggles with noise,

1:37:44.040,1:37:47.440
then I think it's valid
to have a designated quiet car on a train

1:37:47.440,1:37:50.440
that someone doesn't
bring a screaming baby into.

1:37:50.520,1:37:54.360
But I don't think it's valid
to have a child-free train car

1:37:54.600,1:37:59.040
because there's some kid out there
who's like a little baby Neil who also finds

1:37:59.040,1:38:03.040
noise really upsetting and would also like
to sit in the quiet space.

1:38:03.120,1:38:05.960
And this is all provided
that it's just one portion of a train

1:38:05.960,1:38:07.800
and the screaming
baby is still allowed somewhere

1:38:07.800,1:38:10.200
because the screaming
baby is a human.

1:38:10.200,1:38:11.800
Besides, if you're from the 
States watching this

1:38:11.800,1:38:14.000
and I say this as a 
fellow USAnian

1:38:14.000,1:38:16.440
I promise you,
you don't want to give Europeans the right

1:38:16.440,1:38:20.840
to kick you out of public spaces
on the basis of the volume of your voices,

1:38:21.000,1:38:22.920
because rights shouldn't
be something we grant based on

1:38:22.920,1:38:25.920
whether someone is likable or not,
or whether someone has

1:38:26.000,1:38:29.560
good social awareness
or whether someone is autonomous.

1:38:29.640,1:38:32.360
Our little Bábóg is not autonomous

1:38:32.360,1:38:33.880
they have woken me up

1:38:33.960,1:38:39.880
every few hours for the last few months
to be fed, to be held, to be entertained.

1:38:39.960,1:38:41.960
And I'm delighted to provide that

1:38:41.960,1:38:44.120
I'm madly in love.

1:38:44.200,1:38:46.000
But it's not always easy either.

1:38:46.000,1:38:47.720
Caregiving isn't easy.

1:38:47.720,1:38:50.800
Watching out for the rights of others
isn't easy, but it's moral.

1:38:50.800,1:38:52.160
It’s Praxis.

1:38:52.240,1:38:53.480
Next time you’re with a child

1:38:53.480,1:38:56.520
ask yourself if you’d treat an adult
the same way you're treating them.

1:38:56.760,1:38:58.840
If you’d rip something
out of an adult's hands

1:38:58.840,1:39:01.080
or make them ask permission
to use the bathroom

1:39:01.080,1:39:04.360
or bar them from public space
or hit them when you feel angry.

1:39:04.400,1:39:05.760
Because when you strip away

1:39:05.760,1:39:09.280
the social construction of adult
and child, you're left with human

1:39:09.360,1:39:12.000
And one group of humans
who is allowed to mistreat

1:39:12.000,1:39:16.280
another on the basis of 
their needing more care.

1:39:16.360,1:39:17.520
Neil: and hey, maybe we are being

1:39:17.520,1:39:19.200
hippy-drippy and unrealistic

1:39:19.200,1:39:21.040
Maybe we're being glib.

1:39:21.040,1:39:25.200
It's easy to be theater kids
waving your arms and telling people

1:39:25.200,1:39:29.160
how exciting something is, but it doesn't
put out the flames of a world on fire.

1:39:29.320,1:39:31.840
And while I'm keen,
in fact desperate,

1:39:31.840,1:39:33.720
to really do something

1:39:33.720,1:39:35.880
I'm also aware of the 
white savior advocate

1:39:35.880,1:39:39.080
for marginalized group, 
well-meaning wanker trap

1:39:39.080,1:39:41.120
as Biswas puts it:

1:39:41.200,1:39:45.040
It is here that I invite readers
to pause the hasty urge to lean

1:39:45.040,1:39:48.120
into performing
the logistics of implementation.

1:39:48.120,1:39:50.360
But equally, this video
might actually have

1:39:50.360,1:39:53.680
some small impact on
how sound you are to children

1:39:53.760,1:39:57.880
and the amount of respect you treat them
with, and that will materially affect

1:39:57.960,1:39:58.840
some children.

1:39:58.840,1:40:00.840
which matters. 
It's worth talking about!

1:40:00.840,1:40:01.920
on the bigger level,

1:40:01.920,1:40:04.600
yeah, we're pitching
imagined alternative realities,

1:40:04.600,1:40:08.880
but every material improvement
was once an imagined alternative reality.

1:40:09.120,1:40:11.520
I don't know what we do
with the world now.

1:40:11.520,1:40:12.320
I really don't.

1:40:12.320,1:40:15.840
But in my lifetime, from my childhood
through to my becoming

1:40:15.840,1:40:18.920
an adult and a parent,
not necessarily in that order.

1:40:19.160,1:40:22.000
I know I've seen manufactured outgroups

1:40:22.000,1:40:23.880
designed disgust and hatred

1:40:24.040,1:40:26.880
towards groups that were 
at various points, not exactly beloved,

1:40:26.880,1:40:28.200
but at least more accepted.

1:40:28.200,1:40:32.760
I've seen change happen in real time,
and I've heard enough rhetoric from people

1:40:32.760,1:40:36.520
who feel like finally they're free
to just say that they hate kids.

1:40:36.720,1:40:40.520
And it really reminds me
of a similar celebration in other spheres.

1:40:40.520,1:40:44.080
Finally, they say we can just openly hate
a group of people.

1:40:44.280,1:40:46.400
People hate when they 
don't know any better,

1:40:46.400,1:40:48.840
but that thing that would
make that better

1:40:48.840,1:40:51.240
Educstion, the thing that would make 
democracy better,

1:40:51.320,1:40:55.440
the thing that would make public health
easier and climate change taken seriously.

1:40:55.560,1:40:59.760
That's a thing that adults reject
because “education is for children.”

1:40:59.800,1:41:02.800
And we seem to think that children
only need education

1:41:02.880,1:41:04.760
because they're so damned incompetent

1:41:04.760,1:41:07.240
and useless and they don't 
know how anything works.

1:41:07.240,1:41:11.120
We think education exists
to successfully transform

1:41:11.120,1:41:14.120
children into adults,
but it need not be so

1:41:14.280,1:41:16.720
we can imagine otherwise.

1:41:16.720,1:41:19.520
We can't make anyone
watching care about children.

1:41:19.520,1:41:23.240
We can't make you reorient
your worldview towards interdependence.

1:41:23.240,1:41:25.800
You're not even going to get 
social points for this one.

1:41:25.800,1:41:29.080
The power structure is just so in-baked.

1:41:29.080,1:41:31.880
but morality isn't determined 
by popular consensus

1:41:31.880,1:41:35.120
and clinging to the status quo isn't wisdom.

1:41:35.200,1:41:36.960
It's a failure of imagination.

1:41:36.960,1:41:38.760
As with any marginalized group,

1:41:38.760,1:41:42.600
some of the changes
that children want will benefit all of us.

1:41:42.600,1:41:46.440
I know I'd benefit if I remembered that
a sidewalk could be a place of play

1:41:46.600,1:41:50.080
rather than just the liminal space
between work and home.

1:41:50.320,1:41:54.640
I think like a child, it's good
for us to look at society and ask why?

1:41:54.720,1:41:57.480
Why have we constructed
labor relations this way?

1:41:57.480,1:42:00.120
Why Have we created gender? Race?

1:42:00.120,1:42:02.040
Is this still serving us?

1:42:02.040,1:42:03.640
Why don't we change it?

1:42:03.640,1:42:06.560
I imagine we could do so much
if imagining itself

1:42:06.560,1:42:08.560
wasn't seen as uncouth.

1:42:08.560,1:42:09.560
Childish.

1:42:09.640,1:42:15.400
Imagine what we’d do if when we grew up
we still understood ourselves as

1:42:15.400,1:42:20.360
as full of potential,
as incomplete, as malleable, as brave

1:42:20.360,1:42:24.000
and weird and 
unknowable as we were

1:42:24.000,1:42:25.840
when we were kids.

1:42:26.360,1:42:28.000
🎵 scratching 🎵

1:42:28.640,1:42:32.480
🎵 Peter and the Wolf set to hip hop 🎵

1:42:40.440,1:42:42.320
Hey, Editing Neil here

1:42:43.080,1:42:43.760
Hi.

1:42:44.480,1:42:47.320
I just wanted to say
we were pretty harsh on commenters

1:42:47.320,1:42:51.640
and sort of on the concept of commenting,
and please don't let that stop you

1:42:51.640,1:42:55.720
from commenting on this video because
actually we often get very lovely comments

1:42:55.800,1:43:00.960
and it would be a shame to not have you
comment here, so feel free.

1:43:01.040,1:43:02.200
I won't make you self-conscious.

1:43:02.200,1:43:03.800
Just, you know, do do your thing.

1:43:03.800,1:43:05.680
Leave a comment below.

1:43:10.600,1:43:14.200
Just to be clear,
you don't have to comment.

1:43:14.280,1:43:16.240
Just if you were ...

1:43:16.240,1:43:18.040
whatever comment
you were going to

1:43:18.120,1:43:21.920
just act, just act normal, just whatever
comment you were going to leave.

1:43:22.000,1:43:22.960
Just put that.

1:43:22.960,1:43:24.240
I'll go.

1:43:28.400,1:43:31.080
Okay, I have noticed this 
one particular comment that's come in

1:43:31.080,1:43:33.000
and I did think
this was going to happen,

1:43:33.000,1:43:38.120
so we didn't use the stage lights and
that was an intentional artistic decision.

1:43:38.120,1:43:39.240
That's not a mistake.

1:43:39.640,1:43:41.840
It’s not cause we didn't 
know how to use them.

1:43:41.920,1:43:42.880
We wanted to have

1:43:42.880,1:43:44.240
because it's like a video essay.

1:43:44.240,1:43:45.360
It's like as if a video essay.

1:43:45.360,1:43:46.480
were a stage show.

1:43:46.480,1:43:48.960
So we used the video essay lights to

1:43:48.960,1:43:50.080
um

1:43:50.160,1:43:52.440
semiotically

1:43:52.440,1:43:54.400
signify

1:43:54.400,1:43:57.000
it was intentional.

1:44:03.280,1:44:04.760
I'm actually going to talk 
to Sarah about this

1:44:04.760,1:44:06.240
because I'm a little bit annoyed.

1:44:06.240,1:44:07.760
Sarah, we just got a comment
that said

1:44:07.760,1:44:10.040
that we didn't turn on the stage lights

1:44:10.040,1:44:14.720
like by mistake, but that was an
intentional artistic decision, right?

1:44:14.800,1:44:16.000
Sarah: I mean, I just

1:44:16.000,1:44:18.120
you didn't know where they were

1:44:20.280,1:44:21.200
(baby sounds)

1:44:21.200,1:44:23.040
Neil: but then I made
the intentional artistic decison

1:44:23.040,1:44:27.640
to not use them
because I didn't know where they were.

1:44:27.720,1:44:28.960
Sarah: Yeah, but that's not

1:44:28.960,1:44:31.280
that's not what intentional is, 
Neil

1:44:31.280,1:44:33.840
like I wanted to use the stage lights.

1:44:33.840,1:44:35.400
I wanted to find my light. I wanted

1:44:35.400,1:44:35.760
Neil: No, no, no,

1:44:35.760,1:44:37.040
it's fine. It's actually fine.

1:44:37.040,1:44:38.480
You can do whatever comment you want
and this is

1:44:38.480,1:44:40.080
the worst sequence we’ve ever had

1:44:40.080,1:44:40.920
over the credits. Thanks.