“all fragile” children. Such awesome incoherence is resolved by kids’ “haphazardness” that conquers Hitler!
Now, are we convinced by now? All our adult objections, proudly condemning children as imperfect, often hurt and sickly, tending to get into fight, and so haphazard, are actually our admiration of children so unlimited in growth, daring to venture out experimenting, honestly expressing hatred and honestly forgetting it, and full of unknown potentialities so potent.
These features typify how kids play together, and playing together is joy of interculture worldwide, and so kids teach us in their living, precisely while we adults proudly complain about them, how to interculture in joy unlimited worldwide, right here now as kids. Without kids, there would be no adults complaining to be perfected by these imperfect kids!
V. Abusing Children
Now, have you noticed it? Children have been described, and in describing kids, our awesome “interculture” appears by itself, for kids are interculture as kids play with one another, and “play with”
is interculture. So, let us tie things up together. We have three points here, interculture, kids, and abusing kids.
One, interculture: Believe it or not, we humans live interculture. I live with trees, literally breath to breath, as they receive my breathing to live on as I receive their breaths to be alive on and on. Robbing me of “trees culture” robs me of my “life culture.” We are radically social; interdependence is our human
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essence, as part of the essence of the whole Mother Nature, as
“mother” implies reciprocity of nurturing interdependence.
Interculture is interdependent in our “inter way” of living back and forth. “Interculture” is the way in which we think and live, and grow. Interculture is how we “inter think” to “inter learn” in “inter joy.” We all live for joy, so all of us live interculture. Robbing us of interculture robs us of our life. This conclusion, however surprising, is inescapable.
Two, children: Kids are innately playful; they constantly play with others, kids and non-kids, all in “inter joy” jumping shouting.
“Playing with” is how they live, think, and grow. Kids are thus born with interculture playing “inter learning” to “inter live” in “inter joy.” If this is not innate interculture in all kids, nothing is. So, we adults must learn how to interculture by playing with kids. Since we all live interculture, all of us must live with kids playing interculture. All our living hangs on this “must” of becoming kids, playing with kids. Robbing us of playing with kids as kids kills us all.
Three, adults ruin themselves by abusing kids: This point naturally and inevitably follows from the two points above. India says, “Those who cut the tree cut themselves,” simply because trees nourish human vigor to live on. Likewise, those who abuse children
“our root” abuse and poison their root to their death. Harming children harms the adults who harm them. It is such a sad reciprocity of harms.
From World Interculture to Abusing Children 25
Sadly, however, we do mysteriously abuse others, the
“weakest” of whom are kids, so we think, and so we abuse kids.
Abusing kids tells of us committing suicide. Child-abuse shows our absolute innate need of being led by kids and guided by kids.
“Abusing children” clues us to our absolute dependence as adults on kids, as kids as our categorical imperative of existence.
Now, have you notices it? I have been giggling while jotting all this down, positive points of kids’ joys and negative ones of adult abuse of children’s joys. Even jotting down my imagined kids jumping shouting so impish is my joy. Kids just continue to give me joy, for kids are joy. How could I stop describing them?
Naturally, then, abusing such children of amazing joy smashes my joy to ruin all my life and theirs. Only by being wholeheartedly with them in differences—usually I am ashamed of my differences from them—is my power of being myself. Kids are all of a piece;
being with them requires that I be totally honest all integral.
“Being with their differences” is interculture that is kids playing, for play requires difference, and “no difference” makes “no play.”
So, we must interculture with kids in kids so different to fulfill ourselves, growing as kids.
Moreover, isn’t all this description simple as kids? Isn’t all this kid-stuff alive in all joy, deeper than adult logic? Life is larger than logic, and kids always live it up, so kids are larger than adult logic. Deep large stuff is kid-stuff of joy together, so casual so overwhelming, and so intercultural. “Abusing such overwhelming kids joyous” amounts to abusing ourselves to end the entire
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lifeworld of Mother Nature in interculture. This ending ends the world. Abusing children ends the whole world.
Now, beware. Abusing kids is not limited to physical abuse of them. Imposition of preset programs does abuse children who are constantly soaring sky high beyond all limits preset on them.
“How’d I know what I am drawing; I’m not done drawing yet.”
Any teacher who gives up on Tommy as hopeless is herself quite hopeless, for she wants to impose a preset purpose and preset pursuit on Tommy’s drawing. Tommy drawing is Tommy drawing up his life. Education educes kids out, to nurture and guide their growth of potentials, drawing them out into them themselves.
Failing them even in this adult way of our good willed
“education” abuses them, to fail ourselves and our future that is kids playing at interculture, right here right now. We are then all doomed. We all know that world interculture is our adult global goal today. World interculture is children playing together in joy here now, to tell us this sobering chilling truth: Abusing children poisons our well of interculture, and we die together with the children we abuse. We either thrive with children in world interculture, or else die with children by abusing them to ruin world interculture to ruin the whole cosmos. We have no third alternative.
From World Interculture to Abusing Children 27
REFERENCES
Andersen, Hans Christian and Lily Owens. 1984. The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales. New York: Avenel Books.
Arendt, Hannah. 1992. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Penguin Books.
Asimov, Isaac. 1964. Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. New York: Doubleday.
Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Weinrich, Harald. 2004. Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting.
New York: Cornell University Press.
Wordsworth, William. 1904. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
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