Ruminations on the Ontology of Morslity

by Steven Sills

  Chapter 18

  Less than Objective Admonishments

  I will spare you of most dates and locations for this inconsequential life, that like all nondescript life will, at its passing, through expedited cremation or the slow natural decomposition of an interred corpse (skeletal rocks eventually eroding as well), be proven unequivocally as nothing greater than a felled tree stripped into the lightness of toilet paper, to which in the wiping and flushing down to waterways is easily transformed into free molecules, atoms, and particles once again. Such is the use of tens of thousands of trees daily, and such is the use of the small levers of men in this unstoppable, out of control mechanical monstrosity called society, this impetus of all men over the centuries that has taken a life unto itself, commandeering men, extruding them here and there as the need arises.

  That is not to say that each nondescript individual is not unique, even if personality is largely an environmental adaptation for survival as attested by observation of any group of insects of a particular area or the coarseness and guffaws of a menial laborer’s language when speaking in Thai. But just as gold would cease to have any value whatsoever if it were shimmering gravel at our footsteps, or even more, were so light and plentiful that it flew around as dust, human life, unless it can mold itself into some commercial function (of course upon retirement stripped even of this pretense of significance in the commercial realm), is much the same. The inherent value of human life is nullified by the superfluous fecundity of reproduced beings, and, except in rare cases, for having absolutely no value to later generations let alone later species to which man will be just a transitional link.

  As I said before, most inanely, St. Augustine laments having once been a crying and demanding infant, as though this “selfishness”87—not that he would have remembered it—had no bearing on his or any infant’s, early survival, or that in seeing the gentle demeanor that a smile elicits from a caregiver, that an infant, once smiling exclusively from pleasure, does not thereafter learn to manipulate others with this artifice. St. Augustine seems to have thought of infancy, and his own infancy in particular, with its emotive and vehement expression of discontent when lacking language, and hence, the means to employ it in less passionate, objectified, and socially acceptable utterances felicitous to the situation to manipulate a desired outcome without the risk of alienating the listener88, as the quintessence of original sin. The “selfishness” of infancy was repugnant to him as it was oblivious of a rational principle which, of course, an infant would not possess when lacking the substance of language and for some time not even independent enough to reposition himself comfortably in a given spot, reliant on a caretaker for pleasures and alleviating discomfort in all things. In his boyhood choosing, as he did, to take peaches one time from a neighbor’s yard in the categorical pleasure, the thrill of uninhibited arrogation as one wishes, a restive and a more vile act with none of the neediness or covetousness of thievery, St. Augustine says that in this instance he rejected the rational principle89; but as there was a rational principle to reject, the reader is led to believe that boyhood, in his perspective, is better than infancy even if it is sometimes more deliberate in its recalcitrance.

  Aristotle also believed children to be selfish and insatiable pleasure seekers, which as celebrants of the novelty of all of life pouring into their orifices during those first years (or at least the electromagnetic stimuli of life, the closest any human can penetrate into external “life”-- a fact which later can impel a man toward the subconscious, meandering inward in subconscious and conscious border crossings to new and original paths of self within this sacred space), and not sensible enough to discriminate the good and bad of pleasures imbibed by the senses90, of course they would be. But then successful child rearing would, it seems to me, involve quashing the hedonist and reaffirming the curiosity of the celebrant, by encouraging children to think of true pleasure as a complement of a pedagogical or beneficent aim, as Aristotle seems to recommend for his students91, and that pleasure unto itself when not linked to something higher, as evanescent and vacuous, like the cloyed sensation of eating of too many chocolates.

  Like John Locke reiterating that the human animal, no different than any other, concocts an artificial sense of family from emotional bonding for that one purpose which is to facilitate a child’s independence, and has no greater or longer lasting bond than this, even though gratitude and respect to ones parents, when warranted, and not obedience, should be maintained throughout life92, Eric Erikson states that successful child rearing to the point of the child’s independence in late teenage years is one in which parents act as safety nets for children as they stumble and fall when making independent movements away from family,93 an eminently wise suggestion, but still when the right pleasures, the right quantity, and for the right purpose is difficult to determine, let alone do,94 to just let children pursue pleasures as their caprices dictate, and support them when having to endure the negative consequences of their actions, not that there always are immediate ramifications either negative or positive, does seem a somewhat errant form of parenthood the best I understand parenthood when not a parent myself. After all, pleasurable activities that might seem good to a child can be disadvantageous or even detrimental for others, and what is pleasurable short term might militate against constructive accomplishments that foster self-esteem over many years (i.e. when dating, falling in love, and forgetting about one’s educational pursuits that embed knowledge and skills which link one to meaningful employment and contributing to the world in one’s nominal way beyond merely the personal domain). Romantic love is dependent on maintaining a certain dopamine and serotonin high and an inflated roseate notion of an individual, but this always diminishes in the changes of one’s biochemistry, moods, perceptions of the recent past, whether or not one has solidifying relationships with others predicated mutual experiences and similarity of perspectives, and the mundane routines of existence), and when teenagers trust in it inordinately, “living” a spurious sensation often entails superseding a plethora of other experiences for this one obsession. Discerning the worth of activities and whether they are salubrious long-term as opposed to the hungers, pleasures, and pains, and their intensities that seem real at a given moment is never easy for anyone even when having developed acumen from a life time of experiences. Thus, parents must guide from plausibility, and not dictate when all future outcomes are unknown.

  Unfortunately, potential parents rarely prepare themselves for this important task by learning about childhood development or even familiarizing themselves with what other parents have experienced through parental guides; instead, they trust in their feelings, those instincts, prejudices, fears, pleasures, interests, and habits, and mimic adult/child interactions like that which they experienced from their own parents, each playing an old and familiar record in a new way as though this, with the limited repertoire of negatives and positives therein, was in use everywhere. Tests are taken to prove competence before granting licenses to do even basic activities like driving a car, and yet, as licensing is not possible for parenthood, society ignores all other means to secure parental competence. It refuses to mandate even basic child development classes for every expecting parent as though individuals were free to be ignorant of such matters.

  Humans are creatures of reciprocity as they are dependent on each other; so if free to be ignorant of the foundations of family and society, are they then free to be unrestrained savages following every unrepressed emotion, making violence permissible at all times as government becomes obsolete; free to be ignorant of how to read and write; free to openly brandish guns in public (well, only in America as it is enshrined in their constitution just as large minority groups commandeering the streets for a half a year of protests in the name of the people is democracy here); free to abort fetuses from any whim without proper deliberation; free to keep the children they bring into the world without delibe
rating on whether they might have better homes if adopted elsewhere; free to horde a savings and retire from life, making a man something other than the creature of reciprocity that he is95); or conversely, that the free enterprise system should freely determine the merit and dispensability of a man based upon a commercial aim96 as though it were not incumbent on government to see that even the least employable are granted stipends from which to live on and are given some menial job as employment, which, if nothing else, will reconnect such individuals to their fellow men and diminish criminal activity. Obviously, even for the best and most knowledgeable of parents it can all go awry with a restive child who becomes obsessed by satiation of pleasures regardless of whether they are at all salubrious to long term growth as an individual and member of society, but that does not excuse parents from obtaining knowledge of childhood development or learning about parenting from other experiences, which considerably lessens the risk of major untoward occurrences.

  Paradoxically, to even broach such a past life philosophically, and it has to be broached as that which is personal is the substance for all things believed even for one so disconnected to it as I am, he steps into personal landmines of active, painful, and volcanic memory and the remembrance of the novelty of being alive exploring body, mind, and environment for the first time, and as he does so there is a tendency to feel the need to save oneself from the barrage of memory and to take umbrage against the untoward events and their human agents, forgetful of himself as having been one of those agents, and in feeling, not understanding, equating it as happening now; but I shall try to stay on the outskirts of this explosive mire for a time and save us both from a litany of grievances of outright cowardly recriminations against family members and for all things that have passed away .

  One way of doing so is to acknowledge that family, like falling in love, a chemically induced psychological dependency which mass media misrepresents as a virtue, is not a rarefied ideal but just one more sublunary experience. Even at the early stage of the two newlyweds who are about to bring family into fruition, they do so in the emotion laden behaviors of lust, escape from the negative experiences of previous family, hope of creating something new, expectations of financial security, material acquisition, and the yearning for a happier existence. Marital bonds for better or for worse would never occur if the respective parties expected worse outcomes for themselves in the union. As time goes on, and ideals become as deciduous as leaves on sullied planes, there is always a degree of bitterness: wives toward husbands for not having more active roles in taking care of the children; and husbands toward wives for receiving the pleasure of the human dolls who at all times puncture financial aggrandizement in a life that seems to require a cache of funds to stave off a large degree of life’s calamities. No, philosophy is simply a means of not losing oneself completely in the chaos of personal savagery, or one would be in those jungles, blind and groping without the sense of touch; and as for this chapter, it has been my means of temporizing to avoid me and little else.