Feeling The Separation

The sad thing about the Capitalist format, is, it is usually the most influential because of the time it is presented to the various children and students, they are heading towards finishing school, about to enter the workforce (Not many had had to find part time work to get things), and what is foremost in their thinking? Capitalism. Not the feudal, nor the socialist ideology. The ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ are especially noticeable at that high school and teen age. There are the factions, splits, and the ‘in crowd’. This is an effective, ‘divisiveness’ when added to the turmoil of, teen angst, peer pressure and the generation gap, which is experienced by all youths (don’t believe you were the only one, I know it felt like it, but apparently it felt like it for most people at high school). Consequently, even the most minor of differences between students, can be blown out of all proportion, because of that emotional period of the ‘world of the teenager’. When not only the bodies are changing, with the hormones crashing about those bodies, but there is also massive upheaval in the minds (in themselves chemically altering). And any mention of divisions at that time, can cause enormous grief, pain and anxiety. Even the ‘in crowd’ experience their own forms of segregation and seclusion. But, it would have been better (for me anyway) if it could have been experienced by everyone, equally.

Sometimes, these various ‘experiences’ did teach us something about the nature of the beast of the teenagers. This in itself was a difficult lesson to learn, and one, which I learnt again, and again, at every school I went to. I spent more time as the new kid, or the younger brother of…. (three older, very clever sisters). …There was a lot of isolation for me personally. I found a certain solace in my own company, eventually.  But many of those growing up, even in the same neighbourhood, also created their own divisions and applied it in the schoolyards. It may not have been a strictly financial division, but even, saying (or rather being told in no uncertain terms) you came from a ‘poorer’ area of town, created a definite stigma. And regardless of your home life, that illusion created by the other students, would stick like a fluorescent sign to you, because other children in the ‘clicky’ group said it was so. Even the fact that you came from one end of a particular street, could cause divisions. And there were moments, I will admit, even as young as five or six, when the financial ‘standover’ tactic was practiced by some very skilled young entrepreneurs at one or two of the schools I went to. They knew if you were ever getting to buy your lunch (a rarity in our house) they knew when to hold you up (once or twice quite literally hold you up) before class, to negotiate the relinquishing of any meagre funds you possessed. And, being segregated, by others, meant there was no support network to prevent such activity. This was feudal, but it was driven by capitalism.

(continued tomorrow)