Latterday Saints
Personally, I am offended that the polygamist compound which was raided recently (do we still consider it recent?) calls itself a name that incorporates the name of Jesus Christ. I haven't said anything because - yeah. Polygamy is a religion and I believe in freedom of religion - I respect people with different religious beliefs from my own (though I will admit that the idea of polygamy discomforts me. I do not trust what the structure of a polygamist relationship says about how the religion views women and I question the psychology of a man who considers the number of his offspring to be an indicator of self-worth.)
But my reaction to the compound that was raided has nothing to do with their religion. Just as I don't believe the raid was organized as an attack against polygamy. It was a measure taken against a community that was mistreating its members, both adult and child. Opression (particularly of the females). Sleep deprivation. Forced separation of family members. And, of course, the rape of girls as young as fourteen years old.
Now that I've done a little research, I know that even some other polygamists say that what happened on that compound was not representative of their beliefs. The extremes imposed upon the members of the compound by Warren Jeffs were just that - outrageous extremes. If anything, if I were polygamist, I would be offended by what Jeffs did in the name of the polygamist religion. His rules don't seem to be to be a strict interpretation of polygamy - his rules seem to be a corruption of polygamy, a twisted mutation of it.
What Jeffs did in that compound? Was only different from what cult founders like Applewhite and Koresh did in one way. Instead of creating a religion, Jeffs took an already existing one and used it (like Applewhite and Koresh did) to gain himself power through the opression and exploitation of his followers.
What sparked tonight's rant? A discussion with a colleague about the dangers of statements by cult Latter Day Saints' members that defend the lack of any toys on the compound. They claim that the children enjoyed working and didn't "need" to play. That they fought over who could wake up earlier in the morning and work harder.
Is there anyone in education today who knows anything about brain based learning and human devlopment who doesn't realize what a powder keg for sociopathic behavior Jeffs was building on his compound?
Apparently so.
Children do need to play, people. Children can learn concepts without play. But play is what allows a child to view a concept in terms he or she can relate to himself/herself. For example, you can teach a child the names of colors, but the names mean nothing if a child can not see and explore those colors. The child feels nothing about those names. The child views the concept of color in a distant and unemotional way. And if every learning experience the child has is this way, the child learns to view everything he or she experiences in a disassociated, distant and unemotional way.
So bascially what you have in a community of children who are never allowed to play, to explore, to imitate with any modicrum of creativity or self-expression, is a community of future adults who can learn to do anything. And. Never. Feel. A. Thing.
We're not talking 100%. But enough. Enough to be afraid. And to do something.
And do you know what my highly educated and generally sympathetic-to-the-plight-of-others colleague had to say about this issue?
That the children would have been okay if left alone because they'd never known anything different. Yeah, there are starving children and children who are victims of domestic violence who are out there and have never known anything different either. That doesn't mean that they're gonna "be okay" as long as we leave them alone.
I hope I don't offend anyone with my comments here. Feel free to all me on it if you think I'm talking shit :p I had to get my words out now. Because earlier I didn't trust myself to express them in an intellectual manner to the man whose comment sent me off on my little ramble :*