a blog by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

A principle of the sort that I have been discussing –that parents, who bring children into the world, should care for and educate them, thereby earning their children’s honor and help as they age—is a guide for judgment. It helps us make judgments  which are, as we say, principled; they have the principle built in, they demonstrate it.  A principle that is going to have this guiding function should be one that is widely shared –even universally shared—so that we can say with confidence “this is a principle all human beings agree upon, in principle, although they certainly have found different ways to demonstrate it.”

People obviously disagree about child-rearing and about education.  Even when being guided by the child-cherishing principle, they differ, and when not guided by it, they make wildly discrepant judgments, most of them abusive. If you have seen the wonderful French film “Babies” that premiered here in the Toronto Hot Docs film festival last year, you saw a superb demonstration of cultural differences in parenting practices. Four babies, born about the same time, are followed through their first years by the unobtrusive director-cameraman Thomas Balme. You are right there at child’s-eye level with Ponijao and her older brother in their Namibian farm village; with Bayarjargal and his older brother in a Mongolian herding outpost; and with two only-child girls in urban settings, Mari in fast-moving Tokyo and Hattie in hip, politically correct San Francisco.  We watch them being born –Hattie in a bubble of cold hospital machines—and nursing.  There they are scooping mush with their hands out of a common pot, or drinking their raw goat’s milk, or enjoying their ornate sushi, or being expected to know –and be grateful– that their organically grown, imported  avocadoes are the best in the world. Although the focus is on the children, we come to know what their parents think their education should consist of. There is no adult commentary in the film, just an implied continuum from farm simplicity through metro complexity, which certainly made me  want to have the poor but loving Namibian villagers teach all the world’s Child Development courses.

You come to realize watching this film how important it is to have experiences of comparing child-rearing practices, renewing your awareness that a principle can guide a lot of different practices. This was the sort of experience that underlay the Renaissance rethinking of Greco-Roman wisdom about children.  As reports poured into the 15^th century European capitals about what adventurers and colonizers had found in the New World, what we call “multiculturalism” emerged among a group generally known as Humanists. During the period of France’s most vicious religious wars, Montaigne was inspired by hearing about other practices in Europe and about New World “primitives” to write essays in which he analyzed carefully what kinds of child-rearing practices make children war-like and intolerant. His contemporary Erasmus of Rotterdam –another founding father of Humanism—explicitly reworked Aristotle’s principle for their war-torn day as he argued against parental use of corporal punishment: a father “who appeals to his son’s sense of decency and liberality can gradually build up in him a spontaneous capacity for moral conduct which is untainted by any motive of fear.”

All later day Aristotelians who think carefully about how to use the child-cherishing guiding principle do come, I think, to the conclusion that it requires respect and trust of children, an expectation that they will become respectful and trustworthy. The principle is the ground for reciprocity between the generations –or for avoiding the conflicts that come when there is no reciprocity. In other words, the principle is connected to a principle of adult-adult human relations that is to be found explicitly in all the world’s traditions –a universal principle.

That adult-to-adult principle goes by the name “The Golden Rule” in the West.  In its Christian formulation it says:  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But in a new book entitled Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, the gifted British historian of religions Karen Armstrong notes (as historians before her have) that the Christian formulation does not clearly steer you away from doing harmful deeds,  while the oldest written articulation we have, which comes from the East, does.  In the Analects of the Chinese sage Confucius (551-479 BCE), the principle says: “Never do unto others what you would not like them to do unto you.” As Armstrong explains, the principle called shu (“consideration” or “reciprocity”) says what you must NOT do: “people should not put themselves in a special, privileged category but relate their own experience to that of others, all day and every day.” This seems to me the wiser formulation, as it requires that people first think carefully about whether they have privileged themselves –whether they harbor a prejudice in favor of themselves—before they do anything unto others. They must first consider how they do NOT want to be in relation to others.  If you do not want your children to grow up disrespecting you, respect them.  If you do not want your neighbor to hate you, do not hate him or her.

Historians of religion look at the Golden Rule as a principle common to all the world’s religions, but I, being, like the Humanists,  more concerned with relations among humans than with how humans relate to their divinities, prefer to see it as a political principle, common to all who cherish democratic polities. In the political sphere, it might be called The Reciprocity Rule or The Respect Rule.  As a rue about political respect, it guides the  First Amendment to the American Constitution, for example.  It says, in effect:  Never refuse to listen to others or they will never listen to you.  Make a space for people to come together freely to talk and consider things as you would have them do for you. In this sense, the Reciprocity Rule is the principle of civility –not artificial “bipartisanship,” but real reciprocal listening–that we hear many people clamoring for in America right now. But what they are barraged with through the media is, instead, a very low-level, unprincipled  “debate” about whether America political culture has gotten to such a dreadful point that it fosters censorship and violence—even assassination.

There is no question that freedom of speech and assembly are not being respected

in America now. The evidence is everywhere –although the principle underlying the Constitution’s guarantee is seldom evoked.  So we have to witness an enactment of our disrespectful political culture even while we feel the horror of the assassination attempt made on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona over last weekend.  She was assaulted by a young man who was so tragically locked in his own mind that he had told many people that he wanted to be able to control his own dreams and dictate the meaning of words; he is an ultra-extreme –mentally ill, probably schizophrenic–version of our national cannot-listen-to-others malaise.   Giffords miraculously survived (although her life as she lived it so richly has been destroyed), but the assassination attempt claimed six others –including a nine year old girl, Christina Green, who was attending a public meeting (newspapers reported) because she was interested in politics and wanted to learn about democracy.

Those who are debating the impact of the political culture in America now on the assassin’s action have come, rightly, to the issue of gun control legislation. The young (but legally adult) assassin purchased a Glock pistol with an extended magazine, which made it possible for him to fire off so many lethal bullets in a matter of minutes. The Glock is a weapon of war, whether in the hands of a sane person or an insane one.  Many debaters are appalled by the law which permitted this purchase; many others defend, on Second Amendment grounds,  American gun laws (state and federal), which are among the most permissive in the world and which are primarily the work of the National Rifle Association, the most well-funded lobby in the country.

If America were the democracy it should be, the debate about gun legislation would

be guided by the child-cherishing principle. Consider several facts from the year 2009, which you can find on the website of the Children’s Defense Fund as part of the CDF’s estimable Protect Children, Not Guns campaign, which actually is based on the child-cherishing principle.  “There are more than 270 million privately owned firearms in our country—the equivalent of nine firearms for every 10 men, women, and children in America.” “Since 1979, gun violence has ended the lives of 107,603 children and teens in America.” “The number of Black children and teens killed by gunfire since 1979 (39, 957) is more than ten times the number of Black citizens of all ages lynched throughout American history (3,437).”  Although the CDF does not say so explicitly, their campaign makes it obvious that the gun laws we have had since 1979 are designed to serve the desires of the adults who sell and own guns. They are childist, that is, they are putting the gun possession desires ahead of obligations to protect children; they are assaulting the principle that adults are obliged to cherish and educate their children. The gun laws manifest a prejudice against children as surely as lynching manifested a prejudice against Blacks. Guns are being used for a prolonged massacre our children.

The political discourse in America now is filled with statements about how we should think of our children and grandchildren as we consider –for example—the deteriorating condition of the environment and the catastrophe of climate change that adult actions is inducing. There is not a politician in the land who does not invoke our children and say how we must protect their home, their habitat. The child-cherishing principle is not unknown, uninvoked.  But the principle is not guiding judgments. There is a disconnect. Legislative actions go against it; they are unprincipled.  Only the short-term interests of some adults are being served. These interests over-ride.  “Right to bear arms” adults are putting themselves in a special, privileged category and not relating their own experience to that of others –and the legislators who help them maintain their privilege and their prejudice are doing the same and being paid with campaign funds for service rendered.

When the Second Amendment was adopted, and the “right to bear arms” and the need for people to be able to defend themselves were taken for granted, the country was in a war-like state and did not have a public police force (or a standing army). Now we do have a public police force (and its leaders speak almost unanimously against the gun laws that harm so many of police officers as well as the public they serve). There is no need now –if there ever was–for adults to have firearms in their homes, which, as everyone knows, are not used for self-defense, but for domestic violence and all too often for public violence. To say that the gun law debate is about hunting and recreational or sporting use of guns is an avoidance of the issue. The debate is –or ought to be—about whether we can recognize that a “right to bear arms” has turned into an unprincipled “right” to harm others. A “right” to do unto others what no one would wish done unto themselves or unto the children for whom they ought to be responsible.