Back when I was pregnant years ago I watched a movie on TV, Miracle in Rome, based on a story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which had the theme that children are the salvation of their parents. I haven’t watched it again, but the movie left a deep impression, particularly because of the timing.
Children are the salvation of their parents. Frequently we don’t realize this, but it is true.
That is why every day millions of parents around the world work three jobs to send their kids to good schools, mortgage their houses to meet college tuition fees, donate blood and kidneys and blood marrow so their children can survive, stay awake at night taking care of sick kids, and do the millions of tasks that parents willingly do. Any good parent gives their life for their child: as Father Paul Nellis explains,
people like those we all know, people living good lives by doing the little things day after day that good people do: Loving your spouse, trying to be a good parent, doing your duty. We are surrounded by such people but tend to take them for granted. Often, they’re no further away from us than the next room.
And yet we find parents who have completely abrogated their responsibilities: Yesterday Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred mentioned this post The Academy Awards, Pan-Sexuality, Narcissism, & Loneliness, which refers to The Cuddle Puddle of Stuyvesant High School. Few things leave me speechless, but that article did.
A “cuddle puddle” represents a total failure of all the adults that those children interact with on a regular basis. Each and every adult who cares for those kids has failed as a person.
Why?
A “cuddle puddle”, which NY Mag describes as the “social rituals of the pansexual, bi-queer, metroflexible”, i.e., “cool”, kids, is this:
Alair is headed for the section of the second-floor hallway where her friends gather every day during their free tenth period for the “cuddle puddle,” as she calls it. There are girls petting girls and girls petting guys and guys petting guys. She dives into the undulating heap of backpacks and blue jeans and emerges between her two best friends, Jane and Elle, whose names have been changed at their request. They are all 16, juniors at Stuyvesant. Alair slips into Jane’s lap, and Elle reclines next to them, watching, cat-eyed. All three have hooked up with each other. All three have hooked up with boys – sometimes the same boys. But it’s not that they’re gay or bisexual, not exactly. Not always.
Never mind whether they are gay or bisexual. The entire thing is wrong in every way. What about VD? statutory rape laws? Will the “puddle” stop with the first lawsuit?
What’s the difference between that and an orgy? that you go to class afterwards? or doesn’t anyone care? ShrinkWrapped asks,
The article includes all the usual points: These are a small group of kids, many from broken homes, with exaggerated notions of teen angst, pushing the limits; they are closer to the “cool” kids than the nerds; their parents don’t understand them or feel they can control them; worse, some parents condone their behavior because they are ex-Hippies themselves, free spirits who would not want to impose their old fashioned notions of morality on their kids. One marvels at this. Isn’t transmitting notions of moral behavior one of the essential jobs of parents?
Yes, it most certainly is. The ex-Hippies and free spirits, who can not impose “old fashioned notions” on their children are all-accepting; all-accepting of practices that can kill the soul. They, in their all-acceptance of anything but moral behavior, have negated the values of a free society. But they are not alone.
There’s the acceptance in the Western World, in the name of multiculturalism and who knows what else, of societies that indulge into what for most of us is inherently revolting, aberrant degeneracy: the weaponization of children. Children suicide bombers, children witnessing public acts of unspeakable barbarity, children used as shields during gun battles, and the corpses of handicapped children (link in French) used as (warning: graphic images) death porn in a propaganda war.
Only a monster could conceivably do that; only people with a broken moral compass would support those like her. I, like Dr. Sanity, ask,
Why did we sit by and do nothing as this evil that lies like a malignant shadow across the face of the world slowly spread?
As Siggy said, the value system of a free society is much different than the value system of a society that is not free.
Gagdad Bob explains,
At bottom, what the [6th] commandment is emphasizing is that life is sacred – it is of infinite value; therefore, do everything you can to honor and protect it. Clearly, not all cultures do so. Some, as in so much of the Muslim world, worship death, not life. And this inversion is reflected throughout these sick cultures, in that they are “fruitless.” That is, they produce nothing but misery, both to themselves and to others. They produce nothing for the body, i.e., no medicines, no new ways to produce food; they produce nothing for the mind, i.e., no science, no translations of books, no freedom of inquiry; and they produce nothing for the spirit, i.e., only the spiritual shackles of their medieval death cult.
Most soul murders are undoubtedly committed by those who are already so spiritually damaged as to be functionally dead. These undead souls such as a Nasrallah, an Arafat, or an Amahdinejad, speak to us from “the other side,” from the shadow world that is created when the soul has been so damaged that it essentially exits the body, leaving only a human animal in its place. But other demonic energies rush in to fill the void, so that the individual becomes a sort of “antihuman.” At their core, they are filled with unbearable envy toward the living, and the only way they can assuage this envy is to kill and kill plentifully. Life is a reminder of their own walking death, hence, “death to Israel,” that primordial symbol of life: l’chaim.
The undead also cannot help converting their children to their way of non-being. In ways both subtle and profound, they will interact with their children in a pathological manner, causing the children to internalize the same virus that afflicts their parents. Regardless, the virus always goes by the name of “love,” which simply further confuses the child. In the end, they will not be able to distinguish the difference between love and hate or truth and lies, any more than they can distinguish between life and death.
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred (emphasis added):
When we are in a family unit or a community that negates our ‘humaness’ and capacity to grow and reach ever higher, we negate the value of family unit and community, because we negate the value and potential of the individual. If a community cannot value it’s own children, it should come as no surprise that that community will not value the life of others.
One cannot experience the inner peace of real faith in God if one is consumed by hatred of others. Those who claim God is merciful and all powerful, and at the same time, call out for and participate in mayhem and destruction in His name, have been cheated. They know nothing of God, even as understood in their own faith. They are caught in a vortex of denial they have created for themselves and they have painted themselves into a corner, from which most are unlikely to emerge. They cannot conceded the truth that is readily apparent to everyone- in attempting to define and distinguish themselves, they rejected the values of life and embraced the values of death.
Now, they have no where to go. They are indeed, dead souls.
Dead souls who have sacrificed the only thing that could save them: their own children.
Update: Please vote for this article at Real Clear Politics
and don’t forget to visit The Cotillion, where it’s also cross-posted.
I should write a whole post about this topic, but you are absolutely correct. Not for nothing is the savior depicted as a baby, for a baby represents infinite potential. As the psychoanalyst W.R. Bion noted, the baby often embodies the messianic hopes of the parents and of the community at large.
This can cut both ways, for the baby may be used to exalt the parents’ narcissism, or perhaps as a psychological “poultrice” to draw out the pain of the parents. This is often what is behind child abuse.
On the other hand, the baby can be the vehicle of healing, as one relives one’s own innocence and tries to give to the baby what was denied oneself.
The hard part about being a parent is that your heart is located outside your body. But that is also what saves us from our self-enclosed inwardness. To paraphrase the Scarecrow, you can’t know you have a heart until it’s capable of breaking, and it’s those cracks that let the light in.
I should write a whole post about this topic, but you are absolutely correct. Not for nothing is the savior depicted as a baby, for a baby represents infinite potential. As the psychoanalyst W.R. Bion noted, the baby often embodies the messianic hopes of the parents and of the community at large.
This can cut both ways, for the baby may be used to exalt the parents’ narcissism, or perhaps as a psychological “poultrice” to draw out the pain of the parents. This is often what is behind child abuse.
On the other hand, the baby can be the vehicle of healing, as one relives one’s own innocence and tries to give to the baby what was denied oneself.
The hard part about being a parent is that your heart is located outside your body. But that is also what saves us from our self-enclosed inwardness. To paraphrase the Scarecrow, you can’t know you have a heart until it’s capable of breaking, and it’s those cracks that let the light in.
Hi Fausta! I really love this concept – thinking of children as the salvation of their parents is succinctly powerful. I wonder, too, about the role of selfishness in soul-killing. My experience as a parent has certainly taught me that children have a wonderful ability to moderate my selfish tendencies.
My experience as a parent has certainly taught me that children have a wonderful ability to moderate my selfish tendencies
That’s also my experience, too, and the experience of parenting itself clarifies one’s priorities like nothing else can.