How old were you when you first learned that the real monsters come in human forms?
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@CuriousMagpie Were you taught anything about Palestinians in that school?
@PhoenixSerenity that was in the early 1960s, I don't believe the word Palestinian was ever used. I don't know if the adults around us even knew the actual history of the formation of Israel.
We were taught the party line. Jews are good and Arabs are bad. In fact, the whole world is bad because everyone wants to kill us.
@CuriousMagpie That is just awful. No wonder many people need deprogramming education.
When I got attacked on the streets by bullies. People who thought it was fun to beat up kids younger and smaller than themselves. For whom cruelty was the point.
From age about 6, to 15, the last time it happened to me, though I've had to intervene when it happened to others.
The bystanders who did nothing were just as bad.
@EricLawton Silent bystanders are the worst.
@PhoenixSerenity three years old. Mother married a pedophile+sociopath. Took seven years before I could find the words to tell my grandmother what was happening to me.
@PhoenixSerenity I was about 16-17yo when I learned of the Finnish eugenics programs and how they survived into the 1960's
@miiamustang I do not know much about that Finnish eugenics programs. Something I need to learn about.
@PhoenixSerenity
I'd say in my mid-twenties. This was in the mid-1980s when I really started looking into what the US government and the CIA were doing in Central America.
@wannabemystiker Diving into CIA dirty tricks history is not for the weak of heart. It's really horrific stuff.
@PhoenixSerenity
It is. And I was still naive enough to think that if the average US citizen knew about all those atrocities they would rise up and put a stop to it. After a few years, I realized how wrong I was.
@wannabemystiker I'm less idealistic because of witnessing similar apathy from fellow citizens.
@PollyWaugh You & several others were robbed of a safe childhood, without traumas🫂
@PhoenixSerenity being abused by my parents did that for me. Also all the people who used homophobic slurs against me in elementary school.
@jackielovescompchem32 Childhood traumas = forced emotional maturity before we finished elementary school.
@PhoenixSerenity
I was a weirdly grounded kid. I don't think I ever believed in fantasy monsters or santa or... well... god. My first grade teacher said having me in class was a bit like having an adult man sit in.
As for when I realized humans were the monsters, I think it was gradual, but it was always kinda there. Growing into a useful awareness of the world in the Reagan years probably played a part.
@TheGreatLlama I blame Reagan for a lot of awful stuff too.
@PhoenixSerenity
I think what aggravates me most about Reagan is that I suspect he didn't really believe much of what he said. Nixon was an evil, hateful bastard who would have done everything Trump has done if anyone had let him. Trump is obviously a malignant narcissist. But so much of the shit Reagan did sold out people who were supposedly friends of his.
@TheGreatLlama I remember Mulroney & Reagan got on pretty well. I didn't like either of them.
@PhoenixSerenity Six, when the yard duty I asked for protection against bullies told me I was disgusting and weak.
@foolishowl Terrible treatment towards you 😔
@PhoenixSerenity If you defend yourself against bullies, you're worse than the bullies and deserve punishment.
If you don't defend yourself against bullies, you're contemptible and deserve to be bullied.
@foolishowl I experienced something similar in elementary school.
I learnt about it when I was a kid.... my mom was one.😢
Pretty much from birth
People think it's "amazing" I started cooking at three, cuz they haven't really thought about the fact I started cooking at three.
@PhoenixSerenity
i learned that unwell, troubled humans could act like monsters before i can even remember. but as for actually being them, a little older but still single digits. in horror at all the violence and suffering that was carried out — unlike the violence in my house — almost gleefully all over the world. toward humans and animals and trees and all.
@moonrabbit I can relate to your thoughts.
@moonrabbit I'm reminded of that quote about it being both a blessing & a curse to feel/care so much.
@PhoenixSerenity The hunch existed earlier, but getting pushed down the stairs at church and ending up in the emergency room was the confirmation. I was four.
@YakyuNightOwl I think many of us have suffered from early childhood church related traumas. I have a few.
@PhoenixSerenity Less than seven. An ad on TV about human suffering, and I started bawling, and everyone else in the room was like “what?”
@Cassandra A young humanitarian.
@PhoenixSerenity Still seems like it shouldn’t be the outlier response.
started around 6/7, when I learned my family came from a far away country that Britain invaded for Empire, that if you had different skin colour you risked being bullied, and that even though there were trains and cars and aircrafts that you couldn't just travel to another country for holiday (let alone live there!) without paperwork.
Also we were supposed to believe in Jesus but there was war with folk who also apparently did but in a different way and actual bombs going off in the streets, more war in some other countries because of oil and that was on telly every night, and then you learned that there was an atom bomb which could blown whole cities to ash..
@PhoenixSerenity probably when first hearing a less self-censored version of what the more extreme neoconfederates at religious school wanted and what they feared would or would never happen, around 11. Actually probably earlier, but it was much more vivid when it reached those first detailed descriptions.
@PhoenixSerenity 16 when I've learned about SouthAfrica apartheid. Later I became obsessed with Holocaust everywhere.
@disisdeguey2 I remember being sickened when learning about SA apartheid in my early teens.
@PhoenixSerenity When I watched a documentary about WWII death camps in my early teens.
@PhoenixSerenity 10... or 12... idk... and then I confirmed at 16...
@passocacornio I was pretty young too. Probably around 10 & confirmed a few times since.
What humans are willing to do to each other (and to Earth) is more horrifying than any fictional horror film that I've ever watched or read about.
@PhoenixSerenity meow... yeah... and they always do some heinous act in the name of "protecting the children" (I am not even talking about the current political landscape)...
more than 20 years passed and I'm still dealing with it...
@passocacornio Yup. Protecting the kids. Supporting the elderly & disabled more. All lies!
I'm with you in talking about decades of this same shit. With 2 different types of conservatives in power.
@PhoenixSerenity I was 7. In hebrew school we were shown those black-and-white films of what the soldiers discovered in the Nazi concentration camps. My younger sisters and I were not threatened or beat up - because we killed Jesus - until we were a little older.