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Title: Unleash Your Radical Child
Author: Daniel Kidby
Date: September 11, 2016
Language: en
Topics: youth liberation
Source: Retrieved on 12th June 2021 from https://medium.com/@Veganarchy/unleash-your-radical-child-5ae08f0ae622

Daniel Kidby

Unleash Your Radical Child

When the young radical enters into conversation with the old liberal the

young radical is swiftly subjected to patronising ageism. When the young

radical speaks of deconstructing socialisation, overturning corrupt

institutions, and creating democratic social movements, the old liberal

in his placid acceptance of the existing order dismissively writes her

off as naive. With high levels of investment in the current system and a

narrow political imagination the old liberal deflects discussion of root

causes and remains cynical of social upheaval. Wallowing in learned

powerlessness he seeks to squash the radical’s spirit and reduce their

ambition to the ‘realistic’, to the ‘achievable’, to the ‘pragmatic’.

Anything radical he classes as ‘naive’, ‘childish’ and ‘idealistic’.

But a defining characteristic of the young radical is that she resists

this subordination. She embraces radical childishness as a revolutionary

consciousness. For childishness contains the capacity for unabashed

critical thought, the creativity and imagination to build utopian social

relations and the innocent belief in the inherent goodness of the humyn

species. The child is guided by compassion for all living creatures and

shudders at the thought of causing harm to people or animals. The child

is the blank slate, before socialisation, the child is free.

The young radical finds freedom in her radical child. She understands

that her dreams are idealistic but nevertheless still she strives for

systemic and utopian change as it is the search for perfection which

propels progression. Meeting the old liberal, the young radical’s faith

is given another test, not only is she presented with those who are yet

unwilling to reflect and change, but the old liberal also asserts an

ageist superiority. The hierarchical attitude of the adult is used to

silence dissent and guide the young radical to the same level of

mundanity to make him feel more comfortable of his own petrified

position. This usually comes as condescending advice, unsolicited

advice, a sticky sap of stagnancy designed to slow the radicals mind and

smother her spirit so she submits to the established order and falls

into a state of apathy and listlessness. The old seek to crush the

potential of the young, they tell us to vote, they tell us to work, they

tell us to respect. If this fails then, well, ‘she’s just very young,

she’ll know when she’s older.’

The young radical refuses to be quelled. In a society where the market

and state encroaches upon ever increasing spheres of our existence she

retreats into her dreams for hope. As it is in her dreams, in her

youthful imagination that lies her revolutionary consciousness. In her

imagination lies a direct and functioning democracy, where all have the

freedom to participate in open, inclusive and equal decision-making. She

sees us liberated from gender constructs and free to express ourselves

as individuals without personality-depriving social norms. She sees a

society where whiteness is dissolved and lands, institutions and minds

decolonised. She sees a future where animals are not exploited and

tortured for trivial taste and enjoyment but respected as equals. A

future where workplaces are cooperatively owned and run, where bosses

don’t dominate and collect the profit from our labour. A future where

the environment, habitat and the lives of people and animals around the

world are put above profit. A society where adulthood is an ancient

construct.

The battle of the young radical is to continue to resist the social and

institutional pressure to conform to notions of adulthood as they grow

older and to keep their radical child alive. To be an adult in the white

west is to be the old liberal. To be an adult is to unflinchingly accept

the status quo and participate unproblematically in the life capitalism

and colonialism has laid out for us and to passively follow the path of

ecological and and societal collapse. The adult disengages in rebellious

youthful counterculture, abandons their quest for a better world, and

neglects the urge to question. He cleans up, shuts up, and goes to work.

In doing so the adult is stripped of his individuality and moulded into

uniformity. He polices himself, get embarrassed at the prospect of play,

and denies himself the beauty and grace of public displays of enjoyment

and affection. He cast aside his dreams of the betterment of society,

joins the crowd and fades into obscurity.

It is revolutionary to keep our radical imagination alive because the

expectation of adulthood maintains the social order by destroying our

impulse to dream let alone to make them reality. Destroying our dreams

is integral, since in our imagination lies the key to social change.

Imagination is inspiring and the inspiration is infectious. The work of

the radical is to spread this hope and to create the conditions which

critical thought is fostered and acted upon.

The young radicals must be aggressive and assertive in our resistance of

adulthood. We must reject the existing order and act outside of these

oppressive institutions. We must abandon positions of status and

privilege and develop new ways of being guided by our innermost

intuition. We must fervently pursue our dreams and maintain a commitment

to revolutionary politics and action. We must model ourselves on the

wisdom of children, share their enchantment with and love for the world

and emulate their free and authentic expression. We aspire to be like

the child for we remember and yearn for that time before our intuition

is inhibited by intellect, before our soul was silenced by society and

before our curiosity was clouded by conformity. As a radical child, we

are free.