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Do We Need Children?

Do children serve any purpose in life besides the obvious propagation of the species?

Obviously, we need children in order to make adults.

But, do these societal leeches serve any purpose before weaning themselves of the bloodstream of the community and becoming productive members of it?

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story (using the word “story” loosely) “Little Annie’s Ramble” argues they do. After a pointless ramble with a kid in tow, Hawthorne concludes with the following reflection:

Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit, throughout my ramble with little Annie! Say not that it has been a waste of precious moments, an idle matter, a babble of childish talk, and a reverie of childish imaginations, about topics unworthy of a grown man’s notice. Has it been merely this? Not so; not so. They are not truly wise who would affirm it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is our moral nature revived by their free and simple thoughts, their native feeling, their airy mirth, for little cause or none, their grief, soon roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us is at least reciprocal with ours on them. When our infancy is almost forgotten, and our boyhood long departed, though it seems but as yesterday; when life settles darkly down upon us, and we doubt whether to call ourselves young any more, then it is good to steal away from the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of still fresh existence, we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to struggle onward and do our part in life, perhaps as fervently as ever, but, for a time, with a kinder and purer heart, and a spirit more lightly wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!

That passage first of all raises an interesting question about whether reading the story of the ramble, not the ramble itself, but the time spent by the Reader, was a waste of time. At first glance, it was unambiguously a waste of time. It’s a really pointless story. But, then if that final paragraph teaches us something, then maybe it isn’t so pointless after all.

Second, is our moral nature revived by children? If we think of children as complete beings, not really. Children can be, if you will recall, every bit as mean and cruel and lazy as adults; they can also be every bit as nice and sweet and kind and helpful as adults. Our moral nature isn’t revived by children but rather, at best, by our romantic idea of children. We think of them as these sweet innocent little things, we imagine they are always like that. We imagine that “airy mirth” and presume it is the permanent state of children.

Every parent knows better, but oddly even parents forget the hard times with kids and remember the good times. When I think back on my own children’s youthful years, I do immediately recall all the amusing and charming and loving moments. Yet none of my children were perfect angels.

Why do we romanticize children? I have no doubt that many people do feel reinvigorated after spending an hour with children; grandparents seem to love having their grandkids around. And don’t get me wrong—I like spending time talking to children too. They amuse me. But, I do not emerge from contact with children “with a kinder and purer heart, and a spirit more lightly wise.”

Does anyone really get that? Does anyone on whom life has settled down darkly truly find a renewed sense of purpose from spending an hour actually wandering around a town with a real, not an imaginary, little kid? Note, the question is not whether an afternoon so spent can be enjoyable—it can—the question is whether such an afternoon can be anywhere near as life-changing as Hawthorne indicates. On that I am skeptical.

It’s not that children serve no purpose in our lives. Christ, after all, used them as a rather interesting example of the nature of faith; children are, in fact, ridiculously credulous. And the experience of being a parent certainly has a deep effect on one’s outlook on life, both good and ill.

But, it seems to me the real advantage of spending time with children is not about what they do for us, but what we can do for them. And if that that is right, then this fantasy of children is turning children into some sort of commodity in which we evaluate them based on their use value. I can watch football, read a book, or spend an hour with a kid—which will bring me the greatest temporary release from the trials of life? Thought about like that, kids are a very poor entertainment good—they are not always entertaining in the way a football game is. The comparison is illustrative—imagine watching a football game that at the drop of a hat turned into a soccer game. The horror. Now you have a picture of spending time with a child—when good, they are very, very good, but when bad, they are naughty.

Oh, and I know this rambling discourse on the “Ramble with Annie” is going to earn me some severe excoriation, but really: I like kids! Honest! Think of this as a corrective to some bizarre infantilization of our idea of our duty toward the next generation.

Escaping

Michael Chabon’s, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

This book won the Pulitzer, which is not necessarily a recommendation. But, in this case, the award is fully merited. I really enjoyed reading this book. In the realm of modern fiction, it’s a star.

Michael Chabon’s, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
and Clay. This book won the Pulitzer, which is not necessarily a recommendation. But, in this case, the award is fully merited. I really enjoyed reading this book. In the realm of modern fiction, it’s a star.

It is a slice of life novel: New York in the ‘30s and ‘40s. (1930s and 1940s, that is. When will saying the ‘30s not instantly be assumed to mean the Great Depression? In 2030? Or earlier? 2029? 2026?) Two cousins. One a Jewish refugee; one a New York native. They become comic book writers. The time period is, as comic book aficionados know, the Golden Age of Comics. Superman, Batman and the Escapist are all created. Haven’t heard of the Escapist? He is fictional—created by Kavalier and Clay. [Your Humble Narrator is not unaware of the irony of calling the Escapist a fictional comic book hero to distinguish him from Superman and Batman.]

[In a marketing stunt which was as inevitable as it was undoubtedly a disaster, there are now actual comic books starring the Escapist. I would be shocked if said comic books were not Beyond Awful.]

If you love comic books and high literature, then you should instantly put The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on your reading list. It is that good. If you don’t like comic books, but do like literature, then this book is still highly recommended. It is a great story, and the comic book elements do not get in the way. After all, in any slice of life novel, the protagonists have to have some job. You may not care at all about Dentistry, but you don’t avoid McTeague because it is about a Dentist, do you? If you don’t like comic books or literature…hmmm, why are you reading this blog?

Escape is, not surprisingly given the title of the fictional comic book hero, the overarching theme of the book. The characters in this book are constantly seeking to escape. They want to escape from their pasts and their presents and their futures. They want to escape from their own identities and their surroundings. Why?

It’s not the desire of the characters in the book to escape that intrigues me. That is all pretty explainable from the novel itself. Why do non-fictional people (like you, Dear Reader) want to Escape?

I received a letter once from a good friend of mine, noting among other things “The adults I know are never fulfilled.” And, it occurs to me now that I am thinking about this book that her observation and this book have a lot in common. People are not fulfilled, they sense that there must be something better, and they want to Escape into that better thing. But, nobody quite knows what that better thing is. How do you escape when it is not clear to what you are escaping?

At this point, I would dearly like to provide the obvious religious answer that fulfillment is found in Christ. But, I am haunted by that sentence: “The adults I know are never fulfilled”—well, that applies to most Christians I know too.

That is, of course a bit of a dodge—theologically I know that fulfillment is only found in Christ, that short of Divine Fulfillment, we are all left eternally desiring something more. So, there is a religious answer. But, does the theological answer mean that fulfillment is possible or not? If we are inherently aliens here, if we are strangers in a strange land, then is it wrong to be fulfilled? If our souls are longing for the City of God, is it a sin to feel fulfilled in the City of Man?

But, that religious answer merely begs the question. Why do people so desperately want to escape? How have we been hardwired to lack a sense of fulfillment? Why is being perfectly content so remarkably rare? Why is it rare even among those whose religious convictions assure them that they have the capability of feeling fulfilled within themselves?

And, the even more pressing question, the question this novel raises but to which it fails to provide even a remotely satisfying answer: can we escape that deeply felt sense of not really belonging where we are, that there is some better place we should be inhabiting? Can we escape not ourselves and our surroundings, but the feeling itself that we need to escape? Short of finding fulfillment, is escape even possible?

Some Books are Just Awful

Sometimes, I despair. Sometimes, I read a book that is just thoroughly bad. Unbelievably bad. As in, how-does-something-like-this-get-published? bad.

And moreover, how in the world does someone who writes this book get a contract to write seven more books after this one?

The book: Christmas is Murder, by C.S. Challinor (which I sure hope is a pen name because surely nobody would want to be known as the person who wrote Christmas is Murder).

First: why did I read it? It was a Christmas gift. I read books people give me for Christmas. I hasten to add that this book was not given to me by my wife. I hope the person who gave me this book has never read it. I hope it was just on the bargain rack of Christmas books at Barnes and Noble.

It was a story pretending to be a mystery—a sort of Agatha Christie whodunit except Agatha Christie threw out manuscript fragments vastly better than this. It isn’t fair to call it a mystery because it was perfectly obvious who done it the whole time.

The best thing that can possibly be said about this book is that it didn’t take long to read the whole thing. In fact, that is the only good thing that can be said about this book. I am trying hard to think of something else which was just bad instead of unbelievably awfully bad, but I can’t. I started this blog post thinking I would catalogue all the crimes of this book—not the crimes in the book, but the crimes of the book, but I cannot bear to start listing them because it would take forever.

I don’t even know where to start. So, how about this? I’ll give you the motive for the murder.

You see, there is this lady who runs a bed and breakfast. Her husband and son both died in Iraq. An editor from some publishing house is staying at the bed and breakfast. The editor has a manuscript she (the editor) is supposed to read to decide whether to publish the book or not. The manuscript is a book about George Bush. So, the owner of the bed and breakfast decides to murder the editor and burn the manuscript because she (the owner) doesn’t like George Bush. I’m not kidding. That is the motive. By the way, the editor doesn’t like the manuscript—on page 30, she calls her firm and tells them that the book is terrible and shouldn’t be published.

That motive is one of the more plausible things in the book, by the way. Because, if you kill some mid-level editor at a publishing house to which an author submitted a manuscript about George Bush, then obviously…hmmm. I can’t figure out what happens after that, but it is obviously a good thing for someone whose husband and son died in Iraq.

I know you don’t believe me that the motive is one of the more plausible things in the book. I know you think the book can’t be that bad. So, how about this? After the editor dies, our hero, the amazing Rex Graves, looks for the manuscript, but it can’t be found. But, gosh, there is a big pile of ash in the fireplace. Maybe that is the manuscript? Fortunately, there are some small fragments that are not burned. One of those fragments says “l Qa” That starts lots of wondering about what “l Qa” could be. Hard to figure. So, they look in a dictionary and it turns out every English word that starts with a Q is followed by a u. Shocking.

Yeah, you don’t believe me that this is shocking, but I can prove it. A quotation from Christmas is Murder: “Well, blow me,” Charley said. “I never realized every word in the English language beginning with ‘q’ started ‘qu.’” (That incidentally, is one of the more artfully written passages in the book.) Fortunately, our hero later sees a newspaper which has…get this…an article about Al Qaeda…Wow! who would have thought of that?…so, maybe that heap of ashes was the missing manuscript about George Bush.

Ok, so that is not even remotely the most implausible thing in the book. How about this? Three people are murdered in this hotel. Ah, but there is a big snowstorm. The hotel is close enough to town that our hero can walk to the hotel from town using a pair of tennis rackets he inexplicably brought along with him as snowshoes. Ah, but the police can’t make it to the hotel. Three murders, but, you know, the police guy in town, he has this cold, see, and there is all that snow, I mean there is a lot of snow, so it is really hard for the police to go up to the hotel to deal with all these murders, but maybe in a day or two, if some of the snow melts, they can come up to investigate.

Sadly, all the guests of the hotel also feel obligated to hang around a hotel with a mass murderer running around because, you know, it would be a drag to trudge through the snow to get down to town to stay at a hotel with no mass murderer. Well, except that our hero and his love interest do ski down to town to go out for a beer, but, you know, it is rather silly to just stay in town, so they go on back up to the hotel.

Yeah, that isn’t the most implausible thing either. The most implausible thing is that anyone could write this book and that anyone could read it and think it should be published. Yet it happened. I have the evidence on my desk. I despair. Truly, I despair.

Oh, and if you still think the book can’t be all that bad, if you think I am just exaggerating, then I dare you to read it. In fact, I double dog dare you to read it.

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Why Does the World Exist?

Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt.

In this case, the title is not deceptive; it is exactly the subject of the book. Holt poses the question and then travels around, Socrates-like, to assorted people who think they can answer the question.

Nobody has a very satisfying answer.

Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt. In this case, the title is not deceptive; it is exactly the subject of the book. Holt poses the question and then travels around, Socrates-like, to assorted people who think they can answer the question. Nobody has a very satisfying answer.

Holt tries to provide an answer at the end, but oddly, after just showing how nobody can provide a satisfying answer, he seems to think his answer might be at least somewhat satisfying, but suffice it to say a) his answer is not in the least bit satisfying and b) his answer is totally irrelevant in evaluating the quality of this book. The book is extremely good.

Just think about the question for a bit. Why is there something rather than nothing? Obviously there is something. But why? Is it Necessary for there to be something? Is or Was Nothing a possibility. Could it be that Nothing…and here we get stuck even more…can you ask Could Nothing Exist? Is Nothing Something or is it the absence of Something? If Nothing is the absence of Something, then can it exist or does existence require being something?

Now it seems like this question of why the world exists can be easily solved by positing a Deity. The world exists because a Divine Power Created it. But, that backs up the question. Why does God exist? To which the traditional theological answer is God Necessarily exists because Existence is a Necessary Characteristic of Deity. But, how do we know that? Does God necessarily exist? Is it possible that God could Not have existed? What is either the Deity-generating Process or the Reason that the non-existence of God is impossible? In other words, even if the Universe is Created by God, if we consider the God/Universe combination or the Universe alone, the exact same questions arise: Why?

The multiverse doesn’t solve this, by the way: This universe may exist because there are infinitely many universes, but why are there infinitely many universes? Also, if there are infinitely many universes, is there a universe which doesn’t exist? Is the non-existence of a universe among the possibilities granted by the multiverse? What does that question even mean?

It also seems like if we can get around the question by asking what seems like a simpler question. What is the purpose of the universe? Or, How did the Universe come into Being? But neither of those questions has a very good answer either.

This most excellent book by Holt does not have an answer (as noted above, ignore Holt’s desperation pass at the end—it falls incomplete).

But, reading this book is like one endless mental exercise on an unbelievably fascinating question. This book is like one of these wandering discussions which just keep turning back on themselves and by the end you aren’t even sure what you are asking, but by golly, it sure feels like you are making progress toward some unknown end but you have no idea what you are learning because you have forgotten where the question started or what you were trying to answer or even whether you are actually writing a coherent sentence or off on some bizarre string of words in which each word follows from what came before but it is no longer clear if what is currently being written has any resemblance the to the matter you began to write about at the commencement of the sentence, which probably no longer qualifies as a sentence anyway.

Why Does the World Exist? I have no idea. In fact, I know less now than I did when I started reading this book. And that is seriously high praise for a book.