I wrote this.

I'm wondering what people think when they read it. I've already told my friends about these ideas before writing it, so I can't have their first opinion on the text. But I'm really curious if people think "ok I could see that" or if they disregard as absurdity.

It's not an absurdity. I tend to agree with everything you wrote, but emancipating children from adult domination touches on so many social conventions and raises so many questions: would an emancipated child be able to choose with which family they prefer to live, could a free child decide to skip school and work, have their own bank account etc, and starting from what age, 16, 10, or 3? Could a free child have consensual sex with another child or with an adult, and starting from what age?

These are all very hard questions to answer...

I think, you may need to have a much longer and harder think about human nature, and especially how it collides with the realities of the social systems we put in place.

As an example: as a child's guardian, you are culpable for any damage the child in question does. There is no child insurance, and if there were, the child would have no means of economically engaging in order to meet the burden to carry it without the entire system flopping.

Part of being an adult (and a parent) is to instill in children with no concept of the fact the world around them is a hastily contrived and barely held together mix of "screw it, it works well enough and I've got neither the time nor the or inclination to unseat this particular load bearing wall of societal function" tradeoffs, cultural norms, and traditions, , which without due care eould be more than happy to reach out and crush them.

This goes for Seniors being looked after by younger adults when they are in the latter stages of cognitive decline too, keep that in mind. It's terrifying, but it is what it is.

Would it be better if there were some magical way to cram info into a developing brain, or reconfiguring one already configured for something else? God, do I wish it was so!

But you can't, and there're jobs that need to get done, mouths that need to get fed, with food that needs to be bought, which in order to be bought has to get moved from first supplier to the end of the logistical supply chain, which has to exist just so in order for yields to be high enough to feed everyone, and for everyone implementing that chain, they need to be paid, so they can participate, and everyone else needs to be doing something because reasons to participate...

Now you may say, "Stop right there! That's a bunch of assumptions that you just made there!"

And you're absolutely right! I've been going down that rabbit hole for decades now, and only almost 2 of them "full-time" only one of them with any acknowledgement the entire working underpinning of the world might just be too large to fit in my head alone.

That's the scary part. No one person directs the entire thing, and even the ones in positions of great power are only working off the best advice they can be given. In the grand scheme of things, it's a crap shoot we get anything to work consistently at all!

So! Ask yourself: If you had a blank slate human being in your care, young or old, and a society that even you find difficult to plot a course through...

Should you leave them to their own devices? Is it just to let them go out into harm's way? I do not think so. Not even for the "Stranger in a Strange land" (biological maturity, but for whatever reason absolutely none of the skills required for navigating society safely) case.

I once thought differently, and much in line with you. Then I struck out on my own...

I no longer entertain quite that level of thinking it would work out well in the long run. Consequences would be demanded, and our society already leaves much to be desired in the "lets not have the system chew people up and spit them out" department.

Deep down, I wish the world were much better about equitable starts and less strongly dependent on initial conditions. I'll not live to see that, I'm afraid.

Thanks for the long response!

I disagree with many of your points but I decided to focus on one which might be a misunderstanding.

I don't want to leave anyone to their own devices. Neither children nor co-adults. I want to help them and be helped. I am not interested in independence. I am interesting in strong, resilient, reliable interdependence.

What I claim in this text is that this "help" that is provided by default to children, should not be forced upon them, as it wouldn't be forced to other adults. Children should be able to reject it as well as being able to choose for themselves.

Does that make you see the text in a different way now?