Monday, April 20, 2009

Pardon the Interruption

I have to do some upgrades on my hosting, so this blog will be a mess for a bit.

6:52 pm Pacific Standard Time

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Friday, April 3rd, 2009

The Other 'Peter Principle'

"Peter Pan belongs not to the world of Pan, but to the world of Peter." — G.K. Chesterton

In a comment earlier today on my stoicism post, Jeremy brought up the suffering of children in the context of theodicy. A bunch of thoughts started cascading through my mind. I have no overall theory to propose here, but I'll note a bunch of observations I've made in recent years. If they have a theme, it is the Chesterton quote above. One reading I would give the Chesterton statement is that what happened in the Gospels made some room for childhood as we know it, even if it took many centuries to make an appearance.

Jeremy wonders if we haven't gotten beyond sensitivity into softness. I think it is a good question. (I think the answer is a definite "Yes!") But I think it's worth asking what we have when we don't have softness. (And Jeremy, don't take yourself as the one being addressed here!)

I have run into this in David Hackett Fisher's book Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Fisher's thesis is that there were four distinct cultures in Britain located in four distinct regions, and that those who came to America settled four distinct regions. He supports this by citing how each region had its own folkways that came from Britain. A folkway could be a view of aging, a view of the passage of time, a view of work, how children were named, how the dead were treated, or any practice rooted in a subculture. Some of these came from the religious beliefs of the cultures. Others resulted from physical geography.

The one I found intriguing was what Fisher called "Naming Ways." In Puritan Massachusetts and Connecticut, if a child died, a newborn would often be given the dead child's name. This was called a necronym. The parents wished the father's name to be passed on, and this desire overrode any sense that every child should have it's own distinct name. Reading this, I thought, "How odd!" I could follow the logic, but felt just a little more distant from Puritan culture than I had before reading. But if I felt a bit more distant from the Puritans, the Cavaliers were downright aliens. They would not wait for a child to die. They would name one son after another after his father, just to make sure someone would carry on the name. This had been done in England as well. The historian Edward Gibbon was one of six brothers named Edward. Fisher notes that this precaution was not taken in vain, as the historian was the only child to survive into adulthood.

This expectation of loss will have an impact on how children are viewed. If the naming is any indication, it appears that the sons have a duty to carry on after their father. It is a success if one of them does it. There is some interchangeability in operation.

This is foreign to the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. The twelve tribes of Israel are named after twelve sons with differing names. Names tend to have meanings, even unique meanings. When God steps into the picture, He tends to rename people (e.g. Abram becomes Abraham) or name a child contrary to expectations (e.g. John the Baptist, whose name provoked the comment "There is no one among your relatives who has that name.").

The expected loss would make many parents less inclined to bond with their children, at least until they had greater hope that the child was going to be around for a long time. We could call this hardness. But it is a hardness that avoids pain. Whether or not we understand or approve of this, we should note that this is to be distinguished from a hardness—or a softness—that does not avoid pain.

The psychoanalysts have also proposed the idea that when people ignore the pain of children in cases of abuse, it tends to be out of an identification with the perpetrator. Not necessarily that those who so identify are abusers themselves, but that they were often abused and felt more powerful by internally taking the side of the one with power. Again, you could call this hardness. But it is a kind of hardness that avoids pain.

I think the New Testament has fostered softness in the culture, but not an avoidant softness. Even when we get into the matter of predestination, we can misidentify what the real emotional alignments are. When we submit to the divine will, is this trust? It can be. But it can also be the victim identifying with the perpetrator in an act of self-empowerment. If you tell the other kids to get in line, perhaps you'll be ignored at the reckoning. Now such emotional analyses can be multiplied in any number of directions. They tell you little about which position is true. But they might make us pause in the framing of our position. A position which is true to reality might admit of being imagined in both good and bad ways. I'm just a little suspicious when the tone is, "I'm the child who is able to accept the grim reality."

Our culture is a soft one. I think that is partly the beneficial result of the Gospel pervading it for centuries. I think it is also partly the result of decadence. But even in the latter case, we often find that appearances are deceiving. I've heard it said that the "Greatest Generation" was itself considered soft before the war. It surprised everybody. (On the flip side, many soldiers had "played around" in garages with engines while their cohorts in other countries toughed it out in hard economies. The ability to fix engines proved quite valuable when their tanks conked out. "Play" is serious business. It allows you to know what you are capable of.) The apparently soft are often made of flint. Don't call anyone soft, in the sense of flabby, until the battle is over.

1:43 pm Pacific Standard Time

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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Being Stoic

"Never say about anything, I have lost it, but say I have restored it. Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not this then also been restored? But he who has taken it from me is a bad man. But what is that to you, by whose hands the giver demanded it back? So long as he may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as travelers do with their inn."

Epictetus, from Encheiridion: The Manual for Living, XI.

"And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." (Job 1:21 KJV)

"The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Corinthians 15:26)

Stoicism holds a certain appeal to me. Less so in doing without. More so in telling us that we will be less upset if our expectations are in accord with how things actually go in the world.

When it comes to death, stoicism does provide a way out of the upset that often occurs. But it seems inhuman. Don't attachments suffer if we hang on with such a loose grip? And are the stoics even right about what kind of world we live in, and the place of death within it?

Job is interesting because he seems to share some of the stoic resignation. But he allows himself more hope than they have. "And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26). St. Paul, who knows even more, calls death an enemy. If this is right, then even if we recognize the inevitability of death, we also see its unnatural side.

Much of the stoic resignation is good. But in order to do it right, you have to know what human nature is. Some would say that their this-worldly orientation is natural. But when you see how people grieve, it appears that when people act natural, they see death as an enemy.

1:06 pm Pacific Standard Time

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