Friday, June 4, 2010

Thinking For Himself

My son is so insightful. We have wonderful conversations about books he is reading in English. I usually ask him about the book and ask him to remind me the story line as I read these books one hundred years ago. Okay truth be told 20 or so years ago. The "or so" is very important here. Lots of days gone by. Can you believe it? Oh yeah we're talking about him here not me and my old age.

I love hearing his point of view. We often disagree and I love hearing him defend his opinion. I love watching him listen intently to my opinion. He is amazing to me. These are the most wonderful discussions. We have taught him to respectfully disagree with an adult. It's one of those parenting moments where you say, "I did good here." I see him becoming a man. A man I would want to call my friend.

However, with this latest book I am having a dilemma. His latest read was "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. This book is very dark. I actually pulled out my "Lord of the Flies" essay dated 1/28/88. I kept it! Well I got an A and the teacher wrote, "You know how to achieve transitions and to insert minor details in subordinate clauses." "You are really developing! Keep up the good work!" Yes my teacher used exclamation points!! And she was a hard ass for sure. She certainly knew when to use exclamation points where I use them all the time! See! I digress again turning this writing to be about me. oooppss

Anyways this book is about the effects of human nature when society's conditioning is no longer present with its laws and boundaries. Basically in the book most characters will revert back to being barbarous savages. My son's essay was to answer the following question, "Do you believe that Golding is telling us that we are all doomed, or does he believe there is hope for humans?

Billy believes we are all doomed. He really feels people are inherently evil. That we keep this evil at bay everyday with our choices. This is very contradictory to what I believe, that everyone has good and bad within them. But mostly good. We fight off the bad intentions by dealing with the emotions that cause them, jealousy, anger, sadness, hatred, annoyance. I'm all about the choices we make also.

Here is where we really differ. Billy feels very strongly that "everything we do as humans is motivated by fear." Basically the only thing that causes us to take action is fear. At first I was repelled by this notion of his. Ewe yuck, no that is wrong, we care that is why we take action. We feel.

Then he asked me to give him examples of times I have taken action. So I gave the example of seeing a car accident and stopping to see if anyone needed help or was hurt. He turned this around and said, "You're afraid of what people will think of you if you don't stop." No he was wrong and I told him so. Most of the time I could give a crap what people think, especially strangers. Then he said, "Okay, you are afraid someone is hurt. You are afraid someone could die if you don't take action." Well this stopped me in my tracks. Well....yes... kind of....I was afraid or worried someone might be hurt. Just like the other day I was afraid the horse would get hurt tangled up in the fence.

I gave other examples, "Billy, I push you hard to bring up your grades cause I care. " He said, "No, because you are afraid I am going to fail." I inhaled deeply, I am afraid Billy may have a point here. Is every action we take a double-edged sword? We went over several examples and he could always turn it around with the word "afraid".

What does this mean? Could we both be right? I care about the person in the accident and that makes me afraid they might be hurt? Maybe that's the answer, " I care for others and that makes me afraid."

What the hell? This makes me a little sad, my son thinks this way. This makes me proud he is so insightful and thinks for himself. But I thought I was teaching him to be motivated by the goodness is his soul. Now he tells me we are all motivated by fear and fear alone. What the hell? I like my optimistic happy way that all humans are good!

I am confused. No more talking Billy! You are not allowed to discuss anything, anymore. Yes this scares me......I am afraid. Afraid I may be wrong.

Scratching my head.
Joytobe

No comments: