Kids Should Be Told More Complex Stories
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People are flawed. All of us are. Each has something stupid about. And the funny thing is, it's impossible to avoid people either. We had tried! Lock-downs didn't work. People want to be with other people. And it's preferable that people would be with other people often. Communication is often a key to good psychological state. If we don't want all people to turn to murder maniacs we should never allow lock-downs to happen.
On the other side of the coin though I see a lot of people that are rather almost incapable of communication. I work at a place where the director is a rather impulsive individual. Which turns into a very sad reality: A lot of new worker ( which the place needs ) are getting fired frequently. And almost always it has something to do with their communication skills. Or should I say, lack of them. I had been in all of those situations ( that lead others to get fired ) myself, with the same director and I'm still working in that place.
I could simply brush the whole thing off and say that other people are just stupid enough to not know what is the right thing to say is at any given moment. And it is kind of true. But the question is: Why?
Do you know a video of a woman stopped by a police man while she was speeding or something? You know, that meme video where she refuses to sign the paper and the policeman, then, goes to arrest her. And she tries to escape, resulting in a much worse situation than where she was in the beginning. You know the video I'm talking about? So it seems to me like that's not a luck problem as many assume it is. It's a communication skill problem.
I remember a situation where I was stopped. Perhaps my "crime" was not as big of a deal. But I talked my way out of it. I was ridding a bicycle on a busy road without a helmet. And suddenly a police motorcycle goes in-front of me and stops me. He wanted me to sign a paper which made me liable to a fine for ridding a bicycle without a helmet. A very similar situation. Almost...
The problem was: It was legal for me to do so. And I knew it. The law ( in my place ) requires a helmet only for things that have propulsion. Like electric bicycles, electric scooters, motorcycles and such. Not for a normal, pedaled, bicycle. And I rode a normal one. A lot of other people in such a case would either just pay the damn thing, or would refuse to pay in the similar fashion that the woman did. Maybe they even would try to escape. And ultimately would get fined a lot more. Or even go to prison. I simply told him that it's legal. And that he needs to check it. I pointed to him that he might have a mistake.
Fortunately for me, he had the full book of the law in his back pocket. He opened the correct page, trying to prove me that I'm wrong. And he found out that I was indeed right. So he apologized to me for stopping me and wasting my time.
I, by no means, an expert of talking. There are people way above me on the communication skill scale. Those probably went to special classes that teach how to speak. I for example cannot over-argue my girlfriend at times. She is very good at rising my Norepinephrine levels.
But I remember learning in a very strict religious school called "Yeshiva Ktana". And I was perhaps the kid with the most things allowed. It got to a point where I could do whatever I wanted and just tell everybody "They allowed me.". In Sheiny The Hacker ( my book ) I talk about Sheiny getting a computer from the school in a such a way where she can install anything on it, including having her own password on it. She controls it fully. Well... I did it myself. At the same Yeshiva Ktana I argued with the principal convincingly enough so he let me take one of their computers ( that they bough on their money ) and do with it whatever I wanted. I installed GNU / Linux on that thing. And I had my own password on it. Nobody else was allowed to touch it. ( To be fair the computer was a bit under-powered. So it wasn't much of use. )
I think I might have a slight hint on why I can do these things sometimes. And why other people, especially from the younger generation, cannot at all. But first...
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Kids Just Stole The Car
For some unknown stupid reason I started writing little articles about Moria's Race on blender.community. Perhaps I'm procrastinating. It doesn't seem like anybody reads them. Or at least I didn't see any replies or likes on them. Though, quite frankly, on an episode of Blender.Today ( with Pablo Vasquez ) I saw a title of one of those posts grayed out. This means that he clicked on it at some point. So I believe he knows about the project. And I might get a chance at an interview with him at some point in future if I make an epic enough movie. But quite frankly I though I'd do a whole Blender Conference presentation of my Blender Organizer after I'm Not Even Human. I didn't happen. But I didn't even try to apply. Perhaps it could have been a good show. Who knows.
On the other hand the kids just stole the car. I mean we just reached the cool first action scene in the film. There are 3 action scenes in this film ( despite it being a short film ). So it's really action packed, if you will. Moria just took the car from beneath the nose of Paps and drove it away as fast as possible. Paps got angry and is now trying to pursue her on a truck.
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Kids shows are too stupid!
Have you ever seen an average babies show? It's often so boring that you cannot watch it normally. Though babies seem to enjoy it. I have little brothers and sometimes I witness the kinds of things that they watch. And I ask myself: Why the hell the shows are so boring?
Quite frankly, my dad chooses rather good ones compared to other parents. I've been at home of one of my cousins. She watched a dumb show that is so unwatchable, I don't even know how can a child enjoy this. My father chooses shows that are slightly technical in nature. Shows about science and engineering done in a format of a dumb kids show. Don't get me wrong. It's still kids shows that are rather unwatchable. All of the characters are still flat and way too helpful to each other. There is no villain in any of those stories. And all they do is explain one topic about science in such a way that a toddler with little vocabulary could understand.
Compare it to, say, even The Lion King. The Lion King has murder. It has depression. It has politics. It has ugly characters with ugly motivations. It has tragedy. It has brutality. It has life... While being, quite frankly, a kids show.
I know, I know. It's hard to get a toddler to be interested in something a bit more adult. I watched with all of my brothers a Transformers film. Which is leagues ahead of anything those baby shows do. And I could see a weird effect. The oldest of them ( 7 and 6 ) were enjoying the hell of the movie. The middle one ( 4 ) was scared to his life. Perhaps felt an immense tension to whatever is happening. And the youngest one ( about 1 ) felt uninterested.
I think since for the 4 year old pain is something familiar enough ( he fell, he argued, he's been in conflict with other kids ), he feels the possible pain characters might experience in presence of huge transforming robots. He is not questioning the reality of the robots. He's questioning the motivation. The 1 year old has not enough experience with pain yet.. it seems like... therefor what's it for him... He doesn't yet know of a concept of a villain. So perhaps these big metal guys could be another friend.
Naivete
This kind of naivete is what constitutes bad communication skills. A lot of people for example do not care to see what laws are there ( or what's written in their contract ) because they assume all laws ( and contracts ) have common sense to them.
For example, the secretary at my work was surprised that I read the contract before signing it. And not just read it. Found errors in it, that she had to fix. This, by the way, gave me an interesting privilege. My director knows that I read the contract, so he cannot ask me more than is written in it. While he can definitely do that to other workers. And I've seen him do that. They do not know what they signed. So he can invent things on the fly. And they would believe him.
This is how it works: He needs, say, a few guys to work more hours, or during a holiday. Because, let's face it, he sees that the temp with which we worked was not enough to meet a certain deadline. So he presents an opportunity to work more. He knows what we signed and knows that he can't just force us. We have to agree to it, legally. But he also knows that most of us do not know what we signed. So he can, without explicitly saying it, frame the extra working time as a necessity. So the workers themselves get to a conclusion that it's something written into their contracts. It doesn't work on me though. I catch him do that all the time. And I always cringe from the faces of the other workers that think that it's inevitable that they gonna work longer.
If they assumed that the boss might be doing something outside of the common sense. Or something they didn't like personally. They would have looked into the contract to find possible loopholes that the bosses can use to exploit them. But, they seem to have an opinion of the people around as good, helpful human beings that care about them for some reason.
I believe that we can trace it back to the cartoons people watch as kids. As babies you are immediately thrown into believing that people are usually good and helpful. Those baby shows my brothers watch, even though informative about technology, fail to explain the most basic things, like that there might be somebody wanting to harm you. Some baby shows do that. Like the show Lazy Town. It has a villain. But we can argue that it's not a baby show, but rather a kids show. Those often have villains.
With shows like that we see a different pattern occurring. Something that might add to the naivete as well. Even though there is a villain in that show. They usually present villains as only bad. And heroes as only good. And the world doesn't work that way.
Good vs Evil
When a character of a story is either only good or only bad critics call this kind of character one dimensional. Or otherwise - badly written. The reason is very simple: In the world, you mostly do not see characters that are one dimensional. Those dimensions come from all sorts of things. Confusions about certain topics. Certain presuppositions. Certain habits. Every character trait could position the character in a rather 3 dimensional volume of traits. Nobody is perfect.
Sometimes people question their own believes coming to a stage of extreme confusion called a Cognitive Dissonance. Usually good stories are about such transformations. In a bit from where I am, Moria will feel her own inability to drive, even though she drove "professionally" for the entirety of the previous scene. She realizes that she is a child and that she might get herself and her little brother killed if she does something wrong. And this brings a good level of doubt in her about herself. A doubt that wasn't there in the beginning of the film at all.
In the beginning of Avatar, Jake Sully is a marine joining a group of marines in a new area. Even though he is given a special role, to be in an Avatar. Instead of going to action with his actual human body. James Cameron written a flaw to the character that works as a catalyst to a change. Jake cannot walk. But in the body of the Avatar he can walk. He can run and jump all he wants. This, technically, sparks a controversial opinion in him. Which makes him choose the side of the Na'vi instead of the marines.
The character is even more complex than that. In the beginning of the film he is a complete moron. By the end he speaks an alien language and follows alien traditions. He is not a black and white good guy either. He technically is a traitor. And the film asks you to choose whether this kind of treason is justified.
Even the background characters in Avatar have complexities. There is this guy Norm, for example, who is kind of a very background scientist character. But even he has an ark. In the beginning he sees Jake as a moron and a rival. And towards the end he becomes Jake's friend.
A character ark in a story is when a character undergoes change during the story. The change could be linear as with Norm. Or it could be complex and intricate. Some films make their characters believe certain things by the middle of the film, but by the end they collapse back to what they believed in in the first place. Some are more complex. The character arks of the biggest Indian film so far RRR, for example, are just insane: First they are rivals, then they are best friends. Then they are rivals again. Then one is friendly while the other is a rival. Then the other is a friend while the first one is a rival. Then they are both friends again. It just never stops. And the funny thing is: They both believe that they are the good guy. And the movie doesn't doubt it. Even when they go against each other.
What I watched when I was little...
I remember the kind of situation we had when I was a kid. From about 7 years old and up to 11 I pretty much lived with my grand-grandmother. When I was about 8, my dad left Ukraine to apply for citizenship in Israel. And my Mom was doing god knows what. I saw her sometimes. But she wasn't present there almost at all.
My grand-grandmother liked to tell us gruesome stories about the World War II. She was a little girl when it happened, so her perspective on the things were on the level of understanding that I ( and my bother ( I had only one brother back then ) ) could grasp.
Those stories where not fun. It was not about heroes blowing up bad guys. It was more generally about suffering. She didn't tell us complex character arks. Probably because she is not a writer. She used to talk about isolated incidents. Like the one time Nazis came to where she was at winter. Mind you it was a cold, snowy winter. And Nazis used to take people ( and kids ) and wash them by pouring on them cold water. All of this outside. I knew what snow felt like. I knew how cold can winter be. Imagining such cold was literally painful. I didn't need her to say "Nazis were bad". I knew it from the actions they did in the story.
When it came to films. She herself liked war films a lot. So we watched them. There were other things. Like a series about Russian truck drivers that go into all kinds of trouble. It was not meant for kids. I remember nudity in it. I remember watching Total Recall on TV with her. And I remember being horrified by the ending where Arnold goes outside on the Mars surface and his eye blow up. The TV stations very liked to show Minority Report directed by Steven Spielberg. I really loved that film. And still love that film to this day. It is just littered with complexities. It's amazing.
We watched a bunch of Chinese action films. Jackie Chan movies from the times where they were truly painful. Sometimes there was a horror film or two that for some reason we were allowed to see. There were films such as Batman Begins ( it was before The Dark Knight was made ).
I did watch kids cartoons. But it seems like kids these days are watching only kids cartoons. And it's a little bit of a problem. I spoke to a woman who had a 10 yr old son that refused to watch Transformers since it was not a kids cartoon. It was way too complex for him. Transformers. You know, Michael Bay's explosions caused by big robots. This was too complex for a 10 year old.
I'm afraid that we are loosing generations by censoring them too much.
Censorship
Censorship is used in 3 ways. Military censorship, when a certain thing kept in secret might give a strategical advantage. Political censorship is used when somebody does not want you to believe a certain viewpoint that, perhaps, contradicts their own viewpoint. And there is a different kind of censorship. A naivete censorship.
There is a famous quote from a movie "A Few Good Men" where Jack Nicholson's character says to Tom Cruise's character:
They can't handle the truth!
The idea is that certain information should no be given to certain people for the consideration of their psychological reaction to it. So to speak: They will be traumatized to hear it, therefor let's not tell them.
I want to debunk this viewpoint.
Imagine a person so naive that he kills another person for not knowing that it was bad to do so in the first place. I know I stretched perhaps a bit too far. But similar scenarios happen all the time. A person is not informed enough about a hazard of a certain decision. Then he decided to do that thing. And finds out about the hazard after the fact. When it's already too late.
This naivete leads people to become suspicious of everything. And the life itself causes a form of a trauma. Especially if you conciser how unlucky somebody might be. On the other hand if the person is lucky enough not to have noticed the hazards, they become careless. And it's a different problem.
Not telling kids scary stories either could develop into a form of paranoia. Where they think that everything is bad. Or it could develop into a form of carelessness. Where they think nothing is bad.
I remember being about 9 years old. My school made an interesting decision that you might find controversial. That day we went away from the class and into a darkened room somewhere in the school with just a TV in the middle. The atmosphere was scary by design. The teacher told us that we would watch a film. And we did.
The TV showed a gruesome documentary about drug addiction. It didn't shy away from showing people's deformed bodies ( caused by various drugs, overtime ), falling teeth and other unpleasant images. This was a rather horror film, if you will. And we were kind of traumatized by it.
I didn't ever try drugs in my life. Even though I had opportunities multiple times. I didn't even smoke a single cigarette. That's how powerful this film was.
Today people are of a different opinion. They believe that to make kids not take drugs or not smoke, we need to make them not aware of the existence of these things. Therefor in a PG-13 movie characters do not smoke. And in the R-rated they can smoke all they want.
But I believe this just helps the cigarette industry more. If you would instead show them the cigarettes. Show somebody smokes one. And show that somebody dies from one. That would work much stronger than trying to keep them from knowing about it.
Sex - Another stupidity. You cannot stop people from learning about sex. It's just impossible. Sex is a biological necessity. They will figure it out themselves. And I would even say it's problematic to not show them sex. Because they get in a lot of trouble for not knowing about it.
If you show a kid an act of sex and show how dangerous it could be ( pregnancy and such ). This will lead them towards avoiding sex. Or being more cautious about it. While on the other hand, when it's illegal to show them sex, they grow up doing it without any caution. Because they are not familiar with the dangers that could occur.
Another thing that we need to take into the consideration is the fact that kids will not ask you whether they can watch it or not. And they will type "Big titties" in the search engine. And it will lead them to a porn site. In porn sites sex is shown without any of it's nasty parts. It's all pure fantasy, if you will. Yes it's done for real. But there is a lot of things taken into consideration by the actors that is not shown to the audiences.
Instead something like the film Nymphomaniac, especially part two, could probably be a good educational video about sex for children. This movie is extremely hard to watch. The director does not shy from showing the gruesomeness of some of the things. In the unrated cut of the film, there is a scene of a woman performing abortion on herself. And we see the pain. We see the blood. We see the dead uterus coming out of the vagina.
The first part of the film resembles something you would see in a porn site. Everything is fun and beautiful. Everybody is there only to enjoy. The second film is like the warning. Everything turns to shit. We see consequences of all of the stupid actions from the first part. We feel the pain with the characters.
This is more or less a correct view on sex. Sex could be fun and it does feel good to do it. But there are consequences. Gruesome consequences. I believe that this kind of film is actually good to show kids. Though it's probably illegal to do so. You'll need to hunt a book version I suppose.
Conclusion
The stupidest logical fallacy people make is the catch 22 of child's brain development. People say that when the child is not ready to be adult, he should not try to be an adult. And on the face value it sound rather reasonable. But there is a catch 22 in this sentence.
The catch 22 is well known in the programming world where you see an ad for a programmer position in a company. It requires, say 5 years of experience with a language that only came out 2 years ago. But even that out of the way... Most of them want years of experience of working in a firm like theirs, while you cannot get in any other firm like this to get the years of experience since you need the years of experience in the first place.
Somehow an innocent naive child should first become mature before being given chance to start becoming mature. If age based censorship was actually successful nobody would ever grow up. Because nobody would actually know what are the things to know to be called a grownup.
Children have very plastic brains since they are still forming. Adults after age 21 rarely can learn anything new. You could make the brain a bit more plastic, but it would require a lot of effort. By the time a person is old, they cannot learn almost nothing. Try teaching your grandma to use a cellphone.
We are stripping kids from the ability to become adults by saying that only adults can learn to become adults. And by the time they are adults they already don't have the ability to learn. So a lot of people are just plain stupid. Perhaps this was the plan of the elite all along. And I'm just trying to argue for something that will never change. But perhaps we can do something about it.
I know that books probably will not interest kids. I would recommend a few good ones. But I don't believe that it what will capture them. Unless it will. Then buy them some good books. Start with, perhaps, murder mysteries. Add some flavor with books like Dune. It's a very good psychological book, even though it masks itself as a science fiction. When they get a grip you can introduce them to plain books about psychology. It will open their eyes to possibilities. And perhaps you can throw in something like 1984. Just for sake of it. But you have to discuss this book with them. I believe some world leaders probably misunderstood the book.
If they are not interested in books. Try film adaptations. Sherlock Holmes by Guy Richie starring Robert Downey Jr. is a good series of crime films to start with. Though they are a little cheesy. Sherlock feels more like a computer than a human being. Then perhaps you can jump to higher films of the same genre. Perhaps the Kenneth Branagh films about Hercule Poirot. Or perhaps the classic film "12 Angry Men". Or both.
There are a bunch of good films with good 3 dimensional characters to choose from. Tragedy films are good to shake things up. Titanic. Films by Roland Emmerich. They are dumb sometimes. Maybe you can talk with your kids about the dumb parts. And why they are dumb.
If they get too scared you can show them VFX breakdowns of those films. It helps a lot, to know that something isn't real sometimes.
If the films have supernatural or fantastic elements to them try examining with them why the supernatural thing was needed. What was the message that the filmmaker was trying to convey? If you make it a kind of conversation with the filmmaker it will be easier for them to swallow.
Anyhow try not to dumb them down with kids shows. You can have them as guilty pleasures here and there. As a desert. But not as a main dish.
Happy Hacking!!!
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