19 October 2004

A Kinder, Gentler Society

A recent series of comments made by me in another forum, and the response to those comments, has caused me to consider the rather substantial role that the Social Sciences have come to play in our society, and to wonder whether or not this is really a good thing.

The whole thing started with a temper tantrum, the kind that registers on the Richter scale. It was the kind of temper tantrum that could wake the dead, and that’s exactly what it did to me, roused me from a deep, sound, satisfying sleep of a kind that I experience nowhere near as often as I would like. The source of the tantrum was the oldest child of the young Christian couple that I live with. The cause of the tantrum remains unknown, and to be perfectly honest I’m perfectly happy to keep it that way. I suspect that it was something that was hardly worth losing ones temper over, but sometimes kids don’t seem to be capable of making that distinction.

That one event caused me to remember some of the techniques that were used by my parents to raise me and my brother, and some of the rules that we were required to live under. For example, a the kind of tantrum pitched by young Ben would never have been permitted. It would have been nipped in the bud before it had a chance to begin, the perpetrator of said tantrum would be soundly spanked for daring to challenge the Authority of Our Parents, and that would have been the end of it. We would have ended up doing whatever it was that we didn’t want to do because you can’t always get what you want and the sooner you start learning that and learning how to deal with that the better off you’ll be. Was it cruel and unusual of my parents to choose to raise us in this manner? I don’t think so. I think that they did us a great deal of good by instilling that kind of discipline in us.

But nowadays that kind of strategy would be regarded as lousy parenting at the very best and child abuse at the very worst. Why? Because the my parents didn’t permit us to lash out and get those emotions out of our systems. Because they had the audacity to spank us, to lay their hands on us, and Everyone Knows that spanking is abusive and harmful to the child. It’s a barbaric custom that we should forget ever existed, right?

Excrement.

I’ve always held true to the belief that spanking, when used properly, is an effective way to get the child’s attention and impress upon them the notion that You Can’t Always Get What You Want, as well as the notion that Authority Is To Be Respected. Spanking also reinforces the idea that negative actions have immediate consequences that you probably aren’t going to want to face. That’s the way it was with us. When we did something we weren’t supposed to do we got walloped for it. Pretty soon we got to the point where we would stop doing those things we weren’t supposed to be doing because we knew that if we did them we would get walloped for them and we didn’t want to get walloped so we didn’t do them. I call that effective discipline.

Of course as we got older our parents stopped spanking us and began to use other tactics. They explained the reasoning behind their rulings, and on those occasions when that strategy wasn’t effective they would remove privileges, making it impossible for us to do things that we wanted to do because we did something that we weren’t supposed to do. Good, sound, logical parenting, that.
But people don’t pay attention to things like that. People focus on small pieces of the bigger picture and think that they’re somehow more enlightened for it. I can see the hate mail flowing in now, all full of moral outrage. Your parents spanked you when you were growing up? How can you look them in the eye. You do know that constitutes abuse, don’t you?

I can look my parents in the eye because I wasn’t abused. I can look my parents in the eye because I believe that they are, at heart, kind and loving people who did their best with what they had at hand, and because I believe that my brother and I really didn’t turn out that badly, all things considered. Sure, we’ve had our problems over the years, but who doesn’t? And really, how do you prepare your children to deal with things like adultery, divorce, and deep, killing depression? When you look at all of the things I’ve faced over the last six years or so and consider the fact that not only am I still alive, but I’m actually getting better with each passing day you have to start thinking that maybe my parents didn’t do such a rotten job of raising me after all. Kinda deflates the whole spanking argument, doesn’t it?

The point of this whole essay is that somewhere along the line someone, most likely some kind of Social Scientist, decided that spanking was somehow wrong and wrote a thesis to the fact. This thesis would have been read by other Social Scientists who, believing that they had Moral Authority behind them, would have gone out into the world and campaigned to make the unwashed masses believe that spanking is abusive and wrong. And you know what, people started to believe them. People bought into the idea that spanking is abuse hook, line, and sinker, and didn’t look back. And this belief has reached new highs of paranoia. God Help You if someone sees your child sporting a bruise, no matter how small. The next thing you know the Social Services people, all full of Moral Authority to Do The Right Thing, will be on your doorstep investigating how you raise your child. And if they see even one little thing that they don’t like, no matter how small and insignificant, then they’ll take your children away from you and there isn’t a damn thing that you can do about it. The courts are going to side with Social Services because the people who took your children from you are learned professionals while you are among the Great Unwashed who aren’t intellectually advanced enough to understand the finer points of Social Science.

My question is this: Why have we allowed this to happen to our society? Why have we allowed these Social Scientists to tell us what’s right and what’s wrong? Why are we believing what these people tell us? Is it because we’re afraid to accept the responsibility for our own actions, or because it’s simpler to let someone else tell us what to do and hope for the best? Have we really fallen so far?
My problem with the Social Sciences is that their findings have no bearing whatsoever on real science. The process used by Social Scientists to reach their conclusions bears absolutely no resemblance to the scientific method as I was taught it in school. There is absolutely no body of scientific or statistical data to corroborate their conclusions, so why are we treating the things that these people are telling us as Gospel handed down from On High?

Because somewhere along the line we lost the ability to think for ourselves, and when that happened we began to need someone to tell us what we should and shouldn’t be thinking, and that’s where the Social Scientists come in. They paint a very bright picture of a kinder, gentler society that we generally tend to find very appealing, but they completely ignore the fact that the period of transition between the society we have now and the Social Utopia of their Bright Future is going to have its ups and downs, and they also ignore the fact that their Utopia is nothing more than a pipe dream. It doesn’t exist. It can’t exist.

Or can it?

Let’s think about this for a moment. Let’s take a good hard look at the things that we’re teaching our children. Instead of letting them turn into sodding little heathens let’s actively instill a sense of discipline within them by teaching them that You Can’t Always Get What You Want or Do What You Want, and punishing them when they rebel against this truism. Let’s teach them that Authority Must Be Respected and punish them when they fail to do so. Let’s teach them that social niceties like manners and mutual respect are not optional, and punish them when they fail. Let’s teach them that respect for the elderly and the handicapped is not optional and punish them when they fail. Let’s teach them that English is a beautiful language when spoken properly and punish them when they fail. Let’s teach them that education is important, and the purpose behind education is to ensure that you can perform a minimum number of basic tasks and use the brain that you were given so it’s important to do the best you can, but let’s also teach them that everybody’s best is different and that you’re still a winner as long as you actually try.

And let’s also teach our children that some people are stronger than others and that it’s okay to show what you might perceive to be weakness, and that the only real sin lies in apathy, in having no desire whatsoever to get better, to improve yourself.

You want your kinder, gentler society, well there’s your blueprint for achieving it. Now look at what I’m saying and look at what the Social Scientists are saying and notice one key difference: at no point do the Social Scientists consider the fact that sooner or later you’re going to have to punish your children. And let’s face it, Ladies and Gentlemen, sooner or later you’re going to have to punish your children. It’s only a matter of time, so it’s something that you had better start thinking about now.