[lit-ideas] Re: Good Ole' Missouri
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 08:21:35 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 5/18/2006 4:03:31 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Good Ole' Missouri
>
> AA:
> >>Sorry, John, living with unmarried parents, who often are uncommitted
to
> >>each other, is not good for children. <<
>
> What's not good for children? Living with unmarried parents or living
with
> people who are uncommitted to each other?
People who are not committed to each other. If you have a child, you
commit to that kid for 18 years and then kick him/her out of the house.
People who live together have a lower marriage survival rate than people
who marry and then live together. The fairly accepted explanation for this
phenomenon is that people who live together want to see what's in it for
them. They are not committed to the marriage. A marriage is the soil
children grow in. I'll let you fill in the illustration of what soil and
plantings look like.
I know unmarried people who are
> very committed to each other. I know married people who are basically
> strangers to each other. Marriage seems to me to have nothing to do with
> anything but social, legal questions. There are many good and valid
reasons
> why people deeply committed to one another don't or can't get married.
> Surely you don't equate certain social mores and legalities with love and
> commitment to children.
>
Someone who goes through the trouble of getting legal and getting unlegal
has a better chance of not walking out the door on a whim, often through a
revolving door.
>
> >>Children bond easily and then are torn away when the relationship ends
and
> >>moves on to someone else.<<
>
> So they should live in emotionally cold, angry, hostile, sometime violent
> environments? I assume you don't mean this. I assume you mean that we
> should all be perfect and there should be no unhappy relationships. Amen.
>
I mean people should stop with the stars in their eyes that children are
little dolls that will do their bidding. Parenting should be taught in
high school so it doesn't take people by surprise.
>
> >>Children also need a mom and a dad (mentally stable obviously, which a
lot
> >>of parents aren't).<<
>
> Mentally stable. Emotionally stable. Financially stable. Socially
stable.
> Stability, that's what children need.
Yes. See above.
But even the ground beneath your feet
> is unstable and guess what, children almost always survive, often even
> thrive, in the most adverse of circumstances. I personally know some
people
> who are loving, generous, caring people whose childhoods were total
hells.
Yes they are, but they carry demons they wouldn't otherwise carry, by
definition if their childhoods were hell. If they get past the hell, they
can be better people. Unfortunately, most people don't even look at their
childhood hells let alone get past them.
> I know others who didn't survive so well. I grew up in an immensely
loving
> environment, yet I'm a spoiled, mocking, mean, snide, cynical, dismissive
> bastard -- I'm certainly as cynical of humanity as you are, except that
I
> celebrate our climb out of the mud even as I confess to loving the mud.
I
> feel sorry as hell for my kids, the fruit of my loins, but so far they
seem
> to be loving, kind, prospering, generous people and parents, fools that
they
> are.
>
>
I don't know Mike. I don't want to talk about your situation personally. I
do remember that you said you had to get the instrument your mother hit you
with. I'm extremely sorry about that. That means we need to define
"loving" and "good". Did you ever have a car that you loved? Did you hit
it or beat it when it didn't run? I'm not criticizing your parents. They
went by the established model. They did what was "normal" and expected and
without a doubt what had been done to them. That's a model that needs to
be changed.
> >>Gay couples don't care about a child's need for two (stable) parents,
only
> >>their own "need" to have a child.<<
>
> I assume what you mean here is that gay couples don't care about a
child's
> need for two (stable) parents OF THE OPPOSITE SEX.
No, they don't care about the child, period. All children need a mom and a
dad. Boys need a dad to show them how to be a man, and they need a mom to
learn how to relate to a woman. Girls need a mom to show them how to be a
woman, and a dad to learn how to relate to men.
I don't know how you
> know what gay couples care about, and it's not important except that you
> seem to know absolutely nothing about gays or gayness or gay relationship
> stability, but I'll let that pass. Let's just focus on the child. Most
of
> all a child needs love,
Love needs to be defined. It's a meaningless word.
emotional and material support, stability, and lots
> of other things like someone who knows how to tie various knots to pass
the
> first test in Scouting -- which my stupid father didn't know and didn't
even
> care to learn, no wonder I'm a failure. And yet, had I been raised by a
> couple of gay guys, I probably wouldn't be stuck doing air conditioning
> work, I'd be draping lamp shades with shawls ending in unimaginably
> intricate, beautiful knots and making ten times what I'm making now and
> enjoying it. God, I wish I were gay or at least raised by gays. But
what
> if I'd been raised by lesbians? Would I have turned out a sensitive New
Age
> guy? or a pussy-whipped whiner? or their impossible dream -- which I am
> forbidden to see. It doesn't matter. I would have turned out, as we all
> do, the product of sky and earth, sun and moon, a tugging sea and a
million
> years of enormously complex human history, rich beyond telling, evil
beyond
> telling, loving beyond telling, a chance toss of DNA. Certainly our
social
> environment plays an important part in shaping us, but only a part, and
an
> undeterminable part. Everything is beyond foretelling. Will we grow up
to
> embrace Islamists, Mexican illegal immigrants, lesbians and gays and
even,
> God forbid, conservatives? Or will we want to kill them all? Everyone
not
> like me offends me to some extent, I confess. But as the
humanity-rejoicing
> Joyce reminded us through Mulligan: "Look at the sea, what does it care
> about offenses?" Chuck your theories, Andy, "the Sassenach wants his
> rashers". It's the belly, not the mind, the belly, not the soul, not the
> psyche, it's the belly that drives us all. Concentrate on the belly if
you
> want to improve humanity. A full belly looks at a rose and says How
> beautiful, an empty belly eats it. Look to the belly.
>
>
Sexuality seems to be some combination of inborn-ness and language-like
(i.e., learned) qualities. We all have the ability for language, but what
language depends on our environment. The learned parts of sexuality are
fear, anger at the same or opposite sex, not knowing how to relate, and on
and on. Less important is that no one hit you and that someone listened to
you and let you make decisions commensurate with your age and ability and
didn't brainwash you in some way (brainwashing is what a lot of people
confuse with good parenting). Assuming that you got that from two gay guys
or gals (which is theoretically possible) how would you learn how to relate
to one of the sexes? Unfortunately, gay separation and divorce rates are
the same as straight. Domestic violence in gay communities, especially
among men, is worse than among straights (NPR) because it's two men going
at it and judges aren't sympathetic. Plus people are often gay to begin
with because they use sex as a way to nurture themselves. It never ever
works, hence the promiscuity in the male gay community. It's well known
that a reason for teenage pregnancy is that girls need love (for lack of a
better word) but will settle for sex.
> >>Leftist that I am, I would make it illegal for single parents to have
> >>children,<<
>
> I would say that if this is truly what you believe, love, you're no
leftist,
> you're a full blown fascist. Celebrate that if you can.
>
I don't have a problem with being fascist if fascist means getting children
what they need. It speaks to how little people care about children that
they would call someone fascist who cares more about them than about those
who would use them to get their own needs met. Forget conservative, most
people are reactionaries. Even suggest something different, let alone the
drastic change that needs to be done, and they run scared.
I will see you probably on the weekend. Take care.
> Mike Geary
> Memphis
>
>
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