We Are So Afraid That Death Will Take The Child From Us, That We Take His Life

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Today I want to talk about something that is difficult and I don’t really want to think about. There is a shadow side to the desire to protect children and take care of them, about their safety, health, morality, and future

A session of black magic followed by exposure

How else to describe the effect of the article in Novaya Gazeta, which shocked many Russian parents, about teenage suicides?

Unexplained deaths of children from prosperous families, mysterious whales going into the sky, the cult of the “network saint” Rina, shots of cut hands, phone calls before death, the horror leading to “Eva Reich” … no names, take our children with them into a “different reality”, into “comprehension of the truth”, “into heaven” - but in fact, into a senseless and untimely death?

There was a lot of controversy about the article itself. Admired, scolded. They contrasted the "professionalism" of the Lenta with the "alarmism" of the New. I don't think there is a definite answer.

An article in Novaya is definitely anything but a journalistic investigation. But this, alas, is not the only example when a journalist of this publication has a bright position, opinion and impression, which means that a balanced work with facts is no longer needed.

On the other hand, if there were no "black magic" in the article, there would not have been two million views - all colleagues in the shop would not have jumped up at once and would not have done in a day what Mursalieva could not / did not consider necessary to do in a few months. Thousands of parents of teenagers would not think about the state of their children, about their relationship with them. So, if we proceed from the assessment of the effect produced, the article undoubtedly “fired”. And she hooked on those layers of the topic that in the emphatically sound "Lestrade" materials do not sound at all: what is happening to the children? Let "behind the curtain" - just notorious idiots, but why are children being led to all this? Why do they leave a life in which they have everything to live and enjoy - family, school, pleasure, prospects?

Everything is not as it really is

First, let's disperse the haze. Any child is much more dependent on the immediate environment in real life than on secret communities on the Internet. In the vast majority of cases, suicidal attempts are preceded by serious conflicts with parents, teachers or peers, depressive episodes, emotional distress, developing addictions and eating disorders. Statistics unambiguously indicate that the Internet is not only not a factor provoking an increase in adolescent suicide, but rather has the opposite effect. The degree of coverage of the population by the Network is inversely correlated with the number of suicides in general and adolescents in particular. But directly with it correlates the level of poverty, general disorder, domestic violence, as well as the low quality of education and the lack of social lifts. It's just that no one will write in the central newspapers about the death of a fifteen-year-old drug addict from a poor working-class suburb. The adults around her will call the attempt to hang herself by a girl tortured by the harassment of her stepfather “foolishness” and not only to psychologists - they will not even run to doctors, and she will be forbidden.

This does not mean that children from "good families" who do not suffer from violence and have caring and loving parents cannot be depressed. Even from the article by Mursalieva, in which the idea is persistently carried out that the children - "victims of the whales" were initially successful, another thing is clear. Only one fact: the deceased girl was so worried about her figure that she had been eating only salads for a long time. This suggests that the child had at least a persistent eating disorder, one of the markers of increased suicidal risk. It is clear that it is usually easier for the relatives of the deceased to come to terms with the circumstance of force majeure - being zombified through the Network - than with the thought that the child was bad before. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the fact that children were in suicidal communities was a consequence of their condition, not the cause.

Yes, today's kids are looking for all the answers on the Internet. Including the answer to the question "what to do if you want to die?" But the question itself appears in real life. Manipulations with numbers like "130 children of those who committed suicide were in groups of whales" - nothing more than manipulation. And another 200 of them went to church with their parents, 350 watched TV, and certainly all 400 went to school. Why ban school now?

This in no way relieves responsibility from those who could, in such communities, push adolescents to move from suicidal thoughts (which are almost the age norm) to suicidal intentions and attempts. In communities, normalization and poeticization of the idea itself, with the use of music and visual images, and specific know-how, and group pressure “let's all together”, “who will not chicken out” work for this. Sociopathic moderators can also be very skillful manipulators. This is serious, and bringing to justice those who "joked" and "flash mobilized" in this way is very important, as is the dissemination of information about the cost of such self-promotion methods.

But do not deceive yourself that it all comes down to "zombie on the Internet." This is the case when mystical horror interferes with seeing the state of affairs. And it is such that there are plenty of factors that increase the risk of suicidal behavior in adolescents and without any whales and butterflies. The article will be discussed and forgotten, but the factors will remain.

Don't be like that = don't be

Adolescence is given to a person to form an identity, to answer the questions “who am I? what am i? how do I differ from others? At the same time, self-esteem and self-concept are still fragile and fragile, rejection and criticism are extremely painful. Therefore, any type of hating becomes one of the serious risk factors - hatred and persecution of those who … no matter what. Something.

Homophobia has become one of the most powerful hating trends in Russia in recent years. It was deliberately promoted and even enshrined in a law prohibiting homosexual orientation from being called a variant of the norm. As a result, not only children with a homosexual orientation or with an unsettled orientation turned out to be vulnerable, but literally all adolescents - after all, we can say about everyone that he is “fagot” and start bullying. This very possibility is in the air. Even parents of children who had not yet finished elementary school told me similar cases. Moreover, they themselves are usually frightened first of all that this is true, and secondly - that the child is being bullied. This was not the case 10 years ago.

At the same time, the topic became taboo, all methods of preventing homophobic bullying were blocked, books for teenagers cannot be published about this, conversations can be held, the Children 404 project is being methodically destroyed. The law completely paralyzed any way of dealing with homophobia among adolescents and almost any way to support and protect someone who is being bullied. He is only allowed to feel sorry for him, as a patient, and advise him not to advertise his inferiority. How many children this law cost their lives, we will never know - after all, they "did not advertise". One of its authors, Elena Mizulina, is eager to change another law so that 13-year-old Eva Reich can be brought to justice. Is she thinking about her own possible responsibility for teenage suicides?

Another prime example of hating that girls are especially vulnerable to is articles, websites and blogs promoting the fetish of a lean and athletic body. Body image plays a very important role in the overall feeling of satisfaction with life. Teenagers with their rapidly changing bodies are already prone to dysmorphophobia (rejection of their appearance), and then they are taught from every iron that "you can't live with a fat booty."I suspect that boorish weight-loss gurus sent to the next world a lot more teenagers than suicidal communities. Anorexia kills more surely than open veins, and bulimia encourages suicidal attempts. From thoughts “I want to be smaller”, “I look disgusting, it is disgusting to look at me, no one needs me like that” it is very easy to move to “I want to be away”.

The problem is that if parents are horrified by the calls to lie on the rails, then the idea of going on a diet and going in for sports seems quite sound to them. The fact that this is often a self-rejection - the first step to suicide - they do not notice. Or even worse - after reading Madame Traumels, with the same rudeness and categoricalness, they begin to broadcast hatred and contempt for their bodies to their daughters. “So why are you so dressed up with your fat ass? Put the cookies back, you won't get through the door soon. You can't let yourself loose like that, it's time to take care of yourself! " - alas, I know exactly what girls from all walks of life hear from their own parents day after day. Their parents are sure that they love and care, that they want the best, that “she herself will be upset later; it is better to hear from me than from a young man; it is my duty to warn her. " Although, in general, the parents' duty is to convey to their daughter that having heard from a young man at least once a demand to change their appearance and humiliating criticism, they need to turn around and leave. Because these are the first signs of violence, and soon you can find yourself with a tight ass and a battered face.

There are many more examples where family and society send a powerful cruel message to adolescents: don't be who you are. If a child is sensitive, if he has little support, he hears in this: don't be. It would be better if you - this - did not exist. Can someone explain why “whales in the sky” scare us to shaking hands, and all this seems normal and even “useful”?

Decay and despair

Teenagers will have to say goodbye to childhood and enter adulthood. And in it, somewhere to strive, to achieve something, to implement crazy ideas, to conquer the peaks. In theory. In practice, a huge number of children come to life, realizing that nothing good and interesting awaits them. What do they hear from their adults about this life? The job got out, the boss is an idiot, everything is sick and tired, there is no money, you beat like a fish on the ice and everything is useless. Our adult life appears before them as a senseless dreary succession of days devoted to all sorts of stupid vanity. This life requires from people not at all struggle and search, but conformism, deflection, rejection of selfhood, from self-realization in order to while away the year and pay off the mortgage. And for this they need to grow up, study a lot and try to harness themselves into this strap and read for happiness to stretch it for 60 years? Is it true?

We ourselves do not notice how our habit of always whining and complaining, never trying to change anything, the willingness to abandon our meanings and values, forms in children the image of the big world as a branch of hell, meaningless and endless. And what then is death if not an escape from this hell? And what could be wrong with escaping from hell?

It is very difficult for a teenager living in such a mood to oppose something to a homegrown suicidal philosophy. “Holding on to life is stupid, because it’s sheer dullness and boredom, a mediocre world for mediocre people” - well, yes, that's how it is. Mom herself said. She, too, has not lived for a long time.

In the matrix

There is an old joke:

The family came to the restaurant, the waitress addresses the child:

- What is to you, young man?

- Hamburger and ice cream, - the boy answers.

Here mom intervenes:

- Him a salad and a chicken cutlet, please.

The waitress continues to look at the boy:

- Ice cream with chocolate or caramel?

- Mother Mother! - the child cries, - Aunt thinks I'm real!

We love our children very much. We want the very best for them. We are worried about them. We want to make sure that nothing bad happens to them. We take care of them. And we do it so well that they are no longer sure that they exist.

Since the beginning of this century, there has been a manifold increase in control over children. We are tracking their cell phones. They leave school strictly with passes. The teacher can no longer go on a hike with them - the coordination and paperwork will take forever. They can no longer walk in the yard themselves, they are almost completely deprived of free play - they only move from circle to section, accompanied by their grandmother or nanny. Any incident involving children causes mass hysteria and a search for those to blame. The collection of signatures begins immediately, demanding to punish, prohibit, exclude repetition. Deputies and other bosses immediately come out with ideas "to create a control system" and "to tighten responsibility." The number of inspections of any childcare facility is growing every year, the number of prohibitions and prescriptions too.

Give us free rein, we would wrap them in cotton wool and hold them for up to 20 years, or, even better, put them in capsules, like in the movie "The Matrix," and so that nutrients and knowledge would go through the tubes to them.

This is especially painful for adolescents. The collective unconscious contains the expectation of initiation: tests to test the right to be an adult, travel to another world, dialogue with death. A child can always hide from his fears in the arms of a parent, a teenager wants to know what he is worth. But parents are worried, teachers do not want to answer, and as an initiation we are ready to provide them with only the Unified State Exam.

The topic of death is taboo. Do you think many school psychologists and teachers dared to talk with children about suicide after reading an article in Novaya? I doubt it, because if you are serious, and not just read the lecture, you need to start with words like, "I think many of you sometimes feel the urge to die or do something very dangerous, and that's okay." Who will decide on this?

Teenagers have no one to talk to about this, we get scared, drink Corvalol and remind us that the lessons are not done. They use hookers and street racers, strangle each other with scarves and cut their hands. Lacking free childhood, they cling to freedom at the moment when we physically lose the ability to control them, and turn out to be unprepared for these opportunities, often unable to assess risks and foresee dangers. After each "kurtosis" we look for something else to prohibit and restrict. Now they started to select gadgets and read profiles. The more we cut off the phones with our alarm calls, the more they want to turn off the sound altogether. The more we reproach and check, the less trust between us, the stronger their desire to escape from under the hood. Up to the extreme forms of escape from all this - into death.

We do not hear, do not see them, we consider their desires and feelings "whim", do not believe that they are real. They are not asked, everything is decided for them, all moves are scheduled, we expect them to match. As a result, they feel that the dead girl Rina, who lost control and went to live on the Web, exists to a much greater extent than the living ones. She is, but they are not.

I asked my fifteen-year-old daughter and her friends to write what they think about all this. They have good families and a good school. They have no depression and addictions. Here is their text, almost unchanged:

A teenager faces a million tasks, a million questions that he must answer for himself, and the only way to do this is to gain life experience. And life experience cannot be obtained without freedom. It is impossible to understand who you are sitting at home at the computer or at the desk in the classroom, and in fact many parents leave their teenagers no other alternative.

In the petty sterile world of adults, there can be no struggle, no freedom - no matter what you fight for, all adults will unanimously say to you, “don’t be silly,” “why do you need this?”, “Don’t arise, and without you there are many problems "," There is nothing to risk in vain, get down to business. "All you need to do is study normally and come home on time, so as not to upset your beloved mom.

Yes, damn it, we have every chance of getting into a dangerous situation - on the street we come across mad dogs, drug dealers, maniacs, drunk drivers, etc. into a situation where something would depend on us. We don’t have to make a choice, we don’t take risks, we don’t seek, we don’t live. We study, clean the room and, if we're lucky, sometimes get the opportunity to leave the house under the pretext of having a meeting with a girlfriend in a cafe known to our parents to call back about each step and return at a strictly defined time.

Most of all this concerns us girls, because it is our freedom that usually lies in the fact that we can choose to do English or chemistry first. This is shitty, but we managed to find a loophole for our lives. We have a Network - after all, something like free communication, some kind of hope that somewhere in a remote corner of the Network there will suddenly be something really interesting. In real life, they do not want us to be someone - the ideal child does not think, does not doubt, does not make mistakes - and on the Internet we can decide who we will be. It's not like understanding who you are, solving the most important issues in life, defending yourself and your beliefs, finding and losing new people, entering into conflict and learning to get out of it, but this, in principle, comes down. Fine. This is what everyone would do if real life was forbidden. And, damn it, even if there really were all sorts of sects with crazy maniacs who would give out numbers and quests and stuff us with all sorts of mystery, then these girls who are not given a sip of freedom and who have not yet learned to impeccably lie to their parents every day were would just be the FIRST, who would be led. And they would be the FIRST to jump off the roof - along with teenagers who have really unbearable lives, hellish problems with their parents and all that jazz. And what is important they are missing, these domestic girls? The ability to do homework for a few more years? Your personality? Nothing of the kind, they do not yet know who they are, they only hear what others are saying about them. They themselves have been gone for a long time. And then they propose to close the Network for Teenagers, to monitor every message. Yes, then we will all fly from the rooftops, do you understand?.."

* * *

“We are so afraid that death will take the child away from us, that we are taking his life,” Janusz Korczak said a hundred years ago, and over these hundred years everything has become even more serious. The more prosperous we live, the less we want to suffer. The more we control and lay the straw in stacks and layers of cotton wool. We do not want to have the slightest risk, we close all the loopholes for death - and she suddenly finds herself right in the heart of a child so zealously guarded. We can protect a child from anything but himself. Unless we're willing to lobotomize him, for his safety. And it seems to me that it is the realization of this truth that lies at the heart of the horror into which the article in Novaya Gazeta plunged the parents. We will have to learn to live with it if we want our children to live.