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How far is too far?
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From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maia>
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:51:58 -0700
What a flood of messages in one day. As if the can were just slightly peeled and out emerged all the unspoken wyrms of conflict...
How far is too far. I'm not sure that I understand the question... Or maybe I mean that it isn't relevant within my ethical framework?
* Individuals develop in different paces and places. So my six year old daughter can handle some concepts that might make her thirteen year old aunt uncomfortable while other "G-rated" ideas/images would give her nightmares. So she and I "censor" her selections -- movies, magazines, books -- to those that are appropriate for /her/ development.
Last weekend I watched the film /Promises/. It is superb. It is also a bit more than Ciara is ready to handle visually. So instead, we talked through (not for the first time) many of the ideas of the film: are there options for the children of Palestine and Israel to resolve their inheritances of war, fear and conflict? How do we heal wounds that have been carved into our communities? What does forgiveness mean, practically? How can we share land? What does peace as an action look like? These are hard topics, and we grow with them psychologically, intellectually, spiritually, physically.
What one child is able/ready/willing to handle is different from any another. While my daughter has only seen a dozen movies, if that, she has a decent knowledge of sex. She knows different alcohols and how they can impact behavior; she is aware of the effects of some legal and non-legal drugs. She also knows some history of genocide in the US, a little history of the Holocaust, of the oil wars, and the "conflicts" in Ireland. She knows these things because she listens to everything and everyone (as she says "my ears have a microphone to your mouth"), because she asks questions incessantly, and because when she asks we give her the fullest answer that we think she can handle. We talk around/over/on the edges of the graphic details that would /wound/ her. It is a fine balance between joy and wisdom that we seek, and I often worry that I am not getting it right, but I do the best I can. (That is a full time job.)
Because we think that sex is a good thing, that knowledge of sexual acts is useful, empowering information, and that farts -- and bodies -- are not embarrassing, our family is fairly open about such things. We don't joke about farts because there is little there to joke /about/ without shame. We have little tolerance or interest in shaming related to bodies, sex, evolution, pregnancy, etc. My daughter was present and watching as her brother was born; it doesn't get much more bodily than that.
* On the other hand, there are stories (books, oral, personal, movies, etc...) that, I believe, are poisonous. They exploit, they break spirit. It isn't the topic, the subject matter, that is the difficulty, it is the treatment. I would have no problem with a ya book that graphically described and illustrated sexual acts. I think that both girls and boys would, in general, do well to have this information. Sex should be fun, not shameful. And if one feels empowered about one's sexuality, then one can make informed personal choices, and not feel pressured to leave those choices up to other people/culture. In contrast, I would be very angered by a story that left the reader more bereft of soul than when they started -- a book that degraded women and girls, boys and men, and their bodies, their sexuality, their selves. There is no easy checksheet for what makes poison... and I have yet to see a general agreement on a book!
I think that the reason for that is a fundamental one. In a discussion on childlit this year, another author described Story as a kind of a god. I might phrase that a little differently: that Story is our expression or interpretation of (or relation to) god, of our roles within god. We each have very different experiences of cosmic energy, if you will. And thus, we have different ideas of what Story is meant to be. What our lives are meant to be. And through Story, we imagine and create our world.
Ursula K Le Guin brilliantly illustrated an idea of Story as the living response/invocation/creation of cosmos in her book The Telling. (Note: I consider dance, art, music, and conversation all within the realms of Story.) If we entertain that concept of Storymaking, then there is no subject that is outside of the Story, but simultaneously, how we render a story makes a difference in the very substance of reality. And if
/that/ is the meaning of Story, then what we read/write/tell/dance and how we feel deep in our bones about these things must be fundamental, personal, soul-rooted.
Thus to the question of "difficult topics": I know that many teachers, librarians, editors, publishers, school boards, etc. would like a handier list of topics that are "bad/good" or "un/acceptable." I understand the impulse! But I think that real Story is a wild, unruly thing. Libraries are not institutions, they are maverick magics. I think we'd be better off if we each took our trips to the library seriously, like a backpacking trip. It is scary, but you might get eaten by the bears. Be watchful. Be aware. Yes indeed, let's try to eliminate the machine-gun toting villains, and the diesel?d ravagers of mountains... but please let's not get rid of the other large carnivores. We'd do better to think carefully before we read than to sanitize all of our experiences beyond meaning. We need to learn how to explore wild country wisely, and to know what risks we each are willing to take. But we need those bears if our Stories are to keep growing.
Maia
p.s. I "censor" my own selections as carefully as my children's. I do believe in the concept of "garbage in, garbage out"... or perhaps
"garbage in roils around until you wish you could get it out." Being an adult does not mean that I have to -- or want to -- abuse my mind or soul. It means that I have that many more years of experience to know how to find the Stories that I want to echo to the world. (And that I will cook 100 yards downwind when in bear land.)
Received on Wed 22 Jun 2005 05:51:58 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:51:58 -0700
What a flood of messages in one day. As if the can were just slightly peeled and out emerged all the unspoken wyrms of conflict...
How far is too far. I'm not sure that I understand the question... Or maybe I mean that it isn't relevant within my ethical framework?
* Individuals develop in different paces and places. So my six year old daughter can handle some concepts that might make her thirteen year old aunt uncomfortable while other "G-rated" ideas/images would give her nightmares. So she and I "censor" her selections -- movies, magazines, books -- to those that are appropriate for /her/ development.
Last weekend I watched the film /Promises/. It is superb. It is also a bit more than Ciara is ready to handle visually. So instead, we talked through (not for the first time) many of the ideas of the film: are there options for the children of Palestine and Israel to resolve their inheritances of war, fear and conflict? How do we heal wounds that have been carved into our communities? What does forgiveness mean, practically? How can we share land? What does peace as an action look like? These are hard topics, and we grow with them psychologically, intellectually, spiritually, physically.
What one child is able/ready/willing to handle is different from any another. While my daughter has only seen a dozen movies, if that, she has a decent knowledge of sex. She knows different alcohols and how they can impact behavior; she is aware of the effects of some legal and non-legal drugs. She also knows some history of genocide in the US, a little history of the Holocaust, of the oil wars, and the "conflicts" in Ireland. She knows these things because she listens to everything and everyone (as she says "my ears have a microphone to your mouth"), because she asks questions incessantly, and because when she asks we give her the fullest answer that we think she can handle. We talk around/over/on the edges of the graphic details that would /wound/ her. It is a fine balance between joy and wisdom that we seek, and I often worry that I am not getting it right, but I do the best I can. (That is a full time job.)
Because we think that sex is a good thing, that knowledge of sexual acts is useful, empowering information, and that farts -- and bodies -- are not embarrassing, our family is fairly open about such things. We don't joke about farts because there is little there to joke /about/ without shame. We have little tolerance or interest in shaming related to bodies, sex, evolution, pregnancy, etc. My daughter was present and watching as her brother was born; it doesn't get much more bodily than that.
* On the other hand, there are stories (books, oral, personal, movies, etc...) that, I believe, are poisonous. They exploit, they break spirit. It isn't the topic, the subject matter, that is the difficulty, it is the treatment. I would have no problem with a ya book that graphically described and illustrated sexual acts. I think that both girls and boys would, in general, do well to have this information. Sex should be fun, not shameful. And if one feels empowered about one's sexuality, then one can make informed personal choices, and not feel pressured to leave those choices up to other people/culture. In contrast, I would be very angered by a story that left the reader more bereft of soul than when they started -- a book that degraded women and girls, boys and men, and their bodies, their sexuality, their selves. There is no easy checksheet for what makes poison... and I have yet to see a general agreement on a book!
I think that the reason for that is a fundamental one. In a discussion on childlit this year, another author described Story as a kind of a god. I might phrase that a little differently: that Story is our expression or interpretation of (or relation to) god, of our roles within god. We each have very different experiences of cosmic energy, if you will. And thus, we have different ideas of what Story is meant to be. What our lives are meant to be. And through Story, we imagine and create our world.
Ursula K Le Guin brilliantly illustrated an idea of Story as the living response/invocation/creation of cosmos in her book The Telling. (Note: I consider dance, art, music, and conversation all within the realms of Story.) If we entertain that concept of Storymaking, then there is no subject that is outside of the Story, but simultaneously, how we render a story makes a difference in the very substance of reality. And if
/that/ is the meaning of Story, then what we read/write/tell/dance and how we feel deep in our bones about these things must be fundamental, personal, soul-rooted.
Thus to the question of "difficult topics": I know that many teachers, librarians, editors, publishers, school boards, etc. would like a handier list of topics that are "bad/good" or "un/acceptable." I understand the impulse! But I think that real Story is a wild, unruly thing. Libraries are not institutions, they are maverick magics. I think we'd be better off if we each took our trips to the library seriously, like a backpacking trip. It is scary, but you might get eaten by the bears. Be watchful. Be aware. Yes indeed, let's try to eliminate the machine-gun toting villains, and the diesel?d ravagers of mountains... but please let's not get rid of the other large carnivores. We'd do better to think carefully before we read than to sanitize all of our experiences beyond meaning. We need to learn how to explore wild country wisely, and to know what risks we each are willing to take. But we need those bears if our Stories are to keep growing.
Maia
p.s. I "censor" my own selections as carefully as my children's. I do believe in the concept of "garbage in, garbage out"... or perhaps
"garbage in roils around until you wish you could get it out." Being an adult does not mean that I have to -- or want to -- abuse my mind or soul. It means that I have that many more years of experience to know how to find the Stories that I want to echo to the world. (And that I will cook 100 yards downwind when in bear land.)
Received on Wed 22 Jun 2005 05:51:58 PM CDT
