Life on Mars

I was at the park yesterday with my son, soaking up the ambience of the African drum circle, when I witnessed a woman who had six or seven kids smack a little boy on the head for some minor infraction, which I missed, and then seconds later I watched that boy smack a still smaller boy, and then the smaller boy pushed a still smaller child. The look on the smallest child’s face quickly turned from hurt to resentment and you could feel the thoughts of revenge emanating from the poor little boy, who was little more than two years old.

Let me tell you. I contained my laughter, but it reminded me of the man from Mars in Robert Heinlen’s A Stranger in a Strange Land. You may recall that Mike the Martian was an orphan from a human expedition to Mars. The Martians taught him to cultivate and use impressive mental powers and then sent him back to earth to help them judge whether humans were worthy of continued existence. But he had trouble fitting in and understanding humans, especially the concept of humor which he felt was the key, until he visited a monkey house and witnessed pretty much the exact same scene I witnessed at the drum circle. After that, he couldn’t stop laughing for days. Then he became a con man.

Children who are beaten learn only one lesson, that they can inflict violence on weaker people and that they want revenge on those who inflicted violence on them. No, okay, they learn two lessons, to beat up weaker kids and get payback from the adults and to lie in order to avoid being beaten. Okay, three lessons -- violence, revenge, dishonesty.

Anyway, I know, that wasn’t funny. and some of the more enlightened kids learn from the hurt and humiliation that they don’t want to inflict it on others, but still, the great majority learn the negative lessons.

And there’s no question that “corporal punishment, hereafter referred to more accurately as ”beating children“ is a conservative value. U.S. evangelicals like Debi and Michael Pearl, as well as James Dobson advocate beating children as young as 18 months. And some enterprising Christian conservatives add two and two together and come up with actually beating kids with the bible.

But we know all about those people. My point isn’t that prominent conservative nut cases advocate beating children -- it is that so many people throughout the world, just like the good people I saw in the park, beat their children. As noted above, this results in people becoming violent, dishonest, seekers of revenge. Sure, we can laugh at prominent examples such as Sean Hannity (”I turned out all right“), but the fact that so many children are beaten explains a lot of what’s wrong in the world. Look at the extreme examples of Iraq and Afghanistan, societies in which children are routinely and severely beaten. Is it coincidence that they wallow in a culture of violence and revenge? It’s no different here where the very same people who beat their children beat the drums of war. And it’s the same the world over. Children in South Africa, for example, are routinely beaten by both their schoolmasters and their parents and it is one of the most violent places on earth.Violence begets violence. Those who are picked on when they are weak will later pick on those who are weaker, the weak will hate the strong and the victims will plot and carry out revenge. It’s what they call a cycle. A cycle of violence.

Of course people make excuses and rationalize beating children. The only ones who are fooled, however, are other child beaters. When they beat their kids, they just can't help themselves, just as their parents couldn't help themselves.

Funny isn’t it. So many problem in the world, such a strong belief that there are no simple solutions. Yet a simple solution is right there, staring at us with the big eyes of a child. Stop beating children, things will improve.

Yes, but how to get people to stop beating children, especially when so many characters, starting with Yahweh, in our religious literature are so gung-ho about it? No simple solution for that, eh. No messiah, at least none that anyone will listen to, or man from Mars to tell us to spare the rod. No Martians to judge us unfit as a species. No rule of law to protect the children, who trite as it may sound, really are the future. Yep, you may say, I've seen the future.