When I was a kid, I was (naturally) a big fan of kid rights. I always thought that kids should be able to vote, enter into contracts, be considered legally a "person", drive if they could reach the pedals and see out the windshield, and decide whether or not they went to school.
My reasoning for this was not that kids were so smart or mature that they could do this responsibly. It was that the vast majority of adults were dumb and immature and can't do this responsibly, and yet we give them all these rights and privileges anyway.
Since becoming a legal adult in 1999, I have seen little to make me believe I was wrong in this assessment.
It's interesting - if you consider children=dependent and adults=independent, modern society has made children of us all. Everyone (except wackos like the Unabomber) is dependent on someone else now - the economy is just too intertwingled to function without other people. Folks leave the nest of their parents to become dependent upon their employers, and then leave that behind to grovel at the trough of investors, and if that doesn't go well, they become slaves of the credit card companies. That seems to be the price we've paid for all our cool new toys.
My reasoning for this was not that kids were so smart or mature that they could do this responsibly. It was that the vast majority of adults were dumb and immature and can't do this responsibly, and yet we give them all these rights and privileges anyway.
Since becoming a legal adult in 1999, I have seen little to make me believe I was wrong in this assessment.
It's interesting - if you consider children=dependent and adults=independent, modern society has made children of us all. Everyone (except wackos like the Unabomber) is dependent on someone else now - the economy is just too intertwingled to function without other people. Folks leave the nest of their parents to become dependent upon their employers, and then leave that behind to grovel at the trough of investors, and if that doesn't go well, they become slaves of the credit card companies. That seems to be the price we've paid for all our cool new toys.
I, for one, welcome our new Neverland overlords.