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Hidden words
by John A. Jackson
One notes with interest - "astonishment" might be a better word - that President Bush has proposed deep cuts in the tiny sums allocated for preventing and treating child abuse.
How much those funds amount to is unclear, but no accounting puts them at a tenth as much as the U.S. will pay for the Colombian military's dubious assistance to the war on drugs.
Is this to be the pattern of the Bush administration, to sacrifice great long-term interests in the name of small short-term gains? Tax cuts that ruin the government's solvency. Cuts in spending on basic science. Easy inaction on global warming. Mere talk about leaving no child behind. Talk about compassion, instead of acting compassionate. Talk about drug benefits for hard-pressed seniors. Talk and nothing else.
Occasionally, one comes upon ideas whose sudden prominence is so great that they must have their source in many people. In some ways by attempting to remain current, a column like "Shadow Government" becomes an imperfect kind of diary about what people in general are thinking.
Or so I would like to believe.
Lately, one hears more and more the idea that children encapsulate in their consciousness fairly simple messages, like computer programs, that constrict the children's futures. Adults write these sentences on the children's souls.
The programs, as I understand the idea, might take the form "You are stupid," "You are disposable," or even "You should be killed." Obviously, such programming damages a child.
The theory continues that, as an adult, you can discover your own hidden message and manipulate or alter it. Even in the most difficult circumstances, freedom can assert itself.
Where did this theory arise? I first heard about it from my wife, and she from a close friend. Possibly the concept originated with Oprah Winfrey. Frankly, I do not know.
But the idea fascinates me, as few political notions do these days.
Compare the hidden message to the diamond hiding in a mass of crystal. A cutter whacks the stone and the shape of the diamond comes out. Is that how psychological healing will start, with the revelation to ourselves of our internal messages?
Why do we receive one message and not another? Can we really ever be free of these early, and one has to believe accidental, impairments? Or do adults somehow need to rein in or even mutilate children, as they themselves were reined in or mutilated?
How are parents to behave? How is the creative vigor of children to survive?
Those seem like important questions.
What I know about small children is nearly always hopeful. What I know about most adults is that they were scarred for life when young. Somewhere between an axe has fallen. This is mortal violence and it seems to occur everywhere.
The amount allocated for researching, treating and preventing child abuse in the year 2001 in the world's richest nation is much, much, much less than the cost of a single missile submarine.
That makes no sense at all.
John A. Jackson may be reached at TomShadwell@cs.com. ER