Environment? Genetics?
I'm putting this post under "Lore" (originally--the subsections have changed) becuase it is a bit of a ramble. It starts, however, with a TV reference: CSI.
If you watch enough CSI, you will perceive a pattern of reinforced middle-class values. If you've read my intro, you'll know I think this is a positive, rather than a negative, not because I'm big on morality tales, but because I think that middle-class values have a right to a voice.
Murder mystery shows are morality tales by default: slide from the path of righteousness and wrath (i.e. punishment, disgrace and imprisonment) will follow. The episode "Swingers" is one of the best examples of this.
The murder takes place in a posh neighborhood where the upper middle-class neighbors engage in Swinger parties, i.e. wife swapping. The spokeswoman for the "lifestyle" tells Grissom that there are rules: "Come as a couple, leave as a couple. No affairs. No drugs. And the children must never know." But it turns out that kids aren't that dumb. And when the murderess—the teenage stepdaughter of the murdered woman—confesses, she tells the father, "Oh, don't get all protective. I know about your parties."
Grissom recites the rules at the close of the episode, ending with "And the children must never know." Credits.
As straightforward a morality tale as ever existed. And fairly typical for CSI. So what do I like about this one?
What I like is the "children must never know" line. Although it is emphasized, it is allowed to speak for itself. No one draws a direct correlation between the daughter's behavior (she was having an affair with an older man) and the parent's "lifestyle." There's no trail of evidence that says, "Because this girl's parents do immoral things, this girl does immoral things." Such arguments, even if they are true, tend to fall apart when closely examined, and you end up arguing with people who want to convince you that television is responsible for the short attention span of kindergarteners (I never had a long attention span and grew up television-less so that argument doesn't work for me). Drawing direct a-to-b lines of causations when it comes to the issue of morality and free-will is, despite Freud, a tremendously difficult thing to do.
But the irony of the "children must never know" line works on another level. If it doesn't imply a-to-b causation, it does imply a world in which adult verbal instructions are useless in the face of a child's precocity. The idea that we live in a tidy world comprised of "adult" behaviors of which the child—Adam and Eve like—will not partake until instructed is patently ridiculous. The parent who says to herself, "I smoke, but my kids can't smoke. They know it is something they can't do until they are older" or any like-minded thing is fooling herself. This is so obvious that with many "adult" behaviors, such as driving a car, the community enforces laws and expectations that will hopefully keep twelve year olds from getting behind the wheel. Because they will go there if you don't stop them.
I'm not arguing in favor of living in a white-walled room. Parents shouldn't have to be saints in order to expect reasonable behavior from their children. I am arguing what any parent of teenagers knows: age has nothing to do with the desire for experience. Placing a time/date on a particular behavior ("When you're older, sweetie, you can do this") is naïve at best. When the X-Files folks got all paranoid about "someone watching," the answer could have been, "Yeah, and it's your kids, and they see more than you think." The point being that the child is acting on his environment, not simply being acted upon or waiting around for permission to act.
This is anti-Rousseau. Rousseau thought children were innocents. Which they are, but Rousseau thought they were innocent by nature, not by law. U.S. law--and religions like Mormonism--argue that children are innocent because they don't know enough or understand enough to be judged fairly. Rousseau argued that they were innocent because of their intrinsic niceness. The problem with this argument is that Rousseau had to then explain why children grow up and do nasty things. If children are so innocent, how would they even know that the nasty behavior is nasty and if they knew, why would they choose it?
The Rousseau-ian answer is, They don't know. They are simply imitating the behavior of their elders. It all comes down to education. Children don't do nasty things until (1) they are taught after which (2) they only do the nasty things they are told to do. We're all victims of our environment.
The problem here being, If we were once all so innocent, why did anyone think up nasty stuff at all? It's all very well to blame nastiness on social structures, like kings or religion, but people thought up all that stuff, unless you believe it was imposed from on high, in which case the whole argument becomes moot.
In any case, Lord of the Flies illustrates the fallacy of (1); history the fallacy of (2).
Which all sounds very depressing, except I don't think it is. I think it is pretty cool that evolution or God or evolution working for God, devised a system where children aren't simply blank slates that adults get to play out their worries on or squishy bits of clay that adults can mold willy-nilly in a particular direction. I think it is a very good thing that children are born with the capacity to see more than they are shown and hear more than they are told and know--even when the parents think they don't. Otherwise--if we were just products of our environment (whether pure or be-deviled)--freewill truly wouldn't have a chance.
The imperatives of biology are the safeguards of freedom.
If you watch enough CSI, you will perceive a pattern of reinforced middle-class values. If you've read my intro, you'll know I think this is a positive, rather than a negative, not because I'm big on morality tales, but because I think that middle-class values have a right to a voice.
Murder mystery shows are morality tales by default: slide from the path of righteousness and wrath (i.e. punishment, disgrace and imprisonment) will follow. The episode "Swingers" is one of the best examples of this.
The murder takes place in a posh neighborhood where the upper middle-class neighbors engage in Swinger parties, i.e. wife swapping. The spokeswoman for the "lifestyle" tells Grissom that there are rules: "Come as a couple, leave as a couple. No affairs. No drugs. And the children must never know." But it turns out that kids aren't that dumb. And when the murderess—the teenage stepdaughter of the murdered woman—confesses, she tells the father, "Oh, don't get all protective. I know about your parties."
Grissom recites the rules at the close of the episode, ending with "And the children must never know." Credits.
As straightforward a morality tale as ever existed. And fairly typical for CSI. So what do I like about this one?
What I like is the "children must never know" line. Although it is emphasized, it is allowed to speak for itself. No one draws a direct correlation between the daughter's behavior (she was having an affair with an older man) and the parent's "lifestyle." There's no trail of evidence that says, "Because this girl's parents do immoral things, this girl does immoral things." Such arguments, even if they are true, tend to fall apart when closely examined, and you end up arguing with people who want to convince you that television is responsible for the short attention span of kindergarteners (I never had a long attention span and grew up television-less so that argument doesn't work for me). Drawing direct a-to-b lines of causations when it comes to the issue of morality and free-will is, despite Freud, a tremendously difficult thing to do.
But the irony of the "children must never know" line works on another level. If it doesn't imply a-to-b causation, it does imply a world in which adult verbal instructions are useless in the face of a child's precocity. The idea that we live in a tidy world comprised of "adult" behaviors of which the child—Adam and Eve like—will not partake until instructed is patently ridiculous. The parent who says to herself, "I smoke, but my kids can't smoke. They know it is something they can't do until they are older" or any like-minded thing is fooling herself. This is so obvious that with many "adult" behaviors, such as driving a car, the community enforces laws and expectations that will hopefully keep twelve year olds from getting behind the wheel. Because they will go there if you don't stop them.
I'm not arguing in favor of living in a white-walled room. Parents shouldn't have to be saints in order to expect reasonable behavior from their children. I am arguing what any parent of teenagers knows: age has nothing to do with the desire for experience. Placing a time/date on a particular behavior ("When you're older, sweetie, you can do this") is naïve at best. When the X-Files folks got all paranoid about "someone watching," the answer could have been, "Yeah, and it's your kids, and they see more than you think." The point being that the child is acting on his environment, not simply being acted upon or waiting around for permission to act.
This is anti-Rousseau. Rousseau thought children were innocents. Which they are, but Rousseau thought they were innocent by nature, not by law. U.S. law--and religions like Mormonism--argue that children are innocent because they don't know enough or understand enough to be judged fairly. Rousseau argued that they were innocent because of their intrinsic niceness. The problem with this argument is that Rousseau had to then explain why children grow up and do nasty things. If children are so innocent, how would they even know that the nasty behavior is nasty and if they knew, why would they choose it?
The Rousseau-ian answer is, They don't know. They are simply imitating the behavior of their elders. It all comes down to education. Children don't do nasty things until (1) they are taught after which (2) they only do the nasty things they are told to do. We're all victims of our environment.
The problem here being, If we were once all so innocent, why did anyone think up nasty stuff at all? It's all very well to blame nastiness on social structures, like kings or religion, but people thought up all that stuff, unless you believe it was imposed from on high, in which case the whole argument becomes moot.
In any case, Lord of the Flies illustrates the fallacy of (1); history the fallacy of (2).
Which all sounds very depressing, except I don't think it is. I think it is pretty cool that evolution or God or evolution working for God, devised a system where children aren't simply blank slates that adults get to play out their worries on or squishy bits of clay that adults can mold willy-nilly in a particular direction. I think it is a very good thing that children are born with the capacity to see more than they are shown and hear more than they are told and know--even when the parents think they don't. Otherwise--if we were just products of our environment (whether pure or be-deviled)--freewill truly wouldn't have a chance.
The imperatives of biology are the safeguards of freedom.
posted by Kate Woodbury at 16:11
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