7 Secret Super Weapons That Actually Exist
Mainstream society can call us conspiracy theorists all they want, but if they were to only open their eyes, then they'd know that the existence of this stuff is actually documented. And all but one of the "inventions" in this list are Anglo-Saxon — six by the US military-industrial complex, one by the British.
= DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =
After the first six seconds, let me just say that although we didn't particularly want our son to play with guns as toys, there really was no way to stop him from finding a stick in the woods that looks like a gun. They're everywhere. Also swords. As fans of renaissance festivals, we did allow him to have wooden swords. We have a collection. There are also a couple pirate pistols and water guns were always the exception.
Steadfast rules included: never ever point it at anyones face/head. Ever. You do, it's gone. No second chances.
He also had bow and arrows, though not the hunting kind.
He's a very loving and gentle person who never does violence.
We did also limit the violent video/computer games.
Way to go Dreamtimer! Well done, and if all parents take responsibility like that, we would have much less problems to deal with right now.Originally posted by Dreamtimer
We doing that too Dreamtimer, difficult at times though.
The only thing really difficult in that is that it's simply a mental habit (this whole idea of war and violence and bullying). These bad mental habits have been around according to people like Gregg Braden for about 5,000 years. Prior to that time, we were supposedly managed (governed) by females, and males were only good for sex and carrying heavy things. Humans showed up, fully equipped (evolved), about 20,000 years ago.
Well, I personally beg to differ on account of the demonizing of toy guns. First of all, weapons in general have more uses than just warfare. In the hunter-gatherer days, it was the difference between having food on the table or not, and in some cases also between having food on the table and ending up as the food of some dangerous predator.Way to go Dreamtimer! Well done, and if all parents take responsibility like that, we would have much less problems to deal with right now.
Secondly, the warrior spirit — which ties in with the above — is an important expression of the Divine Masculine. It's an essential ingredient of the construct of the universe. A warrior does not have to be a killer or a conqueror, but he does still need to be a warrior — it's a spiritual concept, not an activity. A (true) warrior stands for honor and nobility — warriors strive for justice, protect the vulnerable, partake in charity, and exhibit compassion and forgiveness.
In feudal Japan, a warrior whose honor had been compromised could only restore that honor again by committing suicide — and preferably in the company of his friends and relatives. He would then typically disembowel himself, and upon the first sign that he would succumb to pain, or if he managed to complete the square-angle cut as defined by the ritual — depending on which came first — a trusted warrior would then cut off his head with a single sword stroke as an act of mercy.
Thirdly and not least important with regard to my opinion as I'm expressing it here, I myself have grown up with toy guns and toy swords — both the plastic ones and wooden ones that my grandfather made for myself and for my younger brother — and I am still a fan of military-style firearms and of certain types of swords, my favorites of course being the Japanese katanas. And yet, I am one of the most peaceful and gentle people you will ever come across. Likewise for my brother.
Violent confrontations between different tribes and different countries are a staple of human history from all over the world, and are culture-independent. Children need to develop their psyche and need to come to terms with what such confrontations signify. Pretend-play reenactment of historic battles is part of the child's development.
Today's children are swamped in computer games and all kinds of electronic gadgets, and they remain glued to the television screen by way of cartoons and animated movies or series, which are then strategically interrupted by commercials which are specifically aimed at those children, both to indoctrinate them with consumerism and to manipulate the children as consumerist leverage with their own parents so that the parents would spend more money on buying them the latest must-have hyped toys. These children do not engage in pretend-play anymore, and it is exactly because of his that they end up with less of a sense of honor and values. Their psyche does not develop beyond the first-person perspective anymore, and the only social awareness they develop lies in the assembling of clans for playing multiplayer on-line games. They don't even care who their co-players are as human beings, because the only thing that matters is that you're on the same team, and that your team wins.
Shoot-'em-up computer games are not the same thing as pretend-play and role-playing. There's no identification with anything anymore. You just shoot up all the targets and you advance through the game. It equates meaningless killing — together with all the semi-realistically portrayed gore that comes with shooting somebody's brains out or blowing them up — with a way to advance in life. And, as the Iraq war footage published by Wikileaks has shown, when you're up in a helicopter with your finger on the trigger of a large caliber machine gun, looking down at specks on the ground which are labelled as "the enemy", then there's very little difference anymore in the trooper's mind between shooting those people on the ground and obliterating the targets in his computer game. And the US military knows that, which is exactly why they have certain divisions play shoot-em-up games as part of their training.
Computer games dehumanize the enemy. Pretend-play does not, because that kind of scenarios usually ends up deviating heavily from "the script", simply because you are interacting with living human beings. And only the wildest children among us — some of whom already had it in them to enjoy hurting other children anyway — would actually strike another child with their toy swords. The sword fights conducted by the rest of us were never even aimed at hitting the opponent's body. You just aimed for each other's swords, and you would agree in advance who of the two of you would lose the fight. And you didn't "kill your opponent" with a sword stroke, but with a (gentle) stab in the heart from your toy sword, as you had both agreed in advance.
Likewise for the reenactment of fist fights from cowboy moves or martial arts movies. You never touched your opponent's body anywhere. You simply pretended to hit them, while making a "Ksshh!" sound with your mouth, and the other guy would go "Aahhh!" and pretend that he just took a fist to the face or whatever. Sometimes, we would even play that kind of scenes in a simulated "slow motion". We all understood that the game was about the spectacle of the fight and the identity of what "your side" stood for — cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, medieval knights, et al — not about hurting each other. It wasn't even about winning. Winning was only important in actual sports, or when playing board games or the likes. For us as kids, there was just as much spectacle in losing and dying theatrically than in being the victors.
And with toy guns, there were other rules. The rule was that if you got shot, then depending on what was agreed in advance, you would play dead, or you would remain wounded and incapacitated until "a doctor/medic" could "heal you". Another option, if none of us had the role of "doctor/medic", was that if you got wounded, then you had to count to 100 before you could get up again and continue playing. And we all stuck by those rules. If one of us broke the rules — on occasion, that would happen, as some kids were born cheaters and/or other kids were new to the game — then we would all loudly protest. In extreme cases, the one who broke the rules would even be expelled from the game. And all the kids understood that and adhered to those rules.
There was honor involved, as well as innocence and a sense of fairness. And at the end of the afternoon, when our moms called us home for dinner, we would all part as friends, and "See you guys tomorrow!"
The bottom line of what I'm trying to say is that preventing your children from growing up with toy guns does not contribute one iota to shaping them into better adults — on the contrary, it may actually make things worse. The pseudo-logic behind forbidding one's children to play with toy guns in order to make them more peaceful as adults is the exact same thing as the fable maintained by certain proponents of vegetarianism that people who eat meat tend to be more aggressive than vegetarians. Again, I'm the living proof of the contrary. I eat meat every day and I'm one of the most docile guys you will ever come across.
= DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =
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