Lest I be thought to be arguing without reference to my presuppositions
(superego), I was raised in Wilmington California, a dock town. Most of
the men who lived there worked on the docks. My father was a
lumber-carrier driver -- a good-looking guy who liked to drink and spend
time with the ladies. My mother discovered lipstick on his collar and
eventually divorced him. She later said that she was harder on me
because I looked like my father. She used a switch to punish bad
behavior, most often mine. My sister, two years younger, discovered
that in any conflict she and I had, all she needed to do was yell to
mother and mother would come out with her switch and use it on me. My
sister and younger brother didn't get it as much. This was unjust! I
fumed over the injustice of it and when I was ten and being punished for
something I didn't deserve, I took the switch away from her. She
remarried when I was 12 and promised that her new husband would give me
the punishment I deserved. He however wasn't inclined in that direction.
The upshot was that I developed an intense interest in justice, right
and wrong. Yes, punish bad behavior but make sure it was bad. Maybe
that idea wouldn't work well, but as I grew that was what I thought
ought to occur.
My mother had a son and daughter by her second, more permissive
husband. She didn't think they turned out well. Years later she told
me that she wished she'd divorced my father when she first knew he was
seeing other women -- before any other children were born. She was very
religious when she told me that and wished that she could have turned me
into a pastor. Alas, I wouldn't have made a good one. I was too
cynical about people's motives and behavior by that time.
I didn't in my previous note deal with the social philosophy that is
behind the Welfare State. I believe Jean Jacques Rousseau is largely
responsible and one of his great divergences from earlier thinking
included the idea that men are basically good: leave them alone and they
will turn out well. The American Indian, he argued, didn't have
coercive Judea-Christian teaching but he turned out extremely well.
That philosophy underlies the Welfare State IMO. Opposed to that idea
is that men are born evil and need to be coerced into abandon their evil
inclinations in order to behave well as adults. As you can see from the
above, I resented (what I perceived to be) the misuse of the "rod" by my
mother. But in retrospect I did believe that punishment ought to be
used to coerce good behavior, I just didn't believe my mother used good
judgment as to what ought to be punished. She did her best and her
something was better than nothing. I came away with a strong sense of
right and wrong, was overly scrupulous perhaps in doing what I
considered to be "right."
Consider the bad behavior of a recent president, Bill Clinton. When
discovered to have been canoodling with Monica Lewinski. When caught he
used linguistics to deny it: I did not have sex with that woman (saying
to himself that canoodling wasn't really sex). That didn't really
satisfy anyone so did he repent his bad behavior in sackcloth and
ashes? Not at all. No repentance of bad behavior. He used the very
common modern response: "I made a mistake." Taking a wrong turn on the
way to grandmas is a mistake. Getting an answer wrong on your driver's
test is a mistake. Sexual canoodling with Monica Lewinski was bad
behavior. Did Mrs Clinton ever use a rod on little Billy?
Lawrence
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