New children’s book series take on nihilism, ennui

It’s a great day for education and philosophy, after publishing giant McMillin Publishing announced long-awaited plans to adapt several world-renowned books on nihilism and fatalism into kid-friendly books for children of all ages.

Saying that the current climate of children’s literature does nothing to prepare them for the crushing loneliness, chaos and bitter meaninglessness of life, McMillin CEO Sue Wisside said that the books would finally correct the widespread and erroneous childhood notion that the world is a place of love and fairness.

“I think we can all agree that growing up was a fantastic experience,” she said to gathered reporters at a press conference this morning. “Love, friendship, unity, justice, fun – these are just a few of the cherished lies that we all remember so fondly from our formative years. And if you’re looking for books to fool your children into thinking there’s some kind of meaning or purpose or reason to this short, ugly existence of hatred and suffering, you have literally thousands to choose from.”

However, said Wiside, when it comes to cultivating a curiosity and interest in the emptiness and howling despair that awaits us all, or even just getting the littl'uns thinking about the uncertainty of existence and being instead of frolicking puppies and candy trees in far-off magical kingdoms, there just isn’t anything kid-friendly.

“The only books we have on these fascinating, life-altering, addiction-causing subjects are filled with hopelessly long words that our young tykes would never be able to understand,” she explained, drawing on the collected works of Nietzsche, Sartre, and other existentialist philosophers. “And to be honest, they also all lack the colourful, wide-eyed and naïve animal heroes that our youngest seem to crave so much.”

And parents of children involved in the early focus group testing say the books are amazing.

“I’m blown away,” said one parent. “Just yesterday I went into little Johnny’s room and found him drinking whiskey out the bottle and smoking an unending chain of cigarettes. When I asked him what he was doing, he just shrugged and said ‘muting the unbearable scream that is silence' and then went back to writing his terrible, self-pitying poetry.”

McMillin says that the books will go on sale in bookstores across the globe as early as next Spring, and children will be able to choose between wonderful titles like See Spot Contemplate the Meaninglessness Of It All, The Secret Seven and the Mystery of The Benevolent God Who Allows Children To Die Of Easily-Treated Illnesses and Fun With Dick And Jane (also titled “The Virtues of Reckless Hedonism”).

Opinion: Kids these days spending too much time outdoors

Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen is back once more, folks, with those blistering words of truth and power that move whole crowds to cheers and tears. This time, he’s stumbled upon a very disturbing modern trend that every parent should be very, very concerned about indeed.

Dear Readers, I think I’m finally getting old. This weekend, sitting at home with the curtains drawn so that the bright sun and rolling verdant pastures in front of the ocean by my summer house don’t cause a glare in my 24-inch plasma, I heard a strange, strange noise. Cracking the windows and looking – eugh – outside, I eventually managed to choke down my Gollum-esque sun-hissing long enough to see a truly shocking, disturbing sight.

Children going outside, making forts, playing games and climbing trees.

Seriously, WTF is this kak?

When I was a kid we never had such luxuries. We had to be content to sit indoors all day, staring for hours at a time at a flickering screen, our necks craning downwards into glowing screens. Hell, if I even so much as mentioned spending a few wasted minutes out in the sun and air, my parents would have given me the most massive hiding, or at least left a downvote on my Reddit post.

And yet those were special days. Who could ever forget the magic of getting your first 30 likes on one post? Which of us don’t warmly cherish all the lols and rofls we had with our family? These are the things that make childhood the magical period of innocence and wonder and reposting it is.

All this gambolling and frolicking can’t be good for you: in fact, I think it could be destroying this country’s morals. There is so much life happening in the palms of our hands, and there they all are: outside, breathing in pollen-heavy, insect-infested air in the garden. God, yesterday I had to confiscate their soccer ball and then send them to their rooms with the door locked and shades drawn just so they’d say a perfunctory ‘lol’ to the memes I posted on their walls.

Nature:  a truly revolting, dangerous wasteland brimming
with spiders, disease and all kinds of horrors.

How are you supposed to make friends without adding them online? We need to do something to stop this scourge on our children’s innocence and wonder before it kills it altogether. How will our children ever be able to cherish these special, magical moments without a selfie or status that gets 23 likes and 15 comments in just 15 minutes?

Worst yet are these insufferable books they’re constantly reading. You look up from your iPad at the dinner table and the little vacuous snots have it right on their lap – they can barely go two minutes without looking down at it. And it’s not even a goddamn Kindle; what could be so interesting about paper and ink anyway? It seems that every two seconds I’m telling my kids “geez, Frikkie and Johan Junior, put that bloody thing away”.

We need to take a stand: these balls and games and frolicking in the untouched splendour are creating a generation of hyper-active, anti-social-network loners who don’t even once take part in conversation with their friends and followers; and all the while their iPads and Gameboys and Playstation 4s and Facebook accounts gather dust, forgotten and unappreciated.

In fact, I could go one step further and say that these so-called “physical sports” are warping our kids’ brains and teaching them to be violent. Every day, after my daily stress-unwinding LAN session of ThroatSlit MurderKings 5 I sit back in creeping, overwhelming terror and think about how my kids might be outside, rugby tackling each other, stomping on each other’s’ fingers and hands in that “ruck” thing, or sitting in giant stadiums at school yelling blood-thirsty war-cries at another bunch of kids whose only difference is that they go to some other school.

I know that my own grandparents thought I was spending “too much blerrie time on that blerrie computer thing”, but this is obviously a totally different situation. If we do nothing, we stand to pay the worst price of all: we could end up with a generation of children who think that they should empathise and try to understand that their own children might have their own personal interests and passions that are vastly different to theirs.

Or – God forbid the thought – that they shouldn’t tell their kids to do something just because they did it for years on end. What kind of mad, insane world might that be?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like the hideous scourge of immigration, why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.