IF YOU have any doubt that modern society is suffering from a profound disintegration in literacy and mental coherence, I invite you to read this excerpt from The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance and Democracy’s Future by the famous Harvard psychologist and madwoman Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards. The book was published by Cambridge University Press and was presumably edited. If I weren’t already acquainted with the science and code words of victimology, I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what the authors are saying. The audience for this book has a Pavlovian response to words like “patriarchy”and “women.” All the other words are filler.

Liberalism destroys the mind. It creates fissures in cerebral tissue that widen with time.

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  [T]he best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it.  ... [W]hile the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard. He does not judge Christianity calmly as a Confucian would; he does not judge it as he would Confucianism. He cannot by an effort of fancy set the Catholic Church thousands of miles away and judge it as impartially as a Chinese pagoda.                                 ---   G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

NOTICE THE blasé, non-committal way the Mayo Clinic discusses the link between breast cancer and birth control pills at its website:

The effect of birth control pills on breast cancer risk isn’t quite clear. However, some studies do show a link between pill use and breast cancer. Key factors seem to be how many years you take the pill and how recently you last used the pill. In one study, use of birth control pills led to a higher risk of premenopausal breast cancer in women who took the pill for four or more years before having a baby. Other evidence suggests that 10 or more years after you stop taking the pill, your breast cancer risk returns to the same level as if you had never taken birth control pills. (more…)

ROGER writes:

What a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man.

Just to show that a group of people at a crisis doesn’t always act like a vicious mob, years ago I chanced by a crowd that had just formed where a jumper was spotted up on a building. You read how in these circumstances, everyone is chanting “Jump! Jump!” Well I assure you, we were all hollering at him to stop, reconsider, get back in, etc. One woman was yelling that Jesus loved him (I’m a Jew, but I applaud the sentiment). Particularly impressive was the man near me who (at the top of his voice, so he could only get out a few words at a time) bellowed, “YOU’RE TAKING…A PERMANENT…SOLUTION TO… A TEMPORARY…PROBLEM!!” I looked at him and said, “Damn, you’re good!” He replied, “Throw it all up there and hope something sticks.” After a few minutes the police arrived, and chased us away so the experts could handle things. Eventually the poor fellow was talked down. Anyway, I don’t see how we did any harm. It couldn’t have hurt for him to know that we were rooting for him. (more…)

HOLLY WRITES:

If I may be so bold, I am curious about Christianity with regards to your traditionalist views. Do you espouse Christianity because it is the moral and ethical framework that our culture’s traditions were based on, and because an embracing of it is most likely to bring traditionalism back? Or do you truly believe in the very specific details of the faith — i.e. that Jesus was actually, physically, born of a literal virgin, physically died and was resurrected, etc.?

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  HERE is a heart-warming story about a man who has managed to coax would-be suicides off the sandstone cliffs of Sydney, Australia. If this man had been hired to do what he does, which is simply invite those about to jump into his home for tea, it would never have worked. Charity cannot be legislated.

THE ONGOING effort to encourage children and adolescents to see themselves as homosexual, a campaign that seeks the destruction of innocence, will result in more bullying of children not less. That is a prediction based on common sense. When children are encouraged to flaunt homosexual attractions, they are more likely to arouse hostile responses.

Jeanette Victoria writes:

I’m not a deep thinker but it is my impression that the rise in anti-homosexual bullying is a direct result of the pro-homosexual “anti-bullying” campaign in the public schools. We now have childern as young as 12 (or maybe younger) coming out as homosexuals. Who knows what their dysfunction may have been but what with the pro-homosexual propaganda in the public schools children as young as five years old now self-identify as “gay.” (more…)

THIS AD appears in the latest issue of Fortune. The slogan is “Women as half of all workers changes everything.” That’s true. It does change everything, including the hearts and minds of women. The women in the foreground of this ad appear aroused. They appear to be on the verge of an erotic apocalypse, as if they will gaze from the pinnacles of power with moans of ecstasy. Notice how the morning sun rises in the background. They carry severed heads in their handbags.

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JILL F. writes:

Twenty-five years ago I was expecting my first baby and was a preschool teacher in a childcare center. One of my charges was a quiet, introverted little boy, much like I was as a child. During our parent/teacher “conferences” little Bryce’s parents confided in me that they were thinking of keeping him home for two days of the week and only sending him to preschool for three days…and they were so worried that doing this would mean that he would miss out on “enrichment.” I remember feeling so glad that, somehow with my college degree and absolutely no experience in being a parent, I was in a position of authority and that these parents took me seriously enough to listen to me. I told them to keep him home and bake cookies with him and read to him. (more…)

THE iPHONE, with its many applications designed specifically for young children, is wildly popular among toddlers, even to the point of addiction. According to this piece in the New York Times, some parents believe the phone’s games make young children smarter. There also seems to be genuine concern. Hilary Stout writes:

But Jane M. Healy, an educational psychologist in Vail, Colo. said: “Any parent who thinks a spelling program is educational for that age is missing the whole idea of how the preschool brain grows. What children need at that age is whole body movement, the manipulation of lots of objects and not some opaque technology. You’re not learning to read by lining up the letters in the word ‘cat.’ You’re learning to read by understanding language, by listening. Here’s the parent busily doing something and the kid is playing with the electronic device. Where is the language? There is none.” (more…)

KRISTOR writes:

Lawrence Auster’s memories of childhood play brought back a flood of similar memories: playing war with sticks for rifles; practicing for hours to perfect my vocal imitations of machine gun fire; elaborate mining operations modeled on the side of a dirt hump, using toy trucks and construction machines; throwing my knife millions of times at a tree, trying to learn how it was done. But the absolute acme of all my play took place when I was about 11. My father’s side of the family had bought a bunch of land in the Vermont woods, for a family retreat. We all vacationed there for many years together: about 15 cousins and 6 parents, usually joined by my grandparents. We boys used to spend hours pretending to be Indians in the woods, skulking about as quietly as we possibly could and ambushing each other. I made myself a loincloth once, and tried to peel bark off birch trees in useful quantities (it’s pretty tricky). Once the whole troupe set out on a hike to a waterfall deep in the woods. (more…)

LAWRENCE AUSTER writes in response to previous posts, which can be found here, here and here, on the subject of childhood play:

My main toy in my childhood was a set of toy rubber soldiers. There were maybe 50 or 60 soldiers, contained in a round metal tin, enough for entire battles. There was one soldier in the set who unlike the others was not in a fixed position holding a gun, but was standing in a dynamic position, looking like he could be running, or leaping, or climbing, so he became the main character and hero of my various battle pieces. Sometimes he would serve as a Batman-like hero. I would make a paper plane with a string suspended below it, and attach the toy soldier to it, and he would fly with this paper airplane from his headquarters out to battle criminals. 

Another main toy was a set of bricks, with which a friend and I constructed various edifices, particularly an Egyptian tomb. We would designate the toy soldier a pharaoh, whom we named Ralph, and hide him in the tomb, and then we would become archaeologists and dig him out.  (more…)

JAMES P. writes:

You wrote: “That is why elaborate toys are a mistake for children. Elaborate toys, especially mechanical toys, deaden the imagination.”

I have been amazed at how much mileage my three-year-old son can get out of simple objects. For example, a blue plastic stackable cup can be a hat, a water tower, an excavator, a steamroller, a garage, a car wash, and a garbage dumpster. Sometimes he takes the cup and a shovel to the sandpit in preference to an expensive toy backhoe loader. I have resolved to make the most of this before he wants more costly gadgets! (more…)

KAREN I. writes, regarding the previous posts on children’s play:

I’ve been around organized sports for children due to my child being on a baseball team at a young age and I agree that it is a pointless activity for five year olds. It could also cause them to hate the game because they can’t really play it in a fun way. For example, no little kid can hit the ball into the outfield. The outfielders languish in the hot sun as the inning drags on because kids who can’t hit the ball are given about 20 tries so their self-esteem is not damaged. My son baked in the heat one day so much I was worried he’d get heatstroke. He did not return the following season and he does not miss it.  (more…)

TWO MOTHERS of young children are running neck-and-neck for Congress in South Dakota. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, the Democratic incumbent who is a Georgetown law school graduate from a politically prominent family, is the mother of a two-year-old on a waiting list for daycare and Kristi Noem, the appealing state legislator who has managed to raise more than any other Republican Congressional challenger in recent months, has two teenagers and a seven-year-old. Both women promote their mommy-ness in their television ads. In this ad for Sandlin, she  is shown giving Zachary a bath. The Noem children appear in several commercials plugging for Mom. In an age of Mama Grizzlies, motherhood gives an air of down-to-earth authenticity to a candidate. The idea that young children might disqualify a woman from office is so passé no one even brings it up. To the contrary, a woman who can do all things is vital, her young children a political asset.

These two women are cut from different molds. Herseth Sandlin (her maiden name is Herseth) is a career politician and a right-leaning Democrat who supports abortion rights. Antipathy to the current Democrats is so strong in South Dakota that Herseth Sandlin is running behind Noem in recent polls. This is so even though Herseth Sandlin voted against Obamacare. Noem is a state legislator who helps run her family’s ranch, never went to college, likes to hunt and has a history of speeding on country roads. She has vowed to vote for repeal of Obamacare. Noem is articulate and extremely pretty. She comes across as genuine and serious, as if she has come to politics out of the call of duty. (more…)

Hurricane Betsy writes, in response to this post on play:

I sent my son to a pre-school (or whatever they call it) many years ago, one day per week, for two years. The Final Event at the year’s end took place at nearby Provincial Park, a beautiful, natural spot. The two daycare workers (older women) in charge set up 10 play stations in a clearing surrounded by old forest. The 50 children were divided into groups of 10 and would line up in front of each of these artificial activity centers, taking their turn at “playing.” One such play center was throwing a ball into a hoop; another was horseshoes; a little slide; and so on. All involved interaction with Fisher Price plastic play things on demand. After each child would dutifully do his play, he’d be ushered on to the next play station, all in proper military rotation. On and on it went, round and round.

Several times, a few children got fed up with this never-ending, on-command, artificial “play” and tried to run away toward the edge of the nearby bush away from the “We are Now Officially Having Fun” area. I saw all this, and I watched, stupefied, as the daycare workers chased after them and ordered them back into their line to continue their “play.”

Today, my heart aches when I recall this travesty.

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KILROY M. writes:

What Ian wrote  regarding Karen Owen’s attention to male anatomy might be the sort of thing often mocked by women as “male inadequacy fears.” I have heard women joke about this on numerous occasions at work, as if it were odd that men, being no less human than women, would indeed feel such anxiety. Meanwhile, these same women see female body images portrayed in the media as a gross crime against female psychological well-being. Of course the media images are unrealistic and cause emotional harm to women, but if what women say about men and their inflated egos is true, then similar objectification is likely to have greater psychological impact on boys. This will undoubtedly affect the future quality of marriage and the happiness of women. But for a woman to see this requires perceiving the bigger picture from a perspective not mired in “grrrl power” narcissism.  (more…)

PLAY is something a child does to fill up time. That’s the common view. A child is not yet an adult. He does not have the attention, dexterity, or focus to start and complete a task, and so he plays instead. It is not so important what he’s doing while he is playing, as long as he is safe, occupied and his time is filled.

Educational play teaches, but even with this kind of play, a child’s identity revolves more around what he is not (an adult) rather than what he is. Adults reorganize their lives to accomodate this incapacity of children. Both adults and children seem to co-exist in this state of waiting until childhood ends.

In truth, a child is more than an adult-in-waiting. Child’s play forms not just the developing person, but the world at large. The child plays because he is seeking to understand and to know. He wants to create something new. When a child plays, he is an actor in the drama of existence. He chooses. He decides. He loves. He thinks. He is free. Child’s play fertilizes all of society. It awakens adults from the slumber of rationality. For children, the spiritual dimension of existence, with both its good and its evil, is always close at hand. Imagination is the apprehension of the unseen. For a child, there is no gulf between the physical and the moral, the visible and the invisible. All reality is one. Things that are just things for us are filled with meaning.

That is why elaborate toys are a mistake for children. Elaborate toys, especially mechanical toys, deaden the imagination. The world as it is elicits a response from a child. He needs the time and freedom to act upon his inner life. Boredom is a natural and necessary part of play, a phase of exhaustion, rest and preparation. Contrived play suppresses a child’s awareness and stupefies him.

Play is not play when it is regimented, when it is enacted in large groups or impersonal settings. In an institutional setting, the playing child is like a seedling in a drumming downpour. His tender shoots are battered. He is over-stimulated, too busy and distracted to hear the barely audible voices of inspiration within. He may age, but he does not grow. He is prepared for lifelong stupefication.

For a child to play well, he must be loved. There is no play without love. To enable play is an exalted task, an awesome responsibility. The adult who supervises and nurtures the playing child, disciplining and loving him, is far more powerful than the world will ever admit. With balls and dolls, blocks and swords, civilization is forged.

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