Moral Paradoxes

1: A product of the environment

Elephants recognize themselves in the mirror, though it seems impossible. So I guess those who are themselves can still recognize themselves in everyone else, though it seems impossible. They recognize their own diverse poverties in the bald guy asking for change in front of the bank. They feel their tomboy childhoods in the little girl playing hockey in the driveway. She shoots at a might-as-well-be empty net; the four-year-old goalie is too small to occupy space. They hear their constricted teenaged pseudo-musical consciences in the shy punk rocker practicing for his piano lesson. He shakes his head, huffing: he's just not ready.  The old mother nags her grown son, "Brush your teeth. Put clean socks on. Eat your corned beef hash." Like her, they sense their desire to do what's best while still doing what's just a nuisance.

Retrospective grief once said, "A thick leather belt across the bottom: that's the way my father disciplined us. He did it that way because he believed it was the right way. That's how his father disciplined him and he believed his father's way was the right way."

People aren't always a product of their environments, though. Often you'll find the opposite. Some were so incredibly tormented by their environments that they wish never to inflict that grief on others. I knew my environment was very wrong and that's why I did not learn it, nor care to learn it. But it did give me psychological problems, so I guess in that regard I was a product of it. I believed my father's way was the wrong way because it was very destructive to the self-esteem. That doesn't suggest he meant to be. That just explains why I did not learn his behaviour. But I believed it was right or normal for people to be treated like sub-humans. Right in the context of my expectation, not right in the context of morals. I knew it was wrong; though I thought it was right. I knew it was wrong because self-esteems are terrible things to be destroying. So it was right or normal for my family to be weird; and it was right for all normal families to be normal even though they were so unlike my family that they seemed weird... weird in their normalness.

Comprende?

I guess I should put this in the context of my own feelings: I used to get really defensive when I heard people say so-and-so is going to be a product of so-and-so's environment because I knew I was not going to be a product of mine. In a sense they said that we're all going to wind up just like our parents. But I knew I wasn't, and I was right. I never learned my parent's behaviour. I never thought my father's behaviour was right, as such. I thought it was normal for my family and weird for society. And everybody's perspective on what is right is different.

This is another one of those moral paradoxes that I just love. I need not tell you that that's sarcasm. That's self evident, right? It doesn't make sense, but it does. Thinking about all of this stuff makes me think that nothing makes sense, that there is no truth, but I swear I'll find it.

Elaine 07