Stephen Roney's Blog, page 93

Bad Parenting and Unconditional Love

 

Huckleberry Finn and father.

A model essay in a current school text outlines the two styles of parenting, strict and lenient, with their pros and cons. This seems to be the universal issue, at least since my own childhood and Doctor Benjamin Spock. And the politically correct position is that parents should be lenient. Indeed, spank your child, and you risk losing them to the government.

 This utterly misses the point. I think deliberately; I suspect another of many attempts to avoid all moral questions. Being strict or lenient is a secondary consideration. The obviously more important question is what the rules are, whether they are clear, and whether they are enforced consistently.

I suspect the term “lenient” is being used as a euphemism. It should mean not exacting punishment, or not exacting severe punishment. Instead, I think it now means not having any rules.

The Catholic Church, for example, is a model of lenience. It never exacts any punishment for sin. All that is needed is admission of guilt, and the matter is not mentioned again. Home free. Yet it is commonly condemned as strict.

In other words, “strict” means simply recognizing a difference between right and wrong.

Children need clear direction from their parents. Childhood is their time to learn. They suffer terribly without it. Moral ambiguity is the great danger, and the worst possible form of child abuse. 

If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

If a parent is strict, that is no big problem for a child: they simply do not do the prohibited thing. If a parent is lenient, that’s fine too, so long as the rules are clear. Children naturally want to please their parents, often above all else. But if a parent does not tell you what they want, is unpredictable, erratic, unjust, or encourages things against your conscience, there is an insurmountable problem. You cannot avoid trouble. 

I suspect this very form of abuse is the root of most of what we call mental illness. 

Which is of course growing now by leaps and bounds.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Connecting the Dots

 

The execution of Robespierre

There have been three apparently unrelated bits of surprising news recently. Although they seem to point in opposite directions, I think together they mean the same thing.

First, the reputed impending arrest of Donald Trump.

Second, the exposure of Chinese influence on Canadian elections by the Globe and Mail and Global News; a story that seems to be growing rather than swept under the CBC rug.

Third, an initiative by some members of the South Carolina legislature to impose the death penalty for abortion.

Together, I think they suggest that we are at or near or possibly just beyond an inflection point. Wokeism is dying.

The arrest of Trump shows desperation. By all accounts, it is not legally defensible, and the charges will not hold up in court. The most likely result will be to increase sympathy for Trump. It establishes his bona fides as an enemy of the establishment. It might be deliberately provocative—Trump supporters who come out to protest might be branded as another “insurrection.” But that attack looks risky, as the original “January 6th” alarm seems to have been discredited.

One may suppose it is just one rogue prosecutor out to make a name for himself. But this is a Democratic prosecutor in New York; in that milieu, he is not going to be thinking in a vacuum. Groupthink is the usual situation on the left. He has been at the cocktail parties, and apparently nobody is telling him it’s a bad idea.

It looks like a Hail Mary pass, an act of desperation to prevent Trump’s candidacy. Or even like a case of using the power to the hilt before you lose it. Like those folks who, told the Second Coming was at hand, went out and copulated on the hilltops.

The Canadian media establishment seeming to turn on Trudeau seems to argue in the opposite direction. They are bought and paid for and have until now been reliable in running cover for the Liberals. Now they’re all turning on him at once. The simplest explanation is that they have decided there is no way they can cover for him this time; that he is going down regardless. So the best tactic is to cut their losses, try to recoup some credibility, and perhaps forestall the new government turning off the money taps. They no doubt know more than we of what is coming; they need to get on the winning side.

And then there is the South Carolina bill. It will surely not pass, but it also looks like terrible politics. It seems to confirm the fears of the left about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Abortion has until now been considered a third rail; safest to steer clear of taking a stand. But this is like an open challenge to the woke; a declaration of war.

How do these puzzle pieces fit together?

Most people are not moral. They are concerned only with themselves and their personal welfare. If some group near them raises a cry of injustice, their first instinct will be to shut them up: crush them if necessary. That are being troublesome. If, however, the irate group wields significant power, the instinct is to give them what they want; in hopes they will settle down, and leave the rest of us alone. This is the instinct to appeasement, and it has proven profitable to many interest groups. But if the interest group persists for too long, and makes too many demands, a tipping point is eventually reached, at which it looks safer and less disruptive to declare all-out war than to continue to appease until they come for your own stuff.

This was the calculation that ended Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. Eventually, everyone else realized their only safety was to get rid of Robespierre. This was the French and British calculation when Hitler invaded Poland: if they did not finally take a stand somewhere, Hitler was not going to stop until he was powerful enough to devour England and France.

I think the left has recklessly and greedily pushed things to this tipping point. As a result, not just people on the right, but perhaps the amoral great bulk of the people, see that appeasing them is the greater danger. They can seize your bank account. They can lock you in your home. They can invade your bathrooms. They can mutilate your children. They can arrest and imprison you indefinitely on fake charges. They hate you for your skin colour, and there is nothing you can do about it. 

No surprise if the mood of appeasement and compromise vanishes. No surprise if there’s a rising. No surprise that there is no mood now for half-measures and compromise on abortion. People are already in the streets in France and the Netherlands. 

I only hope bodies hanging from streetlamps and the like will not happen in Canada. It will happen somewhere, but elites in many other places may learn the lesson by example before they too are engulfed. That the media here seems to be turning, and Pierre Poilievre seems to offer an orderly alternative, bodes well for Canada. But the situation is fluid.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Writers, Artists, and Prophets

 

Born with the gift of laughter, and a conviction that the world is mad.

The mask of mental illness, the mask of the fool, is one way to get away with telling the truth. Another is to tell a story. 

This is why Hemingway said the one essential qualification for becoming a writer is to have had a terrible childhood. It gives you the need to tell the truth. The same could be said of the other arts.

That is why we have myths and fairy tales. They are “the stories”; the literal meaning of the word “mythos.” They are the distilled truths of human nature and the world of man, told obliquely. The common run of humankind use the terms “myth” or “fairy tale” as synonyms for “not true”: this is a perfect example of denial. Pay close attention to the stone that is rejected.

Jesus spoke in parables; and warned the rest of us, the good people, not to speak plainly to the mob, not to throw “pearls before swine.” 

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

Or crucify you.

Some people are not people. They are dogs or pigs. Consider the symbolism of these two animals. Dogs go along with social authority, no matter what. Pigs go with their natural urges.

Heartbreakingly, most people read Jesus’s parables in ways the text makes untenable. My father actually believed, or pretended to believe, that the moral of the tale of the prodigal son was that children should never leave the parental home and strike out on their own. He ignored the meaning of the word “prodigal.” Many seem to believe that the tale of the good Samaritan was simply about helping others in need. Of course we should; but we did not need the tale of the Samaritan to know. They ignore the meaning of the word “Samaritan.” And so it goes; the Pharisees can always quote scripture to their benefit. 

The postmodernists, the vanguard of the lost, even insist that no text has any inherent meaning. You are free to have it mean whatever you want. Supreme denial.

On one Facebook group, two hedonists were snickering about stupid Christians playing Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at their funeral. Didn’t they realize that it was a paean to sadomasochistic sex? The “Hallelujah!” refrain expressed orgasm; and the lines “She tied you to a kitchen chair; she broke your throne, she cut your hair” were female domination sex play. 

And then there are the snickerfests at Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed in Moby Dick; or Huck and Jim sharing a raft in Huckleberry Finn. This is pig thought.

I used to despair at this. What is the point of creating art, what is the point of telling parables or fairy tales, since nobody ever seems to understand them anyway? The Pharisees just co-opt it all and pretend they wrote it.

Jesus’s response is “let those who have ears to hear, hear.” One’s real audience is probably a small minority of the literal or physical audience. The rest enjoy a story, as an “escapist” exercise of the imagination, a few hours of not thinking of your problems. Or they like a painting because the colours go well with their other possessions.

A very few will understand; but then they will understand they are not mad, and are not alone.

That is perhaps the best we can do in a fallen world.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Madness and Civilization

 

Why do we fear and shun the “mentally ill”?

Michel Foucault suggests mental illness is historically a replacement for leprosy as a social scapegoat. We need someone to despise, some untouchable caste. 

But still, why the mentally ill? Why not the bicycle riders?

The question came up in relation to a book I am reading with my students, A Separate Peace. A friend of the narrator becomes psychotic in the army, and deserts. He tries to confide in the narrator. The narrator tells him to shut up about his experiences and literally flees. 

This feels typical.

My students initially suggested it was because we fear violence from the “mentally ill.” This is of course a common idea; it is in all the papers. Whenever a violent crime is committed, the perpetrator is said to be mentally ill.

Yet, statistically, this is not true. Statistically, those classed as mentally ill are slightly less likely to be violent than the general population. Far less likely, if you exclude the narcissists and psychopaths. They are, on the other hand, far more likely to be the victims of violence. 

Someone who is genuinely depressed, after all, would not have the strength of purpose to do anyone harm. Someone who is truly psychotic would probably not be able to coordinate his actions well enough to be dangerous. Not sure what is real, he could not coordinate acquiring a lethal weapon, or formulating or executing an effective attack. The most he might do is swing wildly. If you count narcissism and psychopathy as mental illnesses, yes, they are violent, skewing the statistics—but these are the very people who will not appear to any casual observer to be mentally ill. 

Moreover, in the novel we were reading, there was no question of the friend suddenly becoming violent; rather, our narrator assaults him.

So the idea that the “mentally ill” are violent looks like an alibi, not an explanation.

When this explanation seemed not to make sense, and informed by the circumstances in the book, I think my students hit upon the real reason. It is because we fear that a crazy person might tell the truth. Not in full command of themselves, they have slipped the social constraints that generally prevent the rest of us from so doing. Being anywhere around them is therefore frightening to anyone invested in lies.

This works two ways. Anyone honest enough to always tell the truth will be soon declared mentally ill, as an excuse, if a delusional excuse, for refusing to listen to them or accept their claims. And anyone driven by conscience to tell the truth may accept the label, even believe it, as a survival strategy. It is easier to accept that they are insane and just imagining things than that everyone around them are, or that they are all lying.

A thought that often makes me hazy:

Is it them, or am I crazy? 

    -- Albert Einstein 

This seems a sufficient explanation for all mental illness, as much as for the general fear of it. It is the same reason that they crucified Christ. Those who dwell in darkness fear the light.

Solzhenitsyn maintained that, if at any moment one person had determined one morning to speak only the truth, the old Soviet Union would have collapsed in a day. He was unreasonably optimistic. Some of course tried.  They simply were declared insane.

This is the case in any community, from the global culture down to the level of the family or couple; to the extent that they are based on lies, anyone who speaks truth is declared mentally ill. True mental illness is never an individual phenomenon.

And this explains the growth in the incidence of mental illness in recent years. The madder the culture, the more must be martyred to the psychiatric prisons.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Check Your Apple iWatch--Is It 1619?

 

Got any fire water?

One of Xerxes’s correspondents (Xerxes being my anonymous friend the left-wing commentator) writes: “The British importation of enslaved Africans and the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists embedded racism, White Supremacy, and Christian Nationalism as the unholy trinity in the DNA of the United States of America 150 years or more before such a country existed.”

Welcome to the 1619 project and the nonsense peddled now as history.

Leave aside that tiresome and racist cliche “in the DNA.” What strikes me more is anachronism. It reminds me of Whoopi Goldberg insisting that Hitler could not have been a racist because Jews are not black. The term “white supremacy” popped up in print only about 2016. Nobody uses it except the left, as a term of condemnation. If nobody uses it to describe their own beliefs, and the early English settlers in America would not know what it meant, is it sane to use it to describe their opinions? If you are obsessed with skin colour, it does not follow that everybody else is. They were more concerned with your religion than the depth of your tan.

But as to religion, I’ve only started seeing “Christian nationalism” pop up in the last year. Again, it is used only on the left, to tar people they disagree with. I presume it means wanting a nationally established church, as we see in England. Not something anyone advocates even today, in America. Although it also does not seem an especially troublesome idea.

Since many of the early settlers in the US had come to seek religious freedom, because they dissented from the established church in England, calling them “Christian nationalists” is the opposite of the truth.

You might argue that many of them sought to run their governments in the New World on a religious basis. But why is this a problem for anyone? In the context of this new world, anyone who dissented could simply move on and found their own colony on their own principles beyond the next headland. Which is, historically, what they did.

Were they “racists”? The term “race” only developed its modern meaning with Darwin. Before Darwin in The Descent of Man presented man as just another animal, competing with other animals for survival, race was not a thing. Breeding was, true—that is, being well brought up. That had to do with education.

Why did some of the early settlers at least consider it fair game to enslave Africans in the New World? Even though this was against established Christian principles, and would not be tolerated back in England? Not because they thought them an “inferior race.” It was because they considered them uncivilized—not well brought up. They enslaved one another, for one thing. They ate one another, for another. They knew nothing of God or Christian morality or settled agriculture. Buying them, already enslaved, out of Africa was justified as rescuing them from this toxic culture. 

No doubt there was cynicism involved; but having them continue to work as slaves was justified as a process of civilization, which given the continuing influence of parents and cultural traditions was bound to take several generations, and justified as well as supporting the costs of this vast rescue mission. The logic may have been wrong or self-serving, but nobody spoke of “white supremacy.”

The issues in dealing with Native Americans were similarly not racial; neither the Indian nor the settlers thought of themselves or one another in racial terms. In principle and in practice, anyone could join any Indian tribe, be they black, white, blue, Iroquois or Eskimo. The European settlers did not see themselves as a race, but as a community united by religious values. The two groups often intermarried. The issue was that the Indians travelled in gangs like the tribes in the Mad Max movies. The settlers wanted to establish peace and order. They sought to establish governments to protect rights of property and security of the person. Nobody was thinking in terms of “white supremacy.”

We may disagree with their actions, or their attitudes. But we have no right to fight straw men.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Who Else?

 

I think it is clear by now that Joe Biden has for years been in the pay of the CCP in Beijing. I think it is also pretty clear that Justin Trudeau has been in their pay.

I think we are beginning to see a modus operandi here. Why wouldn’t the Chinese government, with their immense sums of cash, buy foreign leaders if sufficiently corrupt and of some strategic value? 

Other leaders whose actions make me suspect they are or were in Chinese pay: Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Roderigo Duterte in the Philippines, Moon Jae-in in South Korea, Jagmeet Singh in Canada.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Stephen Crane on Narcissism

 

Writers are the real psychologists. To make a character live on the page requires a deeper insight into human nature than you will ever see in the writings of Freud, or Jung, or in a therapist’s office.

In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane portrays the secondary character, Wilson, initially as “the loud soldier,” full of boasts and self-assurance. Then he cracks in the face of actual battle and becomes convinced he is going to die. After the battle, having survived, his personality is utterly different. Now he is kind and attentive to others. And brave.

Crane’s narrator ponders the change:

“The youth reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be subjected by him. Apparently, the other had now climbed a peak of wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a very wee thing. And the youth saw that ever after it would be easier to live in his friend's neighborhood.”

This is what growing up is. Adversity teaches us perspective. 

Narcissists are those who do not learn this lesson. They are, for the rest of their lives, “thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. … Swaggering babe[s] accustomed to strut in [their] own dooryard.”

Usually, such people have been spoiled as children. Their parents no doubt believed in “self-esteem” and “unconditional love.” Or favoured this particular child over their other children. They have never faced adversity and seen themselves as a wee thing. They will be demanding towards others for the rest of their lives, and they will crack under pressure.

Wilson was lucky to have been sent to war while still in his teens. This saved him, and perhaps saves many.

Those who experience adversity in childhood, on the other hand, those who are abused by their parents, learn empathy, becoming what is called, in the popular psychology of the self-help groups, “empaths.” They become deeply sensitive to the feelings of others. Often this makes them writers, able to make characters come alive on a page.

This is the opposite of what psychology has been saying for a couple of generations. This is the opposite of psychological received wisdom, as reflected in this exercise from a high school textbook. Everything it says about bullying is the opposite of the truth:

The professionals, following Alice Miller, have been insisting that children grow into narcissists because they are abused. This is no doubt because those who most loudly complain about being hard done by will be the narcissists, because that are always demanding and never satisfied. The truly abused are more likely bullied into silence, and will speak of these things only indirectly or by talking about someone else.

Or writing books.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Larry Elder on the Lies around January 6th

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Thou Shalt Not Mock the Five and Dime

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The five and dime is important to me

The five and dime is where my dreams once were

Until Delia on Cumberland Street.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The velvet paintings of Niagara Falls

The shallow display drawers full of the smell of pink erasers

And bottles of LePage’s mucilage secretly made, we knew, from melting down old horses.

The paint-by-number portraits of Rin Tin Tin

With his tongue out

Showing two shades of pink

The little metal wind-ups from Japan.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The kissing gouramis who will not kiss for me

And live for only a week

Even if I feed them a lot.

The painted turtles from the Mississippi

I think I will take one home and name him Albert

And mother will scream if he gets loose

And dies under the couch.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The tiny tins of chrome paint and paint with gold shimmers

And whitewall stickons

And fire-tongued racing decals

For that real custom car show Roger Barris effect

And Billy Bishop biplane balsa wood and tissue paper makings

To shoot down enemy zeppelins in the attic.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The praying hand Virgin Mary night lights that glow green in the dark

Because they are actually radioactive, like Hiroshima.

And we were not really scared of the dark

Not that much.

Except for if the closet door was open, maybe.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime.

The stereo viewfinders and slide wheels of the Seattle World's Fair

And laughing hyenas in technicolour.

The metal taps we could screw to the bottom of our shoes and walk down the street

Sounding important.

Even if we were littler than the other kids.

And bola bats and big marbles with little pinwheel things inside you could see through 

That were really pretty but you never knew what to do with

And jacks that hurt to step on

That maybe girls did things with

We did not understand.

And groucho glasses with eyebrows attached

That girls thought looked stupid

And Pez dispensers that you bought

Though you didn't like Pez that much

But because Ricky Steinberg had one.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

There once were wonders there

The portraits of unshaven sad-faced clowns

With a broken flower in their hat.

The multicoloured cancelled stamps from Scarborough foreign missions.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime.

Once this was my world.

It was a big world.

I lost something there many days ago.

On that creaking wooden floor.

It rolled under a counter and disappeared

Like the last dime of your allowance.

I fell to my knees

And still I could not find it.

I fall to my knees

And still cannot find it.

Now the five and dime is dark and shut and shuttered.

And I have not found the like of it again.

--Stephen Kent Roney

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Lighting the Gaslamps

 

A fine example of gaslighting this week in CNN's Weekly News Quiz. THis is question eight, a way to test yourself on how well you followed last week's news:

False depictions? The eyes deceive? If so, how do we know they are lying this time, but were telling the truth for the video released by the January 6th committee up to two years ago?

Are they going to get away with this?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.