Some Kinda Freaky Goblin

No matter how injured. If a parent doesn't deem it necessary to see a doctor, it doesn't happen. Teachers can suggest a doctor visit, but unless it's a very acute injury (and even then), it's ultimately up to the parents.

You can be 13. Twisted, maybe broken ankle. You teacher lets you sit out in PE. She's concerned, and tells you to rest when you go home, and see a doctor. You get home, ur parents fill a bath and add some Epsom salts, and then laugh at you for using it moms old colorguard stick as a cane. Take some ibuprofen they say. It's just a little sprain, ur a kid.

You go to school the next day, go to ur office assistant time. Office calls ur mom to come get you, because you're clearly in too much pain for school. Your mom laughs when she gets you, says you just were so determined not to miss school. Scolds you for making the office ladies worry.

You never see a doctor for the injury.

Your parents come into the exam room at every visit. This does not stop with age, except for gynecologist. But your parents are on the medical release forms. They fill them out for you, with you. You do not get to take them off.

You never get to tell s doctor about the ankle. Even though it never quote healed right, and it hurts every day.

Then your 18. In college. Still on your parents insurance, and have no car. The on campus clinic only does std testing. You fall down some stairs. Same injury. You call your parents, crying from the pain. You are using a mop as a cane. They console you and say to have a bath, take some meds, and let them know how it feels in a few days. You end up borrowing your roommates rolling chair to get around for the weekend.

By Monday, you can walk again. You walk miles to class every day. You ask to see a doctor, but your parents won't drive the hour to come take you, and you don't have the insurance card. You are still at their mercy for medical care. The ankle tries to heal again. This time worse than before. The tendons click with every step.

Now you're in your twenties. Finally have your own healthcare. You see a doctor. You get to mention the ankle! They say it's been too long to really even know what was damaged. That you have arthritis now. It healed wrong but it can no longer be fixed.

It's the End of American Science As We Know It We have 45 days to express our opposition to catastrophic changes.

[...] These rules, which we have 45 days to comment on starting May 29th, will affect every federal agency, affecting Housing, Education, Health and Human Services, NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy among all the others.

I urge you to read Elizabeth Ginexi’s detailed summary. The broad brush strokes reflect the historical authoritarian moves described in my talk:

Diminishing or eliminating peer review in favor of political appointee decision-making. The peer-review process is where experts anonymously assess scientific proposals and outcomes on the basis of their expertise. Removing this means that funding decisions will be made on the basis of political sensibilities, rather than scientific sense.

Targeting climate change research, which is our best hope for sustaining all life on Earth. U.S. government agencies are some of the biggest climate change research organizations in the world and gutting their capacity to do this work literally puts the future of our species at risk.

Targeting and cutting research by and about disfavored minority groups (specifically trans people and anyone doing “DEI,” where it’s clear “DEI” is primarily a placeholder for “Black people” in the eyes of this administration).

Political litmus tests for researchers that allow grants to be cut if the researcher is a member of a civil rights organization the administration doesn’t like, even when their membership activities are kept completely separate from grant activity.

Total control over researcher conference attendance.

Functionally this means a political takeover of university research apparatuses by encouraging universities to censor their researchers.

This will also function as fiscal influence over professional societies through cuts to researcher attendance of conference and membership dues.

These changes are dystopian and ecologically unsustainable. They also completely unravel the American scientific enterprise in a way that is so thorough that you’d think only someone who really hates the United States would do this.

[...] Here’s What You Can Do

Submit a comment opposing these changes. You can use Elizabeth Ginexi’s summary to help you highlight the problems. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A GOOD WRITER TO DO THIS! JUST WRITE WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART!

This is a federal government issue, but it will affect the states because many of them get grants from the federal government. Contact your state reps — House and Senate — and governor and urge them to publicly and vigorously oppose these changes. Yes even if they are Republican. Remind them of how this will hurt farmers who get funding from the Department of Agriculture, state public health infrastructure, etc. These rule changes are almost certainly illegal under Congressionally-passed laws, and we need the states to be ready to sue if they get implemented.

Contact your Congressional representatives. Phone calls are better than emails, but do the best you can. You can use 5 Calls to find the numbers. Yes you need to call Republicans. Be a thorn in their side, even if you think they won’t listen.

Before I answer that question, I think it's important to be really clear what we mean when we talk about "consequences".

Because here's the thing: "consequences" usually means "the results of previous events", but when adults use the word "consequences" in relation to children, much of the time what they actually mean is "a negative experience inflicted deliberately by an authority figure in response to perceived wrongdoing". A more accurate term for that would be "punishments", but adults like to cloak our nastier invocations of power over children in euphemisms.

If we want to get technical about actual consequences, we can break that down further into "logical consequences" and "natural consequences"; those are terms that have been written about both in the realm of parenting and in broader studies of social order. Logical consequences are outcomes that are clearly related to someone's conduct, but still require deliberate exercise of authority to implement. Natural consequences are things that just happen as a direct result of what someone does.

So, a concrete example:

A group of kindergarten kids are building towers with wooden blocks. Alice throws a block at her classmate Bob and hits him in the head.

Punishment: Alice doesn't get to go outside for playtime later that day. This has basically nothing to do with what happened. The basic lesson is "don't do this thing because someone with the power to make your life worse said so".

Logical consequence: Alice isn't allowed to use the blocks for a while. The connection to the problematic act is clear: "you used this thing to hurt someone, so we don't trust you with the thing".

Natural consequence: Bob doesn't want to play with Alice anymore. No one had to make this happen; it just happened because getting hit in the head by a wooden block is unpleasant, and makes you not want to be around the person who hit you. Bob isn't an authority figure invoking any kind of power over Alice, he's just a fellow kid who has the right to choose his own friends.

So, to bring us back around to your original question: if someone goes their entire life and never experiences punishment, I'm genuinely 100% all for that. Punishments serve mostly to reinforce social orders and power structures. If they're successful in changing behaviour - which they're often not! - it's through fear, not by helping people to internalise principles that make them better members of the community. My bro Michel Foucault and I both say fuck that noise.

On the other hand, if someone goes their entire life without experiencing a logical or natural consequence? That's more likely to be a problem, because it's consequences that actually teach us something. It's important to learn that if you hurt someone they won't want to be around you anymore. It's important to learn that breaking people's trust means you might not be trusted again.

The thing is, being insulated from consequences is not something that can just happen. That takes effort from people around you constantly working to prevent anything bad happening to you as a result of your actions. On some level, we do that to children all the time! Alice and Bob from earlier? What are the odds their teacher not only enforces a punishment on Alice, but also then directly intervenes to avert the natural consequence by forcing Bob to accept an apology and be friends again?

There are certainly parents who take this to an extreme. The ones who'll pay $5000 an hour for a lawyer to make sure their teenage kid gets half an hour of community service for setting a bus on fire or some shit. Thing is, odds are those parents are actually punishing that kid severely in private, which is why calling the kid "spoiled" is still kinda fucked up in my book. It's not that nothing bad ever happened to them, or that they never wanted anything they didn't get; it's just that all the bad things that ever happened to them were arbitrary, punitive, and totally useless for learning how to live as an equal member of a society. All they ever learned about was power - that with enough power, you can avoid consequences and inflict punishments as you please. And the moment no one is holding power over them anymore, the rest of us are all fucked.