Cultural and Psychological Context of the Individual Resistance of Children and Youth in the Global World

Introduction

The problem of children’s cultural spaces has been developed Jaleta JT [1] in the study «The cultural spaces of young children: Care, play and learning patterns in early childhood among the Guji people of Ethiopia», is relevant as a globalized approach to the individual uniqueness of the cultural context of childhood. The author of the study proves the importance «address African indigenous knowledge of early childhood development by discussing young children’s cultural spaces of care, play and learning among the Guji people of Ethiopia» [1]. The individualized rules of patterns of behavior and collective interaction highlighted in this study are fully correlated with the idea Wall J [2], which expresses the idea of global citizenship of children, although he himself calls such a term controversial in the article «Theorizing children’s global citizenship: Reconstructionism and the politics of deep interdependence»: «Global citizenship is a much disputed term, involving a variety of competing neoliberal, cosmopolitan, and postcolonial framings. Much of this debate, however, assumes a hidden normative adulthood, just as did traditional understandings of citizenship in nation states. This article argues that attending to children’s experiences through a lens of childhood studies or childism opens up the possibility for more complex and profound theorizations of global participatory citizenship for all, both children and adults. In particular, the argument is advanced that global citizenship is better understood as a politics of reconstruction based on the aesthetic practice of interdependent political creativity. The key lies in understanding global political interdependence in a deep rather than superficial way as responding to children’s triple bind: their struggle all at once for self-empowerment, overcoming normative exclusions, and responsiveness from others» [2].

The general cultural and psychological context of the implementation of the rights of children and youth is disclosed Josefsson J, et al. [3] in a research paper «Empowered inclusion: theorizing global justice for children and youth» [3], where the authors substantiate the view that the contemporary experience of children and youth requires a rethinking of global justice around a new concept of enhanced inclusion. The researchers present three case studies of globalization-child labor movements, child and youth migration, and youth organizing around climate change. In each case, youth are simultaneously disempowered through their struggle against injustice, which gives them deep global interdependence. Josefsson J, et al. [3] також наводять «new theoretical advances in global justice that better respond to child and youth experiences through a childist concept of the empowered inclusion of both children and other marginalized groups» [3]. At the same time, the implementation of the proposed ideas is possible not only by means of the global power provided by the international association of children and youth. The most important indicator of the possibility of such an association is the mental health of children and youth, the preservation of which is dedicated to a special issue of the magazine «Global Studies of Childhood», which opens with an article Coppock V [4] «Psychiatrised childhoods» [4]. It is important to conclude that «Moreover, diagnostic classification systems are unstable, constantly under negotiation, reflecting prevailing ideological, socio-cultural and political conditions» [4].

Projection of the Resistance of the Psychological Culture of Children and Youth

The projection of the resistance of the future psychological culture of a citizen of his country is the educational environment and the ethics of relationships in the process of obtaining an education in educational institutions. A special issue of the journal “Global Studies of Childhood” is devoted to this problem, which opens with a special introductory comment «Contemporary ethical tensions: Situated cases of ethical tensions when working with children and young people in educational contexts» McPherson A, et al. [5]. In this context, the mentioned authors use the term «‘educational ethics’ as a term to refer to a specialist area of applied ethics encompassing the study of the ethical complexity of working with children and young people across varying educational settings such as schools, early childcare, digital spaces, universities, civic places and research environments» [5].

The purpose of this special issue is to develop approaches that emphasize contemporary sociocultural dimensions of ethical tensions in school and educational contexts. These approaches are designed to form social skills and conditions for children and youth to master the mental culture of relationships, which in the social context is realized as the legal culture of a citizen. According to the intention of the authors, «This approach considers ethical dilemmas as social processes that shape, and are shaped by, broader historical, political, economic, institutional and cultural forces» [5]. We share this approach, as it considers ethical dilemmas as socio-psychological processes that shape the ethical culture of a child and a young person, which in the wider historical, political, economic, institutional and cultural contexts of the future acquires the properties and meaning of individual resistance of a young person in the global the world.

A separate important problem, which remains almost invisible in the practice of youth work and understudied in theory, is the psychology of perceiving and transforming language meanings for oneself in order to find and define one’s own individual identity. The article is devoted to one of the traumatic aspects of this problem Lindholm KS, et al. [6]

«‘Looping effects’ related to young people’s mental health: How young people transform the meaning of psychiatric concepts» [6]. The authors of this research article note: «We demonstrate how the participants gave new meaning to these psychiatric labels, devalued and gave nuance to them, and by doing so transformed them into cultural categories rather than diagnostic categories» [6].

In the same way, in the continuum “educational ethics - legal culture”, children and young people learn their own reflections in the linguistic marking of themselves. The terms of law and legislative documents are perceived accordingly: they do not mean anything to a child or a young person until they acquire an individually important emotional meaning related to self-identification. The authors note: «However, an important difference to be noted here is that while the DSM expands anxiety and depression as psychiatric definitions of illness, the young people detach these labels from pathology and apply them as cultural categories. In this sense, psychiatric labels stop being categories for suffering and start being cultural categories applicable to dealing with the ups and downs of life» [6].

The cultural and psychological context is also determined by the young children’s reflections on their transnational childhood and migration experience, which were studied David NN, et al. [7] «an intergenerational family migration story» [7]. As the authors note, «The catalyst for the study came from N.D.’s (then) 6-year-old daughter who asked ‘Mummy, am I Australian?’ and ‘Am I more Australian than you?’» [7]. The individual resistance of a child who asks such questions develops on the basis of belonging to a certain nationality and within the framework of nationality to those definitions «when an ‘outsider’ is ‘othered’ and distinct discourses of un/belonging.» [7].

Early Reactions of Children in the Resistance of Adults

An important place in the formation of individual human resistance is the views of early childhood students, revealed in the researched by Demetriou K, et al. [8] in the article «The relational space of educational technology: Early childhood students’ views» [8]. «Participants’ understandings of the interplay between the First Space (material space) and the Second Space (mental space based on perceptions and attitudes) were explored from the perspective of Soja’s Third Space which combines both First and Second Spaces» [8], – the authors of the article note. The formation of role groups of children who implement their own resistant behavior in different ways is reflected in the following research conclusion: «The implications of this study reflect the complexity of educational technology in early years settings where both First and Second Spaces play a significant role and provides the opportunity to implement a spatial perspective on how practitioners can become navigators, transformers and constructors of their own technological praxis and practice» [8].

A special place, which, in our opinion, is universal for determining the diversity of people’s reactions to the demands of the law belongs to research Moore A [9] «Pathological demand avoidance: What and who are being pathologised and in whose interests?» [9]. The author rightly defines four vectors of conflicts that a child is forced to overcome if adults notice psychiatrically described differences in him from others: «PDA: a contested terrain», «Autism and the pathologisation of self-advocacy», «Childhood and the pathologisation of competence» and «Gender and the pathologisation of transgression» [9]. These contradictions reveal the universal tendency of silent violence, which is the dictate of prejudices, rules, diagnostic criteria, attitudes and all those obstacles created by adults that every child must overcome in the process of his development. This is a global problem of all eras and peoples, which has been solved for thousands of years on the scale of individual cases by humanistic thinkers, but is not solved by the legal system on the basis of the moral development of societies on the scale of the billions of the planet’s population that currently live on it.

The Global Right of Children who Come into this World to its Suitability for Life

In this regard, we express our opinion that one of the main problems of the psychological development of mankind is giving preference to the rights of children and youth for their own ecological future. Three main arguments form the basis of this idea:

• Firstly, the current generation of adults is responsible for the ecological situation of the world, which it leaves to the next generation of current children and youth;
• Secondly, based on the first argument, the future life of today’s children and youth in a less fulfilling world than the one used by previous generations of people, i.e. parents and grandfathers, is unfair;
• and finally, thirdly, the implementation of the global idea of sustainable development, which is the platform of the current activities of the United Nations, is possible only if each subsequent generation of inhabitants of the planet Earth understands and feels the justice of their predecessors, who, to the best of their ability, transferred care on ecological development for the current generation of children and youth in a state as close as possible to realizing their right to a full life.

The confirmation of our argumentation is the research topic of modern authors, which studies really important problems as if ecological development takes place outside the development of the human race with its continuity and contradictions of generations of children, youth, their parents, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. For example, the importance of Link J, et al. [10] comparison of fish catches in the marine ecosystems of Africa is undeniable from a modern perspective, but does not cover the possible rights to the ecological future of today’s children and youth, which may be different from those currently recognized. From this point of view, the rights of children and youth latently exist in the presented Hasan S, et al. [11] changes in land use, research by Schütte R, et al. [12] profitability of erosion control with cover crops in European vineyards under consideration of environmental costs, studies by Landman W, et al. [13] the development and prudent application of climate-based forecasts of seasonal malaria in the Limpopo province in South Africa, presented by Wei Y, et al. [14] the dynamics of livestock and its influencing factors on the Mongolian Plateau and many others.

But if the causes of domestic livestock–wild herbivore conflicts in the alpine ecosystem of the Chang Tang Plateau definitely deserve the attention of the researchers Xu Z, et al. [15], why did the rights of children and youth in their still not fully recognized right to their own unique ecological development, and therefore individual resistance in the global world, different from their parents, which leads to generational conflict?

The Multiplicity of Global Worlds

The multiplicity of global worlds of different generations of children lies in the fact that each global childhood has its own psychological epoch. We proceed from the fact that childhood and children, like all people, are an integral part of nature, and most often the driving force of ecological transformations. The global economic depression of the 20s and 30s of the 20th century in various parts of the global world in its extreme forms, for example, in Ukraine, led to the famines of 1921-1923, 1932-1933, 1946-1947 organized by the leadership of the then USSR, which resulted in according to various sources, about 30 million people were destroyed, a third of whom were children, who most often became objects of eating by their own mothers.

The end of the Second World War led to the mass appearance of “children of war” who survived in the territories of hostilities or war-weary areas of warring states - lifelong traumatized by the loss of relatives, disharmoniously raised, often physically crippled. The era of nuclear weapons tests by nuclear states, which began in the second half of the 1940s. Led to the global phenomenon of child acceleration, which nowadays almost no one mentions, but remembers about it. The era of alienation of children from different continents during the entire era of the “cold war” between the free world and the totalitarian world of the camp of pro- communist satellites under the auspices of the former USSR was vividly revealed in the 60s - 80s of the 20th century.

The era of virtual immersion of children in the game world of electronic realities of the Internet in the 90s of the 20th-20s of the 21st century and their alienation from living nature, which most deeply covered the most technologically developed countries, but also created the inertia of all others, which at certain intervals reproduce and it’s an immersion called “internet addiction” and it’s alienation.

The era of social distancing and alienation of the 2020s and the following years, caused by a person’s view of every other person as an object threatening the continuation of life, that is, an object that not only does not contribute to the preservation and joint improvement of human life, but is also a real the threat of its termination primarily through infection. The trend of globalization as a common future, which begins in childhood, has suffered a disaster, as it has turned from the expectation of global benefits to the expectation of individual destruction. Along with social alienation, this era also gave birth to its own hopes, different from those that were carried by the era of globalization.

On the surface of global consciousness, from a state of social oppression, the expectation of justice in the construction of the coexistence of races, destroyed in the past by means of technological advantages, and not the embodiment of the right to life of all people, regardless of ethnicity and essential means - their own language, natural custom, which includes recognition and respect for one’s ancestors, and self-awareness as a member of an ethnic community, equal in the right to life and use of the mentioned opportunities with other communities. Disturbance of balance in the global world of all living beings necessarily and immediately brings to life natural forces, the possibilities of which are able to restore the lost justice of the coexistence of different ways of natural realization of the individual self in the dimensions of natural communities, which are families, clans, ethnic groups, nations and races.

Global, as in previous centuries, remains only the trend of global expansion of the need to represent oneself in the global world - both individually and through the means of one’s communities - families, clans, ethnic groups, nations and races. The main means, as in the previous millennia of history known to us, will remain the exchange of individual and group opportunities, a force that individuals and named communities need for self-preservation; products and their methods, that is, trade, and, finally, the exchange of products of knowledge and information, characteristic of recent times.

The Individuality of the Child in the Global World

We can embody the main views on the individuality of a child and every person in the world of more than seven billion people in the statement that even among twins there are no two absolutely identical organisms. This claim of ours is based on the fact that the search for this identity during the last centuries has indeed provided science with arguments of similarity, but not of congruence. Moreover, human knowledge, the tool of which is what humanity invests in the concept of science, expands and will expand from generation to generation, but, in our opinion, it will never be able to encompass with its own consciousness the universe, the dimensions of which are equal to infinity.

Based on this, we express our opinion about the infinity of human individuality, which acquires its uniqueness at the age of childhood, or, having suffered deprivation, undergoes lifelong trauma, exists in a hidden form throughout a person’s life, or dies, choosing a protective and therefore safe form in relations with by other people Childhood is precisely the period during which not individuality is formed, but forms of its safe representation in the global world of people. Among the countless number of children’s rights, which, in our opinion, are all important and their list is as endless as the nature of the universe, we consider it appropriate to single out the global right of all children of the world and of each child in particular to freely express their own individuality. Moreover, the idea of the child’s global individuality must acquire a global embodiment and it will acquire it.

The individual uniqueness of a person, which has developed since childhood, will become the value of future centuries, just as typification and standardization are a reflection of the human development of the successes of natural and technical sciences of the past 19th and 20th centuries. Humanity has reached a certain platform of material well-being for all, which to a greater or lesser extent reflects the reached limits of knowledge, beyond which individuals of other individual self-organizations and individual resistance of their own mental, including psychophysiological, self are able to penetrate.

Conclusions in Questions for the Future

In contrast to the provisions that should complete the given reflections, we present questions that need to be resolved in the globalized world of modern and future childhood. These questions, in our opinion, primarily include the following:

• What is the child’s conflict with the world? What are the reasons for its occurrence? Is conflict-free possible? What is the numerical expression of the different age categories of childhood to the total number of people? What are children’s rights: innate and acquired? What opportunities does the child have to acquire his rights?
• What tools can be used to measure the cultural and psychological context of a child’s age-related rights? What are the prospects for their development? How reliable can internet measurements be? Childhood on the Internet: representation of the child’s interests by adult legal entities or children’s participation? The child’s world on the Internet: what is projected for the future?
• What are the dynamics of the growth of the rights of the child and childhood as a period of human life recognized by global civilization? Will the rights of a child be equal to the rights of an adult?