Lost in the Rye

(Alternate titles for this post: Lord of the Lies, The Bell Cookie Jar. I'm a nerd. Also, sorry about missing last Thursday's update. Getting ready to leave for college is somewhat time-consuming, what with all the packing, friend-seeing and freaking out I have to do.)

Edit: Apparently the AZ Republic doesn't leave articles up online for very long. Sorry, guys. I had an intro that commented on an article about advice for kids who get "teased" but it has since been taken down. I'm too busy and decided not to write a new intro, so here, have half an essay.

Children and adults don't relate at all. They are essentially two completely alien cultures. Children are incredibly complex, and they construct an entire sub-society complete with its own laws, law enforcement, hierarchy of power, caste system, and economy. Psychology Today recently featured Jill Price (also known in psych literature as "AJ"), a woman who remembers every moment of her life starting around age 8. She has now become an administrator at a k-7 school and says "a child lives in a world that adults left long ago. My memory has made me acutely conscious of that disconnect."

Freud described children as the ultimate expression of the id, and this is true. Children do not embody ignorance or innocence, but are full-fledged humans equipped with all the base, bare impulses and desires inherent to humanity. What they lack is the social and intellectual capabilities to understand the consequences of their impulses or the cultural restrictions placed on them, and therefore are not equipped with the desire or the capacity to validate or rationalize them. When adults want to avoid or "pick on" someone different, they come up with complex rationalization - the economy, the preservation of culture, fear of crime, past experience, etc. When children do so, it is a simple and individual decision with no ostensible greater purpose. Most adults don't realize that children can be seen as undiluted humanity rather than underdeveloped humanity. In them we can observe every beautiful and ugly thing that human behavior can offer, without all the extraneous trappings of adult civilization. When adults want others to feel the same way as them, they introduce religion, politics, or statistics - but a child smashing a friend's Batman toy because Superman is better is only a small-scale version of the Crusades. When adults give to charity, they claim tax breaks and write memoirs about it, but children simply act on the desire to give without thinking about or around it. Adults are essentially watered down children in this respect.

Children are not little, uncivilized adults, however. They see and understand the world differently, constructing social and internal realities completely foreign to almost everyone beyond puberty. What older people perceive as fickle friendships are in fact cunning manipulation and psychological warfare. We believe that children have imbalanced or nonexistent priorities without considering that the importance they place on seemingly insignificant objects or events might have a real origin and meaning. Imaginary fantasy worlds are not daydreams but an integral part of their reality. Adults would do well to wonder why children's minds seem so eager to leave, alter or block out this world. Is it that disorienting and difficult to be young here? Yes. Are children more acutely aware of the injustices and terrors of this world without the softening factors of rationalization, denial, and a sense of control? Yes, again.