spare the rod (and spare me the rest)
[Originally appeared as “Reason vs. the Rod” in the Institute for Humanist Studies Parenting Pages’ Parenting Beyond Belief column, Oct. 17, 2007.]
Nothing focuses the mind like scrutiny. I can get pretty flabby in my thinking when I’m just bouncing ideas against the inside of my skull like Steve McQueen’s baseball in The Great Escape. I’m always a genius in the solitary confinement of my head. But the moment I have to explain myself publicly, I put my ideas on a quick and painful diet.
Since the release of Parenting Beyond Belief, I’ve had to tone up my thoughts on parenting a bit. How can children be good without reference to a god, how can we explain death without heaven—these questions I can answer in my sleep. According to my wife, I often do.
More challenging are the essential questions. What is the essence of secular parenting? How is it fundamentally different from religious parenting? Those are the questions I love the most. They are instant liposuction for my head.
Secular parenting is not motivated primarily by disbelief in God. My religious doubts sprang from thinking for myself, not the other way around, so it’s freethought, not atheism, that’s down there at the root. When someone asks for the foundations of my parenting, I paraphrase the Bertrand Russell quote that begins my book: Good parenting is inspired by love and guided by knowledge. In other words, next to the love of my children, my parenting philosophy is motivated primarily by confidence in reason.
But I’ve wondered lately if my more practical parenting decisions aren’t rooted just as solidly in my confidence in reason. On reflection, they are indeed.
Take one example: I don’t spank my kids. This is interesting to me because religious fundamentalists spank in earnest, citing the biblical injunction “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
There’s something doubly funny about the invocation of that scripture. Funny Thing #1 is that it isn’t scripture. Funny Thing #2 is its actual source—a bawdy poem by Samuel Butler intended to skewer the fundamentalists of his time, the English Puritans:
What med’cine else can cure the fits
Of lovers when they lose their wits?
Love is a boy by poets styl’d;
Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.
Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664)
He’s lampooning the Puritan obsession with sexual abstinence as the cure for passion, using “the rod” in this case as a wickedly funny double entendre, and making sly reference to an actual passage from Proverbs: He that spares his rod hates his son: but he that loves him disciplines him promptly (Proverbs 13:24).
I never tire of hearing sex-averse fundamentalists quoting from a bawdy satire that was aimed at them—and invoking a penis in the bargain. It’s almost as much fun as watching my homophobic aunts happily shouting along with the refrain to “YMCA” as if it’s a song about recreation facilities. But as tempting as it is to refrain from spanking just because fundamentalists spank, I have a better reason. That’s right: confidence in reason.
Let me here confess that I have spanked my kids. It was seldom and long ago, before I had my parental wings. I’m still ashamed to admit it. Every time it represented a failure in my own parenting. Most of all, it demonstrated a twofold failure in my confidence in reason.
Every time a parent raises a hand to a child, that parent is saying you cannot be reasoned with. In the process, the child learns that force is an acceptable substitute for reason, and that Mom and Dad have more confidence in the former than in the latter.
I try to correct behaviors by asking them to recognize and name the problem themselves. Replace “Don’t pull the dog’s ears” with “Why might pulling the dog’s ears be a bad idea?” and you’ve required them to reason, not just to obey. Good practice.
“Every time a parent raises a hand to a child,
that parent is saying you cannot be reasoned with.
In the process, the child learns that force is an acceptable
substitute for reason, and that Mom and Dad have more
confidence in the former than in the latter.”
_______________________________
The second failure is equally damning. Spanking doesn’t work. In fact, it makes things worse. The research—a.k.a. “systematic reason”—is compelling. A meta-analysis of 88 corporal punishment studies compiled by Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff at Columbia University found that ten negative outcomes are strongly correlated with spanking, including a damaged parent-child relationship, increased antisocial and aggressive behaviors, and the increased likelihood that the spanked child will physically abuse her/his own children.
The study revealed just one positive correlation: immediate compliance. That’s all. So if you need your kids to behave in the moment but don’t care much about the rest of the moments in their lives—hey, don’t spare the rod!
Max Ernst, The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child
before Three Witnesses (1926)
Many people think a no-spanking policy is just plain soft on crime. And if spanking were the only way to achieve good behavior, I might just have to spank. I have very little tolerance for kids who are out of control, whether yours or mine. (Just so you know.) Fortunately, many other things get their attention equally well or better, without the nasty side effects. A discipline plan that is both inspired by love and guided by knowledge finds the most loving option that works. Spanking fails on both counts.
Instead, keep a mental list of your kids’ favorite privileges—staying up late, reading time before bed, Xbox, freedom, dessert, whatever. If they really are privileges rather than rights—don’t withhold rights—they can be made contingent on good behavior. Choose well, and the selective granting and withholding of privileges will work better than spanking. Given a choice between a quick spanking or early bedtime for a week—heck, my kids would surely hand me the rod and clench. Too bad—the quick fix is not an option.
The key to any discipline plan, of course, is follow-through. If kids learn that your threats are idle, all is lost.
I hope it’s obvious that all this negative reinforcement should be peppered—no, marinated, overwhelmed—with loving, affirmative, positive reinforcements. Catch them doing well and being good frequently enough, and the need for consequences will plummet. It stands to reason.
In the long run, if our ultimate goal is creating autonomous adults, we should not raise children who are merely disciplined but children who are self-disciplined. So if your parenting, like mine, is proudly grounded in reason, skip the spankings. We all have an investment in a future less saddled by aggression, abuse, and all the other antisocial maladies to which spanking is known to contribute. Reason with them first and foremost. Provide positive reinforcement. And when all that fails—and yes, it sometimes does—dip into the rich assortment of effective non-corporal consequences. Withhold privileges when necessary. Give time-outs, a focused expression of disapproval too often underrated.
And don’t forget the power of simply expressing your disappointment. Your approval means more to them than you may think.
_____________________
RESOURCES
Why Spanking Doesn’t Work (book)
Project NoSpank
For a look at the dark side, check out Darth Dobson’s take on spanking, including this immortal line: “[If spanking doesn’t seem to work,] the spanking may be too gentle. If it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t motivate a child to avoid the consequence next time.”
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serializing my baby
On the Coast to Coast Walk near Patterdale, Cumbria, UK
There’s much good news: PBB hit #588 overall on Amazon Canada last night. My son’s team won a well-played game of Godball on Monday, and, after some struggles and fits, the boy aced his midterm exams and is poised for something close to straight As on his midterm report card. Delaney wants to win “that medal the man got for helping cool the earth down” (Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize). Erin was elected student council representative for her class (the new kid — I’m so proud!). Freelancing work is steady, the weather is brilliant, the trees are changing. We rafted the Chattahoochee River on Sunday. Becca is happy and well, and so am I.
So of course I’m here to whine.
After considering the manuscript of my book Northing at Midlife for a solid year, a publisher I admire and would have loved to work with has decided against acquiring it. They love it, it’s brilliant, the voice is unique and blah blah, the blah is blah blah blah, but “we couldn’t get it the attention it deserves in this crowded market.”
Damn!
While my agent continues to put his shoulder to the wheel for the book, I’ve decided to do my part by both reworking the manuscript and serializing it on this website. In the upper left corner of this page you’ll see a link — currently Northing at Midlife (1 of 88 50) — which will change roughly once a week as I move through the book. I justify it on this site because it includes a distinctly secular take on the midlife contemplation of mortality. If all goes well, someone out there will be the catalyst for getting it noticed by the publishing world before I so much as finish Chapter 2. Might that someone be…you?
deep family
- October 16, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In Parenting, Science, wonder
2
Deena at The Descent of Mills wrote an *exquisite* and wonder-inducing post very (very!) shortly after bringing her daughter Kaia into the world. Those unfortunates out there who find a scientifically-informed worldview ‘cold’ or ‘reductionist’ or ‘blah blah blah,’ be forewarned: this is your worst nightmare. As for the rest of us, prepare for a real privilege:
Introducing Kaia Elizabeth Mills, latest in a long line of carbon-based lifeforms. Kaia traces her ancestry back to an unnamed protoplasmic replicator which lived about four billion years ago. Since inventing sex about 2.5 billion years ago, every member of Kaia’s clan has had not one but two burstingly proud parents.
Among that replicator’s descendants, most remain single-celled. Kaia’s ancestors learned cooperation and have been massively multi-cellular for countless generations. When born, Kaia herself contained 8lb 6oz (3800g) of microscopic cells and was 55.5 cm (22 inches) in length.
One of several branches of the family who have (independently) developed sight, Kaia gazes at the world through deep blue eyes.
Thanks to a relatively recent family development (mammals, 247 million years ago), Kaia spent the first nine months of her development as part of her mother’s body, and so the family have opted to celebrate the moment of her emergence from that body as her “Birth Day” – six minutes past noon on the 28th of September 2007.
Though Kaia’s family are a relatively hairless part of the ape clan, she was born with her hominid cephalus covered in rich dark hair.
(My mind immediately went to my Aunt Marilyn who seriously blew a fuse when my mother, upon the birth of my little brother, said, “He looks like a little monkey!” Marilyn would be spinning in her grave at Deena’s post, if she weren’t still alive.)
I can’t help picturing that Deena is writing from the middle-distant future, from a time when we’ve suddenly awakened to the inspiration all around us and stopped insisting that Story X or Fable Y must be true for life to be endured. The wonder of the real world is such that we’ll never be able to adequately grasp and express it. But ohhh, how fun it is to try!
Kaia’s dad, by the way, is Friendly Humanist Tim Mills. Read Deena’s complete post here, with pix!
[For the origin and meaning of Kaia’s lovely name, visit this page. While you’re there, enjoy the Y-axis on the frequency chart provided, which must surely mean something.]
KID MOVIE REVIEW: Kirikou and the Sorceress
- October 15, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, myths, Parenting, reviews
- 9
A movie review for you this time — and oh my goodness, it’s hard to know where to start.
Desperate for something new for the kids, I happened on a film called Kirikou and the Sorceress in my Netflix recommendations. It had all the earmarks of a well-meaning flop, an animated parable based on African folktales — the kind of thing two Berkeley-educated bleeding-heart parents would make their kids sit through while eating Fair Trade seaweed crackers. But the viewer reviews were through the roof, so I took a shot.
And a flop, well-meaning or otherwise, it is not! Within three minutes we were all captivated by this surprising, funny, and uniquely moving animated film. A little boy walks out of the womb of his Senegalese mother, talking up a storm, and learns that the village into which he’s been born is under the thumb of the evil sorceress Karaba. His uncles have been eaten by the witch, and she has dried up the spring from which the villagers get their water.
[SPOILERS FOLLOW.]
His first question: Why is she so mean and evil? The adults are flummoxed by the very question: Does there have to be a reason?
As the adults alternately fight, cheat, and acquiesce to Karaba, Kirikou instead puts himself to the task of undoing the harm she’s done and of figuring her out. In the process, he learns that Karaba is the African equivalent of the man-behind-the-curtain — that most (not all) of her special effects have naturalistic explanations. She didn’t eat the men, for example, and a hidden animal is drinking up the water. He also learns that she is motivated by literal pain — a thorn — no, not in her paw, but in her spine.
The story also contains further evidence that the Christ story is only one version of a universal archetype, as little Kirikou sacrifices his own life to save the villagers — even those who rejected him — then is “resurrected.” And there is much rejoicing.
Also nice are the ways in which this hero paradigm does not parallel the classic western paragon. He is completely unpretentious, makes mistakes and cheerfully corrects them, changes his mind, and at one point, fatigued from his heroics, curls up in his grandfather’s lap for a rest.
Trust me on this one. 74 minutes. Ages 4-12.
[Pathetic sidenote:
The film’s content of natural nudity enraged some overseas distributors. Some requested airbrushing pants on the fully naked boys and men, as well as bras for the topless women. Michel Ocelot refused; this was African culture, and he wanted to stay faithful to it. In some countries, because of the distribution fights, it wasn’t released commercially until four years later.” (Wikipedia)
Allow me a moment to guess in which country most of this outrage was concentrated.]
Official website, including trailer
Netflix page
La version originale est en français!
the Quéstion of Québec
Il est faux de penser que la religion rend la mort plus acceptable. À preuve, les rites funéraires sont marqués par des moments d’intense tristesse. Et la plupart des croyants ont peur de la mort et font leur possible pour retarder sa venue! Demandez-lui si elle avait peur avant de venir au monde. Elle risque de répondre en riant : «Bien sûr que non, je n’étais pas là!» Expliquez-lui que c’est la même chose pour la personne qui décède. Elle n’est simplement plus là. Il existe plusieurs façons d’apprivoiser la mort. C’en est une.
Accepter sa propre finalité est le défi d’une vie, et ça restera toujours une peur qu’on maîtrise sans jamais la faire disparaître totalement.
M. Dale McGowan, auteur de Parenting Beyond Belief
No no, come back! I haven’t really become sophisticated — except in the pages of the Montréal-based public affairs magazine L’actualité, which carries an interview avec moi as its November cover story.
I was interviewed last month by Louise Gendron, a senior reporter for what is the largest French-language magazine in Canada with over one million readers. A website Q&A (in French) supplements the print interview.
So why the sudden interest among the Québécois about parents non-croyants? It’s a fascinating story. Québec has historically been the most religious of the Canadian provinces. Over 83 percent of the population is Catholic — hardly surprising, since the French permitted only Catholics to settle what was New France back in the day.
But now Québec is considered the least religious province by a considerable margin — and without losing a single Catholic.
Non-religious Catholics, you say? Oui! French Canadians are eager to maintain their unique identity in the midst of the English Protestant neighborhood — and “French” goes with “Catholic” in Canada even more than it does with “fries” in the U.S. Yet educated Catholics — I’ve discussed this elsewhere — are the most likely of all religious identities to leave religious faith entirely. There is, by all accounts, a very short step from educated Catholic to religious nonbeliever.
In recent years, a very large percentage of Catholic Québécois have essentially become “cultural Catholics” — continuing to embrace the identity and traditions of the Church despite having utterly lost their belief. The most striking evidence is a referendum, five years ago, to transition the provincial school system from Catholic to secular. The referendum passed easily, and a five-year transition began in 2003. This year is the last year of that transition — and to the shock and surprise of many, the entire process has taken place with very little uproar.
Until now.
____________________________
“In recent years, a very large percentage of Catholic Québécois
have essentially become “cultural Catholics” — continuing
to embrace the identity and traditions of the Church
despite having utterly lost their belief. “
____________________________
My interview was going to be a good-sized piece, but two weeks ago (in the words of Louise Gendron), “all hell broke loose” in Québec as orthodox Catholic family organizations launched a coordinated media campaign attacking the secularization of the schools. At which point L’actualité decided to make the interview the cover story and enlarge the website Q&A.
Most “cultural Catholic” parents in Québec support the transition but wonder how to explain death, teach morality, encourage wonder — in short, how to raise ethical, caring kids — without religion.
Perhaps you can understand my sudden, intense interest in Québec, and why there is talk — very early talk — of a possible French edition of Parenting Beyond Belief, to be published in (vous avez deviné correctement!) Québec!
The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme–a blogging and scientific experiment
Let me start this post by agreeing with Leslie’s Blog: it made my head hurt to figure it out. To which I say: Woohoo! It hurts so good! Stop it some more!
This is a memetic experiment started by PZ Myers at the unbearably great Pharyngula blog. Bloggers receive the instructions from other bloggers and are permitted to mutate the provided memes within certain guidelines, then pass them on to other bloggers. (That’s the act of reproduction. Don’t watch that part, for decency’s sake.) So here goes:
________________________________
THE RULES
There is a set of questions below, all of the form , “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
Copy the questions. Before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
> You can leave them exactly as is.
> You can delete any one question.
> You can mutate either the genre, medium or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best timetravel novel in SF/ Fantasy is…” to “The best timetravel novel in Westerns is…” , or ”the best timetravel movie in SF/Fantasy is…, or ”The best Romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”
> You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.
> You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.
Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions.
Please do include a link back to the ‘parent’ blog you got them from, (e.g. THE MEMING OF LIFE), to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.
Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers.
Remember though: your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate, and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.
THE LINEAGE
My great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My grandparent is The Flying Trilobite.
My mommy is Leslie’s Blog.
——————————————————————-
THE MUTATING MEME
The Flying Trilobite’s version is first. Leslie’s mutation is next. Mine is last.
The Flying Trilobite says:
*The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is: Hyperion by Dan Simmons.
*The best romantic movie in scientific dystopias is: Gattaca (1997)
*The best sexy song in rock is: #1 Crush by Garbage from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet soundtrack
*The best cult novel in Canadian fiction is: JPod by Douglas Coupland (2006)
——————————————————————–
Leslie’s Blog mutated it to:
*The best timetravel television in SF/Fantasy is: Heroes
*The best romantic movie in scientific dystopia is: THX 1138
*The best sexy song in traditional is: “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social Club
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
THE MEMING OF LIFE’s mutation:
*The best romantic movie in scientific dystopia is: THX 1138
*The best sexy song in traditional is: “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social Club
*The best satirical movie in comedy is: Life of Brian
As for inviting other bloggers to reproduce with me…
I’m curious to know whether an incest taboo exists, or should exist, in memetics as in genetics. To that end, I hereby turn around and stick my log-in my mother:
…and blog-the-casbah with Grampa:
…and pharyngulate my great-granddaddy! (Well it SOUNDS dirty, anyway)
[N.B. I do have a hypothesis about memetic incest: I think it will turn out just as unadvisable as genetic incest. I won’t say why until I see if I’m right…]
Just for sport, let’s invite the neighbors in, making it an eightsome:
Hmm…maybe The Friendly Atheist would be interested in taking in my hard post…
As for the Friendly Humanist— he’s a new dad. Too tired for sex.
Sex, Genes & Evolution does it bloggy style!
As for from Archaea to Zeaxanthol…well, that’s a mouthful. Which doesn’t lend itself to reproduction.
[Ay yi yi! Remember when this was a family-friendly blog?]
What if she comes anyway?
Her name was first spoken in hushed tones among children all over America [over] twenty years ago. Even in Sweden folklorists reported Bloody Mary’s fame. Children of all races and classes told of the hideous demon conjured by chanting her name before a mirror in a pitch-dark room. And when she crashes through the glass, she mutilates children before killing them. Bloody Mary is depicted in Miami kids’ drawings with a red rosary that, the secret stories say, she uses as a weapon, striking children across the face.
from “Myths Over Miami” by Lynda Edwards in the Miami New Times, Sept. 1997
“Dad?”
“Yeah, B?” It was Erin, my nine-year-old, nicknamed “The B.”
“Can you come into the bathroom with me?”
“Why, you need to talk about something?” Our family has an odd habit: one person sits on the edge of the tub and chats up the person on the commode. A gift from my wife’s side.
“No…I’m scared to go in there.”
“It’s the middle of the day, B.”
“I know, but…Daddy, just come in with me.”
“Not ’til you tell me what you’re afraid of.”
She hesitated — then said, “The mirror.”
“What about the mirror?”
She leaned in and whispered, “Bloody Mary.”
I resisted the urge to say, No thanks, I’ll have a Tanqueray and tonic. I knew just what she meant. I was a kid too, you know.
“Desirée at school says if you turn off the lights and turn around three times in front of the mirror with your eyes closed and say Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, then open your eyes — a woman all covered in blood will be looking at you from in the mirror!”
A quiver-chill went through me. I was a kid again. I remember exactly how it felt to hear such ghastly things whispered by a true believer. Their wide-eyed conviction always did a fine job of convincing me as well. But in my day, Bloody Mary came crashing through the glass at you — a detail Erin didn’t seem to need to hear.
“So just go in, leave the light on, and don’t spin around or say the name, B.” I knew how hopelessly lame a thing that was to say. What if she comes anyway? Once the concept is in your head, why, the very thought of Bloody Mary might conjure her up. She might appear just because she knows I know! And she knows I know she knows I know!
“Okay, I’ll go with you. But you know what I’m gonna do.”
“NO DADDY!”
We went eye to eye. “Sweetie, tell me the truth. Do you think Bloody Mary is real, or just a story?”
She looked away. “Just a story.”
“So why be afraid of a story?” Again, I know. Lame! Yes, it’s true, it’s just a story — but ultimately, in our human hearts and reptile brains, such a defense against fear is hopelessly lame.
Her forehead puckered into a plead. “But Daddy, even if she’s just a story — what if she comes anyway?”
See? I remember.
I walked into the bathroom myself and pulled the curtains. She followed, timidly, cupping her hand by her eyes to avoid the vanity mirror. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to, B,” I said. She sat on the lid of the toilet, whimpering. I turned out the lights. Nooooohohohoho, she began to moan, with a bit of fourth-grade melodrama.
I walked to the mirror and began to turn. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary! I opened my eyes. “See?” I knocked on the mirror. “Helloooooo! Hey lady! Look B, nobody’s home!”
Erin peeled her hands from her eyes and squealed with delight. “I’m gonna do it!”
She walked slowly to the mirror, trembling with anticipation. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary…Bloody Mary! She peeked through her fingers.
“Eeeeeheeheeheehee!” she squealed delightedly, jumped up and down, hugged me. But if you believe she was cured — if you think Daddy’s words were really enough to slay the dragon — then you were never a kid. Maybe we said her name too fast, you see, or too slow, or or or maybe we didn’t believe in her enough. Maybe she just can’t be tricked by skeptical dads into showing herself. Erin didn’t say any of these things, but I know she was thinking them. And sure enough, the very next day, Erin was requiring bodyguards in the bathroom again.
I haven’t tried to talk her out of it. To paraphrase Swift, you can’t reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into in the first place. For a while, it’s even a little bit fun to believe such a thing is possible. And thinking I could talk her out of it anyway would be denying an inescapable fact: that when I pulled my own hands from my eyes in that darkened bathroom and saw the mirror, the rationalist dropped back and hid behind me, just for a tiny fraction of a second, as my little boy heart raced at the question that never quite completely goes away:
What if she comes anyway?
[For one of the most hair-raising and powerful essays I’ve ever read, see the full text of Lynda Edwards’ gripping 1997 piece on the Bloody Mary story as told among the homeless children of Miami — complete with illustrations.]
on celebrity
- October 08, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting, values
- 0
(Being the last, and least relevant, in a series of reflections on the 2007 convention of the Atheist Alliance International.)
My arrival at the AAI Convention was marked by a through-the-looking-glass moment as I heard a young woman whisper to a friend: “It’s him!”
I looked up, expecting to see them staring at Dawkins or Harris. Instead, they were staring at mere me. They smiled and held out copies of PBB for me to sign, told me how much they loved the book, etc. It was not entirely unlike me approaching Dawkins or Harris, which made me cringe just a tad. I am not worthy, believe me. Me being on the receiving end of an it’s him calls the whole concept of celebrity into serious question.
The first time I called my kids on the phone from the convention this year, Delaney answered. And she didn’t ask if I had been a fawn-ee; she knows me only as the occasional fawn-er.
And so, when she heard my voice, she immediately asked: “Daddy! Have you talked to The Scientist yet?”
In her mind, the sole reason I had flown 600 miles and spent three days away from her was to see The Scientist — Richard Dawkins. She can be forgiven for thinking this. In retrospect, I’d told her very few things about the convention. I’d said I would talk about my book a bit, I’d be close to the President’s house, and I would see a personal hero of mine, one of the most famous scientists in the world.
“Didn’t you already see him before?” she asked at the time.
Yes, I had. I’ve met Richard Dawkins precisely three times — at the AAI Conventions in 2003, 2005, and 2007. Fortunately, our first meeting in ’03 was captured on videotape, so you can hear what I sounded like as I struggled to express my admiration for his work. You can hear him laughing at me in the clip:
Later in that same convention I mentioned my admiration for Richard’s work to Margaret Downey, who was accompanying him during his visit — and she insisted I join them for lunch. I absolutely refused, feeling I would have nothing to say to him beyond the fawning gestures of fan to star, and that in the attempt (as the video makes clear), I would merely have sprayed him with strained carrots.
I’m completely immune to starstruckedness of the usual kind. I loved Corky the Clown, a local TV station character in the St. Louis of my kidhood. Then Mom took us down to the station during the 1969 Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon…and there was Corky, mugging and clowning for a captive line of petrified children on the sidewalk outside. Anyone who has seen a clown close up will know just how much I longed to put him back in our Magnavox and keep him there. Since then, proximity to the merely famous has never really made my weenie wiggle.
Thanks in part to a three-year job in a hotel in Century City, California during grad school, I rubbed elbows with every imaginable ilk of celebrity and politician of the late 1980s. It was interesting to see them in the flesh, but none of them me swoon. They didn’t move me. In many cases, their celebrity even made me nauseous.
But when I meet someone of genuine accomplishment, someone whose contributions have moved and changed me and millions of others — someone who began as I did, a squinting, squealing, clutching infant, but somehow went on to [insert jawdropping, unprecedented accomplishment here] — well, when I meet someone like that, yes, I swoon.
I remembering packing for that first convention back in 2003, talking to Erin. That was her year to be the five-year-old who watched Daddy pack. “Are you nervous?” she asked. She knew I was giving a speech.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “But not about my speech.” I told her I was going to meet someone who was very important to me, a scientist who wrote some wonderful books. He was one of my heroes, I said, so I was a little nervous to meet him.
“Don’t be nervous, Daddy,” she said. “I betcha he’s very nice.” But then she wanted to know why he was my hero.
What a great question — and a rare opportunity to be explicit about just what impresses and moves me.
“Well,” I said, “I guess the best way I can say it is that he helped me understand the world better.” Just being famous, or just winning an election, or merely singing or acting well can’t possibly inspire in me the same drooling idiocy I feel whenever I extend my hand to shake Richard’s.
There’s irony here. I know, partly through Richard’s work, how cosmically insignificant we are. I know that we are essentially vehicles for the transportation of DNA from generation to generation, and that we are not fallen angels but trousered apes. It seems silly that a fellow speck of dust can reduce me to Miss Teen South Carolina with a beard.
But that actually gets at the point. I’m inspired by the fact that even though we are trousered apes and cosmic specks, we still manage, on occasion, to rise above our situation and achieve something truly wonderful. Speck Einstein saw that space and time are woven together. Speck Gandhi realized that nonviolence could be more powerful than violence. Speck Darwin explained the kinship of all life. That’s the level of astonished joy that paralyzes my mind and tongue when I meet someone like Richard. I am shaking hands with Huxley and Voltaire and Vonnegut and Epicurus. I’m shaking hands with the best in all of us.
I’ve searched for the perfect metaphor of Richard Dawkins at an atheist convention, something that would capture the odd sense that a being from another realm had crossed into our little world. At last, at this convention, it hit me. If you’ve read Flatland, you will instantly understand: we’re polygons, and he is a sphere, floating through our plane. Unable to communicate with it in any meaningful way, we just stand back and ululate in amazement.
For now, my girls are swooning over Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus. That’s fine, of course. They are practicing the fine art of admiration. Connor’s become more judicious, moving on to JK Rowling, Oprah Winfrey and Richard Branson, and for quite admirable reasons.
My kids are also getting a mild version of the lesson from the other end as they enjoy our family’s (very) marginal flirtation with celebrity. I too would have squealed at the chance to walk into Barnes and Noble and find a book with my family’s picture on the back when I was a kid. Hell, I enjoy it now. but I’m also aware that in that moment is a rare opportunity to get all sorts of messages driven home to my kids about what’s important, and what’s not.
for your viewing pleasure
CONNOR ATOP BRAILES HILL, OXFORDSHIRE, OCTOBER 2004
Two new feature pages have been added here at The Meming of Life:
1. TEN WONDERFULL THINGS
I’ve grappled with the problem of how best to present links of interest. Blogrolls are fine, but short ones are incomplete and long ones make my eyes cross.
My solution is TEN WONDERFULL THINGS, an ever-evolving list of links to (always only) ten wonder-full things that relate in some way to the topics explored in the Meming of Life: parenting, the secular life, wonder, fun, sex, death, questions, kids, philosophy, humor, Atlanta, science, England, books, monkeys…things like that. No particular order. Visit often as the list slowly morphs.
2. I’M *SO* GLAD YOU ASKED
Wondering and questioning are the heart and soul of secular parenting. I’M *SO* GLAD YOU ASKED is a blog within a blog listing some of the questions and hypotheses my kids — Connor (now 12), Erin (now 9), and Delaney (now 5) — have come out with over the years. Though this page is primarily a personal family record, I’ve obviously invited visitors in, so I’ll try not to include the kind of cutesy-wootsey questions only a parent could love. I’m including it in the blogworks here because the questioning environment we build for our children is among the most important influences on their intellectual development. I’m endlessly fascinated by these questions and always thinking about how best to encourage them.
So no, in case the title led you to believe this was an FAQ, it is not. These Q’s are not frequently asked. Each tends to appear only once, giving us just that one chance to get it right, one chance to react in a way that nurtures and encourages the next question, and the next.
These are not dimly-remembered paraphrases. Each was written down within three minutes of being said. My hope in creating this page is to capture just a little of the electric thrill I get from being the father of three bighearted and curious kids who’ve never heard of such a thing as an unaskable question.
Click on the links in the upper left of the blog’s home page.
our man in washington: aai 2007
(Being the second in a series of reports on the 2007 convention of the Atheist Alliance International in Washington DC.)
The AAI Convention was such a surreal mix of the ridiculous and the truly sublime that all I can muster is breathless telegraphy in the style of Guinness. The book, not the beer. (And damn Hemant Mehta to HELL for posting his (much more entertaining) breathless telegraphy before I got around to posting mine. He’s young and childless.)
Sam Harris telling a room full of atheists not only to stop calling themselves atheists, but to entirely abandon the concept. Long, good story.
MOST NOT UNDISAPPOINTING MOMENT
Richard Dawkins using most of his speech to debunk the many ways in which he is misrepresented. I’m sure the temptation to clear the air is strong, but (a) he was speaking to the crowd least likely to need convincing, and (b) I want to hear his ideas. This week’s ideas. Perhaps that is just too outrageously what-have-you-done-for-me-lately of me. Yes, now that I think of it, it is. I’m just glad I didn’t type it out loud, then.
BEST DIRECT CONTACT WITH GREATNESS
A nice, long chat with Dr. Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education — see Monday’s post.
BEST MEDIATED CONTACT WITH GREATNESS
Shaking hands with Matthew Chapman, great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, and thereby squeezing Darwin’s own DNA.
MOST IMPRESSIVE ACT OF SELF-CONTROL
Resisting the urge to incorporate Darwin’s DNA eucharistically into my own flesh by licking Chapman’s hand-sweat off my palm. As far as you know.
TOP NIGHTMARE OF CONVENTION
Inadequate facilities. 500 registered, 600 turned away, main ballroom holds only 300. Long story, and, of course, no one’s fault.
MOST INSANELY ARTICULATE NATIVE SPEAKER OF ENGLISH
Sam Harris
MOST INSANELY ARTICULATE SPEAKER OF ENGLISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
PEOPLE I WANTED TO THROTTLE
Wouldn’t you like to know.
PEOPLE I ACTUALLY THROTTLED
Let’s give the statute of limitations some time to work its magic. Then we’ll talk.
MARVELOUS NEW FRIEND AT CONVENTION
Nica Lalli, author of Nothing: Something to Believe In.
MARVELOUS OLD FRIEND AT CONVENTION
Tanqueray and tonic.
PROOF THAT I AM TOO STUPID TO BLOG
I didn’t bring a camera.
PROOF THAT I AM TOO STUPID TO LIVE
Despite the presence, for probably the only time ever, of eleven of the contributors to Parenting Beyond Belief within an area the size of a baseball diamond, I acquired precisely ZERO author signatures in copies of the book. I just don’t think that way. Until afterward.
MOST PLEASANT SURPRISE
Positive media coverage at the national level (click on video screen to right of article.)
PROFUNDITY
(All quotes were transcribed on the fly onto the backs of business cards and napkins
and are therefore unimpeachably accurate.)
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
[Speaking out against dangerous ignorance] is not my living, it’s my life. I’ve no right to betray it. This [religious claim to immunity from challenge] has got to stop. I’m not sure we have very much time.
*
There is only one cure for poverty, and that is the liberation of women. It always works.
*
I don’t wish for God, no. Not remotely. I don’t want to live under an unalterable dictatorship of any kind.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Let [Muslims] proselytize what they believe and I will proselytize what I believe, and let’s see where we end up. That’s so much better than the powerlessness of being a women within that system.
MATTHEW CHAPMAN
For a feminist to still believe in God is like a freed slave continuing to live on a plantation.
*
I think we should advocate for a presidential debate based solely on the subject of science. It’s become essential.
SAM HARRIS
To begin, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary. The year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary God.
*
It just so happens that religion has more than its fair share of bad ideas. And it remains the only system of thought, where the process of maintaining bad ideas in perpetual immunity from criticism is considered a sacred act. This is the act of faith. And I remain convinced that religious faith is one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised.
(Read Harris’ entire speech here.)
HILARITY
MATTHEW CHAPMAN
[on the kind of movie script Hollywood is perpetually in search of:] Horny teen confronts demons, and finally, through faith and violence, returns to being a decent, Christian virgin.
*
I deeply resent standing in security lanes at the airport. I advocate a fast-track lane at airport security for atheists. Whoever heard of an atheist suicide bomber? They should set up a plinth at the start of the line with a wide variety of religious texts. Anyone willing to desecrate the whole lot of them gets breezed right through. “Right this way, my dear atheist! No need to take your shoes off.”
*
If an old lady who opposed contraception while working in the slums of Calcutta can become a saint, I figure I ought to be considered just for doing nothing.
the guilty pleasure that is
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
I tried, while in prep school, to imagine existence in Heaven, which is described as engagement in focused and eternal praise of the Creator. Only slightly less appealing to me are the flames of hell. And both are eternal, with no hope of respite, ever. Now life in North Korea is something close to hell on Earth. According to their constitution, Kim Il-sung, who is dead, is the eternal president. So it is a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. And the people live without much hope of self-expression or joy. But they have one advanatage over the Christian scheme: at least they get to f**king die!
*
[on Mother Teresa] This charlatan, this fraud, this shriveled old bat, as far from the true badge of ‘motherhood’ as it is possible to get…
RICHARD DAWKINS
[Regarding the caption of a photo from The Guardian of three children in a Nativity play] They are referred to as “Mandeep, a Sikh child; Aakifah, a Muslim child; and Sarah, a Christian child” — and no one bats an eye. Just imagine if the caption had read “Mandeep, a Monetarist; Aakifah, a Keynesian; and Sarah, a Marxist.” Ridiculous! Yet not one bit less ridiculous than the other.
(For even more details on the AAI convention, including the full text of all speeches, travel back in time and attend.)
