Reflections on Gender Roles and Domestic Violence

Today I came upon a very interesting video about domestic violence-- by women. It got me thinking. (A dangerous pastime, I know.)

In our culture, most boys are told at some point to "never hit a girl." Now, I stand behind that 100%, except for one thing-- why single out girls? Shouldn't all children be told simply, "don't hit"? It doesn't matter if it's a boy hitting a girl, or a girl hitting a boy, or girls hitting girls or boys hitting boys. Hitting is wrong, period.

How many of us have watched movies-- romantic comedies, dramas, etc.-- where a woman slaps a man for some reason? With the exception of self-defense, that strikes me as very wrong. Why is it that, as a society, we don't react the same way to women hurting men as we do to men hurting women?

In an earlier blog post I talked about feminism, and how it's often misconstrued to mean that women are better than men and maligned by people who don't understand it. I'll reiterate-- true feminism is simply the assertion that women and men are equal. Perhaps a more accurate term would be human-ism (although the word "humanist" is already used to mean other things). Feminism is important because women, historically, have often been treated as though they were less than full persons. But perhaps it is eve more important to emphasize that all human beings are equal. They all have innate human rights. And they all feel pain.

I'm not denying that men and women are possessed of different general propensities and predispositions; however, I have lately come to the conclusion that the cultural imposition of gender stereotypes is generally harmful. "Men are strong." Well, so are women. "Women are sweet and gentle." So are men. All these cultural stereotypes do is inhibit people-- humans-- from expressing the full range of their personalities. And, in the case of domestic violence, it can lead to the marginalization and downplaying of the suffering of fully half of the population. In our society, men aren't supposed to be so weak as to be able to get beat up by a woman.

The way I see it, the bottom line is that cultural gender stereotypes are damaging to people of both genders. Sure, men and women do have feminine and masculine qualities, but there's no need to impose them in the exaggerated way that our society does. If people are allowed to be who they really are in every respect, the world will be a better place-- where people don't hit other people, regardless of their gender.

Ever After: An Analysis

Spoiler alert: In this post I dissect one of my favorite movies. If you are one of those unfortunate souls who has not seen it, consider yourself warned that I'm going to give away a lot of the good stuff.

I wrote awhile back about one of my favorite novel adaptations of Cinderella, Just Ella. Well, as much as I love Margaret Haddix's retelling, my absolute favorite Cinderella retelling is the movie version Ever After. Aside from the fact that I was once told that I look like Drew Barrymore, I like Ever After because the protagonist is in possession of a spine. As you might have inferred from my previous posts, I tend to favor female characters with spines. Eowyn, Lucy Pevensie, and Mulan are some of my favorites. Docile protagonists bore me. And irritate me. Take Rapunzel, for example. She had that long hair for how long? And it never occurred to her that she might cut it off and climb out of the tower? Or Cinderella in the conventional retelling, whose primary virtue was being a doormat. Seriously, the girl was a wimp. In all fairness, Prince Charming was a bit of a spazz himself when he didn't notice that Cinderella's stepsisters had cut off chunks of their feet in order to fit into the glass slipper and a couple of doves had to inform him of the fact. Even so, one would think that if Cinderella had had half a brain she would have been able to figure out her own escape from her stepfamily, instead of having to wait for her fairy godmother to make everything better.

But back to Ever After. It's set in the real world, for one thing-- there's not an ounce of supernatural interference. It's set in France in the late 15th or early 16th century. For another, the protagonist doesn't have a stupid name like "Cinderella"-- it's Danielle. And for one more thing, there are numerous historical references in the movie. Thomas More's Utopia and Leonardo da Vinci (along with his Mona Lisa and several other of his delightful inventions) make an appearance-- in fact, at one point Danielle quotes Utopia in a rousing manner. But we will get to that. Let's get into the good stuff. :)

Danielle de Barbarac

As mentioned above, our protagonist has several advantageous possessions, including a spine and a brain. We first meet Danielle when she is ten years old. She very much a tomboy, regularly "whipping" the stable boy-- and getting covered in mud in the process. Her father, Auguste de Barbarac, travels frequently, but when he is home he reads to her from grown-up books. At the beginning of the movie, he presents Danielle with a copy of Thomas More's Utopia. Unfortunately, Danielle's father dies shortly after marrying the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent. In this scene we begin to see the contrast between Danielle and her stepmother. Upon seeing her new husband dead, the Baroness wails, "You cannot leave me here!" However, the Baroness soon adjusts to her new environment. Her coping mechanism is control-- she domineers over everyone and everything. Her main goal in life is power, as we will see later on.

Since this is a Cinderella story, the Baroness reduces Danielle to the level of a bondservant. But Danielle retains her spunky character. At various points in the movie, she berates the Prince of France while throwing apples at him, poses as a noblewoman to save one of the De Barbarac bondmen, passionately quotes Utopia to Prince Henry, climbs a cliff in her underwear, and threatens to skewer the evil Pierre Le Pieu. In short, Danielle is a perfectly capable heroine who does not need saving of any kind.

Prince Henry of France

Prince Henry is a typical impetuous teenager. We first meet him when he runs away from home using-- cliche of cliches-- knotted bedsheets. Henry has no particular goals in life; his primary objective is to avoid the responsibilities of becoming king. He is aimless, insipid, and arrogant. He first meets Danielle in the courtyard of the royal palace. Danielle is in a heated argument with the driver of a prison cart containing the bondman Danielle has come to rescue. When Henry asks Danielle what her rationale is for saving an accused thief from punishments, she quotes Utopia at him: "If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners corrupted from infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them-- then what is to be said, sire, except that ye first make thieves and then punish them?" Henry is blown away by Danielle and insists on knowing her identity. Since Danielle is not, in fact, a noblewoman, she tells Henry that she is the Countess Nicole de Lancre, expecting never to see him again. Henry is captivated, however, and takes up a full-time job as Danielle's stalker. Together they have a series of delightful adventures-- including a library, a broken carriage, and a caravan of gypsies-- and, since this is Hollywood, they fall in love. But more than falling in love, Henry is inspired by Danielle. He acquires a purpose in life. At one point Danielle says to him, "You have everything, and still the world holds no joy." Henry realizes that he has the power to improve the lives of his subjects, and resolves to do so. If anyone is saved in Ever After, it is Prince Henry. Danielle saves him from a life of apathy and helps him to find purpose.

The Rescue

Unfortunately, Prince Henry eventually discovers that he has fallen in love with a commoner and rejects Danielle-- after she has been through hell to see him, no less. With his newfound self-assurance, he informs her: "I am the Prince of France, and you are a servant." Henry proceeds with his previously arranged marriage to a Spanish princess, and the Baroness de Ghent sells Danielle to the lecherous Pierre Le Pieu. Fortunately, Henry chickens out of the marriage when the Spanish princess bursts into tearful hysterics at the altar. At this point we expect Henry to run to Danielle's rescue, and rush he does. Danielle doesn't need it, however. Before Henry makes it to Monsieur Le Pieu's manor, Danielle has freed herself at sabre-point and is strolling on her way.

At this point the two reconcile and live (presumably) happily ever after. But there is a lot to think about in this movie. Who did the real rescuing here? As I mentioned above, I am of the opinion that Danielle saves Prince Henry from a life of apathetic stuck-up-ness. That's why I'm so fond of this movie. It's funny, it's romantic, and the heroine is a real heroine, not a prize for the prince who can slay the dragon.

On Political Parties: Why a proportional representation electoral system is worth considering

Frankly, few things annoy me more than Democrats. Except for Republicans, of course. The United States' current state of political affairs is a paradoxical one-- it is divided between two strikingly similar political parties. No matter which party happens to be in power, they never fail to screw things up. There is little challenge to these two behemoths of politics, and I see that as a definite problem. Allow me to explain.

Exhibit A: Political ATTITUDES

Political attitudes are relative things. There are four basic political attitudes: liberal, conservative, radical, and reactionary.

Radicals and reactionaries are the easiest to understand, and while they are polar opposites in one sense, they are strikingly similar in another. Both want their way, and they want it NOW. A reactionary wants to reorganize the existing political regime into the way it was in the past-- for example, a person who wanted to go back to the Roman Monarchy's state of affairs during the Roman Republic would have been a reactionary. A radical also wants change-- forward change. By "forward" I mean change to some kind of state of affairs that is "new," that has not yet been tried. So Maximilien Robespierre of the French revolution was a radical. What characterizes reactionaries and radicals is their methods. Both tend to favor violence and upheaval-- they often employ political tools such as terrorism and coup d'etat. This makes them extraordinarily similar. Their main difference is what exactly they want to change to. Of course, some radicals and reactionaries are nonviolent, but still radical or reactionary. Some examples include civil disobedience leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Both wanted fairly immediate change (both radical), but chose to use tools such as boycotts, sit-ins, and other forms of civil disobedience, rather than the more violent methods traditionally used by people who want immediate change.

The Boston Tea Party: 18th-century American radicals

The American Tea Party Movement: 21st-century American reactionaries

For the more mild-mannered individuals, there are two other political attitudes: liberal and conservative. Liberals are a bit like radicals in that they also want the state of affairs to change to something new, but they are more realistic and support gradual, nonviolent change. Conservatives are different from the other three attitudes in that they don't want any change at all-- forward or backward. They are related to reactionaries, though, in the sense that one way of looking at a reactionary is as a conservative who didn't get her way. Conservatives are all about the status quo, and reactionaries want to go back to a former status quo.

So you see, political attitude is relative to the status quo. The US Founding Fathers tended to be liberals, until they realized that dear King George III was so implacable that the only way they were going to get what they wanted was through a more radical course of action-- namely, revolution. On the other hand, someone who wanted to go back to the status quo of, say, 1815, would be a reactionary (even though in 1776 many of the ideals of 1815 were liberal or radical).

Exhibit B: Political PARTIES

Political parties are organizations within a country that are trying to achieve certain political goals. The number of dominant parties varies widely from country to country-- from communist Russia, where there was only one party in power (this party considered itself to be the "vanguard of the proletariat"; see previous blog post), to the US, where there are two dominant parties, to places like Canada and the UK, where there are three or more.

The two dominant parties in the US are the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republican party tends to be more conservative while the Democrats are more liberal, but that is not a matter of definition and it has not always been that way. In the 19th century, the Republican party was the more liberal, progressive one, because it favored (among other things) the abolition of slavery. Both parties have evolved over time. They are not ideologies; they are organizations.

In fact, it is common for a party to be conservative on some issues and liberal on others (radical and reactionary attitudes tend to be quite rare in political parties, for reasons I'll talk about momentarily). For example, a party could favor conservative domestic policy and progressive foreign policy, or vice versa.

Because of the way the US representational and electoral systems work, the two dominant parties are the way to control politics. Since the US is democratic/republican in nature ("democratic" serves as a general term meaning that the demos-- the people-- are in charge of things, and "republican" is a more technical term referring to the specific system of government), the parties have to cater to the people. Since they want to attract the largest base of people possible, they tend to be more moderate in nature-- liberal or conservative. Radical or reactionary platforms tend to strongly attract a small segment of the population while alienating the rest. This is why the Democrat and Republican parties tend to be so similar, and why independent-thinking American voters often feel as if their electoral choices aren't really choices at all.

Exhibit C: Electoral Systems

The number of dominant political parties in a country is intimately tied to its electoral system. The US has a majoritarian electoral system-- meaning that whichever party wins an election gets all of the electors in the electoral college. The alternative is a proportional-representation system (often referred to as PR), which means that seats are apportioned based on proportions. Any party that can get more than a certain percentage of the vote-- usually 2%-- gets the same percentage of seats that they got of the vote. Personally, a PR electoral system makes a lot more sense to me.

Firstly, it eliminates the dual-party monopoly on politics. Voters don't feel that they are "wasting" their vote if they vote for, say, a Libertarian or a Green party candidate.

Secondly, it allows for more accurate representation of the demographic. The US is an especially diverse nation culturally, ethnically, religiously, ideologically-- any way you slice the pie. PR representation allows these differences to be more accurately represented. Minorities don't get trampled on by the majority.

Thirdly, the more diversity there is among government representatives, the harder it will be for them to get anything done. By that, I mean that they have to compromise more. It is a lot harder for any one party to get control of the representative body. Parties often have to form coalitions in order to get any kind of a majority, which means that they have to debate more, argue more, compromise more, sacrifice more. All this takes time. All this involves dropping more extreme ideas. The more time the government spends arguing among itself, the less time it has to mess with the people's business. It is limited to doing those government jobs that are more noncontroversial, that don't step on people's rights, because it is so difficult for them to effect change in the governmental infrastructure. There is always going to be somebody who disagrees. It seems to me that all this would keep the government busy among itself, and out of the people's business.

Peroratio: Sententia

It is my opinion that political parties are basically useless. Unfortunately, the US's majoritarian electoral system means that it is virtually impossible for third parties to get anything done. The Democratic and Republican parties remind me of a king on his throne, complacent in his power. Both parties need a rude awakening-- let's get the Libertarian party, the Green party, the Constitution party, and all the others upsetting the monopoly of power that the two big parties currently hold. How this might be accomplished is quite complicated, though, even in theory (and practice always seems to be more complicated than theory). Many countries that use PR also have a parliamentary system of government, which may not be the best idea for the US. In any case, though, it seems apparent to me that the US government has become destructive of the ends for which it was created-- namely the protection of inalienable rights. Given that, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government. Abolition seems a bit extreme to me, but some alteration may be in order. Since, in my view, the principal problem the US faces in terms of good government is political parties, whatever solution is employed ought to diffuse the power of political parties so that Americans are accurately represented ideologically, instead of having two enormous and mostly irrelevant parties running things to nobody's satisfaction.

Advocatus Diaboli: Communism

In my political science class, we recently discussed communism. It was very interesting; I was surprised to find that I did not know nearly as much about Karl Marx's theory as I thought I did.

Marx viewed history as the constant struggle between oppressor and oppressed. In the ancient world, we find the master and the slave. By the Middle Ages, society had moved on to feudalism-- lords and serfs (serfs were different from slaves in that they were bound to the land of an estate, while slaves were considered the property of a given person). When the burgher class of the Middle Ages overthrew feudalism, the lord-serf dichotomy was replaced by that that exists between the two modern classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The etymology of the word "bourgeoisie" is French in origin, and can be traced to burgeis or bourjois (town dweller), which are related to the English variant, "burgher." In the Middle Ages, the burghers developed as a class that didn't really fit into the conventional feudal order of lords, vassals and serfs. Mainly comprised of merchants and other non-farming types, they represented a shift from agrarian culture (which was a result of the unstable culture of Late Antiquity and the early Merovingian era of the Middle Ages) towards a more town-based society. Burghers were commonly younger sons of feudal lords who were forced to make a living on their own, as they would not inherit the lord's estate.

A depiction of medieval feudalism

Over time, a town-based burgher class evolved. This would eventually become the bourgeoisie of capitalism.

According to the Marxist view of history, the bourgeoisie eventually acquired sufficient education, influence and capital to overthrow the existing feudal regime and replace it with a new economic system-- capitalism. Capitalism was no better than the preceding economic systems in that it still entailed exploitation of the lower class-- the proletariat. The main difference between capitalism and feudalism was that capitalism seemed to allow the lower classes some say in their destiny and position in society. This delusion was called "false consciousness." In reality, the proletariat was just as oppressed as serfs had been under feudalism.

Above and below: The proletariat of the 19th Century.

Since Marx saw history as an inevitable historical evolution of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, he hypothesized that when capitalism had reached its highest level of development (or, to put it another way, its highest level of exploitation of the proletariat), the proletariat would break out of their false consciousness and overthrow the bourgeois regime. A brief period would ensue that Marx called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." The government would quickly collapse, however, thrusting society into a perpetual communist utopia.

Marx's view of communism did not work in the same way that it has been practiced in places like the Soviet Union and China. He saw communism as a natural phenomenon that would work in a similar fashion to the "invisible hand" of capitalism-- no centralized controlling body would be needed. This would work because Marx saw human nature as innately good. He believed that all people wanted to live in peace and harmony, and that if only the oppressive class (the bourgeoisie) could be eliminated, there would be no impediment to perpetual utopia.

Taking this into consideration, communism has never been practiced in the world (at least as far as we know). The major difference is that countries that became communist in the 20th century were, for the most part, not developed, and in some places not even capitalistic. The communist revolution was led by a small group of elites, called the "Vanguard of the Proletariat," which was supposedly acting on behalf of the common people. Since the proletariat did not initiate the revolution, Marx would likely have said that communism as practiced in the 20th century was not really communism at all, but just another incidence of one class oppressing another.

As a result of what I have just outlined, there are some interesting questions for the political theorist to consider. Is Marxist communism a discredited ideology, or is it something that could potentially happen in the future (the most likely candidates for Marxist communism would, in fact, be developed, capitalistic democracies such as the United States and some countries of Europe)? Is communism, and the view of human nature that it assumes, consistent with human nature as it really is?

The conventional view of socialism (as conceived by political theorists such as Frederic Bastiat) is that it is a transitional phase that leads to communism. On the other hand, many modern political theorists have put forward the idea that becoming socialist is the best way to avoid becoming communist, because socialism addresses problems of inequality while still maintaining, to some extent, institutions such as capitalism and democracy. At its simplest, communism was the hypothetical embodiment of ideals like equality, justice and fairness. Stated communist aims included abolition of child labor and equal rights for women. Since many communist aims have now been achieved without actually implementing communism, one could argue that communism is not necessary to solve the very real problems that Marx saw with capitalism.

In short, the modern popular view of communism is somewhat incomplete. The only experience the world has with communism is the perhaps counterfeit version created by people like Mao and Lenin. The question of the merit of communism as envisioned by Marx remains to be answered definitively.

A communist party.

Reinventing Cinderella

One of my favorite novels is Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I received a copy as a gift when I was about nine, and I've read it multiple times since then. It's a reworking of Cinderella, everybody's favorite fairytale.

Haddix's version takes place after Ella has been carried off to her happily-ever-after by Prince Charming. Contrary to what she had expected, her life becomes an endless round of tedium and conformity. She's expected to be a docile social ornament without any personality. She's not supposed to care about-- or even be aware of-- the unsavory aspects of life, be it boar hunting, poverty, or even the process of lighting a fire. Prince Charming himself has no personality or cognitive ability, and Ella comes to realize that this happily-ever-after isn't what she wants for herself, after all. She makes a daring escape from the castle (dungeon) and decides to do what she wants with her life.

As a nine-year-old, I was a bit unhappy with the ending. It was unsettling to think that Prince Charming and fairytale happily-ever-afters might not be the way Disney portrays them. Given that, I don't know why I read the book more than once. But I did, and I think it's arguably the best treatment of Cinderella that I've ever read.

One of the things you have to come to terms with as you grow up is that fairytales aren't real. There's no guy on the planet who can measure up to the ideal of Prince Charming, and even if he did exist, one would still have difficult times after marriage. Real life doesn't have twittering bluebirds and rainbows all the time.

As sad as it is at first to realize that fairytale endings don't exist, upon further reflection I find that that's a good thing. As Just Ella demonstrates, things aren't always as they appear. Things that look like perfection always have a not-so-perfect side. If you box yourself into this idea that certain things in your life are your set-in-stone destiny, you're setting yourself up for unhappiness. People change, situations change. You may find that something that you thought would make you happy doesn't at all, and that you really want something else. Most importantly, it's your choice what to do with your life. Your fairy godmother isn't going to give you a happily-ever-after; you have to make it yourself, and furthermore, you decide exactly what constitutes happily-ever-after for you. If you don't want to marry Prince Charming, don't. It's up to you.

As William Ernest Henley put it in his poem Invictus: "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."

Inside a Song

Anybody who knows me at all, knows that music is really important to me. I listen to lots of different types-- instrumental piano/orchestral and cinematic scores are my favorites, but I also enjoy classical, jazz, pop, some country, and even a fair bit of metal and alternative music (which often surprises people, since I don't really fit the "metalhead" type).
The other day, when I was finishing up the second book of The Lord of the Rings, (which is the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring, see previous blog post)I was at the part where the Company arrives at Cerin Amroth in Lorien. Samwise observes that being in the land of the Elves is like being "inside a song;" an expression which I liked very much. What does it mean to be inside a song? As a musician, I think that studying and performing music is getting inside a song. To learn a song well, you have to really work at it. Even once you've learned the notes and the proper fingering for everything, you have to make sure you're interpreting it well-- putting in the crescendos and diminuendos, using rubato where appropriate, using the pedals properly, etc. Once you've mastered all the minutiae of the composition, you're free to put yourself into the song (although, as my Piano Ensemble instructor last semester pointed out, only a singer can perform a "song." Instrumentalists perform "pieces." Technically.), which is something that is really hard to describe. I do it better when I'm alone.

For me, performing music for other people is a lot different than just playing for myself or for a teacher. And not just because I get nervous, either. When I'm playing alone, it's much... freer. It's hard to describe. I'm playing exactly the same notes, with more or less the same technique and the same expression, but the music moves slower. Most performers have a tendency to perform things at a higher tempo than they practice them, but it's more than that; even if I manage to keep the tempo is the same, the music feels slower to me, because I'm in kind of a "zen" state. More in the moment. When I'm performing, it's like driving on the freeway instead of on a county road. Everything seems to happen faster, and the stakes are higher. I'm not usually nervous while I'm actually playing-- only before and sometimes after. The performance itself is kind of a rush, and I'm usually very comfortable with it-- if very focused. But I'm much more self-aware. I can't always predict whether the performance quality will be better or worse than practice. Sometimes, especially if I haven't practiced as well as I should have, little mistakes that I thought I'd ironed out pop back up in performance. Sometimes (and it's so cool when this happens), I've practiced the piece so much that the technical aspects of it are second nature, and I get into that zen state where I'm able to play even better than I thought I could. Finishing a good performance is like standing on top of the world-- you want to punch the air and yell, "Ha! Take that, world!" It's a great feeling, being inside a song :).

Feminism

The subject of feminism has been on my mind a lot today. A lot of people I know think that feminism is a bad thing, and I find this both saddening and frustrating-- so I'd like to put in words exactly what (I think) feminism is.

I believe that, at bottom, feminism is exactly the same thing as "liberty and justice for all", applied to a specific group that had some trouble getting liberty and justice. Feminism states that women are, legally speaking, persons. The word "person" has certain legal implications (as indicated by the fact that legal documents use the nonstandard plural "persons," rather than "people," in the interest of precision of language). Susan B. Anthony's great address in 1873, "Are Women Persons?" addressed this topic. If you are a person, you have certain rights, privileges, and obligations-- in fact, if you are a person, the Constitution and Bill of Rights apply to you. You have certain inalienable rights, among these being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

All this seems quite obvious to me-- that women are persons, and as such have rights equal to those of men. The question is not one of gender, but of personhood. Gender is irrelevant to personhood.

All this means that, as persons, women have the right to vote (which was recognized legally with the 19th Amendment in 1920). They also have the right to make their own choices regarding their lives-- to marry or not to marry, to work in any field they choose (and receive pay equal to that of a man doing the same work), to have children (or not), to stay home with those children (or not)-- in short, they have the same choices, and the same options, that men do.

That's all well and good, and I'm sure that nobody would disagree with me, as far as I have gotten. The trouble comes when you start to think of the "feminist" as a bra-burning, family-spurning, career-obsessed, man-hating minx. There's a reason that this image springs to mind, but it's not what some people seem to think.

The problem is this-- feminism is a philosophy, and that philosophy, just like any other, can be and has been interpreted, implied, and reworked, for both good and ill. I think that it has been reworked for ill (and, in fact, against itself) in two ways.

Firstly, some feminists have taken the "women are equal to men" too far, and insisted that women are superior to men. This is in fact contrary to feminism itself, the basic premise of which is that all persons are created equal.

Secondly, feminism has sometimes been interpreted to mean that all women should be career women. However, this also goes against true feminism, which states that women, as persons, have the CHOICE to live as they see fit-- if they see fit to pursue a career, that's wonderful. If they see fit to stay home and raise a family, that's wonderful. And if they see fit to do both (whether simultaneously, or at different seasons of life), that's wonderful, too. It's all up to them. Any person, entity, or philosophy which tells women (or any other sort of person) that in order to be "good enough" or "fulfilled" or "worthwhile", they MUST do or be ______, is trying to take away the freedom of those persons, and as such is violating the very meaning of feminism. Such an ideology is a tyrant in liberator's clothing-- but to look at these people and conclude that feminism is bad is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Books and Growing Up

Today I was thinking about the books that I loved growing up (and still do). I read a lot of different kinds of books-- fantasy books like C.S. Lewis's Narnia books and Brian Jacques's Redwall series were some of my favorites. I loved historical fiction and older children's books like Little House on the Prairie and Heidi. I remember my mom used to limit how many Babysitter's Club novels I could read, at one point banning them completely, because she felt that they were "twaddle" (a word she used to describe books which she felt were the literary equivalent of soap operas). At the time, I was very annoyed by this (mostly because I chafed at anything that remotely restricted my ability to "be my own boss"), but now I can see why she did that. As I grew up, my mom taught me that some books are better than others. Some are well-written, some have important things to say, some make you think, some are boring, some you shouldn't read until you're older, and some are just plain bad. As a child I mostly believed her (although I would still sometimes read Babysitter's Club, just to prove that I was my own boss). Now, I still think that, but from experience. I've found that there are some books that when I finish them, I want to read them again and again, and there are others where I feel like I might as well have done something else.

I don't know if I'm a bookworm by nature or nurture-- probably both. I grew up in a house where books were readily available; now, my mom has enough books to take up nine bookshelves, and she's constantly having to juggle the books to make room for more. My mom is definitely a bookworm; she always read to us, and my siblings and I often saw her reading "grown-up books." Reading was never a chore for me. My parents had to make a rule that I couldn't read anything until I'd finished my schoolwork. I was sneaky, though; I could often get away with reading the dictionary, or reading all the examples in my Writing and Spelling books.

It occurs to me that the best kind of learning we do, doesn't come from books that teach us overtly. The best kind is subliminal. Take honesty, for example; I learned from my parents and from church and from the moralizing sorts of books that I ought to be honest. Well, that's all well and good, but mostly those kinds of lessons meant little to me. I think that the most powerful lessons I learned about honesty, didn't contain that word at all. Most likely, the authors of the books I learned honesty from weren't trying to teach that value at all (and if they were, they were very sneaky about it). I learned to be honest by reading about characters who were honest-- like Martin the Warrior in Brian Jacques Redwall novels that I mentioned earlier. When I read about Martin, I wasn't thinking about how honest and brave and valorous he was. I just liked and admired him, as a character. And as a result, I tried to act more like him-- because he was cool!

A lot has been said about children reading books that are "dark," or too scary for them. Looking back on the books I read, some of them scare me a lot more now than they did when I first read them! I read lots of books where people died, or got hurt or maimed. I read books that included battles, torture, mutilation, manipulation, and all sorts of horrible things. And as a reader, I put myself into the shoes of the characters experiencing these things. Why, then, did I not grow up scarred for life?

I think that, for one thing, the bad things I read about were not (for the most part) overly graphic. A lot of them were very frank, but they didn't focus on the bad things. I think that this develops resilience in people-- the ability to hold on to sanity and optimism when bad things happen. Yes, the bad things happened, and sometimes they couldn't be fixed. But the sun still came up in the morning, and even while the bad things were going on, there was still more to the story than that. Rose might have been killed during the battle between the pirate rats and the escaped slaves, and that was very sad, but things still came out okay.

In short, I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to become acquainted with books, and their myriad delights and frustrations (despite the fact that Martin the Warrior had a happy ending, I never really have stopped feeling sad that Rose died). Literacy is a big cause in the world today, and that's a good thing. But I hope that, along with teaching people to be able to decode letters and words, we'll also be able to help them see that the joy of literacy isn't just being able to decode the symbols-- it's what is inside the words that matters. :)

Objective Morality as a Case for God

Yesterday I finished Mere Christianity, a wonderful book by C.S. Lewis which I had attempted (and failed) to finish several times before. It had never really grabbed my attention (even though, in general, I love C.S. Lewis's writing), but this time I found it absorbing, and could not put it down.

What I particularly found intriguing was his argument for the existence of some kind of supernatural being (i.e., God). He argues that the fact that humans do, in fact, have such a thing as morality indicates that there is a supernatural creative force of some kind. Consider, for instance, a person who has to choose between being honest and suffering for it, or being dishonest for his own benefit. When facing this choice, there are in fact three things in his mind. Two of them are the options he has to choose between (honesty and dishonesty), and the third thing is a something that tells him that he should choose honesty. That third thing is separate from his own wanting something-- he may very well want to choose dishonesty-- and can't really be construed as his own "survival instinct" either. Take, for example, the case of a man who sees another man drowning. Again, he has two choices (to help the drowning man at the risk of his own safety, or not help the drowning man and remain safe himself), and a third thing in his mind which tells him that he should help the drowning man, even at personal risk. That couldn't possibly be "survival instinct," because the thing telling him to make the "right" choice is in fact telling him to risk his own survival.

Lewis argues that "morality" is something that man couldn't have come up with himself, and its universality is an indication of its reality. If you look at the religions and moral codes around the world and throughout history, you find a common thread. Sure, there are lots of deviations and differences, but they all contain certain tenets, such as "don't steal," "don't lie," "don't murder," "don't hurt other people," etc. In fact, instances which argue exceptions actually prove the case of objective morality. When somebody is in violation of the moral law, they don't usually say "well, that's a subjective law so it doesn't matter what I do." Instead, they try to argue that what they are doing doesn't really violate the law, or that they are somehow an exception to the law.

Even in the case of people who do argue for subjective morality, you will find that they will be just as upset as anyone else if you cheat them or lie to them. They will at once be appealing to the very moral law that they previously dismissed; they will try to find some objective reason why you should not lie to or cheat them. Lewis takes this as an indication that everybody, deep down, knows that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that we should live by it.

I had never thought of it in that way before. Of course, we are told by the religious community that morality is something that comes from a source outside of humanity, namely God. I had never considered, though, that the fact that humans even have such a concept as morality-- indeed, that human language contains such words as "should" and "ought"-- is an indication of a supernatural being existing outside of human cognizance. How fascinating.