How to Destroy Boys in Two Easy Steps

"Boys are basically being graded on their behavior, not their merit." - Dr. Helen Smith

Sheesh. How destructive things have gotten. "It wasn't like this when I was a kid." It never is, but I didn't expect them to get like this. It's almost like there is a conspiracy to crush boys.

If you want to really screw boys up, there are two things essential: long-term humiliation, and don't let them play. I'd make the argument that not letting kids play is itself humiliation of boys. Well, actually, I don't consider that an argument. I consider it a fact. When you're told you can't go outside and play and have to watch the kids through the window, that's humiliating

If you want to really find out what is wrong with a society, look at the most-damaged people. Because the most-damaged people show what is wrong with the less-damaged people.

So Dr. Stuart Brown and Dr. James Gilligan spent their lives studying the most-damaged people.

Brown, a physician, psychiatrist, clinical researcher and the founder of the National Institute for Play, has made a career of studying the effects of play on people, including, of course, children.

He reviewed more than 6000 life histories, looking specifically at a person’s play experiences over the course their lives. He found while studying homicidal males in Texas that there was a severe severe play deprivation in the lives of these murderers.

One of those he studied was Charles Whitman, who went up a clock tower in Texas and killed 14 people and wounded 32 others. He found that Whitman had been extremely play-deprived - and humiliated - by an abusive father (his father once beat him and threw him in the swimming pool, almost drowning him).

Gilligan spent 35 years dealing with the most violent incarcerated prisoners. When he asked them why they did what they did, including the most horrendous of mutilations, what he heard, every time, was, "He dissed me" (or my friends, wife, girlfriend, parents).

These murderers were excruciatingly sensitive to being humiliated by the most insignificant things (including things normal people wouldn't consider humiliation, like being "looked at") and so sought revenge, which is an attempt to replace humiliation with pride, i.e. self-respect. The Greeks, more wise than we, originally defined Hubris as humiliating someone in public, and considered it so obscene they banned it from the theater.

They also made Hubris followed by Nemesis - revenge. Humiliation is always followed by revenge - the attempt again, to replace shame with self-respect.

Gilligan also found these murderers suffered from severe child abuse and neglect. Since they were never loved as children, they could not love themselves, and so when insulted or disrespected sought self-love through revenge. Gilligan considered it a bizarre, twisted attempt to find love.

Brown, echoing Gilligan's work, found, "A severely play deprived child demonstrates multiple dysfunctional symptoms - the evidence continues to accumulate that the learning of emotional control, social competency, personal resiliency and continuing curiosity plus other life benefits accrue largely through rich developmentally appropriate play experiences."

Then there is this comment from him: "Likewise, an adult who has 'lost' what was a playful youth and doesn’t play will demonstrate social, emotional and cognitive narrowing, be less able to handle stress, and often experience a smoldering depression."

If you really want screw up somebody, humiliate them, make them despise themselves, and forbid them to play. See where I'm going with this? Sure you do.

The public schools are trying to make boys despise themselves, and they are forbidding them to play. It's their policy, and I think it's mostly due to incompetent female teachers who don't like rowdy little boys, of which I was one.

As an aside, but not much of one, these days I found have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder without Hyperactivity, and of course drugged. I wasn't paying attention or doing my homework. I was bored and so retreated into my imagination, which was Better Than Reality.

Schools don't want boys to play anymore. Go "Pow! Pow!" with your finger and you'll get expelled or arrested (and cops should be ashamed of themselves, are disgraces to their badges and if they had any honor they'd quit).

"Beginning in preschool," Brown said, "the natural mayhem that three to five year olds engage in (normal rough and tumble play) is usually suppressed by a well-meaning preschool teacher and parents who prefer quiet and order to the seeming chaos that is typical of free childhood play. We need adequate play hygiene in preschools so that both parents and preschool teachers recognize the difference between dangerous out of control boundary-less anarchy, and normal play - diving, screaming, chasing, even some punching."

Then, he said, kids can grow up into "highly creative and successful individuals...highly successful people have a rich play life...play affects mental and physical health for both adults and children."

When I was a kid my parents, on the weekends, would throw me out of the house and tell me to play. My friends' parents did the same to them. However, if our parents knew what we were doing, they wouldn't have been so keen to toss us out. Or maybe they would have.

Many years ago a friend of mine told me a boy in his neighborhood he grew up with killed himself at 18. He knew something was wrong with the kid from the beginning: his parents wouldn't let him go outside to play (germs, perhaps, or the possibility of getting hurt playing) and the only comic books he was allowed was "Little Lulu."

Some parents are so horrified by the public schools they've pulled their kids out and are homeschooling them. Some I know have become so perturbed they've moved into rural homes - sometimes trailers - so they can raised their kids the way they want to, not the way semi-educated, half-brained teachers want.

I graduated from a university that was the largest producers of teachers in a very large state. All the teaching students except one were female, and every one of them was stupid. Education majors have the lowest IQs of all majors. These days, I met these women not only as teachers but as principals. They're still incompetent. Worse, they're dangerous. And of course they don't have a clue as to how bad they are. They think they are improving things. Nope.

In the video above Brown spoke of play producing a sense of well-being. The word eudaimonia (mistranslated in the Declaration of Independence as "pursuit of happiness") means "well-being" or "flourishing" (same thing). You achieve it through arete, or excellence. And you can't achieve excellence unless you like what you are doing, and see it as play.

Play doesn't necessarily mean "fun." It can be a serious but utterly absorbing activity. It's what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called "Flow." Being completely absorbed in what you are doing, which is the highest form of play and creativity.

I can remember playing by myself in the room my parents had set aside. It was filled with what I called "stuff." I remember playing by myself and being absorbed in what I was doing. Playing outside with my friends was far more rowdier, but just as absorbing, and I needed it as much as I needed to play by myself.

Since men created civilization and technology, this attempt to destroy boys (because female teachers want to turn them into little girls, including through the use of abusive drugs such as Ritalin) isn't only going to damage the boys, it will damage society and make it go backwards. Which means in the long run a collapse of society and government.

So all you guys out there inventing stuff - quit. I know you invent and discover because it gives you a sense of well-being and competence...oh hell, that means you can't quit. But there will be those who were never given a chance. So perhaps you can be mentors? Isn't that one of the definitions of a man?

I'm going to repeat it again: the female-dominated public schools are set up to humiliate boys and prevent them from playing. No good will come from this, only bad. Not a little bad. A lot of big bad.