WEBVTT 00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:03.200 So people have been yelling “Grow Up!” at us a lot lately. 00:00:03.200 --> 00:00:05.440 And it's in a really weird context. 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:07.160 Maybe you've been hearing “grow up” a lot too, 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:09.040 and maybe you'll recognize the context. 00:00:09.040 --> 00:00:09.840 Quick background: 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:12.080 We recently made a video about the author Neil Gaiman, 00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:14.800 and how there's really good reason to believe he committed sexual assault 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:17.800 and so we do believe that. 00:00:17.800 --> 00:00:21.120 And distributed through the general excuse-making 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:25.080 and denial and apologia that you'd expect was a theme. 00:00:25.160 --> 00:00:27.880 People yelling “Grow Up!” at us 00:00:27.880 --> 00:00:31.000 all, apparently independently, coming up with this thing 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:33.480 that we really needed to hear. 00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:36.680 The problem is that you guys glorify entertainers to a hero status. 00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:38.720 You brought that on yourself. Grow up. Grow up. 00:00:38.720 --> 00:00:40.000 Children have heroes. 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:42.160 Adults should not aspire to be another adult 00:00:42.160 --> 00:00:43.560 Grow Up! Acknowledging that people 00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:46.680 that move our hearts and minds have human flaws, too, is a sign of growing up. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:48.480 You don't even know what this video is about. 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:49.520 Go back to college 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:50.920 Heroes are for children. 00:00:50.920 --> 00:00:54.160 This is only a problem in an infantile civilization. 00:00:54.240 --> 00:00:55.960 The Infantilisation of Western Culture. 00:00:55.960 --> 00:00:57.280 Published August 1st. 2000 and ugh 00:00:57.280 --> 00:00:58.960 I'm not reading all that F***ing hell 00:00:59.480 --> 00:01:00.360 You get the idea! 00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:04.680 They say we're not being realistic, that we're being immature. 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:05.400 We're children 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:09.000 either for having heroes or for thinking that everyone isn't a r*pist 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:12.680 or for thinking that celebrities are perfect or that they're not human, 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:13.720 whatever that means. 00:01:13.720 --> 00:01:18.080 Basically, if you've got an issue with sexual assault, you need to grow up. 00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:19.760 But why?? 00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:21.960 like this bothered me so much! Why? 00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:23.880 Why “grow up” and I know 00:01:23.880 --> 00:01:25.800 mean people being mean on the Internet 00:01:25.800 --> 00:01:28.000 blokes who disbelieve women and defend r*pists 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:30.200 What's the mystery? They're just nasty. 00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:31.920 They're just nasty men. 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:35.400 There's no sense in us setting up a whole Rube Goldberg machine in here 00:01:35.400 --> 00:01:36.640 with a chandelier and a net 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:38.840 and then pulling the mask off the ghoul to discover that 00:01:38.840 --> 00:01:41.440 Oh, it was nasty men all along. 00:01:41.440 --> 00:01:42.560 Surely this is 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:45.480 as so many videos make obvious before you've even clicked on them 00:01:45.560 --> 00:01:46.840 The f*cking patriarchy, 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:47.160 *JINKIES!* 00:01:47.160 --> 00:01:50.560 And yet grow up feel so specific, 00:01:50.800 --> 00:01:55.320 so particularly fine tuned to pick on certain vulnerabilities and flaws that we 00:01:55.320 --> 00:01:59.560 maybe all feel as less than perfect adults or as not quite normal folk. 00:01:59.560 --> 00:02:02.520 It picks on those sensitivities while simultaneously 00:02:02.520 --> 00:02:05.520 seeming to have so little to do with s*xual assault. 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:06.920 So we were curious 00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:08.720 and we asked some of our YouTube friends 00:02:08.720 --> 00:02:10.840 if they'd noticed and well... 00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:11.640 Pillar of Garbage: Grow Up! 00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:15.320 The Hogwarts Legacy controversy slash boycott failed 00:02:15.320 --> 00:02:18.440 because the sane people have finally had enough of you 00:02:18.440 --> 00:02:21.000 terminally on the internet freaks and 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:22.280 Hoots: Grow Up, will you! 00:02:22.320 --> 00:02:25.560 If we were needed to ban every children story that seemed 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:28.560 outdated and problematic - Open your eyes! 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:29.520 Grow up. (grow up) 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:30.320 Talis: Grow up. 00:02:30.320 --> 00:02:33.280 So then, seeing that these examples also seemed to have 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:36.360 something to do with naivete and wanting to change the world 00:02:36.360 --> 00:02:40.920 and pushing back against injustice, we were frankly even more confused! 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:43.960 Now, why we're all these people saying Grow Up? 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:47.320 What are we doing exactly when we deploy insults like these? 00:02:47.480 --> 00:02:51.600 Why, without just taking the answer for granted, is being grown up good? 00:02:51.760 --> 00:02:54.480 And why is not being grown up bad? 00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:56.920 What do people mean when they invoke maturity? 00:02:56.920 --> 00:02:58.880 It seems that if you put yourself out there 00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:02.200 with even the vaguest of gestures towards justice: Boom! 00:03:02.200 --> 00:03:05.480 there will be a great deal of naysayers angry at you, 00:03:05.720 --> 00:03:10.280 waiting to criticize you in a very specific and predictable way. 00:03:10.360 --> 00:03:12.240 Sarah’s voice: Your children. 00:03:12.320 --> 00:03:12.880 Exactly. 00:03:12.880 --> 00:03:14.280 They'll say that you’re children 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:18.400 Sarah: No, Neil. Your children, the baby. 00:03:18.480 --> 00:03:19.800 Oh, yes. 00:03:19.800 --> 00:03:24.560 We have children and we just had a baby and we quite like the baby. 00:03:24.640 --> 00:03:25.520 The baby is brilliant. 00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:27.000 And it got us to thinking 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:31.520 Why come people think that being childlike is bad? 00:03:31.920 --> 00:03:33.080 So. 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:34.000 yeah. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:39.760 🎵 frantic high energy Jazz drum solo 🎵 00:03:39.760 --> 00:03:41.080 🎵 snare roll 🎵 00:03:43.880 --> 00:03:49.520 🎵 drums continue 🎵 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:08.680 🎵 tension on the drums builds 🎵 00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:14.520 Have you ever said it? Yelled at someone “Grow Up!” 00:04:14.520 --> 00:04:17.800 or said it sincerely, like, “I think you need to grow up.” 00:04:17.880 --> 00:04:19.040 I have. 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:21.360 So I'm guilty as charged. 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:22.760 And I think a lot of us have. 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:24.800 I think it's a very normal putdown. 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:29.320 It's possibly the most succinct way of saying I big and good 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:33.680 you small and bad, but that doesn't mean it's ineffective. 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:35.160 It's quite maddening 00:04:35.160 --> 00:04:38.440 and sometimes pretty hurtful and usually incredibly frustrating 00:04:38.520 --> 00:04:39.440 to get these comments. 00:04:39.440 --> 00:04:42.440 And I think it's fair to say they're difficult to counter. 00:04:42.600 --> 00:04:43.680 Let's look at this example. 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:47.880 You are simply children who can't fathom the fact that people are multifaceted. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:51.400 I mean, dude, your hair says it all. 00:04:51.480 --> 00:04:54.760 This is in response to a video about credible r*pe allegations. 00:04:54.840 --> 00:04:57.680 What kind of person looks at the despair and anger 00:04:57.680 --> 00:04:59.440 that inevitably follows a high profile 00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:00.800 s*xual assault case and says grow 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:02.880 Woman: Don’t you wave your hand at me! 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:04.960 I wave my hand at you 00:05:04.960 --> 00:05:06.360 Senator: when you grow up I’ll be glad to 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:07.720 Women: “When you grow up??” 00:05:07.720 --> 00:05:11.760 That was Senator Hatch dismissing a group of women who opposed his endorsement 00:05:11.760 --> 00:05:16.720 of Judge Brett Kavanaugh because Kavanaugh, you remember, credible r*pe allegations. 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:21.040 So this is a high profile example of invoking grow up to shut down 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:23.040 a conversation about s*xual assault. 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:28.600 But it is also an example of grow up as an expression of power within a hierarchy. 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:31.040 You've got a sitting white male senator. 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:34.240 He's up here operating within the grossly unjust system, 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:36.080 and you've got this group of activist women 00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:38.800 Grassroots. Speaking with nothing but their own voices, 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:40.840 attempting to call the system into question. 00:05:40.840 --> 00:05:43.000 It seems to be the case that “grow up” 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:46.600 or more accurately, references to childlike behavior are common 00:05:46.840 --> 00:05:50.880 when someone in a hierarchy is speaking to someone from a group below them. 00:05:51.120 --> 00:05:54.600 This is illustrated quite comprehensively by legal scholar and professor 00:05:54.600 --> 00:05:59.200 of Constitutional Law Ruth Colker in her paper The Power of Insults. 00:05:59.280 --> 00:06:00.560 In it, she argues that 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:02.920 Legal Kimchi: the economic and political power elite 00:06:02.920 --> 00:06:06.600 has effectively hurled insults at civil rights activists, 00:06:06.680 --> 00:06:11.240 plaintiffs and their lawyers to undermine civil rights reform. 00:06:11.240 --> 00:06:14.040 I think most of us can recognize that activists, lefties 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:16.760 and basically anyone trying to create positive change in the world. 00:06:16.760 --> 00:06:21.360 Those trying to push civil rights reforms have to put in much more work 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:24.280 than the power elites sitting on their status quo, 00:06:24.280 --> 00:06:27.240 and Overton Window-ing their way into oblivion. 00:06:27.240 --> 00:06:28.800 But as Colker says 00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:31.520 Legal Kimchi: insufficient attention has been paid to how the power 00:06:31.520 --> 00:06:35.920 elite uses the cultural tool of insults to undermine these reforms. 00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:40.280 As she points out, insults are part of a long tradition of class reproduction. 00:06:40.360 --> 00:06:44.320 She takes us back to the early years of the USA, to the 19th century, 00:06:44.520 --> 00:06:47.920 the time between the revolutionary and civil wars, which was a particular 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:51.480 hotspot for duels of honor, a time in which 00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:53.640 FD Signifier: many respectable, educated men 00:06:53.640 --> 00:06:56.680 eagerly avenged even the slightest of insults by 00:06:56.680 --> 00:07:00.600 repairing to the local field of honor and blasting holes in each other. 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:03.880 A lot of men, some of them very famous, were shot 00:07:03.880 --> 00:07:06.880 in some duel over some petty insult. 00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:11.480 I am Alexander Hamilton and I'm a fragile little gentleman. 00:07:11.560 --> 00:07:13.200 But duels weren't universal. 00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:16.200 If some upstart from the lower classes happened to insult 00:07:16.200 --> 00:07:18.880 the honor of a gentleman, this would not be followed by a duel. 00:07:18.880 --> 00:07:19.800 Oh, no, no, no. 00:07:19.800 --> 00:07:20.760 This would be followed 00:07:20.760 --> 00:07:25.480 by beating the wretch with a cane or lashing the reprobate with a horsewhip. 00:07:25.480 --> 00:07:28.040 And funnily enough, not funny at all, actually. 00:07:28.040 --> 00:07:31.760 This is also how children have been historically disciplined in respectable 00:07:31.880 --> 00:07:33.160 Western societies, 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:37.000 in educational and religious institutions up until very recently. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:41.080 It's arguable that like the impoverished lower classes of the 19th century 00:07:41.320 --> 00:07:45.600 children have historically also had no honor to defend. 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:47.360 But anyway, insults! 00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:49.800 Colker points out how, just like in the 1800s, 00:07:49.800 --> 00:07:53.320 those currently in power exist in a completely different world 00:07:53.440 --> 00:07:55.240 in terms of how insults work. 00:07:55.240 --> 00:07:56.760 She points out that insults function 00:07:56.760 --> 00:07:59.280 both as a distraction from civil rights reforms 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:02.200 and that those insults are more likely to be successful 00:08:02.200 --> 00:08:05.360 because of the preexisting weakness of the civil right in question. 00:08:05.400 --> 00:08:09.760 That is, if someone is lower on the social hierarchy, they have to do a great deal 00:08:09.760 --> 00:08:14.560 more proving themselves of worth as part of their response to an insult. 00:08:14.640 --> 00:08:16.640 Putting it my own way, I would say that 00:08:16.640 --> 00:08:20.200 if a disempowered person is dealing with the gallery, the audience 00:08:20.200 --> 00:08:21.320 ... 00:08:21.400 --> 00:08:25.200 over insults and slings and arrows, then they have far less control 00:08:25.200 --> 00:08:28.200 of the narrative than the person with power. 00:08:28.240 --> 00:08:31.280 This means that the insult itself causes group based harm 00:08:31.280 --> 00:08:35.040 and it fuels negative stereotypes about that disempowered group 00:08:35.120 --> 00:08:38.600 and it deflects attention away from their struggles. 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:43.200 So surprise, surprise! There are countless examples of Trump doing this. 00:08:43.240 --> 00:08:44.560 Did we want to...? Do you wanna...? 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:46.200 We want to talk about Trump? 00:08:46.200 --> 00:08:47.520 Are we are we talking about this? 00:08:47.520 --> 00:08:49.240 Have we heard about this? 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:51.480 Trump. 00:08:51.480 --> 00:08:53.760 This is the neo-fascist playbook. 00:08:53.760 --> 00:08:58.440 Insult anyone with integrity over and over and get the client media to report on it 00:08:58.440 --> 00:09:01.520 and ham it up and repeat it until no one remembers 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:06.000 anything about that person of integrity except the insult that you made up. 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:10.520 Most people remember Trump impersonating and mocking journalist Serge Kovaleski 00:09:10.760 --> 00:09:14.280 at a campaign rally in 2015, flapping his arms and such. 00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:17.520 But what Colker points out in her paper, and I'd forgotten this, 00:09:17.680 --> 00:09:21.120 is that that whole thing started because Trump had made a false claim 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:23.320 that the Muslim community in New Jersey 00:09:23.320 --> 00:09:27.160 was cheering as the World Trade Center fell on 911. 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:32.200 And Kovaleski, being a journalist, had published words 00:09:32.200 --> 00:09:34.200 that said, No, they didn't. 00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:37.920 The whole situation devolved into “Will this boorish behavior 00:09:37.920 --> 00:09:39.480 derail Trump's campaign?” 00:09:39.480 --> 00:09:44.560 Instead of spotting that Trump had used ableism to Trojan horse Islamophobia, 00:09:44.640 --> 00:09:47.000 he did it again when he mocked NFL players 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:49.240 for taking a knee during the national anthem. 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:50.680 Successfully distracting from 00:09:50.680 --> 00:09:54.040 the major issue of police brutality against Black Americans. 00:09:54.040 --> 00:09:57.080 And again, when he described Haitian and African immigrants 00:09:57.240 --> 00:10:01.000 as coming from, quote, ‘shithole countries’ and describing Mexican-Americans 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:05.440 as drug dealers, and r*pists, all as cover for his administration rescinding DACA 00:10:05.640 --> 00:10:09.280 a policy that allows certain individuals who came to the United States as children 00:10:09.480 --> 00:10:10.480 to stay in the country. 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:11.760 Remember that? 00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:13.920 No. Neither does anyone else. 00:10:13.920 --> 00:10:17.560 And all of that maybe feels like old news when at time of writing Elon Musk 00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:20.960 and a bunch of fortune gobshite cronies are locked in some government 00:10:20.960 --> 00:10:26.280 vault, pressing Control plus A, Delete on America. 00:10:26.360 --> 00:10:30.360 But it's very relevant because the elite deploying insults and slander 00:10:30.360 --> 00:10:34.360 and dehumanization is at its most rampant and shameless right now. 00:10:34.440 --> 00:10:37.080 Returning to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, 00:10:37.080 --> 00:10:38.360 a Trump appointee. 00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:40.080 At a time when there was ongoing 00:10:40.080 --> 00:10:43.680 investigations into credible allegations of s*xual assault against Kavanaugh. 00:10:43.760 --> 00:10:46.840 Trump, of course, mocked the alleged victim, 00:10:47.080 --> 00:10:48.960 Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. 00:10:48.960 --> 00:10:49.880 Trump: How did you get home? 00:10:49.880 --> 00:10:50.640 I don't remember. 00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:51.320 How did you get there? 00:10:51.320 --> 00:10:53.880 I don't remember. Where is the place? I don't remember. 00:10:53.880 --> 00:10:55.000 How many years ago was it? 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:55.560 I don't 00:10:55.560 --> 00:10:58.280 Once again, using insults to gain political advantage. 00:10:58.280 --> 00:11:02.080 That is, another conservative Republican judge on the Supreme Court 00:11:02.160 --> 00:11:05.440 now is not quite the same thing as telling me to grow up? 00:11:06.040 --> 00:11:07.280 Yes. 00:11:07.920 --> 00:11:08.680 No. 00:11:09.280 --> 00:11:09.760 kind of. 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:10.720 It would be a mistake 00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:13.720 to think that insults are just the thing that the bad guys do 00:11:14.040 --> 00:11:15.280 many voices: Grow Up! 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:19.600 There is growing division among general online leftish folk 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:21.200 over whether using certain insults 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:25.320 is necessary to express ourselves and show some urgency and strength 00:11:25.560 --> 00:11:28.560 and to make our points well and uncompromisingly. 00:11:28.680 --> 00:11:33.000 Or maybe insults are pretty much always hierarchy reproducing and 00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:37.920 Elon Musk won't see your body shaming tweets, but your dad bod friends will. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:40.560 And obviously there's always been an ideological difference 00:11:40.560 --> 00:11:44.240 between those who believe to whatever extent that the politics of identity 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:48.280 should come second to and are a distraction from the politics of class. 00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:50.520 At it's most cliched and stripped of nuance 00:11:50.520 --> 00:11:53.120 That's a blue haired wokey arguing with a tankie 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:55.880 both of which are insults that never seem to actually land 00:11:55.880 --> 00:11:59.560 or hurt anyone because, you know, they're very silly. 00:11:59.640 --> 00:12:01.840 Communists respond to being called “Tankies” 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:04.360 the way that gay people respond to being called “sodomites.” 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:07.040 Like, what did you just call me? 00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:08.440 It's so cute. 00:12:08.440 --> 00:12:12.320 A Tankie?? Oh, I'm a sodomite! 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:12.960 Yeah, I am. 00:12:12.960 --> 00:12:14.280 So given that bit of noise, 00:12:14.280 --> 00:12:17.520 there are actually only a few things that I can say definitively about insults. 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:19.920 One, this is not a well-studied area. 00:12:19.920 --> 00:12:21.600 We basically can't say with any confidence, 00:12:21.600 --> 00:12:24.560 whether it's practice to go low or it's counterproductive to go high. 00:12:24.560 --> 00:12:25.920 We just don't seem to know. 00:12:25.920 --> 00:12:30.480 Another is, as I said earlier, that insults are a useful tool for power elites 00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:33.120 and that they are deployed by the enemies of the working class 00:12:33.120 --> 00:12:37.920 and of disenfranchized people to distract from and sabotage civil rights reforms. 00:12:37.920 --> 00:12:40.920 So it is interesting that Ruth Colker in her conclusion, 00:12:40.920 --> 00:12:44.080 doesn't fall one way or the other on the go low go high dichotomy. 00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:48.400 She doesn't recommend that we do insults or that we do not do insults. 00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:51.440 She recommends a contextual approach. 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:54.920 She suggests that we ask, what is the context of the insult? 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:56.360 What are we trying to achieve? 00:12:56.360 --> 00:12:57.480 And I think that's smart. 00:12:57.480 --> 00:12:58.400 Adding to that, 00:12:58.400 --> 00:13:02.280 I can infer from her paper that it might be smart for us to hold onto 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:06.720 and focus on the original struggle before the Trumps and Musks of this world 00:13:06.880 --> 00:13:11.280 turn any given emancipatory thing into a nonsense ad hominem game. 00:13:11.400 --> 00:13:14.640 So we should learn from what happened with Serge Kovaleski and keep our eyes 00:13:14.640 --> 00:13:17.720 on the goal as it existed before all the distraction tactics. 00:13:17.720 --> 00:13:18.840 But importantly, 00:13:18.840 --> 00:13:22.240 as much as we don't know whether insults unambiguously reproduce hierarchy, 00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:26.400 we can say with some confidence that they reproduce social groups 00:13:26.480 --> 00:13:28.400 in-groups and out-groups. 00:13:28.400 --> 00:13:31.320 Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing. 00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:33.480 It is not necessarily a good thing. 00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:35.200 It is a thing thing. 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:38.000 As professor of psychology, Karina Korostelina puts it: 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.080 Hoots: An insult is a social act 00:13:40.080 --> 00:13:42.400 constructed mutually by social groups 00:13:42.400 --> 00:13:44.320 on the boundary between them. 00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:45.800 Which is to say, 00:13:45.880 --> 00:13:48.480 one of the ways that we create and reinforce social groups 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:51.920 and the differences between those groups is through insults. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:53.800 Which got me to thinking. 00:13:53.800 --> 00:13:55.880 When someone says Grow Up. 00:13:55.880 --> 00:13:58.920 What is the in-group? And what is the outgroup? 00:13:59.160 --> 00:14:01.480 It's not adults and children, right? 00:14:01.480 --> 00:14:04.560 I don't think that these commenters are accusing Sarah and I 00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:07.560 of being actual children, especially since 00:14:07.640 --> 00:14:11.400 Sarah was visibly pregnant and I look f***ing old. 00:14:11.480 --> 00:14:14.240 Have you seen these new video essayists they've got these days? 00:14:14.240 --> 00:14:18.000 Tirrrb and José María Luna? Skin like baby angels. 00:14:18.040 --> 00:14:19.880 No they're not saying that we’re children. 00:14:19.880 --> 00:14:23.800 They're saying we're something else, something child like. 00:14:23.880 --> 00:14:27.480 And so they tell me to grow up that everybody in the world is corrupt. 00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:28.880 So hush and shush. 00:14:28.880 --> 00:14:29.520 And if you're trying 00:14:29.520 --> 00:14:33.120 to push for justice, rest assured we can't because it's just the world. 00:14:33.240 --> 00:14:35.400 So you better get more mature. 00:14:35.400 --> 00:14:38.600 Sarah, I feel like an awful tosser doing all this Hamilton stuff, I really, it's 00:14:38.840 --> 00:14:39.840 tremendously cringe. 00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:43.160 So I once again looked through the comments and tried to find a theme. 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:44.760 I know I'm a glutton for punishment, 00:14:44.760 --> 00:14:48.760 but it was important to understand what “Grow Up” means. 00:14:48.840 --> 00:14:50.080 And then I remembered. 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:50.800 I've said it. 00:14:50.800 --> 00:14:52.200 I have. 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:53.320 What did I mean? 00:14:53.320 --> 00:14:56.280 And I remember I meant grow up like 00:14:56.280 --> 00:14:59.560 be more Irish, be more like me. 00:14:59.640 --> 00:15:03.880 It had been during a fight with Sarah about parenting because Sarah is American 00:15:03.880 --> 00:15:07.640 and I'm Irish, and American culture seems to put romantic partners 00:15:07.640 --> 00:15:09.480 and offspring on an equal footing. 00:15:09.480 --> 00:15:11.800 Whereas, like, Irish culture is a little more oriented 00:15:11.800 --> 00:15:13.360 around babies and reproduction. 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:17.480 So we value the children in a family kind of over the adults, it seems to me. 00:15:17.640 --> 00:15:18.600 Sound off in the comments 00:15:18.600 --> 00:15:20.760 if you think I'm wrong about that, or if you think one or the other 00:15:20.760 --> 00:15:23.640 of those two cultures is repugnant. I think it's just a difference. 00:15:23.640 --> 00:15:26.120 At least, I think it’s just a difference 00:15:26.120 --> 00:15:28.320 when I'm not arguing with someone about it, 00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:31.400 but when someone else is saying that my culture is wrong 00:15:31.480 --> 00:15:33.840 and I have to argue that their culture is wrong, 00:15:33.840 --> 00:15:36.760 there is a tool at my disposal well within reach. 00:15:36.760 --> 00:15:38.080 Grow Up. 00:15:38.080 --> 00:15:40.280 There's only one objective answer here. 00:15:40.280 --> 00:15:42.600 The one that the grown ups are willing to admit to. 00:15:42.600 --> 00:15:46.600 And with that insight, I could see that these comments did fit a pattern, 00:15:46.680 --> 00:15:48.560 not an immediately obvious pattern, 00:15:48.560 --> 00:15:52.000 but one which revealed a lot about our implicit understanding of society 00:15:52.200 --> 00:15:55.080 and the world. Hierarchies we share in common 00:15:55.080 --> 00:15:58.240 so deeply and unknowingly that we rarely glimpse them. 00:15:58.800 --> 00:16:00.640 Grow Up, as it turns out 00:16:00.640 --> 00:16:02.760 is a very special kind of insult. 00:16:02.840 --> 00:16:05.720 But in order to understand why, we need to move on to the next 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:10.120 most obvious question, why is it even a problem to be childlike? 00:16:10.200 --> 00:16:11.360 Why is this an insult? 00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:12.160 Why is it bad? 00:16:12.160 --> 00:16:15.960 Why? Of all of the possible ways that we could group people together, 00:16:16.040 --> 00:16:18.280 do we hate this group? 00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:19.800 Children. 00:16:19.960 --> 00:16:22.360 🎵 bass note 🎵 00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:24.200 So why get bent out of shape 00:16:24.200 --> 00:16:26.440 about being told to grow up? 00:16:26.520 --> 00:16:27.720 No, this is actually bollocks. 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:28.320 🎵 Jazz drum solo 🎵 00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:29.240 This is actually bollocks 00:16:29.240 --> 00:16:31.520 because by the time we get to the conclusion, 00:16:31.520 --> 00:16:34.280 we're not going to be talking about insults at all. 00:16:34.280 --> 00:16:35.680 It's like a red herring, you know. 00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:37.400 Sarah: Why don't you talk about something positive? 00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:38.800 Insults are just a negative bit. 00:16:38.800 --> 00:16:41.440 we need something uplifting. 00:16:41.520 --> 00:16:42.200 Neil: I mean, look. 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:44.960 we're going to talk about nice, hopeful love things. 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:48.960 It's just that and the first comment that we're going to get is going to be 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:51.560 why are you talking about this when the world is on - 00:16:51.560 --> 00:16:53.400 this shouldn't be here, sweetheart. 00:16:53.400 --> 00:16:58.840 Why are you talking about childism when, like, you know, we're all going to die? 00:16:58.920 --> 00:16:59.960 I don't mean - I'm sorry Sarah: besides 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:02.560 if we set ourselves up to only talk about the worst things. 00:17:02.560 --> 00:17:04.200 That's all we'll ever talk about. 00:17:04.200 --> 00:17:06.760 And people still won't be happy. 00:17:06.760 --> 00:17:08.880 🎵 jazz hihat 🎵 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:11.960 You're getting too caught up in the commenters again. 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:13.640 Both: Just talk about children. 00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:22.240 Have you noticed that it's kind of socially acceptable 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:26.400 to say you hate children or at least to say you don't like them? 00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:29.920 It's definitely socially acceptable to say that you don't want them around 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:31.520 to shoot a look of disdain 00:17:31.520 --> 00:17:35.480 at a traveling companion because you've spotted a baby on an airplane. 00:17:35.560 --> 00:17:39.160 Or to judge the parenting of a child who's crying at the grocery store, 00:17:39.160 --> 00:17:43.360 or to suspiciously keep an eye on a group of teenagers at the movies. 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:46.920 Adult-only spaces are normative, and even spaces which allow children do 00:17:46.920 --> 00:17:48.720 so only if they're well-behaved. 00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:50.640 Is itsocially acceptable for a crying baby 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:53.080 to be in a fancy restaurant? Or would you expect that 00:17:53.080 --> 00:17:55.920 their mother would whisk them out until they calmed down? 00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:59.440 Maybe judge her for bringing a baby there in the first place? 00:17:59.520 --> 00:18:00.280 Look it up. 00:18:00.280 --> 00:18:05.880 Search the phrase I hate children because I did that and it wasn't good. 00:18:05.960 --> 00:18:07.320 People are mean. 00:18:07.320 --> 00:18:10.040 People are mean to babies. 00:18:10.040 --> 00:18:13.280 I found screeds at various levels of professionalism, disliking children 00:18:13.280 --> 00:18:17.120 for being boring or loud. Disliking them, for taking up space, 00:18:17.120 --> 00:18:20.680 blaming parents for being too lax about discipline, opining that children 00:18:20.680 --> 00:18:24.880 should not be allowed in public until they learn to act properly. 00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:26.360 So here's an example. 00:18:26.360 --> 00:18:29.400 A paper out of Australia documented that during a public debate 00:18:29.400 --> 00:18:32.640 about whether dogs should be allowed in cafes, the conversation 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:36.520 quickly turned from dogs who were ultimately doing fine to children 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:42.200 who were seen as the real threat to peace, enjoyment and public order. 00:18:42.280 --> 00:18:44.680 The paper quotes one person's take on the matter. 00:18:44.680 --> 00:18:46.320 Talis: I'd really like to see it go further 00:18:46.320 --> 00:18:49.040 and remove all children from public areas. 00:18:49.040 --> 00:18:51.640 Holiday spots and traveling options should be classed as 00:18:51.640 --> 00:18:53.640 for and not for children. 00:18:53.640 --> 00:18:57.240 Make these disgusting things, travel in their own special carriages and planes 00:18:57.240 --> 00:18:58.920 and live in their own areas. 00:18:58.920 --> 00:19:00.600 The world would be a much better place 00:19:00.600 --> 00:19:04.360 if all children were just locked up until they were old enough to behave. 00:19:04.440 --> 00:19:07.160 This idea that children a class of people 00:19:07.160 --> 00:19:10.800 should be confined to private spheres is somehow not controversial. 00:19:10.840 --> 00:19:13.080 For young children, this discrimination is justified 00:19:13.080 --> 00:19:16.080 by evoking their disruptiveness or vulnerability. 00:19:16.120 --> 00:19:19.040 Either that they're too unruly to be allowed access to public space 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:21.440 or that they're too vulnerable, easily corrupted 00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:24.520 or stealable or otherwise hurt by being allowed in public. 00:19:24.600 --> 00:19:29.200 Older children, however, are not seen as vulnerable, but instead as criminal. 00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:30.440 As one paper puts it: 00:19:30.440 --> 00:19:32.840 Rohan Davis: after around age twelve 00:19:32.840 --> 00:19:36.960 adult society recognizes children, particularly children of color, 00:19:37.040 --> 00:19:42.480 no longer as helpless pieces of property, but instead as the reckless criminals 00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:45.480 devoid of any sense of responsibility 00:19:45.600 --> 00:19:48.560 or understanding of their lives. 00:19:48.560 --> 00:19:53.400 As a result, young people are driven out of public spaces. 00:19:53.480 --> 00:19:58.480 Teenagers are routinely overtly profiled or kept from accessing public space. 00:19:58.560 --> 00:20:01.960 Think of the Mosquito, a device which emits a high pitched ring 00:20:01.960 --> 00:20:04.560 which teenagers can hear but adults can't. 00:20:04.560 --> 00:20:05.840 Installing the Mosquito 00:20:05.840 --> 00:20:09.760 in parks or outside of buildings prevents teenagers from “loitering.” 00:20:09.840 --> 00:20:12.360 You know, the crime of appearing in public without spending money. 00:20:12.360 --> 00:20:15.360 This is a particularly impactful limitation for teenagers 00:20:15.360 --> 00:20:19.440 who tend to have very little money and very few places to go. 00:20:19.600 --> 00:20:23.920 The mosquito is widely used in Australia, North America and Europe, 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:26.720 despite the fact that it contravenes articles on human 00:20:26.720 --> 00:20:29.720 rights from both the European Convention on Human Rights 00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:33.800 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:37.720 and that it's capable of causing children physical harm 00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:42.880 with symptoms such as dizziness, headache, nausea and sensory impairment. 00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:47.720 The risk is greatest for non-speaking children and infants who may be exposed to 00:20:47.720 --> 00:20:51.800 the sound for prolonged periods of time by parents who can't hear it themselves. 00:20:51.800 --> 00:20:54.480 And so they don't know why their child is in distress. 00:20:54.480 --> 00:20:55.760 And yes, 00:20:55.760 --> 00:20:59.920 this bias against children is impacted by other mechanisms of marginalization, 00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:01.840 especially race and class. 00:21:01.840 --> 00:21:04.560 Spaces that privileged children can access freely 00:21:04.560 --> 00:21:06.880 like parks or schools are often inaccessible 00:21:06.880 --> 00:21:08.560 to children from minority groups. 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:09.600 Here in Ireland, 00:21:09.600 --> 00:21:13.320 Traveler children are technically invited to attend public schools, 00:21:13.400 --> 00:21:17.960 but they face persistent discrimination ranging from more benign erasure, 00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.000 their culture and language is absent from the Irish curriculum 00:21:21.080 --> 00:21:24.880 to the more extreme forms of hostility from classmates and teachers. 00:21:24.960 --> 00:21:26.600 The result means that Traveler children 00:21:26.600 --> 00:21:29.040 are incentivized to leave school at an early age. 00:21:29.080 --> 00:21:30.400 As one traveler put it: 00:21:30.400 --> 00:21:32.360 Caelan Conrad: my parents wanted me to go to school, 00:21:32.360 --> 00:21:36.480 but because of the discrimination that there was in secondary school, I left 00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:38.760 after six months of secondary school. 00:21:38.760 --> 00:21:40.440 I just couldn't stick it. 00:21:40.440 --> 00:21:41.920 I was really good at school. 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:43.360 I was never in trouble. 00:21:43.360 --> 00:21:45.480 I was never sent home. 00:21:45.480 --> 00:21:47.200 They used to call me (slur) 00:21:47.200 --> 00:21:49.760 Or you're a dirty (slur) 00:21:49.840 --> 00:21:51.120 Go wash herself. 00:21:51.120 --> 00:21:55.840 Racialized children are, in fact, frequently denied childhood altogether. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:58.040 Elliot Sang: Racial bias treats Black children 00:21:58.040 --> 00:21:59.360 as physically stronger, 00:21:59.360 --> 00:22:03.560 more sexually knowledgeable, less innocent, less sensitive to pain, 00:22:03.560 --> 00:22:06.560 and more culpable than white children. 00:22:06.600 --> 00:22:11.480 This exclusion shows that entitlement to the ideal of childhood is not a given, 00:22:11.480 --> 00:22:16.560 but is instead a privilege that is largely exclusive to white children. 00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:18.680 This is something we should all be familiar with 00:22:18.680 --> 00:22:21.800 through high profile cases like 12 year old 00:22:21.800 --> 00:22:26.120 Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a park when police officers shot him. 00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:29.800 Or Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old walking in public shot 00:22:29.800 --> 00:22:33.520 by a vigilante for the crime of walking home from a convenience store. 00:22:33.640 --> 00:22:36.600 The man who shot him, George Zimmerman, who in his spare time paints 00:22:36.600 --> 00:22:39.920 images like this, was acquitted of all charges. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:43.840 The jury clearly agreeing that an unarmed black child walking 00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:48.480 out of the store constituted behavior suspicious enough to justify murder. 00:22:48.520 --> 00:22:53.520 Seemingly paradoxically, Black adults are often viewed as more childlike. 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:56.200 Showing the mutability of these categories. 00:22:56.200 --> 00:23:01.680 How we invoke adulthood to make racialized children appear dangerous 00:23:01.760 --> 00:23:04.480 but invoke childhood to make adults seem 00:23:04.480 --> 00:23:08.040 as if they're undeserving of rights. 00:23:08.120 --> 00:23:10.800 In either case, we're using age 00:23:10.800 --> 00:23:15.240 as a mechanism of control and terror. 00:23:15.320 --> 00:23:16.640 But thankfully, 00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:20.920 there's a philosophical movement meant to question the morality of this assertion. 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:23.760 It's called Childism, and it's exciting. 00:23:23.760 --> 00:23:24.680 It's new. 00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:26.760 It's compatible with leftist goals. 00:23:26.760 --> 00:23:28.040 And it feels congruent 00:23:28.040 --> 00:23:32.000 with a lot of the stuff we've been exploring over the last couple of years. 00:23:32.160 --> 00:23:36.240 But before we go on in the style of better video essays, 00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:38.480 we must outline the term 00:23:38.480 --> 00:23:41.840 so childism can refer to two distinct concepts. 00:23:42.080 --> 00:23:44.560 The first is discrimination against children. 00:23:44.560 --> 00:23:47.240 That's an “ism” the way that racism describes 00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:49.800 discrimination against people of different races. 00:23:49.800 --> 00:23:52.800 The second conception of childism is a philosophy 00:23:52.800 --> 00:23:55.360 one that proposes more egalitarian relations 00:23:55.360 --> 00:23:56.920 between adults and children. 00:23:57.000 --> 00:24:00.840 This is an “ism” in the way that feminism proposes more egalitarian relations 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:02.600 between genders. 00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:07.560 In this essay, when we say childism, we'll be referring to the philosophy 00:24:07.640 --> 00:24:09.840 to the foundational idea that children are people 00:24:09.840 --> 00:24:14.000 and more importantly, the responsibility that we have to reconfigure society 00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:17.120 so that it serves the needs of both children and adults. 00:24:17.120 --> 00:24:19.240 Because right now it only serves the latter. 00:24:19.240 --> 00:24:20.840 And children are people. 00:24:20.840 --> 00:24:22.280 Really take that in for a second. 00:24:22.280 --> 00:24:24.600 Children are people. 00:24:24.600 --> 00:24:27.560 It doesn't sound revolutionary to say that children are people, 00:24:27.560 --> 00:24:31.360 but when you stop to consider the way we currently operate, it becomes clear 00:24:31.520 --> 00:24:33.720 that we don't see children as people. 00:24:33.720 --> 00:24:37.280 We see them as future adults or almost people. 00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:40.960 This goes all the way back to Aristotle, who argued that an organism's 00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:45.160 mature form is its definitional form, fulfilling its actual purpose. 00:24:45.240 --> 00:24:48.760 All of the stages leading up to that are oriented to the goal of adulthood. 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:52.640 Though rather than seeing this as an Aristotelian conception, we're likelier 00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:55.800 to view children through a lens of developmental psychology. 00:24:55.880 --> 00:24:59.080 As someone who has not yet developed their full capacity 00:24:59.080 --> 00:25:02.280 for empathy or their real eyesight abilities, 00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:07.640 this is how Piaget described children as existing at various stages of being. 00:25:07.800 --> 00:25:13.480 Where those stages are defined by deficit when compared to an imagined adult norm. 00:25:13.560 --> 00:25:17.360 And even if we don't consciously think of children as deficient adults, 00:25:17.520 --> 00:25:20.880 we often see them as beings in the process of becoming 00:25:21.080 --> 00:25:24.440 who should be nurtured in that process by those of us in power: 00:25:24.480 --> 00:25:28.800 Adults. Until such a time that that child develops their full abilities 00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:31.880 and crosses the threshold into adulthood themselves. 00:25:31.880 --> 00:25:33.400 Grows up. 00:25:33.480 --> 00:25:36.720 We often think of the child as a sort of evolution in miniature. 00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:40.000 First, you're a baby and you can't see well, 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:42.200 you can't speak, you can't walk, etc. 00:25:42.200 --> 00:25:43.440 Then you're a toddler. 00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:45.400 You can speak, You can walk a bit, 00:25:45.400 --> 00:25:49.080 but you can't really engage with long term plans or complex operations. 00:25:49.200 --> 00:25:51.920 And then you're a child, then a teenager. 00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:54.920 Always there are developmental milestones you are supposed to hit. 00:25:55.080 --> 00:25:56.640 And finally, adulthood. 00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:58.440 You've reached your final form. 00:25:58.440 --> 00:26:02.240 This is a philosophical concept called recapitulation, that the development 00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:06.440 of an individual child mirrors the phylogeny of the human species. 00:26:06.520 --> 00:26:09.960 And like with the modernist misconception of evolutionary theory, 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:12.720 we believe that the ultimate form is the best one, 00:26:12.720 --> 00:26:14.400 the one to strive for 00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:15.840 the Blastoise 00:26:15.960 --> 00:26:17.760 This is the reason people tell us to grow up. 00:26:17.760 --> 00:26:21.000 It's unseemly for us to still not have progressed to adulthood. 00:26:21.240 --> 00:26:24.640 But it's a mistake to view evolution hierarchically. 00:26:24.720 --> 00:26:26.160 Apes are not better than monkeys. 00:26:26.160 --> 00:26:28.400 They are adapted to different environments. 00:26:28.400 --> 00:26:31.440 And there's actually no such thing as a Blastoise 00:26:31.520 --> 00:26:33.480 Likewise, Social Darwinism 00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:35.520 was a misapplication of evolution. 00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:36.880 Viewing some societies 00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:40.840 as more evolved than others when they were just differently adapted. 00:26:40.920 --> 00:26:44.640 The idea that you are not a person until you have hit these developmental 00:26:44.640 --> 00:26:48.640 milestones is essentially the same as you not being a person. 00:26:48.840 --> 00:26:52.440 If you're non-normative and have, for example, a disability, 00:26:52.520 --> 00:26:54.800 maybe you have poor eyesight like an infant, 00:26:54.800 --> 00:26:57.360 maybe you have poor social skills like a young child, 00:26:57.360 --> 00:27:00.600 maybe you have poor emotional management skills like a teenager. 00:27:00.640 --> 00:27:04.800 Ableism interacts with Adultism so strongly that they start to feel like 00:27:04.800 --> 00:27:06.120 almost the same thing. 00:27:06.120 --> 00:27:11.520 The idea that respect is only earned via growth to this ideal of adult, 00:27:11.600 --> 00:27:15.560 a physically and emotionally independent being. 00:27:15.640 --> 00:27:17.560 Zoe Bee: Childism dissolves this 00:27:17.560 --> 00:27:19.640 dichotomy of independent adults 00:27:19.640 --> 00:27:23.920 and dependent young children by emphasizing mutual dependency 00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:27.800 on various levels as a fundamental to human existence. 00:27:27.880 --> 00:27:30.040 Human beings, emotions, and agency 00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:33.000 are shaped through relations to other human beings 00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:37.240 and to their emotions and agency, as well as to non-humans. 00:27:37.320 --> 00:27:40.800 That is, animals, microbiomes, the climate, etc.. 00:27:40.800 --> 00:27:45.160 This challenges the notion of liberty and freedom and raises the question 00:27:45.240 --> 00:27:49.480 what does freedom actually mean in the light of the understanding 00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:54.120 of social and more than social relations as characterized by interdependence 00:27:54.200 --> 00:27:58.800 and in light of children's experience and practices of this interdependence 00:27:58.800 --> 00:28:03.080 between human beings as well as between humans and non-human species, 00:28:03.080 --> 00:28:08.560 and materiality, child ism asks us to stop equating dependance with subservience, 00:28:08.800 --> 00:28:11.560 but rather to see all of us as partially dependent 00:28:11.560 --> 00:28:16.800 and partially independent in ever changing webs of interdependence. 00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:20.760 Even the most independent person is still dependent on human society, 00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:24.840 and any period of relative independence is going to be brief. 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:28.440 Sandwiched between starting off as babies and experiencing 00:28:28.440 --> 00:28:30.120 increasing forms of disability. 00:28:30.120 --> 00:28:34.320 So why not abolish the hierarchy and embrace the fact that nothing we do 00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:35.640 is ever really independent? 00:28:35.640 --> 00:28:38.560 Even for babies, as I've just learned with breastfeeding. 00:28:38.560 --> 00:28:40.080 It's a cooperative effort 00:28:40.080 --> 00:28:44.040 between the baby and I, with both of us learning and adjusting for the other. 00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:45.680 In order for it to work. 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:48.840 It's not something that I can impose on the baby. 00:28:48.920 --> 00:28:52.360 Childism at its most basic points out that children are people. 00:28:52.400 --> 00:28:53.280 Children are people. 00:28:53.280 --> 00:28:54.480 My baby is a person 00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:58.840 with a physical experience of the world and a social experience of the world. 00:28:58.920 --> 00:29:02.400 They have needs that differ from adult needs and that does not make 00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:04.360 those needs any less important. 00:29:05.400 --> 00:29:09.000 They have a right to express themselves socially 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:13.200 without that expression being taken as distasteful, 00:29:13.200 --> 00:29:16.800 without their social experiences, needs or self-expression 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:21.960 being reduced to some inconvenience for whatever adults are nearby. 00:29:22.040 --> 00:29:27.120 So if we are really ready to wrestle with this, what would it look like? 00:29:27.360 --> 00:29:31.200 To say that children have rights that babies have rights? 00:29:31.400 --> 00:29:34.400 In some ways it makes us rethink what we mean by rights, 00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:38.640 because I don't think my infants should be casting a ballot in the voting booth. 00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:41.440 Not only because I don't think that that would benefit society, 00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:43.680 but because I don't think it would benefit them. 00:29:43.680 --> 00:29:47.200 I don't think that when a kid wants to exclusively eat ice cream, their parent 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:52.000 is violating their foundational human rights if she makes them eat some carrots. 00:29:52.080 --> 00:29:54.440 But those examples reflect a misconception of rights 00:29:54.440 --> 00:29:57.440 that is very individualistic and taken to their extreme. 00:29:57.600 --> 00:30:00.000 They lead us to some very uncomfortable places. 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:03.360 I frequently cite Firestone de Beauvoir and Foucault on this channel, 00:30:03.600 --> 00:30:05.440 and while I really like a lot of their work, 00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:09.040 they all tackle this phenomenon and end up in, frankly, the wrong place. 00:30:09.080 --> 00:30:11.160 All of them are uncomfortable with hierarchy 00:30:11.160 --> 00:30:13.120 and all of them want children to be our equals. 00:30:13.120 --> 00:30:16.760 But they seem to get stuck on the idea that treating children as equals involves 00:30:16.760 --> 00:30:18.320 giving them free rein 00:30:18.320 --> 00:30:20.520 because in many ways they conceive of freedom 00:30:20.520 --> 00:30:22.000 as the benchmark right 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:23.160 And some of their writing 00:30:23.160 --> 00:30:26.360 gets unconscionable when they, to different extents, 00:30:26.360 --> 00:30:30.520 explore this in the context of adult and children sexual relations. 00:30:30.680 --> 00:30:33.360 And I know that all philosophy, when taken to an extreme, 00:30:33.360 --> 00:30:34.240 can sound problematic, 00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:37.880 but Simone, Shulamith, Michele, 00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:41.160 So what if instead of valuing freedom or independence 00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:44.480 as the ultimate benchmark of respect, we pick different rights? 00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:45.320 Like Care? 00:30:45.400 --> 00:30:48.240 the right to be cared for, the right to have one's needs met. 00:30:48.240 --> 00:30:49.880 That right is the same, 00:30:49.880 --> 00:30:51.880 whether we’re talking about an adult or a child, 00:30:51.880 --> 00:30:53.520 we all need shelter, food, connection 00:30:53.600 --> 00:30:56.600 or what about the right to community? 00:30:56.720 --> 00:30:58.760 So the right to have your needs be considered 00:30:58.760 --> 00:31:01.760 when making group decisions, the right to access spaces, 00:31:01.760 --> 00:31:03.720 the right to have your voice hear 00:31:03.720 --> 00:31:06.160 the right to be a participant in the world 00:31:06.240 --> 00:31:08.720 rather than just have the world impact you. 00:31:08.720 --> 00:31:09.800 So how would this look? 00:31:09.800 --> 00:31:13.760 Well, I'm an immigrant and so my assumptions about how life works 00:31:13.920 --> 00:31:16.840 get challenged all the time because certain 00:31:16.840 --> 00:31:20.120 aspects of life work quite differently here in Ireland. 00:31:20.200 --> 00:31:25.040 And children are treated much differently here than they are in the US. 00:31:25.120 --> 00:31:29.520 As an example, let's look at that very Irish center of community: 00:31:29.600 --> 00:31:30.600 The Pub. 00:31:30.600 --> 00:31:33.520 Pubs have the same components as bars in the US. 00:31:33.600 --> 00:31:36.160 They may have racks of hard alcohol. 00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:38.400 They may have televisions playing sports. 00:31:38.400 --> 00:31:40.200 They may have music. 00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:43.680 They certainly have the regulars who may or may not have 00:31:43.680 --> 00:31:45.360 substance use disorders, 00:31:45.360 --> 00:31:47.320 but they also have children, 00:31:47.520 --> 00:31:50.600 and not even necessarily the well-behaved children. 00:31:50.760 --> 00:31:54.480 But children who run around underfoot, children who cry, 00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:58.080 children whose parents aren't reining them in at all. 00:31:58.080 --> 00:32:01.920 Last year, I wandered into the pub, not realizing that 00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:06.400 it was confirmation season and I found tons of kids. 00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:10.200 They were dressed up in their best outfits, running from one 00:32:10.200 --> 00:32:15.480 end of the pub to the other, shrieking happily while their parents got sloshed. 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:17.320 This wasn't a private event. 00:32:17.320 --> 00:32:19.040 The pub wasn't rented out. 00:32:19.040 --> 00:32:21.720 It's just socially acceptable here for kids, 00:32:21.720 --> 00:32:25.680 even kids hyper on sugar and special event energy 00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:27.440 to share a social space with adults. 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:31.680 Children here are closer to having the right to community recognized. 00:32:31.760 --> 00:32:35.160 Another example: let's look at Japan. 00:32:35.240 --> 00:32:39.000 The extent to which the built environment is structured to meet 00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:42.000 the needs of children is really different there. 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:45.520 I remember moving to Japan and seeing for the first time 00:32:45.600 --> 00:32:48.360 a five year old confidently walking down 00:32:48.360 --> 00:32:51.440 the sidewalk alone, not a parent in sight. 00:32:51.480 --> 00:32:53.640 Having been a preschool teacher in the US. 00:32:53.640 --> 00:32:57.880 Walking my classroom anywhere outside of the building was terrifying. 00:32:57.880 --> 00:33:00.360 An event we minimized as much as possible. 00:33:00.360 --> 00:33:03.680 But in Japan, even in major cities, 00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:04.760 kids walk alone. 00:33:04.840 --> 00:33:06.240 Don't mistake this for the idea 00:33:06.240 --> 00:33:10.600 that Japanese children are more mature or better behaved. 00:33:10.600 --> 00:33:12.840 instead, Japan has cultural 00:33:12.840 --> 00:33:17.160 and structural differences which allow children to be out in public. 00:33:17.240 --> 00:33:19.680 The sidewalks are broad and generous. 00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:21.120 Speed limits are low. 00:33:21.120 --> 00:33:23.120 Children are taught to raise their arms 00:33:23.120 --> 00:33:26.120 as they cross the street in order to make themselves more visible. 00:33:26.280 --> 00:33:31.000 But all the same drivers expect children to be in the crosswalks, 00:33:31.240 --> 00:33:33.960 so they watch for children in the crosswalks. 00:33:33.960 --> 00:33:37.960 During times when children are likely to be commuting to or from school. 00:33:38.040 --> 00:33:43.000 Networks of volunteer adults place themselves along well-traveled routes 00:33:43.080 --> 00:33:46.080 so that they can watch out for anything dangerous. 00:33:46.200 --> 00:33:48.440 There's a popular Japanese TV program 00:33:48.440 --> 00:33:50.680 called Hajimete no otsukai 00:33:50.880 --> 00:33:53.880 which documents the right of passage of children 00:33:54.120 --> 00:33:57.040 going on their first solo errand. 00:33:57.040 --> 00:34:01.440 So cameramen follow these children ranging from ages 2 to 5 00:34:01.600 --> 00:34:06.240 as they navigate crowded city centers or wild rural countrysides. 00:34:06.400 --> 00:34:09.760 to bring home a packet of fish or to bring cookies 00:34:09.760 --> 00:34:13.200 to their grandma. They do this completely on their own. 00:34:13.440 --> 00:34:16.440 And the show is really, really charming. 00:34:16.560 --> 00:34:18.040 I would recommend you watch 00:34:18.040 --> 00:34:20.000 public infrastructure in Japan 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:22.720 is designed to some extent with children in mind. 00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:26.560 This feels very different from how we live in the English speaking world. 00:34:26.600 --> 00:34:28.160 As one paper puts it: 00:34:28.160 --> 00:34:30.040 Cogito: parents across socioeconomic 00:34:30.040 --> 00:34:31.840 backgrounds in Western cities 00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:36.600 consider public space unsafe for children, a concern fueled by media 00:34:36.600 --> 00:34:41.720 hype around stranger danger and an increasingly risk averse society. 00:34:41.960 --> 00:34:45.960 Hence, children who are still seen out about in the street with an adult 00:34:46.160 --> 00:34:49.320 are often regarded with a mixture of suspicion and worry. 00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:54.040 These paradoxical positions share a view that children should remain in child 00:34:54.040 --> 00:34:58.440 friendly places such as school, home organized after school activities 00:34:58.640 --> 00:35:00.040 or the playground. 00:35:00.040 --> 00:35:03.040 This was from a research paper called No Messing Around, 00:35:03.120 --> 00:35:06.360 which looked at how children view public spaces in Dublin. 00:35:06.560 --> 00:35:10.440 So don't let my romantic view of the pub influence you too much. 00:35:10.440 --> 00:35:13.800 Children here are still quite marginalized when it comes to 00:35:13.800 --> 00:35:15.640 access to public spaces. 00:35:15.640 --> 00:35:18.800 Beyond those explicitly carved out for them 00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:23.320 with special deterministic functions like a formalized playground 00:35:23.320 --> 00:35:27.840 with literal boundaries versus a large car free avenue, 00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:31.600 which would facilitate more free creative play. 00:35:31.680 --> 00:35:34.840 And God, does Dublin need that? 00:35:35.040 --> 00:35:37.640 I'm sure many people from the US who've been to Ireland 00:35:37.640 --> 00:35:41.440 and by Ireland they just mean Dublin are thinking. 00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:44.040 But is it Dublin just idyllic? 00:35:44.040 --> 00:35:46.080 And that's precisely the problem. 00:35:46.080 --> 00:35:49.440 Dublin is so solely focused on tourism, 00:35:49.560 --> 00:35:53.200 on presenting this quaint little twee image of Ireland 00:35:53.400 --> 00:35:57.120 so that it can extract as much money as possible from said tourists. 00:35:57.320 --> 00:36:01.400 That it fails locals in general, and especially fails children. 00:36:01.440 --> 00:36:05.600 A few years ago, security at the Temple Bar, a pub famous 00:36:05.600 --> 00:36:09.520 for having the most expensive drinks in Ireland and for being a place 00:36:09.520 --> 00:36:13.000 that no self-respecting Irish person would ever set foot in. 00:36:13.080 --> 00:36:19.240 Well, they got upset that children, a 13 year old and 16 year old specifically 00:36:19.320 --> 00:36:23.800 were skateboarding on the pedestrianised street outside of the pub. 00:36:23.880 --> 00:36:28.400 So, you know, being in public, using the street, 00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:30.160 presumably making the atmosphere 00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:33.840 less conducive to selling thirty euro pints or whatever. 00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:38.000 So now the pub is also famous as one where the security guards 00:36:38.240 --> 00:36:43.720 assault children for having the audacity to play in the public space. 00:36:43.880 --> 00:36:46.600 Seriously. Boycott the Temple Bar. 00:36:46.600 --> 00:36:48.360 But it's grim in other places too. 00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:52.520 A paper on children in urban spaces focused on a neighborhood in L.A., 00:36:52.640 --> 00:36:58.040 specifically the neighborhood around South Central Avenue, southeast Los Angeles, 00:36:58.160 --> 00:37:01.600 which is a primarily low income, high density area 00:37:01.600 --> 00:37:05.080 where residents are majority Latin-American and Black. 00:37:05.160 --> 00:37:09.000 Children are marginalized in the same way that we've mentioned before. 00:37:09.200 --> 00:37:14.160 Few places to congregate, streets that are unsafe for commuting, etc., etc.. 00:37:14.160 --> 00:37:17.720 You get the idea, but also by factors unique to the area, 00:37:17.800 --> 00:37:21.200 like through criminalization and institutionalization. 00:37:21.400 --> 00:37:23.520 The paper's author, Meredith Abood, 00:37:23.520 --> 00:37:25.000 documents how children move through 00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:26.760 regimented spaces, each day. 00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:29.720 The majority of children go to afterschool programs, 00:37:29.720 --> 00:37:32.120 which means that they are in an institutional setting 00:37:32.120 --> 00:37:36.600 from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. each day. 00:37:36.600 --> 00:37:41.560 But when surveyed, only 9% of fifth graders like their after school programs 00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:46.120 and based on Abood’s writing, I don't blame them for disliking them. 00:37:46.200 --> 00:37:47.600 José María Luna: The children in the program are 00:37:47.600 --> 00:37:50.600 for the most part, institutionalized, disciplined and controlled. 00:37:50.640 --> 00:37:53.240 Students are commonly told to put their hands on their heads 00:37:53.240 --> 00:37:56.200 until the room is silent, often for upwards of 20 minutes, 00:37:56.200 --> 00:37:59.480 or told they cannot go play until they learn to make a perfectly 00:37:59.480 --> 00:38:02.520 straight line, meaning they are often standing still in a line 00:38:02.520 --> 00:38:06.280 for 15 minutes until they are released and given permission to play. 00:38:06.360 --> 00:38:10.240 Students who misbehave because they refuse to silently work on their homework 00:38:10.240 --> 00:38:14.040 or do not put their hands on their head for the entire 5 minutes are “benched” 00:38:14.040 --> 00:38:15.080 and spend the majority 00:38:15.080 --> 00:38:17.800 of the three hour block sitting alone with their heads down. 00:38:18.040 --> 00:38:21.120 If they are lucky, they just have to pick up 50 pieces of trash 00:38:21.320 --> 00:38:23.920 as if they are convicted criminals serving probation. 00:38:23.920 --> 00:38:26.240 Remarkably, however, students rarely question 00:38:26.240 --> 00:38:28.000 the hyper-disciplined environment because 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:30.760 they cannot conceive of anything else 00:38:30.760 --> 00:38:33.120 in a built environment that constrains their play, 00:38:33.120 --> 00:38:34.680 autonomy and freedom, 00:38:34.680 --> 00:38:37.600 where police can search children and youth without cause 00:38:37.600 --> 00:38:40.840 and where more money is spent on prisons than schools, 00:38:40.920 --> 00:38:43.000 Children often do not even realize 00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:45.880 they can ask for or expect anything more 00:38:45.960 --> 00:38:49.560 I think it's particularly noteworthy that this demographic of children 00:38:49.560 --> 00:38:52.720 is also primarily made of children of color. 00:38:52.720 --> 00:38:54.760 Children who are not awarded 00:38:54.760 --> 00:38:58.320 the same premise of helpless innocence as their white peers. 00:38:58.320 --> 00:39:00.440 As a paper on Black girlhood puts it 00:39:00.440 --> 00:39:04.200 Ember Green: racialized gender and sexuality, i.e. 00:39:04.200 --> 00:39:08.760 Black genders and sexualities in and under white supremacy 00:39:08.760 --> 00:39:12.480 and colonization, negate and obliterate 00:39:12.480 --> 00:39:15.480 the very idea of the subject position. 00:39:15.720 --> 00:39:21.280 And the categories of child, childhood, girlhood and human 00:39:21.400 --> 00:39:23.600 in tow of such configurations 00:39:23.600 --> 00:39:25.320 is the denial of innocence 00:39:25.320 --> 00:39:29.760 in the traditional sense of the word, where Blackness blots out 00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:34.280 naivete, not knowing and exemption from responsibility. 00:39:34.320 --> 00:39:37.120 Or, to put it more crudely, children of color aren't given 00:39:37.120 --> 00:39:41.000 the presumption of innocence that white children are routinely granted. 00:39:41.080 --> 00:39:47.000 We are dominating and subordinating young people just because we can. 00:39:47.080 --> 00:39:51.880 And in the cases of racialized children, we are even more cruel and harsh, 00:39:52.080 --> 00:39:55.000 potentially creating a scenario where kids go 00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:57.720 from institutionalization on the basis of their age 00:39:57.720 --> 00:40:00.840 to institutionalization on the basis of their race. 00:40:01.080 --> 00:40:03.440 The school to prison nexus. 00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:06.960 And I ask you genuinely, Is this how we want to treat people? 00:40:07.040 --> 00:40:09.480 Is this how we want our society to run? 00:40:09.480 --> 00:40:11.320 Have you heard the baby in the background? 00:40:11.320 --> 00:40:13.800 Neil actually just ran out with them. 00:40:13.800 --> 00:40:15.720 But I think you might have heard a little bit of it. 00:40:15.720 --> 00:40:19.640 They're here and we're not doing that because we're showing off. 00:40:19.680 --> 00:40:20.760 I mean, maybe you think 00:40:20.760 --> 00:40:24.360 that I'm trying to monetize them or make a shift to mommy blogger, 00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:26.000 but I'm not. Don't worry. 00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:28.040 I don't plan to make videos which feature them. 00:40:28.040 --> 00:40:29.400 We're not that sort of channel. 00:40:29.400 --> 00:40:30.800 And like many of you, 00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:32.320 I would worry about the ethics 00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:35.520 of exposing someone to a public life that they didn't consent to. 00:40:35.760 --> 00:40:41.120 But this is also my job, and I think children should be allowed at workplaces. 00:40:41.200 --> 00:40:44.200 And I know there might be some loss of productivity. 00:40:44.400 --> 00:40:46.440 There's been some loss of productivity today. 00:40:46.440 --> 00:40:50.520 And sure, maybe not every job, certainly not the dangerous ones. 00:40:50.600 --> 00:40:54.080 But the system we have now requires institutionalization. 00:40:54.160 --> 00:40:56.880 The system we have requires carers to either 00:40:56.880 --> 00:40:58.800 give up their careers entirely 00:40:58.800 --> 00:41:02.120 to focus on their children, or to segment their day into sections 00:41:02.120 --> 00:41:06.000 where they're isolated from their children and their children are in care. 00:41:06.240 --> 00:41:08.520 And I don't want to do either of those. 00:41:08.520 --> 00:41:12.240 I really like that most European countries have generous maternity leave, 00:41:12.400 --> 00:41:13.840 but I'd also be pretty miserable 00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:16.640 if I spent every second of maternity leave 00:41:16.640 --> 00:41:19.960 focused solely on the baby and completely neglecting 00:41:19.960 --> 00:41:24.520 my own need for intellectual stimulation or to participate in society. 00:41:24.720 --> 00:41:27.960 Babies should be allowed in public for their own sake, but doing so 00:41:27.960 --> 00:41:31.680 would allow their parents to maintain their public access as well. 00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:33.800 And that's why the baby's here 00:41:33.800 --> 00:41:36.000 Because they're a newborn and they can't be left alone. 00:41:36.040 --> 00:41:38.760 Because I'm breastfeeding every few hours, 00:41:38.760 --> 00:41:41.400 because I don't want to put them in daycare. 00:41:41.400 --> 00:41:44.680 And if you take me less seriously as a thinker or as a professional, 00:41:44.680 --> 00:41:47.520 because I've got a baby strapped to my chest, 00:41:47.520 --> 00:41:49.240 that's your Adultism showing. 00:41:49.320 --> 00:41:50.680 Everything I've discussed today 00:41:50.680 --> 00:41:54.480 gets extra depressing when you see what children want 00:41:54.560 --> 00:41:58.840 and how easy it would be for us to give it to them. 00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:01.600 when they're asked, children want to be integrated 00:42:01.600 --> 00:42:03.640 and valued in their communities. 00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:05.400 They want to feel safe 00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:08.000 and they want to be able to move through their neighborhoods. 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:09.360 They want to be able to conduct 00:42:09.360 --> 00:42:13.600 a variety of activities like playing sports or exploring. 00:42:13.680 --> 00:42:15.120 They want public art. 00:42:15.120 --> 00:42:16.840 They want green spaces. 00:42:16.840 --> 00:42:19.360 They want tangible interactions with nature. 00:42:19.360 --> 00:42:22.600 They want spaces where they can meet up with their peers. 00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:25.080 And this one was especially heartening. 00:42:25.080 --> 00:42:27.720 Spaces where they can mix with kids from different 00:42:27.720 --> 00:42:30.480 ethnic and religious backgrounds than their own. 00:42:30.480 --> 00:42:34.760 So, like, they want what we all want but shaped like them. 00:42:34.920 --> 00:42:36.360 Usable for them. 00:42:36.360 --> 00:42:38.880 Public sculptures that they can climb on. 00:42:38.880 --> 00:42:41.160 Adequate lighting for dark areas. 00:42:41.160 --> 00:42:42.120 Bird feeders. 00:42:42.120 --> 00:42:44.520 Graffiti walls where they're allowed to paint. 00:42:44.520 --> 00:42:46.680 Seating protected from the elements. 00:42:46.680 --> 00:42:48.320 Doesn't that sound nice? 00:42:48.320 --> 00:42:51.480 I hesitate to give many concrete examples of what changes 00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:53.160 that we should make for children. 00:42:53.160 --> 00:42:54.720 Because I'm not a child. 00:42:54.720 --> 00:42:56.040 I'll just be designing 00:42:56.040 --> 00:42:58.320 around an idyllic image of a child. 00:42:58.320 --> 00:43:00.040 But children aren't an idea. 00:43:00.040 --> 00:43:01.480 They're a cohort. 00:43:01.480 --> 00:43:03.400 They can tell us what they want. 00:43:03.400 --> 00:43:07.040 We should invite children to the table and not tokenistically 00:43:07.040 --> 00:43:11.280 but with the intention of actually engaging and taking them seriously. 00:43:11.320 --> 00:43:16.640 Otherwise, we'll keep perpetuating an unfair adult framework, as Abood puts it. 00:43:16.680 --> 00:43:18.040 José María Luna: If children and youth 00:43:18.040 --> 00:43:20.280 do not have a way to empower themselves 00:43:20.280 --> 00:43:24.120 and shape their communities, they will remain victims of an adult world 00:43:24.120 --> 00:43:27.920 that has continuously demonstrated that it does not care. 00:43:28.080 --> 00:43:29.520 I like children. 00:43:29.520 --> 00:43:31.960 I like having children sharing my commute. 00:43:31.960 --> 00:43:34.960 I like having children running underfoot at the pub. 00:43:35.160 --> 00:43:38.440 I don't think children should be confined to a narrow range 00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:41.520 of child friendly spaces like fenced in playgrounds. 00:43:41.720 --> 00:43:45.320 But whether you like or don't like children shouldn't matter 00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:48.520 because they're people. They have just as much right to be 00:43:48.520 --> 00:43:53.400 in public life as you do, regardless ofyour feelings on that matter. 00:43:53.400 --> 00:43:55.240 🎵 bass note 🎵 00:43:55.760 --> 00:43:57.880 We can't make anyone watching 00:43:57.880 --> 00:43:59.600 care about children. 00:43:59.600 --> 00:44:00.440 We can't make - 00:44:00.440 --> 00:44:02.520 (Loud Click) 00:44:02.520 --> 00:44:03.440 Neil, what happened?? 00:44:03.440 --> 00:44:04.560 🎵 jazz drums 🎵 00:44:04.760 --> 00:44:05.520 Neil: I don't know. 00:44:05.520 --> 00:44:08.280 We don't have Philosophy Tube’s budget, do we? 00:44:08.640 --> 00:44:10.400 🎵 more drums 🎵 00:44:10.680 --> 00:44:13.440 Recently, I spent some time in a maternity hospital. 00:44:13.960 --> 00:44:15.360 It was interesting. 00:44:15.360 --> 00:44:20.680 There was an atmosphere of tension and of excitement and magic, actually, 00:44:20.760 --> 00:44:26.640 and horror and grossness and mundaneness and occasionally tragedy. 00:44:26.720 --> 00:44:29.240 We had some time to soak up all of it. 00:44:29.240 --> 00:44:33.000 Sarah was in there for almost ten days, having the baby. 00:44:33.080 --> 00:44:34.320 Her labor had to be induced. 00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:37.520 And unfortunately, it wasn't a very successful induction 00:44:37.720 --> 00:44:41.040 and little Bábóg had some trouble coming out into the world. 00:44:41.200 --> 00:44:45.240 Basically, contractions, but no dilation, no progression, just a little baby 00:44:45.440 --> 00:44:47.960 stuck in there getting squished by a womb, 00:44:47.960 --> 00:44:51.480 displaying increasingly distressed and distressing vital signs. 00:44:51.720 --> 00:44:56.000 And of course, Sarah in absolute agony, but kind of for no reason. 00:44:56.120 --> 00:44:57.320 We had very good care. 00:44:57.320 --> 00:44:59.880 There is very good maternity care in Ireland, 00:44:59.880 --> 00:45:01.600 and that was particularly striking for Sarah 00:45:01.600 --> 00:45:05.480 coming from the States where there are statistically poor maternity outcomes. 00:45:05.560 --> 00:45:09.960 In fact, the death rate isn't just high in the US, it's actively increasing. 00:45:10.080 --> 00:45:14.040 And it felt like the staff there in Galway, a combination of doctors, 00:45:14.040 --> 00:45:17.600 nurses, medical students and midwives all were fully in it. 00:45:17.840 --> 00:45:20.760 Hearts invested, life purpose being fulfilled, 00:45:20.760 --> 00:45:23.120 at least from my perspective, it felt like 00:45:23.120 --> 00:45:25.880 and I may be come across as a little bit of a wanker 00:45:25.880 --> 00:45:28.280 putting it this way, but it felt so authentic. 00:45:28.360 --> 00:45:32.040 It's just such an authentic experience having a baby. 00:45:32.120 --> 00:45:33.400 I mean, 00:45:33.480 --> 00:45:35.440 when they held up our baby, 00:45:35.440 --> 00:45:39.600 our new shining nexus of unimaginable potential and beauty 00:45:39.720 --> 00:45:43.600 and the boundaries of reality were as wishy-washy as my tear-veiled vision 00:45:43.720 --> 00:45:45.600 and the force of love itself, 00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:47.160 which had taken such a deep breath 00:45:47.160 --> 00:45:49.400 finally exhaled. 00:45:49.800 --> 00:45:52.320 It felt authentic, you know, like it felt like something was happening. 00:45:52.320 --> 00:45:54.240 But anyway, that's not the point of the story. 00:45:54.240 --> 00:45:57.120 There was a different bit to that bit 00:45:57.120 --> 00:46:02.200 There was a bit where I stood outside of the hospital and I was holding burritos. 00:46:02.280 --> 00:46:04.560 I just bought these mediocre burritos right? 00:46:04.560 --> 00:46:06.040 And I felt as I stood there 00:46:06.280 --> 00:46:09.040 that I was standing between two very different worlds. 00:46:09.120 --> 00:46:11.760 On the one side was this magical 00:46:11.760 --> 00:46:15.440 hospital place where people fulfilled their life's purpose. 00:46:15.520 --> 00:46:18.480 This really rather difficult and involved and body-horror-infused 00:46:18.480 --> 00:46:21.920 and emotionally fraught business of birth and medicine and care. 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:25.600 And on the other side, past the pedestrian crossing and the busy road 00:46:25.880 --> 00:46:27.280 was Tesco 00:46:27.360 --> 00:46:28.280 and Burritos 00:46:28.280 --> 00:46:30.520 and chain pubs and moneylenders. 00:46:30.600 --> 00:46:35.280 And we're sort of expected to think that these two are the same world 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:38.520 and that in fact the hospital world depends for its survival 00:46:38.520 --> 00:46:41.600 and viability on the Tesco and burrito and money lender world. 00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:43.480 But this is of course not true. 00:46:43.480 --> 00:46:45.160 We've been caring for each other 00:46:45.160 --> 00:46:48.880 for a lot longer than we've been selling assembly line burritos. 00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:52.560 Ireland almost has a public healthcare system, and Sarah and Bábóg 00:46:52.560 --> 00:46:55.560 basically got free care for the duration of the pregnancy. 00:46:55.800 --> 00:46:58.560 And it feels right, actually, 00:46:58.560 --> 00:47:01.400 that that should be something that society exists to do. 00:47:01.400 --> 00:47:06.200 It feels right that we all collectively should be simultaneously protective 00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:10.320 and welcoming towards Bábóg and that we should be challenged 00:47:10.320 --> 00:47:14.440 in an outward radius from Bábóg’s needs to reevaluate the world. 00:47:14.640 --> 00:47:19.800 It feels deeply wrong to think of their future welfare being based on money. 00:47:20.040 --> 00:47:24.480 And so following that logic, it should be deeply morally wrong that any child 00:47:24.480 --> 00:47:28.520 or any person should have their future welfare, be based on their economic value. 00:47:28.760 --> 00:47:33.560 Their value in reality, in a moral sense, is coming from somewhere else. 00:47:33.640 --> 00:47:36.360 So I want to circle the block 00:47:36.360 --> 00:47:39.840 of this Childism philosophy thing 00:47:39.840 --> 00:47:44.000 with exactly that dichotomy in my mind, a society of children, 00:47:44.080 --> 00:47:48.360 which is a society of schools and hospitals and playgrounds 00:47:48.360 --> 00:47:52.840 and mutual interdependence and so forth, versus a society of adults, 00:47:52.920 --> 00:47:58.800 which is money and exploitation, and Tesco and techno feudalism. 00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:02.320 See, no matter how lofty or far reaching or academic this gets, 00:48:02.320 --> 00:48:06.240 ultimately this is still a story about a baby in the world, 00:48:06.240 --> 00:48:09.720 just like how your story is ultimately about a baby in the world. 00:48:09.720 --> 00:48:10.680 That's you. 00:48:10.680 --> 00:48:11.280 And you know 00:48:11.280 --> 00:48:15.960 the movie Three Men and a Baby is actually about Three Babies and a Baby, 00:48:16.040 --> 00:48:17.720 if you think about it. 00:48:17.720 --> 00:48:19.800 (embarrassed laugh) 00:48:19.880 --> 00:48:20.280 Okay. 00:48:20.280 --> 00:48:22.600 So one of the things 00:48:22.600 --> 00:48:26.280 that we could accidentally do here that we might want to, you know, not do 00:48:26.360 --> 00:48:29.240 is to build a whole picture of childism that makes you think, 00:48:29.240 --> 00:48:30.120 oh, I get it! 00:48:30.200 --> 00:48:34.680 This is like “children are brilliant. The Philosophy.” 00:48:34.680 --> 00:48:35.680 This is wrong. 00:48:35.680 --> 00:48:36.480 That isn't it? 00:48:36.480 --> 00:48:39.720 That would be as silly as coming to the conclusion that feminism is. 00:48:39.840 --> 00:48:41.920 “Women are brilliant. The Philosophy.” 00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:45.000 which I'm aware, is a conclusion that some people do come to, 00:48:45.200 --> 00:48:46.560 and I wish they wouldn't. 00:48:46.560 --> 00:48:49.560 Some people get these sorts of things wrong on purpose, actually, 00:48:49.560 --> 00:48:52.200 and they quite actively throw a spanner in the works 00:48:52.200 --> 00:48:54.360 by responding to feminism with, 00:48:54.360 --> 00:48:56.600 “Well, men are great too!” 00:48:56.600 --> 00:49:00.560 or “are you saying women never do anything wrong??” 00:49:00.560 --> 00:49:03.440 and thus participate at whatever level in a sort of ratcheting 00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:07.400 of misinterpretation that tends towards making feminism look silly? 00:49:07.400 --> 00:49:10.400 And much like our discussion of insults earlier, 00:49:10.400 --> 00:49:14.520 erases productive conversations about problems like 00:49:14.520 --> 00:49:16.560 patriarchy or gender based violence. 00:49:16.600 --> 00:49:20.600 Similarly, people interpret critical race theory as this kind of 00:49:20.680 --> 00:49:23.640 inelegant, half-assed exaltation of non-white 00:49:23.640 --> 00:49:27.440 racial identities or some kind of cult of Negative Nellies who hate the whites, 00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:31.480 which you'd have to be pretty generous to actually interpret as misunderstanding. 00:49:31.480 --> 00:49:32.680 But I digress. 00:49:32.680 --> 00:49:37.080 This is important, though, because as I now start to talk about the details 00:49:37.080 --> 00:49:40.200 of things like democratic representation for children, 00:49:40.200 --> 00:49:42.040 political participation for children, 00:49:42.040 --> 00:49:46.080 youth activists, equality for children imagined in new and concrete 00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:49.840 ways, you might find yourself somewhere on that spectrum of 00:49:49.920 --> 00:49:52.320 “But we can't really be serious about all of this.” 00:49:52.320 --> 00:49:55.800 “We're not really considering children as people in this way, are we?” 00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:58.920 And this is just something I would ask you to be aware of as we go, 00:49:58.920 --> 00:50:02.920 because there is such a thing as invisible ideology. 00:50:02.920 --> 00:50:04.320 ideas that you hold 00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:07.960 that you didn't come up with that don't even necessarily serve you, 00:50:08.080 --> 00:50:12.360 that you nonetheless reproduce on the behalf of your oppressors. 00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:14.880 This is part of what makes a status quo, 00:50:14.880 --> 00:50:18.040 however unjust and dysfunctional that status quo is 00:50:18.040 --> 00:50:22.400 more comfortable than particular imaginable alternatives 00:50:22.400 --> 00:50:23.840 in John Walll's paper. 00:50:23.840 --> 00:50:28.600 Can Democracy Represent Children? Towards a Politics of Difference 00:50:28.600 --> 00:50:31.800 He points out that history regards the political role of children 00:50:31.960 --> 00:50:34.840 in often more generous ways than we do now 00:50:34.840 --> 00:50:36.480 That Dang Dad: In the past, children have been kings 00:50:36.480 --> 00:50:39.600 and queens played important roles in the labor movements, marched 00:50:39.600 --> 00:50:43.600 with Gandhi to liberate India, helped desegregate the United States South, 00:50:43.840 --> 00:50:47.480 and been involved in one way or another in all manner of political movements. 00:50:47.640 --> 00:50:51.520 Have you ever heard of the Newsboys Strike of 1899? 00:50:51.600 --> 00:50:54.040 It's a long and storied and controversial tale 00:50:54.040 --> 00:50:56.240 that we can't fully indulge here today. 00:50:56.240 --> 00:50:59.280 But basically, newspaper hawkers of the time, young men 00:50:59.280 --> 00:51:03.480 and boys had a strike for two weeks which effectively halved the circulation 00:51:03.480 --> 00:51:07.240 of the papers of both Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. 00:51:07.480 --> 00:51:09.840 Now, they didn't exactly succeed in their aims. 00:51:09.840 --> 00:51:13.160 Neither Hearst nor Pulitzer agreed to pay them more, 00:51:13.160 --> 00:51:16.560 but they did leverage buybacks for the papers that they didn't sell, 00:51:16.560 --> 00:51:20.600 so they successfully impacted their own poverty at the expense 00:51:20.800 --> 00:51:23.920 of those famously miserly capitalists c***s 00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:25.560 And that's a win for the little fella. 00:51:25.560 --> 00:51:29.000 It's all somewhat faithfully recreated in the Disney film Newsies 00:51:29.160 --> 00:51:33.360 and the Broadway musical of the same name, neither of which I've seen, 00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:34.920 but Biz Berkeley has. 00:51:34.920 --> 00:51:37.400 So you can just watch the video that she did about it 00:51:37.400 --> 00:51:39.080 🎵 swelling music 🎵 00:51:39.160 --> 00:51:41.160 🎵 When I Dream 🎵 00:51:41.160 --> 00:51:44.480 Anyway, the news hawkers were an exploited workforce. 00:51:44.560 --> 00:51:45.280 Absolutely. 00:51:45.280 --> 00:51:49.120 And it sucks that children were part of an exploited workforce, 00:51:49.200 --> 00:51:52.600 but they also organized and used collective action. 00:51:52.800 --> 00:51:56.560 This gets referred to as “Youth Activism” now because of course 00:51:56.560 --> 00:51:59.720 it's different to just activism because they're children. 00:51:59.880 --> 00:52:01.080 It's so cute. 00:52:01.080 --> 00:52:02.600 They think that they're people. 00:52:03.240 --> 00:52:05.440 But I'm going to put a pin in this 00:52:05.440 --> 00:52:06.000 (pin!) 00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:07.320 and it's a lynchpin, 00:52:07.320 --> 00:52:10.120 it’ll be really quite important and have something to do with 00:52:10.120 --> 00:52:12.720 Youth Activism and kids fighting for the whole world. 00:52:12.720 --> 00:52:14.120 You'll see it's a whole thing 00:52:14.120 --> 00:52:16.160 because children, it would seem, 00:52:16.240 --> 00:52:20.160 are the cohort most patently aware of how f*cked the world is 00:52:20.320 --> 00:52:23.320 and just how urgent and necessary it is 00:52:23.320 --> 00:52:27.200 to stop playing adult games and unf*ck the world immediately. 00:52:27.200 --> 00:52:31.520 But as I say, we’ll pin that because that is children outside of the establishment. 00:52:31.680 --> 00:52:35.960 No matter how Other a group is, it's possible to picture them outside the gates 00:52:36.120 --> 00:52:37.640 yelling and saying, “This Sucks!” 00:52:37.640 --> 00:52:40.240 Even children don't get their usual erasure from that scenario. 00:52:40.240 --> 00:52:44.360 But if we turn our attention instead to children sitting in the big chairs, 00:52:44.440 --> 00:52:46.480 in the big rooms, making the big decisions 00:52:46.480 --> 00:52:49.160 Like Bossy Baby baby or Blank Check or whatever 00:52:49.160 --> 00:52:50.960 then it does start to sound a bit weird, right? 00:52:51.160 --> 00:52:54.560 If we look at the various instances where there has actually been an attempt 00:52:54.560 --> 00:52:58.120 to integrate children into democracy, to facilitate their participation 00:52:58.120 --> 00:53:01.560 in the establishment, then our preconceptions, 00:53:01.560 --> 00:53:03.520 our clichéd mental images 00:53:03.520 --> 00:53:06.360 and our cognitive biases kick right back in again. 00:53:06.440 --> 00:53:09.120 But it's true that attempts have been made at this very thing, 00:53:09.120 --> 00:53:13.200 this more liberal version of representing children in politics. 00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:16.480 And by looking at some of the examples of children's democratic 00:53:16.480 --> 00:53:19.920 participation, hopefully it will help us to understand how, 00:53:20.040 --> 00:53:24.640 One, the issues with involving children in democracy are actually quite arbitrary. 00:53:24.840 --> 00:53:28.640 And Two, those issues are also really similar 00:53:28.720 --> 00:53:32.520 to the issues that face everyone who gets excluded from democracy. 00:53:32.520 --> 00:53:37.600 So again, drawing from John Wall's paper, there is something of a shift around 1989 00:53:37.800 --> 00:53:40.400 with the establishment of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, 00:53:40.400 --> 00:53:43.560 with various countries struggling to interpret or pay lip service 00:53:43.680 --> 00:53:47.160 to listening to children without that actually being a concrete 00:53:47.160 --> 00:53:50.760 legal obligation, you have New Zealand, South Africa, even Israel 00:53:50.880 --> 00:53:54.200 establishing consultative bodies for children. 00:53:54.280 --> 00:53:55.320 In more recent years, 00:53:55.320 --> 00:53:58.880 many countries go a step further by introducing children's parliaments, 00:53:59.120 --> 00:54:02.280 the idea being that adults assumptions about the needs of children 00:54:02.440 --> 00:54:05.880 can be supplemented or challenged by children themselves. 00:54:05.880 --> 00:54:08.960 But as Wall and others have pointed out, there's a few issues here. 00:54:09.160 --> 00:54:10.600 He clears up the picture 00:54:10.600 --> 00:54:14.920 of democratic participation for children by splitting it into three categories: 00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:17.920 Agency, Interdependence and Difference 00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:19.240 Okay, first: Agency. 00:54:19.440 --> 00:54:23.160 That idea that you can just give children the vote, give them the microphone, 00:54:23.160 --> 00:54:25.080 give them something, give them agency. 00:54:25.080 --> 00:54:28.200 Some of the problems with this, we actually touched on already 00:54:28.200 --> 00:54:30.080 First: which children? 00:54:30.440 --> 00:54:33.640 that is, wealthier children from good schools are overrepresented in 00:54:33.640 --> 00:54:36.640 even the most benevolent forward thinking of organizations. 00:54:36.800 --> 00:54:40.920 Agency has the problem of simultaneously holding open doors for certain 00:54:40.920 --> 00:54:44.520 kinds of people and closing doors for other kinds of people. 00:54:44.680 --> 00:54:48.800 It tends to be that those who most closely resemble the existing power elites 00:54:49.000 --> 00:54:53.480 will have disproportionately greater “agency” in political participation. 00:54:53.480 --> 00:54:55.920 If we're talking about adults, they'll be the sort of people 00:54:55.920 --> 00:55:00.560 who have the ear of the powerful, or they'll be part of existing institutions. 00:55:00.560 --> 00:55:03.200 They'll have access to education, they'll have property, 00:55:03.200 --> 00:55:06.640 they'll have savings, technology, other forms of cultural capital. 00:55:06.640 --> 00:55:10.560 And if we're talking about children, even once you've gotten past the razors of 00:55:10.560 --> 00:55:13.680 which kids, rich kids, the right kids, the white kids? 00:55:13.680 --> 00:55:15.600 you still have the problem that they will be 00:55:15.600 --> 00:55:18.040 the children who most resemble adults 00:55:18.240 --> 00:55:21.560 and at that most resemble wealthy and powerful adults. 00:55:21.720 --> 00:55:23.520 On top of that, you have Tokenism. 00:55:23.520 --> 00:55:27.320 This idea that whatever diversity you is mostly decorative. 00:55:27.400 --> 00:55:31.400 Now, at time of writing, most everyone even remotely left of center 00:55:31.560 --> 00:55:34.680 is crying out for some decorative tokenism in the US 00:55:34.680 --> 00:55:38.960 because it's better than the beady-eyed Ku Klux Klan bloodthirsty whitewashing 00:55:38.960 --> 00:55:41.280 evisceration of the Republican Party under Trump, 00:55:41.280 --> 00:55:42.800 and none of them have any eyebrows. 00:55:42.800 --> 00:55:45.720 But we can still, I hope, recognize that sticking 00:55:45.720 --> 00:55:50.520 some marginalized people in a committee does not actually emancipate them. 00:55:50.600 --> 00:55:54.160 This is extra true of sticking children in a committee 00:55:54.280 --> 00:55:55.320 That Dang Dad: as suppressed groups 00:55:55.320 --> 00:55:59.320 throughout history have found citizenship in name can differ from citizenship 00:55:59.320 --> 00:56:03.560 in reality. For example, children in civic councils in the UK report 00:56:03.560 --> 00:56:06.560 feeling that, while they can participate and have a voice. 00:56:06.800 --> 00:56:08.440 These councils are really controlled 00:56:08.440 --> 00:56:12.240 by larger institutional structures that are run by adults. 00:56:12.320 --> 00:56:15.680 There's a basic structural issue with the concept of agency, 00:56:15.680 --> 00:56:16.920 as Wall puts it. 00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:18.120 That Dang Dad: The problem is that 00:56:18.120 --> 00:56:20.480 agency itself is a political norm 00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:22.920 with historically adult-centered biases. 00:56:22.920 --> 00:56:26.880 So he outlines his next category: Interdependence. 00:56:26.880 --> 00:56:29.920 A different form of participation that isn't contingent 00:56:29.920 --> 00:56:33.400 on hierarchical skills and knowledge and various forms of capital. 00:56:33.520 --> 00:56:35.280 Now, interdependence is a term 00:56:35.280 --> 00:56:36.880 we've already thrown around once or twice, 00:56:36.880 --> 00:56:40.360 but we might now take a moment to actually understand 00:56:40.360 --> 00:56:41.360 That Dang Dad: children can be 00:56:41.360 --> 00:56:44.040 included as full rather than second class citizens, 00:56:44.040 --> 00:56:47.560 the argument goes If citizenship is broadened to include 00:56:47.560 --> 00:56:51.520 relational ties and social and political interdependencies, 00:56:51.600 --> 00:56:54.520 that is persons simultaneously active 00:56:54.520 --> 00:56:58.040 independence and passive dependance. 00:56:58.120 --> 00:57:03.040 We exist in webs of relationships with different dependencies. 00:57:03.120 --> 00:57:06.880 Drawing on other thinkers, John Wall points out that the idea of an independent 00:57:06.880 --> 00:57:10.680 participant in democracy is kind of a fallacy in the first place. 00:57:10.680 --> 00:57:12.680 Individuals, just like, y’know 00:57:12.680 --> 00:57:16.520 your parents or your neighbors, the people commenting on our last video, 00:57:16.600 --> 00:57:19.800 they cannot necessarily grasp political concepts, 00:57:19.800 --> 00:57:22.080 economic or ecological problems, 00:57:22.080 --> 00:57:25.800 clearly, they cannot grasp issues of public health and so on. 00:57:26.040 --> 00:57:29.480 We need each other in order to outsource expertise. 00:57:29.560 --> 00:57:32.760 And therefore, citizenship is a dynamic process 00:57:32.760 --> 00:57:36.240 of active independence and passive dependance. 00:57:36.240 --> 00:57:40.720 The idea of any category of person who is granted the respect to make salient 00:57:40.720 --> 00:57:44.280 political decisions because of that category has always been silly. 00:57:44.320 --> 00:57:49.760 Whether the category is landowner or man or white person or f***ing Baron or Duke 00:57:49.840 --> 00:57:54.760 And that idea doesn't stop being silly just because now the category is adult. 00:57:54.920 --> 00:57:57.480 Have you met adults? 00:57:57.480 --> 00:58:01.120 As I will really emphasize later, a key missing component of functional 00:58:01.120 --> 00:58:04.480 and benevolent democratic participation is education. 00:58:04.480 --> 00:58:08.760 This idea that we must learn or outsource learning would require a willingness 00:58:08.760 --> 00:58:13.600 to suspend entitlement when you don't know and to admit when you don't know, 00:58:13.600 --> 00:58:16.920 to get good at accessing the experience of not knowing 00:58:17.040 --> 00:58:19.960 and therefore knowing when it is that you are not capable of showing 00:58:19.960 --> 00:58:22.680 greater judgment than someone who doesn't speak English 00:58:22.680 --> 00:58:24.720 or someone with a mental illness or someone 00:58:24.720 --> 00:58:28.000 with an intellectual disability, or indeed a child. 00:58:28.080 --> 00:58:29.680 Sometimes you don't know better than a child. 00:58:29.680 --> 00:58:33.400 That itself would radically transform democracy, 00:58:33.480 --> 00:58:35.120 as Mark Jans puts it in 00:58:35.120 --> 00:58:39.320 Children as Citizens: Towards a Contemporary Notion of Child Participation. 00:58:39.400 --> 00:58:40.800 Babila: This citizenship of children 00:58:40.800 --> 00:58:42.800 is based on a continuous learning process 00:58:42.800 --> 00:58:44.960 in which children and adults are interdependent. 00:58:44.960 --> 00:58:47.800 In this interdependency, the playful way in which children 00:58:47.800 --> 00:58:50.800 give meaning to their environment has to be taken into account. 00:58:50.840 --> 00:58:51.680 The play of children 00:58:51.680 --> 00:58:54.920 cannot merely be considered as socially unimportant child play. 00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:57.840 But there's still an underlying issue with interdependence, 00:58:57.840 --> 00:59:00.840 and that is that it represents a failure of imagination 00:59:01.000 --> 00:59:05.080 and will tend to bring us right back to situations that favor adults. 00:59:05.160 --> 00:59:07.280 Usually, advocacy. 00:59:07.280 --> 00:59:11.280 as in hey group that is dependent on us to represent them. 00:59:11.440 --> 00:59:12.480 What kind of ice cream 00:59:12.480 --> 00:59:15.680 would you like with this legislation that increases funding for the police? 00:59:15.680 --> 00:59:19.480 Would you like Biden Genocide or Harris Genocide? 00:59:19.720 --> 00:59:24.080 Interdependence as much as it is very much along the right path, 00:59:24.160 --> 00:59:27.200 still has this implicit hierarchical order of things 00:59:27.360 --> 00:59:31.880 in which power kindly squats down next to non-power asks it 00:59:32.040 --> 00:59:34.760 how many sugars it would like in its tea, and then 00:59:34.760 --> 00:59:37.040 defunds the committee in charge of tea 00:59:37.040 --> 00:59:40.720 in order to begin to get around this and other issues with interdependence, 00:59:40.920 --> 00:59:44.280 Wall proposes a third category: Difference 00:59:44.280 --> 00:59:46.400 and this is the real blow-it-all-up 00:59:46.400 --> 00:59:49.800 change our mindsets anti-colonial childist radicalism 00:59:49.800 --> 00:59:50.880 That Dang Dad: on this model, 00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:54.800 democracy means striving against historical norms of power 00:59:54.800 --> 00:59:59.320 for the inclusion of the greatest possible diversity of social differences. 00:59:59.400 --> 01:00:01.000 This isn't DEI, 01:00:01.000 --> 01:00:02.880 this is f***ing 01:00:02.880 --> 01:00:04.240 Die. 01:00:04.320 --> 01:00:06.120 That's a bad joke. 01:00:06.120 --> 01:00:09.720 In its simplest form, we can say that an inclusive democracy 01:00:09.960 --> 01:00:12.920 should represent the specific needs of different groups 01:00:12.920 --> 01:00:16.800 in their specific and different ways that those groups interact 01:00:16.800 --> 01:00:20.640 with and understand society differently to each other. 01:00:20.760 --> 01:00:24.440 This is the exact opposite of the Euro- Americananian norm 01:00:24.440 --> 01:00:27.160 that if anyone should dare to try to make a life for themselves 01:00:27.160 --> 01:00:31.440 in one of these golden imperial lands of the free, then they had better curtail 01:00:31.440 --> 01:00:36.480 their bloody culture and adapt to the many horrible norms in said land of the free. 01:00:36.720 --> 01:00:40.120 Conformities understood through the rhetoric of its richest 01:00:40.280 --> 01:00:43.560 and most powerful and most c***-like 01:00:43.560 --> 01:00:45.520 different cultures, be they from 01:00:45.520 --> 01:00:47.400 foreign lands or minority religions, 01:00:47.400 --> 01:00:51.000 or they're queer, or they have different needs or different neurotypes, or indeed 01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:55.600 they are simply children should be represented in that difference, 01:00:55.840 --> 01:00:59.440 by that difference, different democraies should be different. 01:00:59.480 --> 01:01:02.480 Public spheres should be plural and many and different. 01:01:02.480 --> 01:01:04.640 And the people watching who already know a thing or two 01:01:04.640 --> 01:01:07.800 about decolonialism will know what I'm dancing around 01:01:07.800 --> 01:01:12.640 is that the process of “civilizing” or “developing democracy” 01:01:12.720 --> 01:01:17.360 is the same as the process of conforming to the will and design of the colonizers. 01:01:17.360 --> 01:01:18.400 More on that later. 01:01:18.400 --> 01:01:21.840 Because in the more macro, all encompassing complex high 01:01:21.840 --> 01:01:24.960 end of this idea, some childists are proposing that in order 01:01:24.960 --> 01:01:29.240 to do fair representation and utopia properly, democracy itself 01:01:29.240 --> 01:01:32.360 should be deconstructive rather than consensus-oriented, 01:01:32.360 --> 01:01:35.640 and the role of the citizen should be antagonistic towards power 01:01:35.720 --> 01:01:38.520 rather than part of the mechanism that creates it 01:01:38.520 --> 01:01:39.040 (sound of chair) 01:01:39.120 --> 01:01:42.560 and the people watching who already know a thing or two about political anarchism 01:01:42.560 --> 01:01:48.240 will also be saying Yes, yes, we know more on that, etc. 01:01:48.960 --> 01:01:49.720 (chair) 01:01:49.800 --> 01:01:52.760 But for me, while that's all huge and inspirational. 01:01:52.760 --> 01:01:55.240 It's not quite substantive or actionable enough, 01:01:55.240 --> 01:01:58.240 or at least it doesn't yet compose a material set of tools 01:01:58.320 --> 01:02:00.960 and guidelines and things we can do 01:02:00.960 --> 01:02:02.680 for that, I must draw your attention 01:02:02.680 --> 01:02:06.080 back to this here pin, because I promise 01:02:06.160 --> 01:02:08.640 there's actually a way of doing all of this, 01:02:08.640 --> 01:02:10.640 at least an imaginable way. 01:02:10.680 --> 01:02:12.520 In the meantime, what you’re probably 01:02:12.520 --> 01:02:15.640 currently imagining as the democratic representation of children 01:02:15.840 --> 01:02:19.080 is probably still somewhat mired in tokenism 01:02:19.080 --> 01:02:21.480 and playing pretend and ultimately, at best, 01:02:21.480 --> 01:02:24.720 advocacy with extra steps by adults for children. 01:02:24.720 --> 01:02:27.440 I mean, this essay is in many ways no different. 01:02:27.440 --> 01:02:28.440 It is adults. 01:02:28.440 --> 01:02:32.680 Sarah and I thinking about what children need and speculating 01:02:32.680 --> 01:02:36.480 on what young people think and advocating for what young people would say, 01:02:36.680 --> 01:02:38.720 if only there was some way to listen to them. 01:02:38.720 --> 01:02:42.320 Because let's face it, when you're not imagining these idealized 01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:45.960 four foot tall activists and advocates who all look like Greta Thunberg 01:02:46.200 --> 01:02:49.160 and speak six languages, and you instead imagine 01:02:49.160 --> 01:02:51.160 actual children! 01:02:51.160 --> 01:02:53.840 children you have met, I mean, like a crowd of them. 01:02:53.920 --> 01:02:58.440 It's just a cacophony of chewing gum and monster energy drink and references 01:02:58.440 --> 01:03:00.720 to Bluey, and it's impossible to make out a single word 01:03:00.720 --> 01:03:02.160 Right? 01:03:02.160 --> 01:03:03.880 No, obviously, that's bollocks. 01:03:03.880 --> 01:03:07.720 But still, we do default to the adult- centric frame quite readily, 01:03:07.880 --> 01:03:10.760 and it seems to be an irresistible worldview. 01:03:10.760 --> 01:03:12.080 There seems to be a pattern 01:03:12.080 --> 01:03:16.200 to the excuses we use to rationalize the disenfranchisement of kids: 01:03:16.360 --> 01:03:20.360 Children can't engage with the political process, children can't articulate themselves. 01:03:20.520 --> 01:03:23.280 Children aren't good at judging their own needs and so on. 01:03:23.280 --> 01:03:28.160 And again, these excuses, when we set aside for a moment 01:03:28.240 --> 01:03:29.400 that they're about children, 01:03:29.400 --> 01:03:33.360 may be strikingly familiar to those who are disempowered in general 01:03:33.560 --> 01:03:37.440 for trans people, for disabled people, for people with chronic illnesses. 01:03:37.480 --> 01:03:43.080 “Oh, you're not understanding the system, you're extremist, naive-ists 01:03:43.080 --> 01:03:44.560 and you're pushing people away from your cause!” 01:03:44.760 --> 01:03:46.640 for mentally ill people, for pregnant people. 01:03:46.840 --> 01:03:48.880 “You're not actually able to judge your own needs! 01:03:48.880 --> 01:03:50.880 Have you been talking to Doctor Google again?” 01:03:50.880 --> 01:03:52.680 for immigrants, for refugees, 01:03:52.760 --> 01:03:56.640 for people on minimum wage, for anyone basically who stands outside 01:03:56.640 --> 01:03:58.360 of the establishment halls of power, 01:03:58.360 --> 01:04:00.840 No matter how perfectly you articulate your needs 01:04:00.840 --> 01:04:04.440 and no matter how incontrovertibly you understand 01:04:04.440 --> 01:04:08.400 and know your own needs, you don't get to actually represent yourself. 01:04:08.520 --> 01:04:10.000 And it's familiar, right? 01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:13.000 that even the people that do come close to representing you 01:04:13.080 --> 01:04:16.920 are the richer, more educated, prettier and more urban version 01:04:16.960 --> 01:04:20.160 of you and the means by which the participants are 01:04:20.160 --> 01:04:22.680 then Disenfranchized is, of course, familiar too! 01:04:22.680 --> 01:04:26.280 Participation transformed into manipulation, decoration and tokenism. 01:04:26.280 --> 01:04:29.760 In fact, much of the language used to describe disenfranchisement 01:04:29.760 --> 01:04:36.120 has the adult child dynamic baked into it Infantilizing, belittling, patronizing. 01:04:36.240 --> 01:04:39.240 They're making it difficult for me to draw a parallel here. 01:04:39.400 --> 01:04:42.520 And so, of course, when people seek meaningful change, 01:04:42.520 --> 01:04:46.680 they get told to grow up, which is particularly unfair 01:04:46.760 --> 01:04:51.000 on the cohort of literal children and young people who, when they grow up, 01:04:51.200 --> 01:04:55.280 will no longer have the political concerns of children. 01:04:55.360 --> 01:04:59.640 Of course, that's the idea because having just gone full circle, 01:04:59.800 --> 01:05:03.240 we now see that the traits that make them children 01:05:03.240 --> 01:05:06.600 are the very things that we otherize and objectify in the first place. 01:05:06.840 --> 01:05:10.760 These otherized, objectified, childishnesses 01:05:10.760 --> 01:05:13.880 are the things that become problems, whether they are 01:05:14.120 --> 01:05:17.680 value neutral traits or needs or just phenomena peculiar to a cohort. 01:05:17.880 --> 01:05:21.320 The idea is “come back to me when you're an adult!” 01:05:21.320 --> 01:05:24.760 Very similar to “come back to me when you're no longer trans” 01:05:24.760 --> 01:05:28.320 or you can lean in or talk like a white person, or you can 01:05:28.520 --> 01:05:30.720 get out of that f***ing wheelchair or whatever. 01:05:30.720 --> 01:05:33.480 And it may be, as ugly as it's going to feel, 01:05:33.480 --> 01:05:37.200 that the things you think of as annoying about children are exactly 01:05:37.200 --> 01:05:40.960 those otherized, socially undesirable, economically unproductive 01:05:40.960 --> 01:05:44.320 and generally needy and vulnerable traits which your oppressor 01:05:44.320 --> 01:05:47.000 wants you to hate about children 01:05:47.000 --> 01:05:49.800 wants you to objectify and villainize and pathologize. 01:05:49.800 --> 01:05:54.120 Ugh, children on planes, children in restaurants, children needing 01:05:54.120 --> 01:05:58.120 things, costing money, being born, bringing more misery into the world, 01:05:58.360 --> 01:06:02.320 taking over my friends’ lives! As ugly as it might feel, 01:06:02.400 --> 01:06:05.400 it may be that your oppressor wants you to hate those things 01:06:05.520 --> 01:06:10.640 because those are the things that he hates about you. 01:06:10.640 --> 01:06:18.040 (footsteps exiting the stage) 01:06:18.120 --> 01:06:21.280 I bet there's a part of you right now that's thinking, okay, 01:06:21.360 --> 01:06:25.880 this is great in theory, but in practice this is kind of hippie nonsense. 01:06:25.880 --> 01:06:27.440 Maybe you're willing to go along with me 01:06:27.440 --> 01:06:31.240 when I say that we're interdependent, that makes some intuitive sense. 01:06:31.240 --> 01:06:33.600 No one does anything truly alone. 01:06:33.600 --> 01:06:38.040 But what if I ask you to picture someone with no agency, 01:06:38.120 --> 01:06:44.120 someone who has no active independence, someone who only takes and doesn't give? 01:06:44.160 --> 01:06:45.600 Like, what about infants? 01:06:45.600 --> 01:06:46.440 It's all well and good 01:06:46.440 --> 01:06:49.440 to say that relationships with older children are reciprocal. 01:06:49.600 --> 01:06:52.640 They can report on themselves, they can be reasoned with. 01:06:52.640 --> 01:06:55.160 They can help come up with solutions when there's a problem 01:06:55.160 --> 01:06:57.480 that they're facing, even they still need 01:06:57.480 --> 01:06:59.040 your involvement for some of it. 01:06:59.040 --> 01:07:01.640 They can even provide moments of care for adults. 01:07:01.640 --> 01:07:04.920 Like one night I was up with the baby at 2 a.m. 01:07:04.920 --> 01:07:06.000 and my 14 year old 01:07:06.000 --> 01:07:07.800 step kid peeks their head in the door 01:07:07.800 --> 01:07:09.200 because they thought they heard me 01:07:09.240 --> 01:07:13.400 and they wanted to offer me a cup of herbal tea, which in that hazy, 01:07:13.400 --> 01:07:17.160 sleep deprived state, it sounded like my absolute salvation. 01:07:17.200 --> 01:07:19.920 So they made it for me and they brought it to me. 01:07:19.920 --> 01:07:21.720 I was up because I was breastfeeding. 01:07:21.720 --> 01:07:23.520 They were up because they're a teenager 01:07:23.520 --> 01:07:27.160 and they did a sweet thing for me at a time when I really needed support. 01:07:27.240 --> 01:07:30.240 But they're 14. What about younger children? 01:07:30.280 --> 01:07:33.480 What about infants? What about my newborn? 01:07:33.560 --> 01:07:37.560 I think many people would argue that my newborn isn't even a person yet. 01:07:37.560 --> 01:07:38.520 Not really. 01:07:38.520 --> 01:07:40.560 They’d argue that newborns are completely dependent. 01:07:40.560 --> 01:07:43.520 They can't give back. They can't even reciprocate. 01:07:43.520 --> 01:07:47.280 They're just creatures of instinct with no thoughts or feelings of their own. 01:07:47.360 --> 01:07:49.880 They can't feel stress. They can't feel pain. 01:07:49.880 --> 01:07:51.400 You think they're smiling? 01:07:51.400 --> 01:07:53.880 That's actually just gas. 01:07:53.880 --> 01:07:55.480 Except it's not. 01:07:55.480 --> 01:07:57.760 Because newborns do feel stress. 01:07:57.840 --> 01:08:00.000 And though they have a limited set of tools 01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:04.000 with which to address it, they can do things like avert their gaze 01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:08.120 from the object of stress in order to help regulate their heartbeats. 01:08:08.120 --> 01:08:12.360 Newborns do feel pain, something we didn't learn until as late as the 1980s, 01:08:12.520 --> 01:08:16.040 before which we were still sometimes doing surgery on newborns 01:08:16.040 --> 01:08:19.160 without pain relief and wondering why they were dying of shock. 01:08:19.200 --> 01:08:22.560 Recently, The Lancet, the world's most prestigious public health journal, 01:08:22.800 --> 01:08:26.400 had to put out an article calling on doctors to properly medicate 01:08:26.400 --> 01:08:30.440 newborns undergoing painful medical procedures as the current practice 01:08:30.560 --> 01:08:34.360 of giving them sugar water doesn't actually address pain 01:08:34.400 --> 01:08:37.680 and the repeated experiences of feeling pain, even in a baby 01:08:37.680 --> 01:08:41.000 so young, is so disruptive that it can lead to brain damage. 01:08:41.000 --> 01:08:44.360 And yes, mountains of relatively recent scientific evidence 01:08:44.440 --> 01:08:47.440 overwhelmingly lead to the conclusion that newborns smile 01:08:47.520 --> 01:08:51.040 not just as a reflex, but as a meaningful sign of social connection. 01:08:51.120 --> 01:08:54.120 They do this as early as 36 hours old. 01:08:54.160 --> 01:08:57.560 That's how long it takes for them to observe their caregivers smiling, 01:08:57.640 --> 01:09:00.280 understand that this is a tool of social connection 01:09:00.280 --> 01:09:02.640 and then reflect it back themselves. 01:09:02.640 --> 01:09:06.000 In fact, they are so good at this that even during the pandemic, 01:09:06.000 --> 01:09:09.480 researchers tested whether they could detect smiles under masks. 01:09:09.600 --> 01:09:13.760 The results of the trial showed that even with the mouth part of a smile covered, 01:09:13.840 --> 01:09:17.280 babies were able to observe the rest of the face enough to determine 01:09:17.480 --> 01:09:21.320 that they were being smiled at and reciprocate by smiling themselves. 01:09:21.360 --> 01:09:24.960 Babies, even when they're hours old, are already people. 01:09:25.080 --> 01:09:26.960 They're not just biological computers 01:09:26.960 --> 01:09:30.120 coded with instincts, dictating when they eat, sleep or poop. 01:09:30.360 --> 01:09:32.640 They're already learning, taking in the world, 01:09:32.640 --> 01:09:34.080 making connections with it. 01:09:34.080 --> 01:09:35.200 They are people. 01:09:35.200 --> 01:09:37.080 Just as valid as any one of us. 01:09:37.160 --> 01:09:39.000 This isn't a moral imperative. 01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:40.960 This is a scientific reality. 01:09:40.960 --> 01:09:42.760 We see this same bias with animals. 01:09:42.760 --> 01:09:45.320 Serious scientists have to put out papers saying, 01:09:45.320 --> 01:09:48.440 “Actually, animals do love. Animals do mourn.” 01:09:48.440 --> 01:09:49.800 as if that were a revelation. 01:09:49.800 --> 01:09:50.680 A few years ago, 01:09:50.680 --> 01:09:54.440 a whale named Tahlequah carried the body of her dead calf for weeks, 01:09:54.680 --> 01:09:57.800 not because she thought it was alive, but because it was her calf, 01:09:58.000 --> 01:09:59.240 because she was mourning. 01:09:59.240 --> 01:10:02.960 She's actually recently lost another calf and carried its body with her again 01:10:03.040 --> 01:10:05.520 long days pushing a dead baby around 01:10:05.520 --> 01:10:08.640 because it's her baby, because she lost someone she loved. 01:10:08.880 --> 01:10:10.080 This has captured headlines. 01:10:10.080 --> 01:10:12.160 “Isn't it incredible that whales mourn?” 01:10:12.160 --> 01:10:15.480 But animal studies tell us that lots of animals mourn. 01:10:15.560 --> 01:10:18.880 Maybe even most, if you're brave, look up how dairy cows 01:10:18.880 --> 01:10:21.960 react when their babies are taken away to go to slaughter for veal. 01:10:22.120 --> 01:10:26.360 The standard practice in dairy farms so that we can take cows milk for ourselves. 01:10:26.520 --> 01:10:30.720 Listen to the noise that mothers make or the way they thrash the footage of cows 01:10:30.800 --> 01:10:34.560 chasing slaughter down the road to get their calves back. 01:10:34.760 --> 01:10:39.000 At the cat rescue I worked at, we dealt with a situation where some scumbag 01:10:39.000 --> 01:10:40.760 took neonatal kittens away from their mother 01:10:40.760 --> 01:10:42.840 and the way that cat screamed for her babies 01:10:43.000 --> 01:10:46.600 circled the house endlessly, desperately trying to get in. 01:10:46.680 --> 01:10:49.440 I genuinely don't know why we feel that something 01:10:49.440 --> 01:10:53.120 so obvious as “animals love each other” is surprising. 01:10:53.200 --> 01:10:55.360 I don't know why we need studies to validate it 01:10:55.360 --> 01:10:57.240 Or why, for a century at least, 01:10:57.240 --> 01:11:00.600 we've dismissed the idea that newborns do, in fact 01:11:00.920 --> 01:11:01.680 smile. 01:11:01.680 --> 01:11:04.280 But a lot of harm has been done on the basis of this misconception, 01:11:04.280 --> 01:11:06.440 or more cynically: fabrication. 01:11:06.600 --> 01:11:10.720 What if we go further and consider that the environment itself should have rights? 01:11:10.840 --> 01:11:12.240 Lawyers in various countries 01:11:12.240 --> 01:11:16.440 have tried to get personhood status for notable areas like the Ganges River 01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:19.680 or Mount Taranaki, but to me it seems that environmental rights 01:11:19.840 --> 01:11:21.320 are inherent in childism, 01:11:21.320 --> 01:11:24.320 even without considering the personhood of the natural world, 01:11:24.360 --> 01:11:26.480 let's picture a small area of native forest 01:11:26.480 --> 01:11:28.800 here in Ireland. We only have 1% of those. 01:11:28.800 --> 01:11:32.240 Most of the forests you see here are ecologically dead farms 01:11:32.240 --> 01:11:36.160 of Sitka Spruce and the rest of the land has been clear cut to raise cows and sheep 01:11:36.360 --> 01:11:38.280 for us to consume dairy and milk, 01:11:38.280 --> 01:11:39.720 but maybe you live in an area 01:11:39.720 --> 01:11:43.200 where there is some native forest and that land goes on sale and you buy it. 01:11:43.400 --> 01:11:46.560 Under an individualist framework, a buyer can get said land 01:11:46.680 --> 01:11:50.040 clear cut the established forest and plant it with Sitka Spruce 01:11:50.200 --> 01:11:53.360 to begin the process of growing, clear cutting and selling. 01:11:53.360 --> 01:11:55.560 Through a childist framework, however, 01:11:55.560 --> 01:11:58.280 you must consider the web of things dependent on that forest. 01:11:58.320 --> 01:11:59.840 The trees themselves, sure, 01:11:59.840 --> 01:12:03.320 but the animals, plants and fungi dependent on those trees. 01:12:03.440 --> 01:12:07.200 And if there are humans who use the forest, you need to consider them too. 01:12:07.280 --> 01:12:09.880 Is this forest a play area for children? 01:12:09.880 --> 01:12:11.840 A picnic spot for families? 01:12:11.840 --> 01:12:13.040 How would they feel, 01:12:13.040 --> 01:12:15.440 If you clear cut it and fence it in? 01:12:15.440 --> 01:12:17.720 How would they feel about the increase in pollution 01:12:17.720 --> 01:12:19.520 they're going to experience from the machines that 01:12:19.520 --> 01:12:23.120 you're going to be using to clear cut or the increased carbon released 01:12:23.120 --> 01:12:26.760 from burning wood, the increased soil erosion, or the runoff 01:12:26.760 --> 01:12:30.120 from fertilizer, which will cause algae blooms in the nearby lake, c 01:12:30.520 --> 01:12:34.520 killing more wildlife and making it dangerous for humans to swim in. 01:12:34.600 --> 01:12:37.400 Shouldn't you be obligated to ask locals how they feel? 01:12:37.400 --> 01:12:40.120 Is it genuinely fair that you are able to impact 01:12:40.120 --> 01:12:43.680 a community of humans and animals just because you have the money to do so? 01:12:43.760 --> 01:12:47.640 Is it fair that any of us can trade some socially meaningful paper money 01:12:47.840 --> 01:12:50.160 for socially meaningful paper deeds? 01:12:50.160 --> 01:12:51.920 and then just do whatever the f*** we want? 01:12:52.080 --> 01:12:54.120 Yeah, it might feel constraining to have to consider 01:12:54.120 --> 01:12:56.760 every factor before you act, because for a lot of people 01:12:56.760 --> 01:12:59.400 that's going to mean their actions are more limited. 01:12:59.400 --> 01:13:02.680 For someone used to individuality, it can feel chafing. 01:13:02.680 --> 01:13:04.000 But it's also right. 01:13:04.000 --> 01:13:07.080 It's just right from a moral perspective to view things from the lenses 01:13:07.080 --> 01:13:10.600 of interdependence and difference rather than through power and capital. 01:13:10.760 --> 01:13:12.120 Because we need each other, 01:13:12.120 --> 01:13:16.360 we need disabled people, we need children, we need a biodiverse ecosystem. 01:13:16.360 --> 01:13:17.800 We need a livable planet. 01:13:17.800 --> 01:13:21.000 Luckily, it's not up to adults to solely get their shit together. 01:13:21.240 --> 01:13:26.800 Many children are already acting to bring us closer to this more just world. 01:13:26.880 --> 01:13:28.360 Foreign Man in a Foreign Land: There are two key questions 01:13:28.360 --> 01:13:29.560 consistently raised by children and youth 01:13:29.560 --> 01:13:30.440 consistently raised by children and youth 01:13:30.680 --> 01:13:34.960 since the onset of the school strikes for climate in 2018 in the Global North. 01:13:35.040 --> 01:13:37.960 Why study for a future which may not be there? 01:13:37.960 --> 01:13:40.400 Why spend a lot of effort to become educated 01:13:40.400 --> 01:13:44.400 when our governments are not listening to the educated? 01:13:44.920 --> 01:13:46.320 You remember those protests? 01:13:46.320 --> 01:13:48.720 the School Strikes for Climate seven years ago 01:13:48.960 --> 01:13:50.920 Greta Thunberg and all that. 01:13:50.920 --> 01:13:53.880 Yeah, that was back when Greta was in the media all the time. 01:13:53.880 --> 01:13:57.320 But around about the time that she set her focus 01:13:57.320 --> 01:14:02.120 on capitalism and colonialism, the media started to lose interest. 01:14:02.200 --> 01:14:06.640 And by the time she was protesting Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, 01:14:06.720 --> 01:14:09.960 getting assaulted and arrested by police, the media was so silent 01:14:09.960 --> 01:14:11.480 that, well. 01:14:11.720 --> 01:14:12.800 (pin drops) 01:14:14.040 --> 01:14:17.160 So that quote, There are two key questions Why study for a future? 01:14:17.160 --> 01:14:18.280 Why get educated? and all that 01:14:18.280 --> 01:14:19.800 is from the beginning of a paper 01:14:19.800 --> 01:14:22.960 by associate professor of pedagogy at the University of Stavenger 01:14:23.120 --> 01:14:25.960 and foundational thinker in the philosophy of childism 01:14:25.960 --> 01:14:27.120 Tanu Biswas 01:14:27.120 --> 01:14:30.560 Biswas is like the, uh, decolonial “let’s fix the future, education 01:14:30.560 --> 01:14:33.960 and the planet” childist. A very interesting thinker. 01:14:34.160 --> 01:14:37.120 That paper is called Becoming Good Ancestors, 01:14:37.120 --> 01:14:41.920 A Decolonial Childist Approach to gGobal Intergenerational Sustainability. 01:14:41.920 --> 01:14:44.120 And it starts with some very good questions. 01:14:44.120 --> 01:14:46.920 Why study for a future that may not be there? 01:14:46.920 --> 01:14:49.960 Why be obedient on the educational production line 01:14:50.120 --> 01:14:52.080 to said non-existent future? 01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:55.000 Why value truth and knowledge when the systems and the people 01:14:55.000 --> 01:14:59.080 with decision making power do not at all value truth and knowledge? 01:14:59.080 --> 01:15:01.800 To me, this feels like the same frustration 01:15:01.800 --> 01:15:03.800 and puzzlement I feel when I see everyone 01:15:03.800 --> 01:15:08.760 just carrying on as normal, ordering stuff from Amazon and booking holidays. 01:15:08.760 --> 01:15:11.520 During this increasingly proximal climate crisis. 01:15:11.520 --> 01:15:13.040 What's everyone doing? 01:15:13.040 --> 01:15:14.400 What am I doing? 01:15:14.400 --> 01:15:15.600 What's wrong with all of us? 01:15:15.600 --> 01:15:19.160 This willingness to stand in the queue or fill in the form 01:15:19.160 --> 01:15:23.200 while the building is literally on fire feels really quite adult, doesn't it? 01:15:23.280 --> 01:15:27.480 But these troublemaking children back in 2018 create a really quite the disruption 01:15:27.480 --> 01:15:29.840 of a really quite deceptively important thing 01:15:29.840 --> 01:15:31.200 as Biswas puts it: 01:15:31.400 --> 01:15:32.560 Foreign: a pivotal institution 01:15:32.560 --> 01:15:35.600 of modern childhood and one of the foundational pillars 01:15:35.600 --> 01:15:40.480 for sustaining an intergenerationally, unjust capitalist economy - 01:15:40.560 --> 01:15:42.040 the contemporary school. 01:15:42.040 --> 01:15:45.240 Now, before I get into my own critiques of the contemporary school, 01:15:45.240 --> 01:15:47.760 and some people are already vibrating in anticipation. 01:15:47.760 --> 01:15:49.360 over here, they're like, (gasp) 01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:52.440 there's already enough conspiratorial anti-intellectualism out there. 01:15:52.440 --> 01:15:54.760 What are ya doin Cooks?? Don't come for the schools! 01:15:54.760 --> 01:15:59.920 And over here they're like, Yes, validate my resentment towards elementary school. 01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:01.680 I hate you, Mrs. Doherty! 01:16:01.680 --> 01:16:04.120 But before we actually do it and we will, we should make 01:16:04.120 --> 01:16:07.360 an important carveout on behalf of educators 01:16:07.360 --> 01:16:08.960 because those who teach 01:16:09.040 --> 01:16:12.640 so often seem to be doing it for complete ideological reasons. 01:16:12.640 --> 01:16:17.680 They're rarely financially incentivized. Underpaid US public schoolteachers, 01:16:17.800 --> 01:16:20.960 English as a foreign language teachers who actually like being English 01:16:20.960 --> 01:16:25.000 as a foreign language teachers, lifelong semi impoverished academics 01:16:25.000 --> 01:16:29.800 searching for one really specific thing and then discovering to their delight 01:16:29.920 --> 01:16:33.120 that it's actually a million specific things. 01:16:33.240 --> 01:16:37.400 Those people seem to live in a world of their own with its own rules 01:16:37.480 --> 01:16:40.800 similar to the world I stood outside with my burritos 01:16:40.800 --> 01:16:42.680 but I'm getting ahead of myself. 01:16:42.840 --> 01:16:43.800 How do we sort this out? 01:16:43.800 --> 01:16:47.680 Well, Biswas draws a helpful distinction between two concepts: 01:16:47.760 --> 01:16:50.760 education and schooling. 01:16:50.760 --> 01:16:53.520 Education, Biswas sees as geared towards the future, 01:16:53.520 --> 01:16:55.560 composed of its own pedagogical aims 01:16:55.560 --> 01:16:59.120 and disruptions and endless reimaginings. We can all be engaged in education. 01:16:59.280 --> 01:17:02.840 Education is a foundational human endeavor. 01:17:02.840 --> 01:17:05.720 Schooling, on the other hand, Biswas calls a 01:17:05.720 --> 01:17:07.520 “co-conspirator of capital” 01:17:07.680 --> 01:17:11.160 a place to put children that is like work and teaches them about work 01:17:11.280 --> 01:17:14.800 and teaches them how not to be trouble at work, she says. 01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:17.160 Foreign: A key analytical and decolonial step 01:17:17.160 --> 01:17:20.040 I took was to recognize ‘Western schooling’ 01:17:20.280 --> 01:17:25.240 as a specific mode of learning, a conspirator of capitalism deeply rooted 01:17:25.240 --> 01:17:30.520 in philosophical racism and contributing to a global epistemological loss. 01:17:30.600 --> 01:17:34.200 If we're going to be honest, we need to admit that a large part 01:17:34.200 --> 01:17:38.960 of the purpose of education all over the world is employability. 01:17:39.040 --> 01:17:41.600 That itself is an injury against children. 01:17:41.600 --> 01:17:43.000 But it quickly becomes worse than that 01:17:43.000 --> 01:17:46.000 when we realize that this employability often serves the purpose 01:17:46.080 --> 01:17:48.040 of colonial wealth extraction, 01:17:48.040 --> 01:17:50.760 creating middle management for the colonies 01:17:50.760 --> 01:17:53.880 supervisors, civil engineers, tour guides and teachers 01:17:54.040 --> 01:17:58.800 to expedite the theft of raw materials and capital from the developing world. 01:17:58.840 --> 01:18:02.560 See, neither nor myself is being some glib lip service lefty 01:18:02.560 --> 01:18:04.120 when we say “colonial” 01:18:04.120 --> 01:18:06.960 it is in this case a very real and material 01:18:06.960 --> 01:18:09.000 and fucked up phenomenon. 01:18:09.000 --> 01:18:11.520 You ever heard of the term “school in a box?” 01:18:11.520 --> 01:18:14.160 Yeah. It's not as cute as it sounds. 01:18:14.160 --> 01:18:17.280 Bridge International Academies, the world's largest 01:18:17.280 --> 01:18:21.880 for profit primary education chain, has around 750,000 students 01:18:21.880 --> 01:18:25.040 in its schools in India, Kenya, Liberia, Uganda and Nigeria. 01:18:25.080 --> 01:18:26.200 Bridge is the brainchild 01:18:26.200 --> 01:18:30.320 of two white American entrepreneurs, Shannon May and her husband Jay Kimmelman. 01:18:30.400 --> 01:18:33.360 They saw an opportunity to undercut and outcompete 01:18:33.360 --> 01:18:35.360 the schools in the city of Nairobi 01:18:35.360 --> 01:18:37.680 for some of the world's most impoverished children. 01:18:37.680 --> 01:18:40.680 And then from there, they continued to spread all over the developing world. 01:18:40.920 --> 01:18:43.960 They successfully raised investment from some of Silicon Valley's finest 01:18:43.960 --> 01:18:46.280 Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar amongst them. 01:18:46.280 --> 01:18:47.520 As May herself said: 01:18:47.520 --> 01:18:49.760 Shannon May: it was straight commercial capital 01:18:49.840 --> 01:18:53.520 who saw, like wow, there are 01:18:53.600 --> 01:18:55.320 a couple billion people 01:18:55.320 --> 01:18:58.720 who don't have anyone selling them what they want 01:18:58.720 --> 01:19:01.200 in order to successfully undercut 01:19:01.200 --> 01:19:03.760 the existing private schools in Africa and Asia, 01:19:03.760 --> 01:19:06.320 they needed to scale up ridiculously fast 01:19:06.320 --> 01:19:08.960 and have irresponsibly outlay. 01:19:08.960 --> 01:19:11.280 So, like, cutting the costs of classrooms, 01:19:11.280 --> 01:19:14.680 of classroom supplies and teacher salaries, which they can slash 01:19:14.840 --> 01:19:19.320 by having curricula centrally produced and distributed on tablets 01:19:19.400 --> 01:19:22.400 so the teachers are high school graduates. 01:19:22.440 --> 01:19:24.560 This is what it is to be a school in a box 01:19:24.560 --> 01:19:26.280 Lola Sebastian: with scripted lesson plans 01:19:26.280 --> 01:19:28.160 delivered by tablet, which detail 01:19:28.160 --> 01:19:31.720 what teacher should do and say at every moment of each class. 01:19:31.800 --> 01:19:36.080 The tablets are also used to monitor lesson pacing, record attendance 01:19:36.240 --> 01:19:37.400 and track assessment. 01:19:37.400 --> 01:19:39.560 Nicola Ansel's Shaping Global Education 01:19:39.560 --> 01:19:42.440 International Agendas and Governmental Powers uses the example 01:19:42.440 --> 01:19:45.240 of another school in a box: Omega Schools 01:19:45.480 --> 01:19:47.000 Lola: a chain of for-profit schools 01:19:47.000 --> 01:19:50.720 serving, 12,000 students from nursery to junior high school in Ghana. 01:19:50.720 --> 01:19:53.680 Teachers are senior high school graduates who receive one week 01:19:53.680 --> 01:19:57.720 of pre-service training and 2 to 3 days per term of in-service training. 01:19:57.720 --> 01:20:01.360 Both Bridge and Omega are among 22 private school chains supported by 01:20:01.360 --> 01:20:04.200 the Center for Education Innovations, which is funded by 01:20:04.200 --> 01:20:06.760 the UK's Department for International Development. 01:20:06.760 --> 01:20:11.200 Despite the seemingly low cost of such provision, studies suggest low cost 01:20:11.200 --> 01:20:16.000 private education exacerbates inequality, with children from rural areas and lower 01:20:16.000 --> 01:20:20.240 socioeconomic backgrounds underrepresented and a widening gender gap. 01:20:20.320 --> 01:20:22.320 But it's not just low cost crapness 01:20:22.320 --> 01:20:24.360 Bridge was opening schools so fast 01:20:24.360 --> 01:20:27.880 that sometimes they weren't even obtaining approval to do so legally. 01:20:27.960 --> 01:20:31.680 The Kenyan government had to close ten bridge schools in 2014 01:20:31.800 --> 01:20:33.600 for violating children's basic safety. 01:20:33.600 --> 01:20:37.240 At one school in Nairobi at least 11 girls were sexually assaulted 01:20:37.240 --> 01:20:40.040 In 2019 at another school in Nairobi, 01:20:40.120 --> 01:20:43.360 A kid was fatally electrocuted by an exposed livewire, 01:20:43.360 --> 01:20:45.920 and Bridge reached a settlement with the child's mother, 01:20:45.920 --> 01:20:48.160 which did require them to apologize. 01:20:48.200 --> 01:20:51.600 Shannon May and her entrepreneurial stroke of genius 01:20:51.600 --> 01:20:55.200 Bridge International Academies has received funding from the World Bank, 01:20:55.440 --> 01:20:58.960 glowing praise from the New York Times and sits as the gold standard 01:20:58.960 --> 01:21:02.280 for the future of for profit education the world over. 01:21:02.400 --> 01:21:08.040 And I'm just going to let that sit with you at this time in this age 01:21:08.160 --> 01:21:12.760 where we know that the plan is definitely not to make the Global South richer, 01:21:12.840 --> 01:21:16.600 it is to make the poor everywhere poorer. 01:21:16.680 --> 01:21:19.400 Tanu Biswas a self-avowed child ist with a penchant 01:21:19.400 --> 01:21:22.680 for the anti-colonial, has other ideas about what the f*** we should do. 01:21:22.800 --> 01:21:25.560 A different imaginable world. 01:21:25.560 --> 01:21:29.440 She lays out four strategies to reimagine education 01:21:29.440 --> 01:21:30.840 in no particular order. 01:21:30.840 --> 01:21:32.440 One: move away from capitalism 01:21:32.440 --> 01:21:35.600 as the modus operandi for which schooling is in service. 01:21:35.600 --> 01:21:38.040 Forget bullshit jobs and employability. 01:21:38.040 --> 01:21:41.160 Stop trying to create capital out of young people. 01:21:41.200 --> 01:21:44.640 Foreign: the paradox of a global education agenda geared towards 01:21:44.640 --> 01:21:48.040 generating human capital employable on a job market 01:21:48.200 --> 01:21:52.000 is that most of those jobs, if at all, they will be there, continue 01:21:52.000 --> 01:21:55.800 serving the very economic system that is threatening the right to life, 01:21:55.800 --> 01:21:59.000 health, culture, especially for indigenous communities 01:21:59.160 --> 01:22:02.920 and the best interests of future generations on this planet. 01:22:02.920 --> 01:22:04.480 Two: restructure and reclaim 01:22:04.480 --> 01:22:06.960 the spacio-temporality of global childhoods. 01:22:07.000 --> 01:22:08.040 What does that mean? 01:22:08.040 --> 01:22:11.200 it means that different places are different to each other. 01:22:11.200 --> 01:22:14.560 And education should take place in community by community. 01:22:14.640 --> 01:22:19.680 What Biswas calls, quote, adapting formal education to local realities. 01:22:19.720 --> 01:22:23.440 See schooling takes children out of community and assimilates them 01:22:23.440 --> 01:22:25.640 into standard capitalist aims. 01:22:25.640 --> 01:22:27.960 Colonial wealth extraction molds them in the 01:22:27.960 --> 01:22:31.720 Western norm of the employable upward climber. 01:22:31.960 --> 01:22:36.000 Examples like Bridge and Omega show that a lot of the time standardizing 01:22:36.000 --> 01:22:38.880 has less to do with meeting a high pedagogical standard 01:22:38.880 --> 01:22:42.000 than it has to do with establishing an acceptable lowest standard. 01:22:42.120 --> 01:22:46.560 Large scale standardized education is often an homogenizing force 01:22:46.680 --> 01:22:50.560 self-replicating and modular and production line-esque 01:22:50.560 --> 01:22:52.800 Even in the best of free education systems, 01:22:52.800 --> 01:22:56.240 often schooling is fundamentally putting children in boxes. 01:22:56.480 --> 01:22:59.680 This means that the differences between children can become a problem 01:22:59.760 --> 01:23:02.840 and the differences between cultures equally so. 01:23:03.000 --> 01:23:07.080 This is why Sami children in Norwegian schools have their culture brushed over 01:23:07.160 --> 01:23:11.480 First Nations people in Canadian schools, Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals. 01:23:11.640 --> 01:23:14.360 This is why Traveler children in Irish schools 01:23:14.360 --> 01:23:16.880 don't get recognized as a different culture 01:23:16.880 --> 01:23:19.880 except when they're being called slurs, of course. 01:23:20.040 --> 01:23:21.800 Like there's a story from one paper 01:23:21.800 --> 01:23:24.600 of a school in Ireland putting on an Intercultural Day 01:23:24.840 --> 01:23:26.520 and they invited the media and everything, 01:23:26.520 --> 01:23:28.560 and it was probably the only time in the whole year 01:23:28.560 --> 01:23:30.400 that the Polish kids or the Ukrainian kids 01:23:30.400 --> 01:23:32.880 or the kids from Nigeria had their culture celebrated. 01:23:32.880 --> 01:23:36.440 But they had the traveler kids lumped in with the settled kids. 01:23:36.440 --> 01:23:40.120 Like, officially categorizing them as not a culture 01:23:40.120 --> 01:23:43.080 worthy of celebration or even recognition. 01:23:43.160 --> 01:23:48.200 This absolute cultural vandalism that permeates global education 01:23:48.200 --> 01:23:51.840 and “development” is the same phenomenon that allows a couple 01:23:51.840 --> 01:23:54.120 like Shannon May and Jay Kimmelman 01:23:54.120 --> 01:23:56.800 who, if you'll forgive just a wee bit of editorializing, 01:23:56.800 --> 01:24:00.400 are a disgusting pair of white, money-hungry colonizer 01:24:00.400 --> 01:24:04.200 Silicon Valley loveless c*** c***s who think they can just rock on over 01:24:04.200 --> 01:24:08.320 to Kenya with zero cultural connection, zero curiosity and just pump out shit 01:24:08.320 --> 01:24:12.320 standard schools, endangering children, ruthlessly profiteering, 01:24:12.320 --> 01:24:14.760 all for the benefit of their investors and the future investors 01:24:14.760 --> 01:24:17.760 in a more employable and exploitable Africa. 01:24:17.800 --> 01:24:21.920 While Biswas cautions very directly against forces like nationalism 01:24:22.040 --> 01:24:26.320 and xenophobia in embracing the community and culture side of education, 01:24:26.440 --> 01:24:29.640 she nonetheless encourages indigenous teaching practices 01:24:29.880 --> 01:24:33.600 and the school as a center of cultural celebration 01:24:33.800 --> 01:24:37.920 and integration, which dovetails nicely with her next strategy. 01:24:38.080 --> 01:24:42.840 Simply, make existing institutions and educational systems work. 01:24:42.920 --> 01:24:46.240 So here we immediately step back into the science of pedagogy, 01:24:46.320 --> 01:24:49.600 the best practices in education, the study of childhood. 01:24:49.680 --> 01:24:51.360 There are things that work. 01:24:51.360 --> 01:24:55.560 There are many things that work that schools the world over do not do 01:24:55.800 --> 01:24:58.000 because they haven't caught up with the recent research, 01:24:58.000 --> 01:25:01.080 or they're too expensive or they would work 01:25:01.080 --> 01:25:05.440 but other things would have to be in place in the community for them to work. 01:25:05.520 --> 01:25:08.600 And this is probably the broadest of all of Biswas’ strategies, 01:25:08.600 --> 01:25:11.560 but that's because it runs the gamut of some really important stuff. 01:25:11.560 --> 01:25:13.960 things like apprenticeship practices 01:25:14.080 --> 01:25:17.560 and passing on skills, involving the community in teaching. 01:25:17.720 --> 01:25:21.560 Helping parents to help kids, to help teachers, to help kids, to help parents. 01:25:21.640 --> 01:25:23.680 As Biswas herself says: 01:25:23.680 --> 01:25:25.640 Foreign: Existing institutional settings 01:25:25.640 --> 01:25:30.520 such as kindergartens and old homes, can be used as intergenerational learning 01:25:30.520 --> 01:25:35.320 sites to combine education and care for children and aging populations. 01:25:35.400 --> 01:25:39.960 So finally, rethink the inseparable imaginations 01:25:39.960 --> 01:25:42.560 of childhood and education afresh. 01:25:42.560 --> 01:25:48.320 That is, completely blow up the invisible ideological assumptions of education. 01:25:48.320 --> 01:25:51.480 Blow up the aims of children's advancement through that system. 01:25:51.680 --> 01:25:55.800 Completely reimagine the life you want for these kids. 01:25:56.000 --> 01:25:58.240 Foreign: Broadening epistemological horizons 01:25:58.240 --> 01:26:00.320 on living a good life could enable 01:26:00.320 --> 01:26:03.400 diverse forms of intergenerational relating with children 01:26:03.520 --> 01:26:07.760 so that their learning is responsive to the broader cultural, socioeconomic 01:26:07.920 --> 01:26:11.320 and political changes within their societies and beyond. 01:26:11.400 --> 01:26:15.080 Like, we're going to be putting our little baby in school at some point. 01:26:15.280 --> 01:26:17.760 I don't want Bábóg to have their imagination 01:26:17.760 --> 01:26:20.960 curtailed by the goals that society invents for them. 01:26:21.040 --> 01:26:25.280 I want to engender a very broad idea and a functioning broad idea 01:26:25.280 --> 01:26:27.360 of what a good life is. 01:26:27.520 --> 01:26:30.960 And I want this child to teach me what a good life can be. 01:26:31.120 --> 01:26:34.320 And I want my dear baby's education to be an endless 01:26:34.560 --> 01:26:38.040 unfolding of the possibilities of a good life. 01:26:38.240 --> 01:26:42.520 So we're we're away with the fairies now, but in for a f***ing penny, right? 01:26:42.760 --> 01:26:44.680 With a view to all of these strategies, 01:26:44.680 --> 01:26:49.680 Biswas proposes we re-imagine education as community formation 01:26:49.680 --> 01:26:51.920 Foreign: to foreground the intrinsic value 01:26:51.920 --> 01:26:56.760 of learning and realign the entangled purpose of education, economy 01:26:57.000 --> 01:27:01.280 and community livelihoods with the overall purpose of life on this planet. 01:27:01.360 --> 01:27:05.280 I propose reimagining education by redefining development 01:27:05.440 --> 01:27:11.160 as nurturing diversity and expanding the scope of intergenerational life. 01:27:11.240 --> 01:27:12.560 And I'm saying 01:27:12.560 --> 01:27:13.960 Yes And 01:27:13.960 --> 01:27:18.000 let's reimagine learning and teaching and discovering and nurturing 01:27:18.200 --> 01:27:21.960 as the foundational unit of human existence, 01:27:21.960 --> 01:27:23.880 like, go with me here, 01:27:23.960 --> 01:27:25.840 What are we doing? 01:27:25.840 --> 01:27:27.240 What is life? 01:27:27.240 --> 01:27:30.480 What is the purpose of this society thing that we've built? 01:27:30.560 --> 01:27:32.800 Is it “line go up”? 01:27:32.800 --> 01:27:36.000 like “our investments are currently relatively well future-proofed? 01:27:36.240 --> 01:27:38.480 We're all very excited about AI. 01:27:38.480 --> 01:27:39.440 All it's taking, 01:27:39.440 --> 01:27:42.640 killing all the poor and filling everyone with murderous rage for outgroups 01:27:42.640 --> 01:27:43.360 and just generally 01:27:43.360 --> 01:27:46.360 a complete ideological brainwashing of whole generations of human 01:27:46.440 --> 01:27:48.560 such that they will lose their very souls. 01:27:48.560 --> 01:27:49.920 Price Of eggs a little high. 01:27:49.920 --> 01:27:53.840 But price of gasoline surprisingly affordable, all things considered.” 01:27:54.520 --> 01:27:56.600 Like, what are we doing? 01:27:57.320 --> 01:28:00.880 Even when we propose these alternate theories of economic value 01:28:00.880 --> 01:28:02.840 and I'm not a Luddite coming for Marx, 01:28:02.840 --> 01:28:04.800 a lot of our work has a marxist underpinning. 01:28:04.800 --> 01:28:08.480 But I'm actually just asking some childlike questions like why 01:28:08.560 --> 01:28:13.680 in order to produce alternate imagined ways of structuring things. 01:28:13.680 --> 01:28:16.040 And a big part of the reason why I'm so excited 01:28:16.040 --> 01:28:17.560 by philosophical childism 01:28:17.560 --> 01:28:19.360 is because, well, One: we've been saying 01:28:19.360 --> 01:28:20.480 a lot of this stuff for years. 01:28:20.520 --> 01:28:25.320 And two, you know, I kind of always had a suspicion that children were people. 01:28:25.560 --> 01:28:29.920 But three, and most importantly, when I read those words, 01:28:30.000 --> 01:28:34.080 “reimagine education as community formation” 01:28:34.160 --> 01:28:38.560 I was transported back to that hospital car park where I stood 01:28:38.640 --> 01:28:42.200 on the threshold between an economic world and a nurturing world. 01:28:42.440 --> 01:28:43.720 And instead of that nurturing world 01:28:43.720 --> 01:28:47.400 just vaguely existing in a cozy, but directionless utopia, 01:28:47.400 --> 01:28:50.760 suddenly in my imagination, we had something to be doing: 01:28:50.760 --> 01:28:53.080 learning and discovering and teaching 01:28:53.080 --> 01:28:56.440 that already is a foundational human endeavor. 01:28:56.560 --> 01:29:00.520 What if that were the basis of our entire society? 01:29:01.720 --> 01:29:03.560 and I know what you're going to say. 01:29:04.400 --> 01:29:06.200 It's not. 01:29:07.080 --> 01:29:08.680 So grow up. 01:29:08.680 --> 01:29:10.800 🎵 frantic jazz saxophone 🎵 01:29:10.880 --> 01:29:13.880 Sarah: well, I think you'll have a conclusion now. 01:29:13.960 --> 01:29:15.720 Neil: Yeah, uh, will I? 01:29:15.720 --> 01:29:17.240 Will I have a conclusion? 01:29:17.240 --> 01:29:21.160 because from where I'm sitting, we kind of just did the same thing we always do 01:29:21.240 --> 01:29:25.880 where we raise the stakes, and it's all very urgent and important and inspiring. 01:29:25.880 --> 01:29:27.760 But you know, what we didn't do actually? 01:29:27.760 --> 01:29:30.360 is we didn't answer the f***ing question. 01:29:30.480 --> 01:29:31.320 uh 01:29:31.840 --> 01:29:34.960 “Why do people think being childlike is bad?” 01:29:35.040 --> 01:29:36.760 Sarah: Neil It's video essay. 01:29:36.760 --> 01:29:38.360 They have framing devices. 01:29:38.360 --> 01:29:41.560 We don't necessarily need to have an answer to that question 01:29:41.560 --> 01:29:42.960 Neil: but we could! 01:29:43.040 --> 01:29:47.520 We could sit with people in their messy, embarrassing feelings 01:29:47.680 --> 01:29:52.000 about kids, like the actual source of the nasty things that people say. 01:29:52.080 --> 01:29:56.440 And we could like empathize with that and then come through it. 01:29:56.520 --> 01:30:01.080 And you know, if we're worth listening to, we can still make a compelling case 01:30:01.080 --> 01:30:04.960 for this philosophy with some love intact or whatever. 01:30:05.040 --> 01:30:10.360 But if all we're actually dealing in is idealism, then it's just 01:30:10.440 --> 01:30:12.560 set decoration. 01:30:12.560 --> 01:30:16.000 Imagined worlds, but not much else. 01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:17.760 (slam) 01:30:20.040 --> 01:30:21.600 I have a pet theory, 01:30:21.600 --> 01:30:25.200 a suspicion really, that a lot of people's discomfort with children 01:30:25.280 --> 01:30:28.480 is that things in the world in this dark 01:30:28.480 --> 01:30:32.480 timeline are so grossly out of whack with our things are supposed to be 01:30:32.680 --> 01:30:35.760 that children existing in this world is not as it's supposed to be. 01:30:35.760 --> 01:30:37.920 And so your relationship with children is not as it should be. 01:30:37.920 --> 01:30:42.160 And so by extension, the children themselves should not be. 01:30:42.240 --> 01:30:43.800 It's similar to the cliché. 01:30:43.800 --> 01:30:48.640 I remember when all of this was trees as far the eye could see, except it's 01:30:48.720 --> 01:30:53.400 I remember when childhood wasn't disgusting. 01:30:53.400 --> 01:30:55.440 And there's a great deal I can empathize with 01:30:55.440 --> 01:30:57.800 the way that parents become unreachable, 01:30:57.960 --> 01:31:01.600 whether that's friends, like essentially ceasing to exist 01:31:01.600 --> 01:31:06.720 as their own people or strangers seemingly parsing their entire existence aroundchildren 01:31:06.800 --> 01:31:10.240 or it’s parents asserting their rights as parents 01:31:10.440 --> 01:31:16.560 to dominate and dictate all of society up to and including their own children. 01:31:16.640 --> 01:31:18.200 And you! 01:31:18.200 --> 01:31:20.960 I can sympathize with not knowing how to interact with children. 01:31:20.960 --> 01:31:25.600 It's not your fault that Western society, and particularly white American society 01:31:25.680 --> 01:31:30.400 decided to be so age-segregated and gave you every reason to be ashamed 01:31:30.400 --> 01:31:33.280 of your inherent childish qualities and therefore to race ahead 01:31:33.280 --> 01:31:35.120 and escape childhood 01:31:35.120 --> 01:31:37.680 while giving you zero tools to then engage 01:31:37.680 --> 01:31:40.680 with the new children that, yknow, keep coming into existence. 01:31:40.800 --> 01:31:44.560 I can sympathize with struggling with noise or with sensory stuff 01:31:44.560 --> 01:31:48.600 because I'm autistic and I often find exactly those things rather difficult. 01:31:48.800 --> 01:31:50.800 I find it especially difficult at first 01:31:50.800 --> 01:31:53.200 when I'm interacting with a child that I haven't met before. 01:31:53.200 --> 01:31:55.640 And even though I think people would say I'm good with kids, 01:31:55.640 --> 01:31:59.160 I think I put on a good show and I put in effort. 01:31:59.160 --> 01:32:01.400 But internally I'm struggling. 01:32:01.400 --> 01:32:03.240 Adults would say that I'm good with kids. 01:32:03.240 --> 01:32:05.960 Kids can see through my bullshit. 01:32:06.040 --> 01:32:07.880 I mean, it's deconstructed, which is good. 01:32:07.880 --> 01:32:09.400 I can especially sympathize right now 01:32:09.400 --> 01:32:11.880 because I haven't slept in 13 f***ing weeks! 01:32:11.880 --> 01:32:12.920 having a baby 01:32:13.000 --> 01:32:15.120 I mean, this baby's remarkably chill, 01:32:15.120 --> 01:32:16.720 but that doesn't mean that it's not screaming 01:32:16.720 --> 01:32:18.720 and puking and pooping and all the rest. 01:32:18.720 --> 01:32:23.160 And in between, it's the most disarming smiles and chuckles you've ever seen. 01:32:23.280 --> 01:32:27.880 I assure you, newborns can smile socially and it's just as f***ing well. 01:32:27.960 --> 01:32:29.080 See, I'm Irish. I don't. 01:32:29.080 --> 01:32:32.160 I don't have to make sure that I'm coming across as positive or diplomatic. 01:32:32.320 --> 01:32:38.200 You maybe don't know if I'm joking when I say that all children are bastards. 01:32:38.280 --> 01:32:39.800 Pains in the arse! 01:32:39.800 --> 01:32:41.280 But you know, 01:32:41.280 --> 01:32:44.200 I'm actually doing something by admitting to myself 01:32:44.200 --> 01:32:46.240 that I have negative thoughts about kids sometimes 01:32:46.240 --> 01:32:48.360 or that I'm crap with kids sometimes 01:32:48.360 --> 01:32:50.560 I'm being honest and frank and a bit ugly 01:32:50.760 --> 01:32:53.240 not in order to escape a social responsibility, 01:32:53.240 --> 01:32:57.360 but in order to understand why I find that social responsibility difficult. 01:32:57.560 --> 01:32:59.960 Because I'll let you in on a little secret here. 01:32:59.960 --> 01:33:02.120 I don't like adults either. 01:33:02.120 --> 01:33:03.880 I don't like any of my social responsibilities. 01:33:03.880 --> 01:33:04.760 I'm a recluse! 01:33:04.760 --> 01:33:06.200 My favorite way to talk to people 01:33:06.200 --> 01:33:09.240 is curated monologues uploaded to a YouTube channel. 01:33:09.400 --> 01:33:11.560 I know that people's discomfort with people, 01:33:11.560 --> 01:33:13.440 even with categories of person 01:33:13.440 --> 01:33:17.600 comes from a place, has reasons that people think are justified. 01:33:17.640 --> 01:33:18.720 And my suspicion 01:33:18.720 --> 01:33:19.440 (smashy) 01:33:19.440 --> 01:33:23.120 is that this growing discomfort generally towards children generally 01:33:23.120 --> 01:33:25.840 comes from a combination of our segregating them, 01:33:25.840 --> 01:33:27.920 our alienation from community 01:33:27.920 --> 01:33:30.680 and our disgust more generally at the world that we live in 01:33:30.680 --> 01:33:33.040 which is really f***ed up because those issues 01:33:33.240 --> 01:33:35.280 really negatively impact children. 01:33:35.280 --> 01:33:36.880 you and the children, 01:33:36.880 --> 01:33:40.280 you are oppressed by common enemies on all of those fronts. 01:33:40.360 --> 01:33:43.360 And I think if anyone was going to be disgusted by anyone, 01:33:43.440 --> 01:33:46.080 it's children should be disgusted by us. 01:33:46.080 --> 01:33:49.200 And when children and those that remind us of children 01:33:49.200 --> 01:33:53.280 ask why the world is this way, how do we respond? 01:33:53.360 --> 01:33:54.120 Grow up. 01:33:54.120 --> 01:33:56.760 It's not a million miles away from “Shut up” is it? 01:33:56.760 --> 01:33:59.120 Oh, my God. Sarah. Cormac, we've got a conclusion. 01:33:59.120 --> 01:34:01.160 I've got a conclusion now! I can do a conclusion. 01:34:01.160 --> 01:34:02.320 Conclusion! 01:34:02.320 --> 01:34:04.440 (anticlimactic scarpering) 01:34:04.440 --> 01:34:06.560 🎵 bass note 🎵 01:34:06.560 --> 01:34:10.240 So why get bent out of shape about being told to grow up? 01:34:10.320 --> 01:34:11.480 It's no big deal. 01:34:11.480 --> 01:34:13.080 It's actually not a big deal. 01:34:13.080 --> 01:34:14.280 We're admitting it 3 hours later. 01:34:14.280 --> 01:34:15.880 Show's over, everybody! Byeeeee! 01:34:15.880 --> 01:34:17.840 Turns out, grow up, it just wasn’t a big deal 01:34:17.840 --> 01:34:19.640 It’s not a big deal. 01:34:19.640 --> 01:34:22.640 Do you think we'd have gotten this far if we couldn't handle an insult or two? 01:34:22.720 --> 01:34:24.720 We made a video about being vegan. 01:34:24.720 --> 01:34:26.400 We can handle being insulted. 01:34:26.400 --> 01:34:28.560 And “Grow Up” isn't even really an insult, is it? 01:34:28.560 --> 01:34:29.800 It's just a 01:34:29.800 --> 01:34:30.760 ... 01:34:30.760 --> 01:34:32.640 thing people say? 01:34:32.640 --> 01:34:37.000 I maybe it would wound someone if they were particularly sensitive or vulnerable. 01:34:37.080 --> 01:34:41.000 I mean, it's it's probably not nice to say, but an insult? 01:34:41.080 --> 01:34:42.960 Had you thought about that before today? 01:34:42.960 --> 01:34:45.400 Had you thought about what people mean when they say grow up? 01:34:45.400 --> 01:34:48.400 Had you questioned what people generally think of children 01:34:48.520 --> 01:34:51.520 and what people think of the qualities of being childlike? 01:34:51.520 --> 01:34:54.520 Had you examined your own attitudes to those things? 01:34:54.600 --> 01:34:57.560 Because in reality, grow up is an insult. 01:34:57.560 --> 01:35:02.200 It's just an insult which polices very popular social conformities 01:35:02.280 --> 01:35:04.720 And people do really think very little of children 01:35:04.720 --> 01:35:08.640 and take a particularly dim view of the childlike qualities of vulnerability, 01:35:08.640 --> 01:35:12.560 dependance, imagination and any insistence on asking the question “Why” 01:35:12.800 --> 01:35:16.680 But, like with Grow Up, these are also very popular social conformities 01:35:16.920 --> 01:35:19.560 I'm still not sure where I stand exactly 01:35:19.560 --> 01:35:22.880 On the whole, going low going high thing 01:35:22.880 --> 01:35:24.000 because, I mean, in the ridiculous 01:35:24.000 --> 01:35:26.960 arena of politics on the Internet, I've definitely fired off 01:35:26.960 --> 01:35:30.720 my share of insults, many of which I am frankly still proud of. 01:35:30.800 --> 01:35:34.440 But know that I firmly stand by interrogating my own attitudes 01:35:34.440 --> 01:35:37.560 and keeping an eye on what those insults are about. 01:35:37.640 --> 01:35:41.160 These are insult heavy times. Far from duels of honor, 01:35:41.280 --> 01:35:45.120 it just seems like the lowest common denominator of Twitter honourlessness 01:35:45.240 --> 01:35:50.080 has taken over every other sphere of, in particular, American society. 01:35:50.320 --> 01:35:53.880 It makes me wonder what will be considered childish tomorrow? 01:35:53.920 --> 01:35:56.960 What level of injustice and violence and cruelty 01:35:57.080 --> 01:36:00.000 will we be told next is just normal 01:36:00.000 --> 01:36:03.480 and that instead of fighting it, we should just grow up? 01:36:03.560 --> 01:36:06.360 What will be the next shifting of the goalposts, you know, 01:36:06.360 --> 01:36:09.360 so that even more of the thoughtful, curious people 01:36:09.520 --> 01:36:14.560 get mischaracterized as unrealistic children? 01:36:14.640 --> 01:36:16.400 Sarah: drinking tea again 01:36:16.400 --> 01:36:17.800 if you know, you know. 01:36:17.800 --> 01:36:19.320 In caring for a baby, 01:36:19.320 --> 01:36:22.320 I'm supposed to feel very adult, but I don't. 01:36:22.440 --> 01:36:27.480 That's because “adult” is a social construct and “child” is a social construct. 01:36:27.560 --> 01:36:28.360 Like, we know this. 01:36:28.360 --> 01:36:30.720 Children face more lenient sentences in court. 01:36:30.720 --> 01:36:34.040 So if a crime is bad, we decide to charge a child as an adult 01:36:34.200 --> 01:36:38.520 we just wave a rhetorical wand, and now they're more complicit in their actions. 01:36:38.520 --> 01:36:42.400 And when a white 20-something athlete sexually assaults someone, 01:36:42.480 --> 01:36:45.400 we plead for mercy by calling him a college kid. 01:36:45.400 --> 01:36:49.520 The frame of child or adult carries weight and biases our perceptions of reality. 01:36:49.520 --> 01:36:53.880 And based on that misunderstanding, we make decisions that should horrify us 01:36:53.960 --> 01:36:56.960 like separating calves from their screaming mothers or giving 01:36:57.000 --> 01:36:59.920 infant children medical procedures without pain meds. 01:36:59.920 --> 01:37:01.560 We have power over some people. 01:37:01.560 --> 01:37:03.400 Some people are weaker than us. 01:37:03.400 --> 01:37:06.320 Adults have power over children, but children's dependance 01:37:06.320 --> 01:37:07.720 doesn't mean they're lesser. 01:37:07.720 --> 01:37:11.960 The fact that they can be so utterly dominated does not make it moral to do so. 01:37:12.160 --> 01:37:14.000 And you don't need to like children. 01:37:14.000 --> 01:37:18.160 You don't need to enjoy the setting of an Irish pub during communion week. 01:37:18.160 --> 01:37:22.480 I would advise you not to hate them though, because prejudice is stupid 01:37:22.640 --> 01:37:24.000 and there are probably a lot of children 01:37:24.000 --> 01:37:27.520 who fall outside of whatever stereotyped vision you have of them. 01:37:27.600 --> 01:37:29.840 But I can't tell you how to feel. 01:37:29.840 --> 01:37:32.720 I can tell you that you can't discriminate against them. 01:37:32.720 --> 01:37:34.360 and that doesn't mean you can’t get 01:37:34.360 --> 01:37:36.560 accommodations for your own needs. 01:37:36.560 --> 01:37:41.520 I think we can come up with all kinds of clever solutions for competing needs. 01:37:41.640 --> 01:37:44.040 If you're someone really struggles with noise, 01:37:44.040 --> 01:37:47.440 then I think it's valid to have a designated quiet car on a train 01:37:47.440 --> 01:37:50.440 that someone doesn't bring a screaming baby into. 01:37:50.520 --> 01:37:54.360 But I don't think it's valid to have a child-free train car 01:37:54.600 --> 01:37:59.040 because there's some kid out there who's like a little baby Neil who also finds 01:37:59.040 --> 01:38:03.040 noise really upsetting and would also like to sit in the quiet space. 01:38:03.120 --> 01:38:05.960 And this is all provided that it's just one portion of a train 01:38:05.960 --> 01:38:07.800 and the screaming baby is still allowed somewhere 01:38:07.800 --> 01:38:10.200 because the screaming baby is a human. 01:38:10.200 --> 01:38:11.800 Besides, if you're from the States watching this 01:38:11.800 --> 01:38:14.000 and I say this as a fellow USAnian 01:38:14.000 --> 01:38:16.440 I promise you, you don't want to give Europeans the right 01:38:16.440 --> 01:38:20.840 to kick you out of public spaces on the basis of the volume of your voices, 01:38:21.000 --> 01:38:22.920 because rights shouldn't be something we grant based on 01:38:22.920 --> 01:38:25.920 whether someone is likable or not, or whether someone has 01:38:26.000 --> 01:38:29.560 good social awareness or whether someone is autonomous. 01:38:29.640 --> 01:38:32.360 Our little Bábóg is not autonomous 01:38:32.360 --> 01:38:33.880 they have woken me up 01:38:33.960 --> 01:38:39.880 every few hours for the last few months to be fed, to be held, to be entertained. 01:38:39.960 --> 01:38:41.960 And I'm delighted to provide that 01:38:41.960 --> 01:38:44.120 I'm madly in love. 01:38:44.200 --> 01:38:46.000 But it's not always easy either. 01:38:46.000 --> 01:38:47.720 Caregiving isn't easy. 01:38:47.720 --> 01:38:50.800 Watching out for the rights of others isn't easy, but it's moral. 01:38:50.800 --> 01:38:52.160 It’s Praxis. 01:38:52.240 --> 01:38:53.480 Next time you’re with a child 01:38:53.480 --> 01:38:56.520 ask yourself if you’d treat an adult the same way you're treating them. 01:38:56.760 --> 01:38:58.840 If you’d rip something out of an adult's hands 01:38:58.840 --> 01:39:01.080 or make them ask permission to use the bathroom 01:39:01.080 --> 01:39:04.360 or bar them from public space or hit them when you feel angry. 01:39:04.400 --> 01:39:05.760 Because when you strip away 01:39:05.760 --> 01:39:09.280 the social construction of adult and child, you're left with human 01:39:09.360 --> 01:39:12.000 And one group of humans who is allowed to mistreat 01:39:12.000 --> 01:39:16.280 another on the basis of their needing more care. 01:39:16.360 --> 01:39:17.520 Neil: and hey, maybe we are being 01:39:17.520 --> 01:39:19.200 hippy-drippy and unrealistic 01:39:19.200 --> 01:39:21.040 Maybe we're being glib. 01:39:21.040 --> 01:39:25.200 It's easy to be theater kids waving your arms and telling people 01:39:25.200 --> 01:39:29.160 how exciting something is, but it doesn't put out the flames of a world on fire. 01:39:29.320 --> 01:39:31.840 And while I'm keen, in fact desperate, 01:39:31.840 --> 01:39:33.720 to really do something 01:39:33.720 --> 01:39:35.880 I'm also aware of the white savior advocate 01:39:35.880 --> 01:39:39.080 for marginalized group, well-meaning wanker trap 01:39:39.080 --> 01:39:41.120 as Biswas puts it: 01:39:41.200 --> 01:39:45.040 It is here that I invite readers to pause the hasty urge to lean 01:39:45.040 --> 01:39:48.120 into performing the logistics of implementation. 01:39:48.120 --> 01:39:50.360 But equally, this video might actually have 01:39:50.360 --> 01:39:53.680 some small impact on how sound you are to children 01:39:53.760 --> 01:39:57.880 and the amount of respect you treat them with, and that will materially affect 01:39:57.960 --> 01:39:58.840 some children. 01:39:58.840 --> 01:40:00.840 which matters. It's worth talking about! 01:40:00.840 --> 01:40:01.920 on the bigger level, 01:40:01.920 --> 01:40:04.600 yeah, we're pitching imagined alternative realities, 01:40:04.600 --> 01:40:08.880 but every material improvement was once an imagined alternative reality. 01:40:09.120 --> 01:40:11.520 I don't know what we do with the world now. 01:40:11.520 --> 01:40:12.320 I really don't. 01:40:12.320 --> 01:40:15.840 But in my lifetime, from my childhood through to my becoming 01:40:15.840 --> 01:40:18.920 an adult and a parent, not necessarily in that order. 01:40:19.160 --> 01:40:22.000 I know I've seen manufactured outgroups 01:40:22.000 --> 01:40:23.880 designed disgust and hatred 01:40:24.040 --> 01:40:26.880 towards groups that were at various points, not exactly beloved, 01:40:26.880 --> 01:40:28.200 but at least more accepted. 01:40:28.200 --> 01:40:32.760 I've seen change happen in real time, and I've heard enough rhetoric from people 01:40:32.760 --> 01:40:36.520 who feel like finally they're free to just say that they hate kids. 01:40:36.720 --> 01:40:40.520 And it really reminds me of a similar celebration in other spheres. 01:40:40.520 --> 01:40:44.080 Finally, they say we can just openly hate a group of people. 01:40:44.280 --> 01:40:46.400 People hate when they don't know any better, 01:40:46.400 --> 01:40:48.840 but that thing that would make that better 01:40:48.840 --> 01:40:51.240 Educstion, the thing that would make democracy better, 01:40:51.320 --> 01:40:55.440 the thing that would make public health easier and climate change taken seriously. 01:40:55.560 --> 01:40:59.760 That's a thing that adults reject because “education is for children.” 01:40:59.800 --> 01:41:02.800 And we seem to think that children only need education 01:41:02.880 --> 01:41:04.760 because they're so damned incompetent 01:41:04.760 --> 01:41:07.240 and useless and they don't know how anything works. 01:41:07.240 --> 01:41:11.120 We think education exists to successfully transform 01:41:11.120 --> 01:41:14.120 children into adults, but it need not be so 01:41:14.280 --> 01:41:16.720 we can imagine otherwise. 01:41:16.720 --> 01:41:19.520 We can't make anyone watching care about children. 01:41:19.520 --> 01:41:23.240 We can't make you reorient your worldview towards interdependence. 01:41:23.240 --> 01:41:25.800 You're not even going to get social points for this one. 01:41:25.800 --> 01:41:29.080 The power structure is just so in-baked. 01:41:29.080 --> 01:41:31.880 but morality isn't determined by popular consensus 01:41:31.880 --> 01:41:35.120 and clinging to the status quo isn't wisdom. 01:41:35.200 --> 01:41:36.960 It's a failure of imagination. 01:41:36.960 --> 01:41:38.760 As with any marginalized group, 01:41:38.760 --> 01:41:42.600 some of the changes that children want will benefit all of us. 01:41:42.600 --> 01:41:46.440 I know I'd benefit if I remembered that a sidewalk could be a place of play 01:41:46.600 --> 01:41:50.080 rather than just the liminal space between work and home. 01:41:50.320 --> 01:41:54.640 I think like a child, it's good for us to look at society and ask why? 01:41:54.720 --> 01:41:57.480 Why have we constructed labor relations this way? 01:41:57.480 --> 01:42:00.120 Why Have we created gender? Race? 01:42:00.120 --> 01:42:02.040 Is this still serving us? 01:42:02.040 --> 01:42:03.640 Why don't we change it? 01:42:03.640 --> 01:42:06.560 I imagine we could do so much if imagining itself 01:42:06.560 --> 01:42:08.560 wasn't seen as uncouth. 01:42:08.560 --> 01:42:09.560 Childish. 01:42:09.640 --> 01:42:15.400 Imagine what we’d do if when we grew up we still understood ourselves as 01:42:15.400 --> 01:42:20.360 as full of potential, as incomplete, as malleable, as brave 01:42:20.360 --> 01:42:24.000 and weird and unknowable as we were 01:42:24.000 --> 01:42:25.840 when we were kids. 01:42:26.360 --> 01:42:28.000 🎵 scratching 🎵 01:42:28.640 --> 01:42:32.480 🎵 Peter and the Wolf set to hip hop 🎵 01:42:40.440 --> 01:42:42.320 Hey, Editing Neil here 01:42:43.080 --> 01:42:43.760 Hi. 01:42:44.480 --> 01:42:47.320 I just wanted to say we were pretty harsh on commenters 01:42:47.320 --> 01:42:51.640 and sort of on the concept of commenting, and please don't let that stop you 01:42:51.640 --> 01:42:55.720 from commenting on this video because actually we often get very lovely comments 01:42:55.800 --> 01:43:00.960 and it would be a shame to not have you comment here, so feel free. 01:43:01.040 --> 01:43:02.200 I won't make you self-conscious. 01:43:02.200 --> 01:43:03.800 Just, you know, do do your thing. 01:43:03.800 --> 01:43:05.680 Leave a comment below. 01:43:10.600 --> 01:43:14.200 Just to be clear, you don't have to comment. 01:43:14.280 --> 01:43:16.240 Just if you were ... 01:43:16.240 --> 01:43:18.040 whatever comment you were going to 01:43:18.120 --> 01:43:21.920 just act, just act normal, just whatever comment you were going to leave. 01:43:22.000 --> 01:43:22.960 Just put that. 01:43:22.960 --> 01:43:24.240 I'll go. 01:43:28.400 --> 01:43:31.080 Okay, I have noticed this one particular comment that's come in 01:43:31.080 --> 01:43:33.000 and I did think this was going to happen, 01:43:33.000 --> 01:43:38.120 so we didn't use the stage lights and that was an intentional artistic decision. 01:43:38.120 --> 01:43:39.240 That's not a mistake. 01:43:39.640 --> 01:43:41.840 It’s not cause we didn't know how to use them. 01:43:41.920 --> 01:43:42.880 We wanted to have 01:43:42.880 --> 01:43:44.240 because it's like a video essay. 01:43:44.240 --> 01:43:45.360 It's like as if a video essay. 01:43:45.360 --> 01:43:46.480 were a stage show. 01:43:46.480 --> 01:43:48.960 So we used the video essay lights to 01:43:48.960 --> 01:43:50.080 um 01:43:50.160 --> 01:43:52.440 semiotically 01:43:52.440 --> 01:43:54.400 signify 01:43:54.400 --> 01:43:57.000 it was intentional. 01:44:03.280 --> 01:44:04.760 I'm actually going to talk to Sarah about this 01:44:04.760 --> 01:44:06.240 because I'm a little bit annoyed. 01:44:06.240 --> 01:44:07.760 Sarah, we just got a comment that said 01:44:07.760 --> 01:44:10.040 that we didn't turn on the stage lights 01:44:10.040 --> 01:44:14.720 like by mistake, but that was an intentional artistic decision, right? 01:44:14.800 --> 01:44:16.000 Sarah: I mean, I just 01:44:16.000 --> 01:44:18.120 you didn't know where they were 01:44:20.280 --> 01:44:21.200 (baby sounds) 01:44:21.200 --> 01:44:23.040 Neil: but then I made the intentional artistic decison 01:44:23.040 --> 01:44:27.640 to not use them because I didn't know where they were. 01:44:27.720 --> 01:44:28.960 Sarah: Yeah, but that's not 01:44:28.960 --> 01:44:31.280 that's not what intentional is, Neil 01:44:31.280 --> 01:44:33.840 like I wanted to use the stage lights. 01:44:33.840 --> 01:44:35.400 I wanted to find my light. I wanted 01:44:35.400 --> 01:44:35.760 Neil: No, no, no, 01:44:35.760 --> 01:44:37.040 it's fine. It's actually fine. 01:44:37.040 --> 01:44:38.480 You can do whatever comment you want and this is 01:44:38.480 --> 01:44:40.080 the worst sequence we’ve ever had 01:44:40.080 --> 01:44:40.920 over the credits. Thanks.