June 26, 2009
MANN TALK: Disease and Symptoms
By Perry Mann
Hinton, WV (HNN) -- Kathleen Parker is an anti-feminist columnist, who makes the point consistently and frequently that the problem with children is no parents at home. This she says is the disease and all the other problems with children, such as drugs, pregnancy, violence, truancy, etc., are symptoms; and she is irked that seemingly intelligent people stupidly equate disease with symptoms. “How can we expect to solve a problem if we refuse to identify it?” she asks.
She opines further: “We refuse, of course, because to identify the problem is to morally judge. It is to say, you are wrong; you are to blame for your circumstances; you have to change your behavior. Yet we dance around the truth as though it might bite us”
First, what good comes from judging except the righteousness that the one doing the judging feels with regard to the sinner? Anyone who has lived a while knows or should know that a person trapped in painful circumstances resulting from years of improvidence and self-indulgence needs everything but to be told that her pain is the consequences of her immorality and stupidity. If she doesn’t recognize that they are, no amount of judging her is going to enlighten her; and if she does recognize that they are, no amount of judging is going to change her unless some of all the causes poised to effect her behavior are deflected so that she can attempt to change her life style. No one acts in a manner that is, in the short or long run, against her best interest unless she is ignorant of it or knows it but acts against it owing to overwhelming compulsion.
To blame one for his circumstances is in itself an act of immorality and stupidity. It is mindless simplism. One need not dwell long on the subject of another’s circumstances, or her own, to get an understanding that anyone’s circumstances are the result of no end of causes and effects beyond his or her control. For instance, anatomy is destiny has truth in it. Certainly, anyone can discern that Marilyn Monroe’s anatomy was her destiny. Or that Mike Tyson’s is his destiny. And anatomy is only one of thousands of features that a person has that she had no hand in choosing. Color, race, sex, nationality, intelligence, empathy, imagination, and no end of other characteristics that one has, but that were determined at conception, affect any of her acts and shape any of her attitudes. All of these are part of circumstances that one cannot be blamed for. Further, there is luck. How much does chance play in one’s circumstances? “There but for the grace of God, go I “ is a credible adage.
Ms. Parker writes that we dance around the truth. What is the truth? She implies that she knows what it is. She knows that the immorality of parents is the cause of juvenile delinquency. And that the immorality is a free will choice of parents. If parents would just choose morally there would be no juvenile delinquency. From such a position the question arises as to why so many parents chose morally with respect to matters that affected children 100 years ago but now so few choose morally in such matters. A moment of contemplation of the question gives birth to all sorts of answers.
The short answer is that all is symptoms. If one can argue with validity that children are delinquents because of the immorality of their parents, one can argue that what parents are are the results of their parents and so on and on. And if one can blame the circumstances of children on their parents so can parents blame their circumstances on their parents and so on and on. Just because society declares that when one reaches 18, she suddenly has a free will and is thus responsible for her choices and her circumstances does not overnight change her from a determined person to one with a full-flowered free will, a will unfettered with one’s nature and nurture. To believe so reveals a bit of obtuseness.
Spinoza concluded that man’s will is not free, that man’s acts are the result of causes which are the result of previous causes on to infinity. Others of great mental stature spent their lives contemplating the question and concluded the same. One may reject the conclusion but one should consider its probability when thinking of making a judgment. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” is pertinent.
Man long ago decided that Eden was not enough, so he has with shrewdness and beaver busyness built his version of Eden, which version is characterized by clever devices designed to gain something for nothing and to have all pleasure and no pain: a garden that produces with no sweat and where wild oats can be sown with no worry of a retributive harvest. He moved from the land to streets; he changed from horses to machines, from walking to riding, from a society in which children were needed and were an asset to one in which they are in the way and costly. No pregnant woman on the land 200 years ago considered abortion; for a child was a blessing and not a curse.
The Luddites lost. The changes have come with historical inevitableness. Any one opposing them would be as one armed with an ice pick confronting a glacier. Thus we now have a society crowded into cities, where a minority has the power and the wealth and preys on the majority, where labor-saving things are idols, where idleness and boredom are pervasive and cunning men create seductive remedies to mitigate them, and where all progress tends to subvert relationships and serve as a solvent to familial cohesion.
A person born in this world with an absolute understanding of life’s goal, a universal knowledge of how to achieve it and a will stronger than the force of history would have few problems in shaping happy circumstances including rearing blue-ribbon children. But of course no one has such powers. Instead there is no consensus about what is life’s goal, no agreement how to achieve happy circumstances, and certainly no will free of genetic mandates and historical compulsions.
So children come into the a world made by their parents who came into a world made by their parents; and they come designed by their genes and molded by their environment, pawns to history and dicing fate. Judging parents or children is intellectually simplistic and morally forbidden. In the final analysis all is symptoms.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
MANN TALK: Disease and Symptoms
By Perry Mann
Hinton, WV (HNN) -- Kathleen Parker is an anti-feminist columnist, who makes the point consistently and frequently that the problem with children is no parents at home. This she says is the disease and all the other problems with children, such as drugs, pregnancy, violence, truancy, etc., are symptoms; and she is irked that seemingly intelligent people stupidly equate disease with symptoms. “How can we expect to solve a problem if we refuse to identify it?” she asks.
She opines further: “We refuse, of course, because to identify the problem is to morally judge. It is to say, you are wrong; you are to blame for your circumstances; you have to change your behavior. Yet we dance around the truth as though it might bite us”
First, what good comes from judging except the righteousness that the one doing the judging feels with regard to the sinner? Anyone who has lived a while knows or should know that a person trapped in painful circumstances resulting from years of improvidence and self-indulgence needs everything but to be told that her pain is the consequences of her immorality and stupidity. If she doesn’t recognize that they are, no amount of judging her is going to enlighten her; and if she does recognize that they are, no amount of judging is going to change her unless some of all the causes poised to effect her behavior are deflected so that she can attempt to change her life style. No one acts in a manner that is, in the short or long run, against her best interest unless she is ignorant of it or knows it but acts against it owing to overwhelming compulsion.
To blame one for his circumstances is in itself an act of immorality and stupidity. It is mindless simplism. One need not dwell long on the subject of another’s circumstances, or her own, to get an understanding that anyone’s circumstances are the result of no end of causes and effects beyond his or her control. For instance, anatomy is destiny has truth in it. Certainly, anyone can discern that Marilyn Monroe’s anatomy was her destiny. Or that Mike Tyson’s is his destiny. And anatomy is only one of thousands of features that a person has that she had no hand in choosing. Color, race, sex, nationality, intelligence, empathy, imagination, and no end of other characteristics that one has, but that were determined at conception, affect any of her acts and shape any of her attitudes. All of these are part of circumstances that one cannot be blamed for. Further, there is luck. How much does chance play in one’s circumstances? “There but for the grace of God, go I “ is a credible adage.
Ms. Parker writes that we dance around the truth. What is the truth? She implies that she knows what it is. She knows that the immorality of parents is the cause of juvenile delinquency. And that the immorality is a free will choice of parents. If parents would just choose morally there would be no juvenile delinquency. From such a position the question arises as to why so many parents chose morally with respect to matters that affected children 100 years ago but now so few choose morally in such matters. A moment of contemplation of the question gives birth to all sorts of answers.
The short answer is that all is symptoms. If one can argue with validity that children are delinquents because of the immorality of their parents, one can argue that what parents are are the results of their parents and so on and on. And if one can blame the circumstances of children on their parents so can parents blame their circumstances on their parents and so on and on. Just because society declares that when one reaches 18, she suddenly has a free will and is thus responsible for her choices and her circumstances does not overnight change her from a determined person to one with a full-flowered free will, a will unfettered with one’s nature and nurture. To believe so reveals a bit of obtuseness.
Spinoza concluded that man’s will is not free, that man’s acts are the result of causes which are the result of previous causes on to infinity. Others of great mental stature spent their lives contemplating the question and concluded the same. One may reject the conclusion but one should consider its probability when thinking of making a judgment. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” is pertinent.
Man long ago decided that Eden was not enough, so he has with shrewdness and beaver busyness built his version of Eden, which version is characterized by clever devices designed to gain something for nothing and to have all pleasure and no pain: a garden that produces with no sweat and where wild oats can be sown with no worry of a retributive harvest. He moved from the land to streets; he changed from horses to machines, from walking to riding, from a society in which children were needed and were an asset to one in which they are in the way and costly. No pregnant woman on the land 200 years ago considered abortion; for a child was a blessing and not a curse.
The Luddites lost. The changes have come with historical inevitableness. Any one opposing them would be as one armed with an ice pick confronting a glacier. Thus we now have a society crowded into cities, where a minority has the power and the wealth and preys on the majority, where labor-saving things are idols, where idleness and boredom are pervasive and cunning men create seductive remedies to mitigate them, and where all progress tends to subvert relationships and serve as a solvent to familial cohesion.
A person born in this world with an absolute understanding of life’s goal, a universal knowledge of how to achieve it and a will stronger than the force of history would have few problems in shaping happy circumstances including rearing blue-ribbon children. But of course no one has such powers. Instead there is no consensus about what is life’s goal, no agreement how to achieve happy circumstances, and certainly no will free of genetic mandates and historical compulsions.
So children come into the a world made by their parents who came into a world made by their parents; and they come designed by their genes and molded by their environment, pawns to history and dicing fate. Judging parents or children is intellectually simplistic and morally forbidden. In the final analysis all is symptoms.
* * *
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a columnist for Huntington News Network. He lives in Hinton, WV.
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
