Teaching Horses to Fly

I won't go into the Sufi story of Nasruddine and the Caliph of Baghdad's horse, it's easily accessible to anyone with Google (although probably not spelt like that), since I only intend to pinch the title. It's worth reading, though. I decided to steal this particular title (no point in saying "borrow", I'm not giving it back) is that teaching horses to fly sounds to me, as the mother of a recently-four-year-old daughter, very similar in terms of near-impossiblity as producing a reasonable thinking member of human society from the savage little solipsists we give birth to.

It seems vaguely sad that, with 40 still just over the horizon, I should be complaining about "kids of today". Perhaps I'll join a knitting circle, or start collecting other people's cats. However, I look at my daughter and I realise that in almost every conceivable environmental way her upbringing, including nurture - my mother and I have very different ideas of what to do with children - is wildly different from mine. More different, I think, than any two consecutive generations of human beings has ever yet been. I remember black and white TV that stopped at 11.00 whether you wanted to go on watching or not; my daughter watches dedicated kids channels, uses the Net and will soon have her own computer (when I get round to scrounging a moinitor). I was born in (deep breath) 1966, my daughter in 2001; has there ever been such an intense period of change, I wonder? Not of those specific dates, but from mid/late-20th to early 21st century. And things are still changing, faster and faster; desperate people like me struggle to keep up, so that next week our own children won't be regarding us with the sad, pitying look they'd usually give someone who failed the exam for Village Idiot. But however computer-literate (or not) I may have struggled to make myself, I'll never keep up with my daughter once she really takes off. I'm one of the last of the Dodos, and I know it. My daughter lives in a world which was sci-fi when I was growing up; we're going to be very different people.

The question of "What do I teach this clean-slate human mind" is something that, once a parent has asked him or herself, just gets harder to answer and less easy to ignore. I'm not part of any organised religion, so I don't have a convenient ready-made template of Good and Evil to apply to my daughter's growing mind. And the fact that I didn't want to be spoonfed "The Truth" or to apply one inflexible set of rules to every situtation I encountered in this strange, constantly-morphing world we now live in is the reason I'm not part of any organised religion. Nobody seems to want me for very long either - I think I ask too many questions. Still, being a parent means being presented with this strange-coloured (and no matter what their genetic or racial background, they're all a strange colour to begin with) screaming, demanding alimentary tract (because throughput is what it's all about in the early months) not even loosely attached to a thinking brain, and told to turn it into a human being. No-one tells you how; I got better instructions with my last digital camera than I did with my daughter. I envy the sincerely religious at this point; it must be wonderful to truly believe that an all-wise, all-knowing, all-loving being is going to enfold your child as soon as you've dipped it in some water or chopped off a small part of it's anatomy, according to your personal belief structures. From then on in, it's all down to God. I'm not capable of that kind of faith in anything which, however Divinely Inspired (I'm not even going to approach that one, a person's faith is their own business as long as they aren't trying to impose it on me) to begin with, is essentially man-made (and I do mean men, not just humans). It's been a long time in human terms, however it may appear to an Infinite Being, since any of the major religions got any updates. Not many of my neighbours have oxen to covet, but everyone round where I live seems to covet their neighbour's car stereos. And how about "Thou shalt not wear annoying tinny-sounding personal media players in any public place"?

There are parents who, if they ever read this, would say "what a load of old bollocks, kids are kids, we'll get along - we always have". Maybe I do take parenthood a bit uber-seriously, but I suspect that those are the same people who are pretending that nuclear fuel is safe and there's huge undiscovered oil-reserves under Antactica and there's no such thing as oil or water wars, no sir, not on my planet. At least one of the things I'll have to teach my clean-slate proto-human daughter, at some point, is that my generation, and the two preceding, knowingly squandered the Earth's dwindling resources and er, well, sort of left it to the next few generations to sort out, oh yes, there's a Tree in the Natural History Museum..... I know it's presumptuous of me to go about assigning places in history to people and events as if I was Herodotus, but I have a feeling the 20th Century isn't going to go down in Mankind's Greatest Moments. If there's going to be any history, of course; our current behaviour as a species is making it highly improbable that anything evolved enough to hold a pen will be around in 200 years time.

But back to teaching horses to fly. Unlike those fortunate enough to have true faith (and I do think that's a rare and special thing, even if their faith is different from mine), or even just inherited faith, there are people like me who have to start from scratch. Lots of people in this situation either don't understand they have to do this, i.e. impose some kind of ethical structure on these little sociopaths we give birth to (because ethics very rarely evolve spontaneously in human young, in my experience), or expect schools, the Government, TV or whatever to do it for them. None of these things actually work; here on our poor rundown inner-city housing estates, the most dangerous people are the teenagers (and younger) who hang around drinking strong lager wherever they don't get moved on by the Police or hassled by Truant Officers. The younger brothers and sisters, sometimes even the children of these lawless, hopeless kids will be my daughter's peers when she starts school. If I want her to be different, then I'm responsible for making her different. If I don't want her to share the values (or lack of them) of the people around her, then I have to instill something else, something strong enough not to cave in under peer pressure, something which gives her self-worth and self-reliance.

So, I know it's important, and I know it's my job; that's a good start, but I still haven't got a clear idea of what (and basically, this is what we're taking) survival skills I should be teaching my daughter, in this alien world. I want what most parents want for their kids; I want her to be happy, I want her to succeed in whatever she decides to undertake in life (even if I don't like what she decides), and I want, at the moment, to teach her the basic skills she needs to acheive this. So far so straightforward; however, I'd also like my daughter to be a good person. This is another survival thing, by the way; I think people who have kindness and generosity are much happier within themselves, and get along better in the world. Not financially, of course, for that it helps to be ruthless and cunning and unscrupulous, but in terms of emotional and personal fulfilment. I've never yet heard of anyone, on their deathbed, asking for their nearest and dearest stocks and shares to be with them (although I'm not disputing that some people might).

This is where the religious have people like me over a barrel. I don't have a pattern-book for a "Good" person; there's nothing she should or shouldn't eat/wear/expose that I believe will spiritually benefit her, no particular time of the day I think she'd be a better person for meditating or praying at, no rules of conduct not already covered by common law or social conventions that I believe she might please a Deity by following. But anyone can live within the law, millions if not billions do, without being necessarily a "good" person. This is where the sincerity of religious belief becomes important, by the way; a true Christian, to my certain experiential knowledge, will actually give the trainers on his feet to a beggar who is barefoot. An "Easter-Christian" can be as big, if not bigger, a bastard than a Satanist. At least with the Satanist you'd have advance warning; Satanists, whatever their PR people might say, are self-dedicated to Evil Incarnate, and it probably says so on their card. People pretending to be kind, sincere, loving, generous and honest are far more dangerous.

I think, however, that age 4 and a bit, my horse is finally getting off the ground. She's intelligent, but that's a part of their development that you can, with supervision, trust to a decent school; I've been more concerned with her emotional life than her alphabet, and it seems to be paying off. She's a peaceable child; if I have to tell off one of her friends who visit, she always defends them; when argues she'll stomp in, fists on her hips and say "Be kind to each other!" She never gets involved in Nasty Incidents; as I mentioned, the average human child is (I honestly believe) a natural born sociopath, and they do the most horrendous things. When mine was about 18 months, a friend with a daughter about the same age came round; we were sitting drinking coffee, and the two small persons seemed to be getting on okay. Then, from my daughter's bedroom, came one of the most blood-curdling screams I've heard outside of a movie theatre. My friend's daughter had bitten mine in the face, to the point of drawing blood, for no apparent reason at all. All very embarrassing for my friend (she never came round again, in fact - she'd warned me her daughter could be "a bit violent sometimes" but I'd had hair-pulling in mind, not cannibalism), shocking for my girl who'd never been exposed to anything more violent than a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and highly unpleasant for me for about two weeks; one side of my daughter's face was swollen up exactly as if someone had punched her, and if looks could kill almost everyone I pushed the stroller past would have been guilty of murder.

Given the material we have to work with, and the complete lack of guidance most of us have, it's not so surprising that "They fuck you up/Your Mum and Dad,/They might not mean to/But they do" should ring such a chord. It doesn't matter if you read all the self-help manuals and nurture theories going, ultimately you're on your own because each child is different and each parent is different; in fact, trying to apply currently-trendy child-rearing techniques is probably the biggest mistake we could make. I read lots, when I was pregnant (the Whale-Song tapes didn't work; she used to kick me in the kidneys), but in the face of reality all the theory evaporated like campaign promises after an election. A for-instance; in spite of my previously-worked-out strategy, my daughter didn't like hand-prepared lavender and camomile aromatherapy massages; far from lulling her into a soothing sleep, they left her red-faced and bawling, not to mention slippery. And so on and so on, through virtually every preconceived idea I had; you can pick up a few tips on how to calm down tantrums, a couple of bits and bobs might work with your own kid, but mostly parents have to play it by ear. And nowhere, unless you've bought yourself a specifically-religious book on parenthood, do we approach the sticky subjects of moral or spiritual formation. Plenty about how to teach them to eat with a fork and develop hand-eye coordination, nothing on how to stop them from growing up to be Jeffrey Dahmer.

Unless I stumble over, say, a cure for leprosy growing on the old tomatoes in the back of my fridge, being a parent will be the single most important thing I do in my life. I'm fine with that; it's probably the most important thing the Mahatma Ghandi's mother did in her life (and Adolf Hitler's mum, too, lest we forget). How, given the world as it it and not as we'd all like it to be, am I going to guide my little proto-human safely through drugs (everywhere), underage sex (virtually unstoppable if they decide to do it), in short doing all the things I did? Hash has become as available and as socially acceptable (if not more so) than alcohol; I smoke myself, and I'd certainly rather she skinned up a doobie (with herbal tobacco, of course) than got stinking drunk. I accept that she'll experiment; I did, so it would be a bit hypocritical of me to cry woe too much. Maybe my experience will be useful, maybe not; I do try to avoid the "When I was your age...", especially since I was such a waste of space and a perfectly good education as a teenager. With a bit of luck, she'll rebel against me and all my works, in the traditionally-approved Teenage manner, and spontaneously reject my laissez-faire attitude to pot consumption - then I'll have nothing more to do than polish her hooves and wave goodbye as she heads for the stratosphere.

Acts of God

I'm unfamiliar with both the etiquette and the mechanics of using links to other people's blogs (do I write and ask permission? And if so, why? Isn't getting to the widest audience possible the whole point? I think I've provided you (at the end of this instead of at the beginning - sorry about that, I expect I'll sort it out next time) with a link to a story I personally found so disturbing yet so worthy of consideration that I'd like to pass it on. Briefly, for those who don't want to or can't be bothered to scrolldown and use the link (or in case it doesn't work), it's a story of Young White Christian Boys and Gay Bashing. There were several ironies in this particular case, such as both assailants and victim, previously unknown to each other, being from the same ethnic and religious minorities; the linked article is excellent in its grasp of the moral stance of both agressors and victim, and how their similarities were more marked than their differences, the main (perhaps only) one being the sexuality of the victim.

Whatever one's personal religious or philosophical persuasions, the recent death of Jean-Paul II has provided us with an occasion, perhaps even an obligation, to consider the place of religion in politics and society, and as an influence on human behaviour. I knew there were a lot of Catholics; I didn't know that there were a billion of them, though. I didn't know that 1/6 of the world's population at least nominally subscribed to the idea that the Pope is Infallible. I think that history will certainly accord a special place for this man, whom I believe to have been honest and sincere in his devotion to his faith; he's certainly been more politically active on the world stage than most of his immediate predecessors, yet his legacy is mixed. I think it's probably true that because Jean-Paul II was Polish and had lived and preached under the Soviet-controlled regime in Cold War Poland, he had a deeper understanding of, sympathy for and (crucially) influence over the collapsing Soviet Bloc. At that point in history, his Papacy became part of the evolution of post-Communist politics, when a lesser Pontiff, or a less influential and committed Pontiff, might have allowed the Church to be come sidelined and irrelevant.

However, it's hard to deny that Jean-Paul II's adherence to the "condom" question has caused enormous loss of life and suffering in Africa, where many of the Church's most fervent and (crucially) conservative (both priests and lay persons) members can be found. More progressive thinkers are mostly to be found in the developed Western world, whose "flocks" are vastly more sophisticated and liable to pick which parts of their religion suit them and dispense with what's inconvenient. Sure, if the Pope is right, when it comes to the Pearly Gates the Africans will probably get free passes while the rich Easter-Christians who sometimes ate Dover Sole on Fridays will be sweating it out in Purgatory (and I'll be roasting, but that's another matter). It doesn't change the fact that millions of people, in some places whole generations, are dying miserably in poverty, squalor and pain because they sincerely believe that if they put a bit of rubber over their dick they'll go to Hell.

So back to the link and the story I mentioned above. These young men were all (apart from the victim, who's father was one and who had rejected his son because of his sexuality) Evangelical Christians, and their main defence, if you can dignify it with the name, was that homosexuality is an "abomination" according to the Bible and it was "against their religion". I believe the reference comes in one of Paul's Epistles in the New Testament, but it doesn't mention anything about slashing them so badly with smashed bottles they look like "sides of beef". Even in the Old Testament, where Sodom and Gomorrah were thoroughly chastised, it was God who actually did the work; in fact, "Vengeance is Mine", Sayeth the Lord. He seemed to make quite a point of that.

"God made me do it" has been the standard fallback of loonies, psychos and would-be Presidential assassins for as long as there's been a God/Gods. I don't mean to devalue the millions of people who do actually do conscious good because of their faith, whatever it may be, but when it comes to atrocities, real atrocities, then almost as many seem to be of religious as of good old common-and-garden greed (oil, water, raw materials, slaves - don't kid yourselves, they just call it "people trafficking" nowadays). It seems, if God really does deliver the odd personal message, the message is always something pretty nasty or - and maybe this should be looked at as a possibility - a message from the Almighty makes you insane. It's true, you do occasionally read about someone who donates all his/her wordly goods to a Church, but the actual money tends, sadly, to end up in the pockets of people like Jimmy Swaggart. Such misguided faith is more likely to produce feelings of pity rather than a desire to emulate.

But given the massive public grief at the death of Jean-Paul II, much of which I know to be real and deeply sincere, and the Bush administration's tactics in the US (and to a lesser extent the Conservative Party in the upcoming British General Election), which shamelessly evokes the "dark side" of Christianity (intolerance and religious hatred), maybe Western liberal thinkers should give a bit more cerebral time to religion. Because you live in an apartment in a city with water coming out of a tap and several direct connections to the rest of the world at your disposal, because you're politically well-informed and read the right books and watch the right films, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of organised religions as faintly medeival and not worth taking seriously. Anything that 1 billion people believe in, whether it's the Catholic Church or a Flat Earth, has to be taken seriously. And I'm not comparing the two in terms of relevance, I'm just making a point. Anything that leads three young men to launch an unprovoked (unless you have a real dislike of white trousers) attack on a complete stranger deserves examination.

I'm not going to get into rivalry or even downright hatred between different faiths; not because I don't have anything to say, because it's a constant interest (and horror) of mine, but because I'd rather take it as a seperate subject. The kind of hatred that motivates atrocities like Darfur, the India/Pakistan arms race, or the Twin Towers deserves to be treated as a thing apart. And I bet you never read such a list in that order before, either. For now, it's enough to look at the metaphorical beam in our own eye; what are "we", in the sense of our societies, teaching our young people by way of morals, that they end up slicing up people who don't share their beliefs? Or shooting their classmates? Or getting pregnant at 13?

Lots of different issues here, but ultimately they come down, I think, to the fact that a lot of us are living in a post-Christian era. Certainly, there are plenty of Christians, especially in America, but exactly what brand of Christianity are they pushing? The New Testament brand, with it's insistence on love and tolerance, or the Old Testament fire and brimstone variety? And if we aren't Christians and have children, what kind of moral framework are we laying down for our children instead? Because the fact that I, as an adult, have opted out of organised religion means, to me, that I have to replace this in my daughter's life with something, a code of ethics which I believe to be right and which involves her as a human being with all her faults and her gifts. It's a big job, being a parent, and I think we're beginning to get a sense now, as a society, of what happens when we abandon the "old" moral values and don't replace them with something approaching a sense of right and wrong (or acceptable/unacceptable) in our children.

I live on a large, poor housing estate, and the scariest thing I ever encounter round here is a bunch of early teens with a few cans of lager inside them. If you follow the link, you'll find something scarier, but it boils down to the same; something is very wrong with what we're teaching our kids, or not teaching our kids, and if we expect to have a society where you really can walk down the street carrying a whie stick and not get mugged, we ought to be addressing this problem. Whether Gods tells us to or not.

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