The importance of babies.

I got an email from an acquaintance who is a professor and a midwife. I wondered in passing about the wisdom of bringing children into the world at this time. She wrote a very long piece about how she finds her work important and satisfying. She said something about babies being the most important thing in the world. This is part of what I wrote back: 

I'm with Robert Heinlein, one of my favorite authors, who wrote women as strong and intelligent characters in his stories and novels. He said that "Any morality not based on 'Women and Children First' is a false morality". His idea of morality is rooted in the principle of survival, from that of the individual and inclusive of all the human race. In fact, on reflection, it's possible to derive every useful and civilizing principle from that one dictum. This is but one idea that enamored me of his literary output, starting with one of his novels for juveniles, which I received a bit earlier than one might expect, but I was an avid reader, somewhat advanced for my age. Interestingly, the first two books my dad gave me to read, also before an age one might expect to read those, were "1984" and "Brave New World". Those three set me on some interesting courses of inquiry. 

Another title was one I came across in high school, called "The Phenomenon of Man". Immediately on seeing that title, my life changed, as it occurred to me that if humankind is a phenomenon, then so was I, and I was a worthy object of impartial study by myself of myself. A remarkable incident not soon after certified for me that any thought one is aware of in a pattern called "self" is artificial and an ad hoc phenomenon relative to geography and levels of culture. It was the most freeing and disturbing thing ever to rudely and involuntarily discover and conclude. Especially for a 17yo who had no support system for such a revelation, given my Catholic background and the less-than-introspective nature of American society even in such a forward-looking region as the Bay Area. It took me a long time, maybe ten years or more to integrate that. In the meantime, I had to function. That's another story. At least whatever it was that happened to me sharpened my ability to do well at school, but it also made me not give a wit. So some of my teachers had that talk with me about why my IQ and percentile scores were so high and why I was nearly failing in anything other than what I enjoyed doing. 

All that, I guess, is a very long way of saying that babies are likely the most important thing we have. Sadly, and the part I'm concerned about, is that while they are bundles of astounding and unimagined potential, they are thrust, in the vast majority of instances, into situations that they will find crippling emotionally and intellectually. This happens as they are forced to adopt beliefs and attitudes they didn't come with and which are tragically required for their survival in a family and society. At least the overall picture for that is somewhat improving worldwide, though we may yet end up in a major Dark Age due to the accumulated trauma manifesting as conservatism, primarily. Not that liberalism doesn't have some drawbacks, but overall, it's far safer, as it tends to be more inclusive, getting back to the survival idea relative to morality.

There was a Hungarian who wrote a book on how to raise genius children. He married and raised genius children. I think his was a good start, but he didn't cover all the bases. There are at least eleven discernable intelligences. A true genius is a polymath in several of those. To be a genius in one is still impressive, but without the buttressing or other intelligences, it can be dangerous and prone to collapse or tipping over.

The support doesn't have to be all internal. I give you as a consideration to support that idea, the movie called "Goodwill Hunting". The Robin Williams and Mini Driver characters were the protagonist's salvation, as they added perspective and nutrition he couldn't garner on his own. But generally speaking, geniuses are lonely people, even sometimes in a crowd of friends. This is, I think, particularly true of those who have what might be called transcendent or enlightened states of awareness. Hence, yet another title, "The Path of the Lonely Ones". They may be isolated, but back to Heinlein, he wrote a few paragraphs on the subject of human thinking ability which I personally found profoundly humbling, and made me much more respectful of my genius betters.

But back to babies: When we see as a society that they have astounding potential in so many ways, and that at last becomes the common knowledge of the stomach of society instead of fear, loathing, and hoarding, then we may at some time in the future enter an actual Golden Age. We will then have the way cleared to build upon a foundation that we now continuously bombard with the fears and prejudices of babies who grew up untrained and inexperienced in the ways of love, inclusiveness, affection, curiosity, and other things we may not yet know exist as our ability.

But as it is at the moment, regardless of our great strides forward, I predict that the historians of future days will look back at this time as one of astounding barbarism relative to what we could have had, given our resources and insights. We are so busy with trying to survive emotionally and economically that we have gone eccentric from our centers, continuously whipped and frothed by psychotic commercialism and sociopathic politics. And the churches, the alleged bastions of morality and higher answers all have failed in particular and in general, some to the point that their loyal members hold on to flotsam and jetsam as if they were solid ground. Meanwhile, the sharks and the cold that are their actual and needful points of attention go unnoticed, perhaps hidden by the warmth of their fellowship while hanging on to the same hatch cover bobbing in the waves.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, then we need a large group to come through as babies who can withstand the perturbations of the inculcations inevitably handed out by family tradition, churches, political parties, and even educational systems for the most part. We can look outward now and see that, like at night and in season in certain areas, there are flashes of wonder, insight, and inspiration like fireflies in the dusk we shadow around in. Those are the sparks that need to be fueled into the kind of campfires that we used to gather around to commune and protect ourselves from the unknown.

Except the biggest unknown is still ourselves, inside, alone and together. It's not the frontier, yet, anyway, of Kirk, Spock, Janeway, and Piccard. The place where no one has gone before, at least in significant and coherent numbers, is inner space, the depths of the human mindsoul. Individuals have thrown torches into those goldmines so we might at least see that they are there as passages to great open fields and forests fertile with Newnes. Many have ventured in and whispered out promises. We need to take courage and each other in hand and go together into Wonder. I'm guessing that the way is fraught with danger and even disaster. But it's what we're here for. We owe it to the babies.