Beating Children

Was talking to my mom about this tonight, and the subject of violence towards children came up, specifically how and when do you physically discipline children.

My nephew's mom who is divorced from my brother disciplines freely, and in anger. I think this is wrong. I am not wholly against beating a child if there is a compelling reason, but it needs to be done without anger and either needs to be to protect the child or as a last resort when all other forms of discipline have failed.

In the case of protecting the child, I mentioned if a child tries to run out into the street, or play with pots on the stove, or drink bleach, or do some other dangerous act it is better to instantly deliver pain to a child than to have them become horribly disfigured, crippled, killed sick, and such. Discipline in this case is purely to protect the child from far more serious harm, this is a very appropriate case for such punishment, and should be a first resort.

If there is no such clear danger involved it should be a last resort, after many other things are tried, such as time outs, restrictions, lectures, and such. In general you want a child to behave well not because they fear being punished for behaving badly, but because they see a benefit in behaving well. The key thing is is love, there must be love and respect shown for children always, even when they do wrong and when they are being punished.

This is why violence against children done in anger can never be a solution to a behavioral problem, and it also has the negative effect of showing them that it is okay to react with violence when you are angry. A very bad idea.

Scary Weird Dream

I had a dream last night where a guy in my dream had his eyeball fall out of it's socket, he was bleeding and he passed out or was unconscious.

I remember trying to get help and finding his eye on the ground.

I rarely remember my dreams at all, but this was pretty vivid I guess, and unusual. I don't remember who it was in my dream, I know it wasn't me as I was observing and trying to get help.

Tonight I had a nasty nose bleed when I was having dinner with my dad. I mentioned the dream to him, and even wondered if my nose bleed could have been related to my dream. But I doubt that they were related if my dream meant anything at all.

UPDATE: I was talking to someone this past week, and I remembered that my dad, who is diabetic, had a problem with one of his eyes last year, and had to have eye surgery. He almost went blind. I was afraid he might end up blind in one eye, but the surgery went well and he recovered and can see very well out of it. But when he was recovering he wore an eye patch to protect his eye. I guess part of me which was scared about the whole thing didn't even process it emotionally at the time because I was more worried about him than how I felt about it. That makes sense and that could be what the dream was about, but there might be more to it than that, I really don't know. I do know I don't remember my dreams very often, this was a rare exception.

Emotions, Men, and Violence

So, we have a society where guys are not allowed to feel.

And yet humans are inherently emotional creatures. But if a man shows emotion he's "emo" or gay or weak. Supposedly guys are the protectors, but we are not even allowed to protect ourselves. Not where it really matters. We're not allowed to protect our feelings because we're not allowed to have feelings.

This of course does not work.

Men bottle up emotion until it boils over, and then lash out with violence. The brutality of men against other men and against women and children is a symptom of the sickness of a society that does not allow men to be what they are, emotional creatures. Beings with actual feelings, that they can have and can express freely.

Because we're not allowed to have feelings or taught how to express them in a healthy way we go out and find unhealthy ways to do so.

The worst part about this is this is expected behavior. It's even encouraged to a certain point, coddled, excused, normalized.

Somehow beating your girlfriend or wife is just part of "being a man" it's macho to give a girl a black eye because she was out of line. When a guy attacks a girl he's just being a man instead of a dysfunctional emotionally crippled child who never grew up.

Because this whole mess permeates the entire fabric of our society it's almost impossible to deconstruct. It's defended by both men and women as the way things are. Women are taught to be clingy, emotionally dependent, while men are taught to be detached and emotionally shallow.

This is a distortion of both sides.

The question of what to do about it I think begins with making people aware of how things are. Perhaps if people were more aware of the violent consequences of this broken system, there might be some hope that it might change in the future.

It's not enough to be against violence, you have to understand what got us there to begin with to know how the system can be unraveled.

Projects 1 and 2

Here's what I did for projects 1 and 2 for C. Hill's Illustration class:

First is a sign about the Art Department. My concept was "Stop Art" and was about censorship, but unfortunately the class and the instructor didn't get it.

This is my head in profile filled with illustrations about my life and interests. Including movies, music, food, family, etc.

Twain: Man is the Reasoning Animal

Here we were given a list of quotes from Mark Twain and asked to select one to illustrate. Twain is full of awesome quotes, so there was a number of great choices. I originally thought about doing one on chastity, but decided my idea was more about modesty which isn't quite the same thing.

Ultimately I decided upon "Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it's open to dispute." Notice how timeless Twain's quotes are? He could have said the exact same quote today and it'd work just about the same.

Ghost Turkey

This was one of my projects for C. Hill's Illustration class. The project was for a contest related to a surprise at Thanksgiving for a brother and sister.

Amy Youngs

I found this fabulous artist over at http://www.ylem.org/artists/ayoungsWhat a talent! Her Micropropagation is both funny and very contemporary while surreal at the same time.