Report #004 - Text, Video Linked --BACKDATED to the 17TH - PLOT COVERAGE!

[pluckyreporter]

[This post is preceded with some internet linkage; back to the Making an imPact site for Wayne Enterprises dealing with media and their upcoming work on a new-and-imPort information channel. This post is repeated under Roxanne Ritchi's section, on her development and new blog, titled FORMERLY NORMAL TO SUDDENLY SUPER. Sure, you can't comment on

Comments

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[hells4children]

Well, it's a start, I guess. Small, tiny, insignificant splash in an ocean.

Could do without the speechifying and the pandering, of course.

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[pluckyreporter]

All journeys start with a single step, and so on.

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[hells4children]

Yeah, easy for you to say when the slowness of these steps doesn't have much bearing on your quality of living.

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[pluckyreporter]

Touche. Is there anything in particular you'd want to specifically look at? Emancipation for imPort Minors? Establishing a better system, specific changes to education? The Network's an open forum, so there's no real need to hold back here.

Part of my job is fostering knowledge and discussion of a issue -- so here's your chance. We are, in fact, listening.

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[hells4children]

Listening. As if.

That's why there will always be a need to hold back, because people like you only "listen" as long as it makes you look good to others, makes you feel good about yourself. How much of what you're doing here is about "listening" instead of just winning PR points?

The fact is, the whole discussion is being framed wrong. You're talking about our lives as if you people should get to make that decision, as if you should get any say at all.

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[pluckyreporter]

[There may be some temples being massaged on the other end of this conversation. Oh, man. She knows she had it good -- well off parents, got into college easy -- and her mistakes were buffered by that good family and the appearance of a superpowered friend. But man, cynical kids? She counts her lucky stars she wasn't as unhappy as this to get this way at 16, 17 years old.]

Unfortunately, until you're deemed competent to take care of yourself, manage your finances, and establish a quality of life that is better then poverty -- which most youth without stable families end up -- you are the responsibility of an adult who, in the ideal world, can do all those things for you

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[hells4children]

[ He knows a thing or two about having well-off parents, we grew up in Malibu, after all. ...But his parents were also supervillains, and having had a lot of time to think about why he sided with them on that hasn't left him exactly fond of anyone over thirty. Working in City Hall hasn't actually helped it much, either. ]

Aside from getting into the socialism fears as this would apply to native kids, I think it's worth pointing out that none of it does for imPorts. Should we elect to live in the MAC and collect our Porter-given allowances, those are all privately funded. We're no more of a burden on the already broken system than imPort adults, but because we're minors we still get placed into it.

That's what it all comes down to, no one expects anything from us but weakness because of our age. You're no exception.

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[pluckyreporter]

The Porter allowance does not, in fact, equate to a livable wage, even if housing is included. Eight hundred dollars a month will not get you the food you need, the clothes you need, and so on, to outfit you as you endure, even if you are frugal. Even less so if you have outstanding medical conditions. It is the equivalent of less than minimum wage for full time employment.

Then comes the problem of finding a job that will provide you a livable wage, and due to age, your experience and skill set could be a detriment unless you happen to be one of those who are lucky and arrived with abilities or knowledge that will make you employable.

It is not a matter of strength of weakness. It is a matter of time. In some things, time is the only currency that can purchase experience and knowledge.

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[hells4children]

No, it isn't. That's an excuse.

Time doesn't promise that experience and knowledge, and lack of it doesn't exempt one from it either. Time is completely arbitrary in the equation. It matters because people like you mistakenly believe it should matter, and so you build social structures that restrict those of us who haven't gone through as much time, despite the experiences we have.

It's a matter of strength because you have the social power and we don't. Because you're so goddamn condescending as to think we're unworthy of it.

As for Porter allowances, I'm still not living on the state's dime either way. You might be surprised what you could make last if you had to.

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[pluckyreporter]

You realize that this is a transitory state for you, right? That eventually you too will be over thirty, with a change in experience and perspective?

Time is not arbitrary to the equation. Experience isn't either, and one still requires time to get experience -- though there are those who pack a lot of living into shorter time frames. A dear friend started his heroing career at ten, and was a smashing success up through his thirties... much to his regret, and to the regret of the city he abandoned when he realized he didn't honestly want to do that, and the choices he made to embrace heroism as a child did not fulfill him as an adult. I assure you, maturity is not age dependent. But experience and knowledge often are

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[hells4children]

You're doing it again. Talking about my life as if you know it better than I could.

Learning isn't something that stops when you're suddenly eighteen, or thirty, or even well into your fifties. Age has nothing to do with changing your mind, and even if it did, is it really for the state to decide what direction I choose to take in life, or when I take it?

The fact that I can opt out of the game with if I devote enough money and energy doesn't ease the fact that there shouldn't be a game in the first place. I'm not talking about a singular instance here, but a wider pattern.

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[pluckyreporter]

I am speaking in hypothetical because I don't know who you are, what you're doing, or are your situation is, and doubt you'd tell me straight anyway. I am, after all, a servant of The Man, apparently

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[hells4children]

The problem here is that you think these young people fall into the patterns you see because they're incapable of taking care of themselves instead of recognizing that it's because the system failed them. The system was never trying to help them to begin with, it's been stacked against them from the start

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[pluckyreporter]

There are people on both sides of the equation. Certainly the system fails young people -- and old people, and middle-age people. All systems fail eventually, somewhere, because there is no perfect system. Or rather, there is no system that can withstand people being added to it. Nearly everything is 'perfect' until you add one human to the mix, who has a different idea of how the system should work then the other human in the system.

I'm not suggesting you're naive -- I can see that you're cynical in a way I have never quite been able to attain, and don't have any desire to become. Am I aware of my WASP privilege in my personal knapsack of bonuses to being a white female raised in a good neighborhood? Yes. Am I aware that racism isn't dead in the world? Certainly. Does that mean that I believe that all is lost for anyone who isn't me? No.

I refuse to embrace your nihilism of 'there can be no change' simply because to give in to that sort of despair is to simply quit and accept that the system is going to grind everyone up and spit

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[hells4children]

Remember what you said about listening? I'm so glad to find how sincere you were being with that, because from where I'm sitting, it looks like the only thing you're listening to is the sound of your own voice. I guess no one ever taught you that brevity is the source of wit

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[pluckyreporter]

I said I was done arguing. Not listening.

At this point, I am merely coming to the comm to bang my head against the proverbial wall because apparently we don't speak the same language from the same place.

If you wish to have civil discourse, on what you'd like to see done, how you'd like to see it done -- we can get back to that. But all I'm getting is 'you're wrong' rather then 'I think you're coming from the wrong place, this is the alternative I think is better'.

So, enlighten me - how do you fix a broken system externally? How do you know what's really wrong with it without looking at it from the inside? How do you know how to fix it without opening it up on some level? What would you do?