Raising a Son

Raising a son is clear an easier endeavor than is raising a daughter. However, given the simplicity of the task, the mission is complex: How does one create raise a son who does not lie, cheat, rape, pillage, murder, rob....etc. One only has to read the newpaper to see that males are committing the majority of the more heinous crimes.

I need to take a moment here, before I continue, to add that I have a lovely son and three lovely grandsons.

However, I was watching a documentary the other day about terrorists and how their wives do not always approve of their husband's terrorist activities and urge them to stop. Despite the earnest plea of an earnest wife, not one of the men would change his path. I called my sister, with whom I love to discuss such topics, and asked her why women were not effective in moving men off the path of mayhem. She replied that women, since Lysistrata, had not been successful. Changing a man would be more difficult than trying to build a dam across Niagara falls while the water was running full blast.

There may be, however, another approach to influencing men, and that is the influence that mothers have over their sons. Bachofen assumed, as did others of his time, that a mate who, with “desperate valour,” defended his home and provided for his children, made it possible for a mother to attend to all her children’s needs. Before males became assets, however, a mother had to curb male selfishness through her authority over her sons; mothers had “to tame man’s primordial strength,to guide it into benign channels” (Bachofen, 1861:144, 151). They had to move adult males into a “voluntary recognition of feminine power” (p. 84). Bachofen wrote: "at times the woman has exerted a great influence on men and on the education and culture of nations. The elevation of women over man arouses our amazement most especially by its contradiction to the relation of physical strength. The law of nature confers the scepter of power on the stronger. If it is torn away from him by feebler hands, other aspects of human nature must have been at work, deeper powers must have made their influence felt"(p. 85).

Bachofen pointed out that males as kinsmen and fathers had to learn to restrain their selfishness and use their strength, intellect, and resources for the benefit of vulnerable others. If it is true, however, that human males initially learned to father by watching and copying (being influenced by) their mothers, then maternal care provided the model for paternal care. Bachofen’s claim that the origin of culture owes a great deal to ancestral mothers, needless to say, did not form the foundation of modern social theory. Although Bachofen’s words may seem like little more than wishful thinking, I will be risking little if I build on the argument he raised, as scholars still are uncertain if, when, and/or how humans learn to parent. Biology indeed plays a role in maternal behaviors, genes are expressed, however, in an environment that is, for many primates, social. Among humans, mothering behaviors are learned, taught, supported and reinforced, by and large, through traditional kinship and moral systems (Edel & Edel 1959). Traditions, ancestral strategies coming from the past, are the key to human parenting. They also may be a key to taming male behavior.

I would write more, but my feet are freezing cold...

Creativity

Creativity: it is our mantra, our saint, our god, our joy, our reason to be. We have a big brain and complex wiring in that brain. Clearly, humans can be creative. Yet, what does it mean to be creative? Well, if we look closely, and try to be careful and empirical in our search for definitions, creativity implies change. Creativity means, if it means anything, doing something differently than that something was done before. To me, creativity implies competition, in the sense that you are sure you can do anything better than others, before you, did. You can make things prettier, nicer, more thoughtful, whatever. Clearly it implies a breakdown of traditions.

Last week my sister, Anne, and I were talking about historical periods with a 14 year old girl. The girl mentioned that she had just finished studying the Middle Ages (and thank god for that, she felt) and was moving on to the Renaissance, which she loved. My sister mentioned that she loved the Middle Ages and I offered that the Middle Ages were, to me, much more fascinating than was the Renaissance. The girl looked at us like stink bugs under a microscope: one could see on her face her mind rolling around the thought: how on earth could an adult be so stupid? We let the topic drop then, but due to her arrogance (one has to balance between honoring the confidence it takes for a 14 year old to be so free to think that a 60 year old is stupid, and wanting to let that 16 year old know that there are things out there, Horatio, that she has not thought about. So, over tea, I mentioned that I had written a book in which I praise the Middle Ages and denigate the Renaissance. She just thought I was stupid, but her mother asked why. I tried to explain that for much of human history the function of art had been to promote kinship (or kinship-like) cooperation. This had been its function in the Middle Ages, when all were brought into a metaphorical kinship system under God the father and Mary the Mother and were encouraged to treat one another as if they were close kin: brothers and sisters, children of a common ancestor, God.

Of course I went on and on, but the 14 year old was unmoved, ending the conversation saying that the art of the Middle Ages was, like Egyptian art (with little change), boring. I bit my tongue, briefly, and then said, "well we are brainwashed in this country to think creativity is important, but creativity to some extent is about competition." Why can't people see that cooperation is important; there are costs to creativity, just as there are costs to traditions? The thing about traditions, however, is that they were honed over time. The people who followed them were successful, in that they survived and became ancestors. Why can't we see that many of our social ills are due to our lack of cooperation. We no longer have "boring art" or bowling leagues. We seem to have forgotten how to cooperate in our zeal for creativity.

selfish genes and mindless intellectuals

The other night on CSPAN books, Richard Dawkins, with a dramatic flourish, dismissed religion and associated traditions. While he did not use the word "deluded" when he referred to those who are religious, as did Geoffrey Miller, Dawkins surely would not deny that he felt the term was an appropriate one. A number of issues emerged during this program. First, girlish giggles were heard as echoes to all of his most dramatic points. One has to wonder why. Was this response due to "intellectualism," which is now firmly founded on an anti-religious platform? Or, was it an appreciative response to the "art" of his presentation? Females amused and attracted by a famous and influential male? Although I did not watch the entire program, the ones to ask questions were primarily male. The only female I saw, a "fellow" athiest, praised him with enthusiasm for his bravery. Is it brave to be anti-religious in a crowd of fellow intellects? One has to wonder. The males who did ask questions tried to discredit him on some of his religious points. Dawkins, however, is quite quick and well able to deflect criticism, often through artful sarcasm.

While I am a Darwinian, in the sense that I understand and accept the theory and its implications, what bothers me is the mindlessness of many of our intellectuals--this use of great gifts to obscure and build political positions. It has always bothered me over the years that my most "intellectual" students have supported Modern Darwinian theory, without knowing what it said or implied, because, apparently, it was the position that intellectuals, such as they, should take. One has to wonder why they would support the theory without understanding it. It seems more honorable to me to admit you are accepting a position on faith, which is what these students are actually doing, not based on empirical science or logic.

The question I would have asked is this: Given the general intelligence of all modern humans, how can we account for the fact that religion is ancient and widespread? Does this not suggest that religion might have had an important function? Might this function be empirically identifiable IF we bother to define religion (Dawkins never did) in such a way as to make it possible to study it empirically? Isn't the first step of the scientific method "DEFINE AND STATE"? Shouldn't we consider multiple hypotheses? Science should be made of sterner stuff. Do they really teach students to make such gross overstatements, to rely on sarcasm and art to make a point-- and to do such poor science -- at Britain's best universities?

This experience reminded me of the Samuel Wilberforce-Thomas Huxley debate, using wit, but not logic and science, to discredit an opponent.

"Then the Bishop rose, and in a light scoffing tone, florid and he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock -pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey? On this Mr Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood before us, and spoke those tremendous words - words which no one seems sure of now, nor I think, could remember just after they were spoken, for their meaning took away our breath, though it left us in no doubt as to what it was. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. (see http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/legend.html for more historically-based information).

Truth? What confidence he had. As Wilberforce had pointed out, evidence supporting the theory was, at that time, lacking. Some of his criticism was appropriate: Darwin did not know about genes and it was not until the 1940s that much of this theory was put together. However, the point here is that for such a smart species, we can be pretty dumb and we are particularly dumb when we ignore the scientific method and when we fail to apply skepticism to the ideas we hold most fondly.