I took my new dog, Piggy Rose, out to Casa Blanca Canyon last week. What a beautiful spot! Later, as I drove back into town, a trucker flashed his lights at me, the traditional warning for “cops running radar ahead.” Sure enough, seconds later, there he was — The Man — not candidly parked at the edge of the road near the high school as usual, but tucked into a thicket at the northern end of town. Sneaky little devil.
My wife loves it when drivers flash their lights in brotherly warning. She’s always seeking evidence of kindness and solidarity among humans, as if to counter the horror and hopelessness renewed daily by the media. To her, the motorist is like Little Red Riding Hood or Tchaikovsky’s Peter, while the cop is a wolf in our midst. We raise our fat, white tails and run away, or flash our lights to warn the herd that there is danger near.
It’s ethically perplexing, though. The police are working to ensure public safety, so trying to foil them endangers the herd. Does the very existence of speed limits seem like an insult to our judgment and competence? Are we unsure that cops are our friends? Or, does fellow feeling simply trump concern with safety here? Kathryn would never knowingly break the law, yet she rejoices in those who interfere with the administration of justice. It must just be her sentimental side.
I’m fascinated by the many ways in which humans embrace parental authority or, alternatively, embrace sibling solidarity against authority. It’s mostly not a conscious choice, and not a level playing field. How could it be? Children start out ignorant and helpless, after all. The Big People — parents and teachers — have all of the power. In politics, the basic divide between “Liberals” and “Conservatives” — ranging from anarchists and libertarians at one extreme to traditionalists and fascists at the other, comes down, in large measure, to: Which side are you on — the parents’ or the kids’?
In any particular child’s case, though, it’s hard to predict which way the ball will roll, largely because of the 180-degree rule: A person will do X, or exactly the opposite of X, in response to any given stimulus. Kids often identify with their rule-making parents, accept their values, and become like them. In other words, they become normally socialized...presuming the parents are normal, of course. In the other scenario, children rebel. They reject parental strictures and generally mistrust authority. Most of us lean toward one side or the other: toward acceptance of order and convention, or toward rejection of order and convention. The ability to be comfortable with both is a sign of maturity — of good mental health.
Kids are born with pretty reliable bullshit detectors, but they will ditch them to survive. They want to trust their parents and they need their parents to be wise and real. But, when parents are frightened, or stupid, or cruel, it disquiets their kids, who realize that there’s no one at the wheel; no safety net. This causes outrage and loss of respect. I know a couple of teens who grew so weary of their hippy parents’ neurotic distaste for authority — including fear of exercising any — that, first chance they got, they ran off to join the military or some fundamentalist sect which could provide a compensatory megadose of structure. Some other kids find it by going to jail.
There’s a ditch at each edge of the road, Emmylou. One’s too hard and one’s too soft. Perhaps moderation really is the key to happiness, just like your parents said. But, face it, when you’re young, balance sounds dull. You don’t find out till later how hard balance is to own. Imagine that.