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Whether or not you’d like to admit, all of us are highly destructive. We destroy. That’s what we, as humans do. It’s what we’re best at.
A passion to destroy is also a creative passion. Our founding fathers didn’t “destroy” the native civilizations, they “created” their own. We didn’t “destroy” the tree, we “created” paper. You didn’t create a painting, you destroyed a perfectly good white canvas. You didn’t create music, you destroyed the silence. Just about everything we do has both a creative and destructive side affect
As soon we’re born, we start to self-destruct. Every second 5 million cells die across our body, 300 mil a minute. Boom! Gone. Gone. Gone. We are constantly on self-destruct mode, every second, our life bomb counts down to zero, then restarts again.
I think we’ve all seen a toddler or younger kid playing with building blocks or Legos of some sort. They always build something up, just to knock it straight back down. We do the exact same thing
By destructing ourselves piece by piece, we accomplish things like healing our wounds, growing taller, and overall just maintaining a healthy state of living.
So something that may seem unnecessary and harmful, can also be viewed as beneficial and constructive in the long run. In other words, By destroying ourselves, just as a toddler destroys his Lego tower, we are given room to grow and create something new and potentially better.
In my school, we all wear a uniform. Even teachers are required to wear a uniform, but have you ever thought why? I mean genuinely “why do we really do this?” Most of us probably haven’t. It’s Hard to question something in your daily routine. Something that is a habit.
One way you can look at it is that by wearing our uniforms we create a commonality among us, as well as a sense of community. At the same time we, are also destroying a piece of our individuality and freedom to self-express. We destroy a piece of ourselves in order to create something else.
We have to weigh out the outcomes when it comes to making choices. We, or our parents, may feel that a better education and sense of community gain may be more important than the individuality you lose.
As we grow up, we destroy our innocence in order to create our adult persona. We destroy one version of ourselves in order to transform into another. This happens when anyone changes a slight bit. It could be as subtle as having a different favorite color or as drastic as having a different set of views or values.
As teens, we are probably in the most destructive period of our lives right now. We are constantly creating and destroying ourselves in order to find what fits. We play with types of music, hobbies, different ways of presenting ourselves, and most of all we alter our appearance.
I don’t mean plastic surgery, I mean the little things. Wearing makeup, dyeing your hair, even just shaving. When we do this, we destroy a natural authenticity. Our genuine appearance. Then again, we create a new aesthetic for ourselves. We create a opportunity to either conform to social beauty standards, or rebel. We destroy our PG filter and replace it with a more advanced, and crude vocabulary.
My last example is school. Not just one aspect of it. School as a whole. We start school at a young age. We start preschool around 2 or 3 years old. We learn our numbers and letters, and then we move to a primary or elementary school. Then comes middle school and high school.
That is 15 years of our life gone. Some may even say wasted. Don’t forget college. Four years at minimum, unless of course you drop out early, and you can always stay longer. From a young age we either push, or are pushed to excel at homework and tests and persuasive speeches. We destroy any remnant of free time, and sometimes our childhood as a whole.
What do we get from this? Why are we here in this room at this very moment? What’s the point? We create stress. We create a better understanding of the world and people around us with history. We create a better understanding of the earth and life around us with science.
We create language, and a way to communicate with English. And we create a second, numerical language with math. Most of all, we create a better understanding of ourselves. We create social skills, and problem solving skills. We create relationships and time management. We create job opportunities for ourselves with proper schooling even though we destroyed all that time and peace of mind.
As soon as we’re born, we start to self-destruct. We don’t have the choice to destroy or not to destroy. The only thing we can choose is how and what we destroy. We thrive off of destruction. It shapes us, it normalizes us, it makes us human. So whether you’re painting, shaving or simply going to school, just know that a passion to destroy is a creative passion, because before you start building a brand new Lego tower, you have to knock down the old one.
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]]>For decades, the Department of Defense (DoD) has been collaborating with the entertainment industry to create TV ads, movie theater ads, comics, video games, and websites to glorify militarism to teens and young people. David Sirota, writing in In These Times, calls it a “child-focused military-entertainment complex.” I guess the government’s thinking is that you can’t start recruiting early enough.
The products of this unholy marriage between the entertainment industry and the DoD present military service as a glorious and fun adventure. They neglect to show the realities of war—real injuries, real blood, real death. They tell kids that soldiers are saving the country from “terrorists,” conducting humanitarian interventions, and “spreading freedom and democracy” around the world. They hide the truth that they are sacrificing their lives for the protection and expansion of U.S/global corporate interests.
In one of DoD’s TV ads, Marines suggest being a soldier is similar to being a “Lord of the Rings” hero who slays fiery monsters. In another series of ads shown in movie theaters, the Air Force portrays dangerous missions as exciting video games, telling kids: “It’s not science fiction—it’s what we do every day.”
A DoD website aimed specifically at teens offers a free downloadable graphic novel, America’s Army which provides the back story of a video game called AA3. Together, they send the message to kids that life in the military automatically makes one special, professional, bold, brave, tech savvy, and powerful.
According to a pro-military review in Comic Resources:
The Army creates and distributes America’s Army so that young Americans can virtually explore soldiering in the U.S. Army like Soldiers experience it—as individuals and as members of teams. Through the Game’s virtual experiences, young Americans can explore the Army from basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and medic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to operations in defense of freedom. Along the way, they can join elite Army units and experience the strength of Army teamwork, values, and technology within an engaging environment. The game has become an online phenomenon, consistently ranking among the most popular PC action games played online. The games are rated T for Teen and can be downloaded free via Steam and from various partners listed on the www.americasarmy.com website. They are also distributed at local Army Recruiting stations, ROTC Detachments, and Army events.
The latest DoD ad is based on the 2011 summer blockbuster film, X-Men: First Class. It takes army propaganda to a new low, suggesting to vulnerable, pimply-faced teens that the military could make them a hero and give them super powers.
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]]>It’s 8 pm, and I’m leaving the Dollar Store in University City, Missouri. It’s a magnificent June evening: the sun is setting and a refreshing breeze weaves through the branches of the trees that line the concrete islands of the parking lot.
“This would have been a great day for a bike ride,” I think to myself. “Or for swimming. Or a barbeque…”
As I continue to tally the many uses this day could have served, I see a group of about 20 high-school-age kids hanging out in the back of the parking lot. They seem to be enjoying themselves. Some are on bikes. One dribbles a basketball. All are laughing and joking around. I ask myself, why would a group of teenagers hang out in a grocery store parking lot? As I get into my car, a police car pulls into the parking lot, shooing the kids away. They oblige, not taking offense to the officer’s warning and go on about their evening, still laughing and joking. The officer stays in the parking lot until the kids are far enough away that he knows they won’t return once he’s gone.
I’m still confused about why a Dollar Store parking lot would be a teenage hang out as I make my way home, when I realize that perhaps these kids are the aftermath of the new curfew for the Delmar Loop, an eclectic, six-block entertainment and shopping district in St. Louis.
Mayor Shelly Welsch stated in an article on STLtoday.com that U.City officials are up to the challenge of finding suitable activities for the 16-and-under crowd. A reader commented that the kids who city officials want to keep out of the Loop after hours are the same kids who “terrorized” (his word, not mine) the Metro-Link stations last summer, before Metro Transit increased security presence on platforms. It seems that Mayor Welsch and company need to find something to occupy these adolescent “terrorists,” before they become too attached to their grocery store parking lot.
The Delmar Loop curfew change is only one small contributing factor to the potential issue of kids being disruptive and finding other places to hang out. By the end of summer, they’ll migrate west and become a nuisance to Centennial Commons, a recreation center recently built in University City. St. Louis needs to take a cue from other cities and address its lack of opportunities for youth activism.
In 2008, a group of Chicago business owners recognized that the violence in Chicago was not only becoming increasingly deadly, but for the most part caused by the youth population. They organized a youth-driven and youth-directed social action group that aims to help divert potentially violent energies toward working for social change on a local and global scale. Youth Struggling to Survive also provides an online forum where members can discuss and find solutions to issues in the Chicago area as well as organize community events to promote social change.
Seattle’s Young People’s Project (SYPP) is a youth-led empowerment organization that provides students with a voice to catalyze social change. Since 1992, SYPP has organized social justice education where youth have the opportunity to voice their experience and solutions to issues of inequality.
In addition to building safer communities and schools, Boston’s Center for Teen Empowerment has a mission to education urban youth on human rights. Students and adults work collaboratively to find solutions and provide necessary tools to confront the most difficult problems in their community to foster positive change. Teen Empowerment works to bring authentic youth voices into dialogue about improving communities and mobilize the energy of urban youth to create meaningful change. Teen Empowerment currently works to open neighborhood-based sites to improve their community presence and foster creative initiative for young people.
Some might argue that unlike Washington DC and New York City, two areas deemed the mecca for youth activism, St. Louis doesn’t have the resources to provide and sustain organizations similar to ones in Seattle and Boston. Centennial Commons is a fantastic addition to University City, but a recreation center should be the start of including young people in a process to improve their neighborhoods, with hopes that they’ll become knowledgeable, effective community organizers.
On my way back from the Dollar Store, I pass a group of boys I regularly see playing basketball on most summer evenings. But today, instead of playing their usual game of two-on-two, they’re being searched by police. One boy leans against a squad car as an officer handcuffs him. Two others are being searched. Their hands rest against the side of a house while their faces register anger and embarrassment. One stands off to the side, awkwardly holding the basketball as if he expects the game to pick up where it left off. As neighbors and other drivers assess the disheartening scene playing out on the street, I wonder if these boys were the victims of empty summer days. Days where the end of school ushered in unlimited daylight hours and innocent mischief eventually transformed into illegal activity.
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