Counsel for the Youth

This is offered as counsel for the youth.
They are many adults out there whose advice and counsel are worth seeking. Individually, you must do that, find someone who you are most comfortable with, parents, older sibilings, extended family, teachers, scout leaders, multitudes of others. Yeah, I know, it's the same old advice from a stuckup groove in a record. But remember this there are even many among your peers who give good counsel.

There is the adult world and there is the youth world. There are as many facets, aspects, traints in each as they are among the individuals that make up each world. Each of the aspects of the adult world can be found in the youth world. There is good and bad in each. There is a violent adult world. There is a violent youth world. It is presently the violence among the youth that draws attention to itself. Both worlds beg and plead for a solution. Sometimes the two worlds work together toward a common goal and good things happen. Sometimes they work against each other in conflict and nothing good happens.

On the whole the offical aspect of the adult world (government, general public opinion) usually gets absorbed in their views of what society should be and how to acheive it. More rules, more laws, more debates, more of the same mostly. I see little help coming your way from the offical adult world.

When I use to watch movies and tv shows I would catch a phrase or scene that others seem to miss, those bits of insight that can be expanded into something more profound.

The first to come to mind is from an episode of Wonder Years. It was that math/science teacher who said, "Every problem contains it's own solution." Such applies to most of life's problems. The youth have their problems and it will have to be the youth who solve their problems.

The "I Will," "Safe Spirits," and such campaigns came from the youth for the youth. It is only the beginning though. These have to lead out of the school and on to the streets and into neighborhoods. It has to go into the heart of youth culture.

For many years I followed the outcast youth culture, not only the group in schools but also those groups outside of the norm of society. It's the street kids that have ever been present in all youth generations, those homeless kids wandering and living off the streets. It's the wilder group of youth that do the drinking and pot smoking. Lots of youth it seems have that irresistible urge to do what they shouldnt be doing, at least once. And there's always been the violent youth gangs, or more correctly, the youth gangs that have become more violent.

The news media as you have recently learned presents a baised view of the world. They filter out much good and let only the bad pass through. One of the Columbine students whose eye witness account I've read has learned just that, "retard news media" I think was the phrase he used. The information media is much the same, newspapers, magazines, tabloids, they all present a baised view of the world.

Take the teen magazines, the commercials on tv, the movies images of the youth world they want you to see. It's the hottest looking girls and boys, it's the elite social cliques, it's the coolest fashions. Such is only a fraction of the real world.

Where are the pictures and scenes of the hard youth life, even the common average life? Those you have to find for yourself, unless you happen to be living it. Such outcast groups have little or no money, they cant buy the clothes, cool stuff, cosmetics, so they're not on the magazine covers or in the commercials.

What to do among yourselves and for yourselves?

Share I suppose and it's not clothes, cars or anything like that, it's the experience. A form of empathy I think. I've walked the streets of Santa Monica and seen the extremes of society, street walkers pushing their carts past an elite gathering for an art show. I've seen kids at beach resorts begging, panhandling, selling themselves in order to survive. I've seen kids sitting on the streets of Edinburg with signs, "Homeless and hungry."

I've passed out my share of change and bills, cigs, but it never felt like enough. I've sat and talked with them, just to be friendly, to ask about them and their life, just to show an interest. I've picked up my share of hitchhiker's with backpacks beside the road (that safe act of helping is long past). Paid for a bus fare, bought a few lunches. It all never felt like enough.

There's the youth world and then there's the adult world. Over the years and decades I've seen them meet each other in conflict. Youth have this need to gather and be together as youth. Cruising main street or some other main drag use to be a gathering place. But a few among the young were unruly, trashing the streets, blocking traffic. The adult world responsed, banned cruising, pretty much told all the youth "Go away kids, you're bothering us." Then there were the gathering places out in nature by rivers and lakes. Again it was a few, again the gates went up blocking enterances, again it was "Go away kids, you're bothering us." Malls, street corners, parking lots, mountain tops, ocean beaches, where ever it is the youth gather. Sooner or later it seems, the adults see the few and barricade out the whole lot.

What counsel is it that needs given among yourselves?

Do your own policing I suppose. Talk with the few and get them to come around to your own way of thinking about how to keep from getting kicked out of the best gathering places. Dont trash the place yourself and pick up after the others who do, it eventually catches on. Dont let the partying get out of hand, I've never understood raging, it seems be begging for adult attention to shut it all down. Accommodate us old folks and let us just pass through, maybe we'll see the courtisy and not be stalled long enough to see the unruliness.

There was a spirit in the youth culture, an entity with a life of it's own. I think it's faded away. Some fad would start on the streets in some city, it would soon pop up in the most unlikely places. Breakdancing in LA and NYC, then there were these kids breakdancing in Red Square. Rock music in the Caverns of Liverpool, then there was phantom rock music in underground pubs in Moscow, though none of the muscians would admit they just played it.

Maybe such things are still out there in the youth world. Maybe the kid in me has been suppressed to hard and too long by the adult world so that I no longer see it. It will have to the you young people out there to bring it back.

"The Force, life creates it, it flows all around and through us, and together binds us." Such is the force of youth life. From the movie Footloose, dance was bannished from the town because of some fatal accident. "Dance, it's the way we celebrate life and living," was much what Kevin Bacon's character explained. It's that kind of celeberation of life and living you young people will have to spread among all of your selves out on the streets.

And like the darkside of the force, there's the darkside of youth life, those who have succcumbed to it's quickly flowing suductiveness. "It is no more powerful, only more quickly to flow." It preys upon those outcast street kids. Kicked out of homes, schools, society for multitudes of reasons. They defend themselves as best they can, they learn to meet violence with violence. They form gangs with turf to protect, a lifestyle to defend, they become lost within the darkness. It's that darkness that creaps back into the schools off the streets.

For years I kept a cover of Parade Magazine posted on the wall. It was a picture of a street kid, about 10, leaning against a chain link fence, head propped up by a his hand: "I want to die so it wont hurt anymore." He hung with a friend called Rat, his street name. Rat traded his prize possession, a strat guitar, for a gun. They needed it for protection from the bigger street kids, and adult street people.

What counsel am I to give for the youth? What counsel can the youth give among themselves? What counsel is there to give that can overcome this darkside of youth?

Spread the celebration of life and living around among yourselves. There's organizations out there to help such street kids, join them. Help each other with homework, dont wait for some adult to organize it. Show the way, walk with a fellow youth who's got personal problems to a guidance counselor's office. Go down to the youth centers for street kids, play a ball game with them. Choose your role models wisely, a real individual, not some super athlete, teen movie star, politican. Choose to follow the good things role models do, not the bad things, they're human too and mess up just like everyone else occassionally. Help and guide the younger youth who will follow you, be your own role model for them. Look for ways to turn a disadvantage to an advantage (one of the STNG eposides I think). The killing and violence will not go away till the motivation to seek weapons and do the violence, till the darkside of youth culture is removed.

"Go, make it so."

Uncontrolled emotion leads to motivation. Love - Hate.

Within the youth world there is this issue of love and romance, teen romances, first teen love and relationships. Several incidents of school violence involve a broken relationship or rival suitors. There are probably other similar conditions which result in violent reactions due to teen romances.

There are several lines of query concening this issue.

1. With what standard do today's youth measure their personal relationship? Is it romance images, themes, storylines in movies and tv shows? Is it the talk among themselves about other relationships? Is it some idealistic standard they set for themselves?

2. When the few individuals who lose control after a breakup, is it due to an overly developed sense of failure because the standards they used were too idealistic? Or, is it due to some commonly understood standard that every boy *has to have* a girl friend and every girl *has to have* a boy friend? The previous question sort of implies if there's no boyfriend - girlfriend relationship others consider an indication of being gay or leisban in today's world.

3. Do the youth understand that first love relationships are a learning experience in themselves? Academically, they take tests, on some they pass on others they fail, it is part of the learning process. The same applies to relationships as well.

The love-hate couplet.

Some people group specific feelings into a set and call them emotions. Thus there would be {Emotions: love, hate, jealous, joy, sadness, grief, angry, happiness, ....} Others may say there is just emotion with all specific feelings lumped together with one domanating the others are any given time depending on the circumstances.

In Chineses philosophy things in nature come in pairs, the yin-yan principle in which harmony is a balance between two opposites. Love - hate would be such a couplet. It becomes different aspects of the same emotion.

In other philosophies of emotion I suppose there is a linear line of thinking, one emotion leads to another. In this teen love issue it would be: there is love, then there is rejection, which leads to sadness, which leads to jealously, which leads to frustration, which leads to hate, which leads to retailation.

The desire of the youth to have a romance relationship is strong in some individuals, the love domanates. When the relationship fails the hate domanates with equal intensity. Not necessarily at their former companion but at the failure of the relationship. It becomes a personal defeat of one's own sense of failure.

When that happens the few who havent learned to cope with this personal failure go balastic. They search for some one or some thing to blame and take out their frustration against them or that.

I suppose it is here that one would think there needs to be improvements in teaching the youth what emotions are, what to realistic expect from their first experiences with love, how to deal with the inevitiable disappointments.

Counsel from their peers would be good as place to start as any, along with those adults who have a geniune interest in helping.

Observations:

That for every aspect of family there is a parallel aspect in society. The family has adults and children of various ages. All family members have their own personalities. Society has a collective adult aspect with collective children of various ages. All these collective entities have their own personalities.

For three decades, more or less, I've been the outsider, not really part of any single interest group. But I've had my own special interest of sorts. It's always been the youth and teens. I'm not an educator or school adminstrator. I'm not a politician. I'm not an activist of any description. I've been an outsider looking in.

Why my interest in the youth? I really can not tell. Some sort of knowing they have always been the hope of the future, I suppose. These words from one of my writings, they explain as good as anything else. The *you* is me, I'm talking at myself, the *they* are the youth, it is from a piece titled "Transit Life."

You started out in transit life,
Chasing that make believe perfect youth.
Missing out on real world life,
Trying to be where you could never get.

So now you spend your days
Getting from place to place.
To make sure that they find
The things of life where they're at.

I've seen several generations of youth, not in the normal sense, every 4 - 6 years they've evolved into a new generation. It's as if teenlife is an entity itself, just like an individual teenager. It's not just a parent adult and teenager, it's more like there's the adult world entity and then there's the teenage world entity.

I've seen how the teens, on the whole and individual groups, have been treated by adult society.

The youth find their gathering places where they socialize, party, be part of the experience of teenlife.

I've been to those places, the ones by a lake come to mind. Sooner or later the wilder ones find them too, the partying gets extreme once or twice, then there might be a fight among two of them. The adults react. They put up the gates, block all the kids out, punish them all for the bad acts of two. The adults effectively say, "Go away kids, you bother us."

I've seen cruising main streets banned. "Go away kids, you bother us." I've seen them all I think, rebels without a cause, hippie kids, street kids, punk kids, runaway kids, disco kids, homeless kids, hip-hop kids and all the others. It's always seemed, felt the same, "Go away kids, you bother us."

From a Parade Magazine cover in the late 80's, a picture of a street kid, he looked about 10, leaning up against a chain link fence, "I want to die so it want hurt anymore." I kept that cover on my noteboard till last year (did a major house cleaning and packed up most everything in boxes).

What does all of this have to do with Columbine, the other schools, youth violence? I guess there's just some vague sense that over these short term generations of youth, the kids have picked up on this "Go away kids, you bother us" message. Adults dont seem to care, so they react, they become more extreme in expressing themselves. At least the wilder ones do. I sure dont need to be like society and lump them all together just because of a few. But like society, it's the few that draws the most attention.

It's been discussed elsewhere in this group, America the Violent Society. The numbers and statistics show that our violent society was born and nurtured during 1962-1974. We've lived with it for 25 years. The reasons for why and how can be debated, argued over, discussed, analysed it makes little difference. It happened, it exists. It's been part of all those short term youth generations with whatever effects it's had.

Within the daily news hour there's the local news containing reports of the latest traffic fatalities, killings, other accidental deaths. If there's not a bloody enough accident in the local area, they report on one from elsewhere in the country or world. Then there's the national news containing more of the same with whatever political controversy or scandal that current.

Change a few names and dates, poof, you got the same news from any of the decades. They've all been gloom and doom reports and adults talking their politics and special interests.

What do the kids do? Some watch the news, most of the others eventually hear the talk about the news. They withdraw into their own world, they play their video games, they go watch the movies, they find gathering places just so they can be a teenager.

I recall one time at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I was sitting on some steps in front of a building, watching the street life happen. I overheard some kid say to his group, "Ever notice what you see on the streets shows up in the movies a little later?"

I think it was hacky-sack then. But it's true for most all the other fads and aspects of teenlife. Think of all the movies with themes about high school and high school life. "High Times at Richmond High" comes to mind, then there's been those about LA teen culture, skateboarding, surfing. Seems most of them had some sort of conflict among peer groups too.

The teen culture feeds back on itself. It starts in real life on some street in some neighborhood, moves to movies and television shows, lands on some other street or neighborhood, evolves into something a little different, maybe a bit more extreme, then it starts all over again.

In New York City during the fiftys there were street gangs with their knives and switchblades, their strutting and rumbling, then there was "Westside Story", it eventually landed in my neighborhood. Country boys dividing by neighborhoods and high schools, throwing rocks at each other, shooting BB guns at each other, picking fights.

Some 30 years of teenlife evolution later there's Crips and Bloods in LA with for real guns, drive-by shootings, death.