The Privileges of Corpses
5 minutes
On my wall hangs a poster of Gargantua, “The World’s Most Terrifying Living Creature!” He’s proof that Americans, in the Olden Days, were as attracted to danger as they are now. Let that fact temper the comments that follow. We craved danger — in medicinal doses — even when our culture still admitted a healthy amount of it.
In his semi-autobiography Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury sketched the kind of boyhood that I’d wish for my own sons. Going out on adventures on summer nights. Visits to the old, dangerous canyon. Eccentric neighbors. Mothers who fear for their sons’ safety, but to whom it wouldn’t even occur to keep them always safe. I had a taste of this when I was young; but then, I was lucky. A military upbringing meant bases to explore, and controlled access to a common landscape. At some point I realized that what was normal for me was already changing in the outside world. Now my children live in that outside world. This morning, it reached out to bite them.
After Mass, I let my boys climb “The Climbing Tree,” as I usually do. It’s a forty foot Norway spruce. Not too much sap. Whorled branches that make climbing easy. We’re not the only people who climb it. Our parish has lots of young families, and there’s always a stable group of rascals who come after Mass to roost in its branches. Today was the same as any other, except that we went to the early Mass, which is attended by an older demographic.
I sensed something wrong when I spied the senior woman staring across at my children with a disapproving look. She’s by no means the first, though it’s constantly amazing that the aging should be among the greatest offenders. Perhaps in this, as in so many things, she’s really the loud minority that raises “issues” that do not trouble the sane majority. Certainly my scrappy boys have many senior admirers, people who’ve raised children of their own, and are charmed by their dashing spirits.
In any event, I choose to believe that it was this woman who went to our new-ish pastor and alerted him to the dangerous goings on out in the tree. Maybe I should have expected this. We were the only young family there, and there’s safety in numbers. Without an army of Other People’s Children, we stuck out like a clutch of strong, and very climbable spruce branches. I had just finished helping my very rugged four-year old navigate his way down — he was twenty feet or more up! — when Father caught my eye. From far away, he announced that the boys couldn’t climb the tree. Not anymore. Not even a little bit. [Note: He’s since walked that back to “only the lower branches,” so good on him.]
I was stunned, but not surprised, in just the way you are when a cop pulls you over for going nine above the speed limit. The boys had been climbing the tree for years. There were so many other children who’ve climbed it as well, that the Climbing Tree is part of the culture of that parish. The three previous pastors had allowed it, or at least looked the other way. So had this new pastor, at least for a time. So I suspect his hand was forced by a certain, sour-faced and “concerned” old woman.
My kids were naturally angry and upset. Wasn’t it good and normal to climb trees? Isn’t this the Climbing Tree? Isn’t climbing it perfectly legal and fine, according the established norms of customary law? Yes, yes, and yes. I didn’t argue with them. Didn’t tell them to calm down, or to happily accept the situation. Obey, yes; but not accept. Not normalize.
“Most men live lives of quiet desperation,” I reminded them. “Our culture, especially in this area, is afraid of risk. Even normal risk. People think they should get rid of any risky things; even healthy and normal things. But it’s not okay. This is not a good thing.” For their sake, and partly for my own, I explained that it was probably a policy the priest didn’t want to enforce. (He did mention some black magic words, like “liability”, when I politely asked for an explanation.) The truth is that he might have said nothing if not for Mizz Concerned Citizen. Maybe she’s innocent, but as I can’t think of any way to explain to my children that the people who run their diocese, instead of living without fear, are as fearful, and litigious, and “safety-conscious” as the rest of the world, it was easier to suggest her as a phantom culprit. After all, I know very well what it is to exercise deliberate, benign neglect, only to be maneuvered by tattling into enforcing a rule that does not, in the moment, really apply.
But there has to be some limit to this. We all complain about how risk-averse our society has become. Many of us loved Stranger Things, in large part because it featured school-age children doing the kinds of normal things school-age children used to do. Having adventures, which I guess are illegal now. Most of us realize we’re too afraid, and that we’re making our children live in the same, persnickety terror. Some of us try to fight back, a little. We ignore the sign at the playground, and let our kids climb up the slide, instead of using it in the “proper and safe way,” at least until a Very Concerned Parent arrives, commanding her own child to obey the rules, and speaking it loudly enough to make a point.
The good news is that many of us parents, and teachers, and coaches, etc., do not really buy into the culture of fear and safety. In small, deliberate ways, we break, or allow our children to break, its numerous written and unwritten rules. But if we do, we do so fearfully, always wondering when and if a Very Concerned Human will show up and ruin everything. We feel confident enough about normal risk to allow Johnny to climb the outside of the tube slide, if he can manage it. But we don’t feel confident enough to say loudly, “Johnny, I give your permission to climb the tube slide. You may ignore the posted rules, and, especially, that obnoxious woman over there, with her porcelain child.” We cannot articulate just why it’s alright to take some risks, even if that increases the likelihood of Johnny breaking his arm. Even if we can articulate it, we cannot justify it before others without being able to make an appeal to something else; a common set of metaphysical and ethical values.
And that’s the real problem. I believe that, generally speaking, safety is a good thing. It’s just not the only good thing. The instinct to avoid danger has never given birth to any worthwhile project. Life, almost by definition, means taking risks for the sake of rewards, and balancing goods that are in tension. But it’s easier (and more convenient) to make a good like “safety” paramount. Easier than appealing to the importance of adventure, a value which we suspect many be no longer shared. True, a society of people who actually prioritized safety and comfort would be an incredibly bland, and heart-broken society. Maybe the kind of society that regularly produced school shooters, and youth suicide. It would be a society without joy, for joy is impossible without vulnerability and possibility. A thing that cannot fall also cannot fly. It is half-dead.
Yet total safety is an illusion. Every car accident, every disease, every plane crash, and, most of all, every anxious, psychologically enslaved worry-wart, wounded because he is so safe, pierces this illusion. The glory of a bird in flight, of a child falling as he learns to walk, or even the admiration we feel in the movements of a gymnast, pierce this illusion in a positive way. We don’t really want safety. We want to stand in the presence of Gargantua the Ape; to live closer to the edge, without dying. And deep down, we know it. And deep down, we are sad. For in our heart of hearts we realize that total freedom from harm is the privilege of only one class of humans. That would be corpses.
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