This issue is in the news once again today. On the national level is the effort by Republicans to pass a "parents' rights" bill, the chief motivation for which seems to be a means for clamping down on the right of transgendered kids to express what they insist is their rightful sexual identity. On the state level - in Florida, at least - is this effort to put the fig leaf back on Michaelangelo's David's marble genitals. An art teacher at a charter school in Tallahassee, Florida, showed sixth-graders a picture of David, one of the world's most famous - if not the most famous - statues in the world and was taken to task for it. Apparently three parents found the image "pornographic." Subsequently, the school principal has been fired, allegedly for a number of unacceptable decisions not specified. This tacit approval of "pornography" is apparently only the last straw.
To be fair to the three (overly-protective? engaged and activist?) PTA moms (I assume it's the moms), there is a long history of attempts to cover up the youthful junk of the boy who killed Goliath and went on to become Israel's greatest king. They were not the first to miss the genius of the carving and just see him as a naughty kid with his pants down. Queen Victoria commanded a fig leaf be at the ready when David visited England. And there have been others, including the Catholic Church, who have tried to keep "innocent" kids "innocent." God forbid they should travel to Florence and see David in his birthday suit, showing off his nearly perfect body right there in front of God and everybody.
I remember taking an American Literature class in college with the Robert Frost scholar, Reginald Cook. Marvelous teacher and great story-teller. He told us of the time he was teaching in the south somewhere - was it Texas? Alabama? - Can't remember. He was going on about Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and all the intellectual goings-on in the literary salons in Paris. Somebody spoke up and said she'd been to Paris but had "never seen anything like that." Turns out she was talking about Paris, Texas.
It's hard not to laugh at these examples of lack of experience and sophistication. Urban dwellers - democrats, specifically - are learning to recognize that the Trumpist lemmings are not just uninformed. They are tired of being laughed at, shut out and ignored. And not just economically. But as we try to balance the scales, and close the gap between the two Americas, do we really have to give ignorance equal billing with knowledge? Isn't it bad enough that we have dumbed down in this country to an alarming degree, thrown out an appreciation for empirical truth along with a disdain for government and maybe even democracy? Do we now have to hold back and allow a small group with a minority opinion to assume the right to make decisions for all of us on the basis of a strongly held ideology? Is it really necessary to allow the tail to wag the dog?
One of my early memories of watching my Christian faith slip away was the time in Sunday School when it hit me that the apple tree in the Garden of Eden was known as the "Tree of Knowledge." Adam, the poor shlump, duped by his more clever female partner, was talked into eating something that would make him smart. Or at least give him access to knowledge he didn't have before and wouldn't have otherwise.
How could that be a bad thing, I wondered. I was barely into my teens but I'll never forget the look on the kindly Sunday School teacher's face when I asked her that question. "Some things don't make sense to us. We just have to trust that they will in the end," she said. Or something like that. I wasn't buying it and it prepped me for more doubts about the line I was being fed in Sunday School that were yet to come.
They came flooding in when I got away from the small town I was raised in, where everybody went to church - except for the Jews, of course, but they worshiped in a building that was once a church. A big jolt hit me when I realized the Lutherans I came to know in Germany were not the same people as the German-American Lutherans of my family and my home town. And then came anthropology and sociology and exposure to Mormons and Muslims and outspoken atheists. One thing that might have happened, but didn't, was I could have converted. To Roman Catholicism - they had much prettier churches. To Judaism - they had cantors and a much richer sense of history. Islam was never an attraction, abject submission to somebody I couldn't see was never my thing.
But one thing did draw me in with the kind of power religion can have, and that is the wonderful narrative of the blind men and the elephant. You know the story. I believe the original source is the poem by John Godfrey Saxe from 1872. I trust I'm not breaking any piracy laws by reproducing the whole thing here:
THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT.
A HINDOO FABLE.
I.
IT was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
II.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me!—but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!"
III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: "Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 't is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
IV.
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'T is clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a rope!"
VIII.
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
The conclusion we are expected to take from this bit of wisdom is that we, all of us, seldom if ever have a grasp of the big picture. And that means it's very easy for us to run on, overconfident in our own conclusions, half-cocked. But, simultaneously, we should not conclude that we cannot get ever closer to a true picture of the whole. That, after all, is the purpose of science, the ever improved and improving understanding of the world around us. And that requires an eschewing of ideological stances, including the embrace of principles such as parents have the right to choose what ideas their children are exposed to in schools.
The context for this controversy is an old one. Should society-at-large, aided by government, determine what an educated citizen needs to know to be able to maximize the number of informed decisions they make as they participate in democratic government? Or should parents be free to override group interests, however rational and based on the broadest possible human experience, on the grounds that their children belong to them - and individual rights trump collective rights?
My point is that while I suppose most people in my circle of friends will guffaw as I did when I first came across this story about prudish censorship in the Sunshine State, it's not just that. On a political and philosophical level, it's about who frames the story, who calls the shots. It is not unrelated to the question of how we balance constitutional rights with states' rights, and to the curious fact that Christians have made morality about sexuality, rather than, say, the elimination of poverty. And to the sometimes one-step-forward/two-steps-backwards historical process of shedding the limitations we have placed on personal freedom.
When they say that living life is an art, not a science, that's what they mean.
photo credit
No comments:
Post a Comment