If I could jump in on the subject of people having kids for a moment...
I have friends who are great teachers. Of them, a large portion of them do not have children by choice. They love teaching but having kids of their own is not part of the equation. Teaching requires continual learning and less time for personal pursuits. Children, for them, would remove the ability and freedom to teach.
I have always felt that Keith is a great teacher. Taking information and presenting it to everyone in a concise form that we all can use and understand. This does not make a great teacher a great parent.
Also, I was raised on Frank Zappa. The first album that I was allowed to buy was Hot Rats.
Music from the factories of mass consumption had no appeal for me. I remember listening to Iggy Pop and the Stooges - Raw Power when I was eight years old and watching my mother cringe.
In the era of Disco, the Sex Pistols was the perfect antidote. Mom hated that one.
All my life music has been different than the big box, money making machine that we are forced to endure on broadcast radio.
But I digress...
fred
fred
On 4/14/06, Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
Hi again Jesse
<snip>
> > (Off-topic??? Grrr!) Sure, just as long as you're blithe about it.
>
>I see your Grrr! What, the care and future of the planet is not off-topic,
>eh? Good point. I guess I was confining my thinking to the Title.
Well, that too.
<snip>
> >> Balance of idealism and practicality indeed. But what kid is practical?
> >> Bringing up the question of when is it that human beings become
>1) aware of
> >> their mortaility 2) humbled by it 3) able to get anybody to listen to
> >> them.
> >
> > Okay, I'll try, though how would I know...
> >
> > When it's too late? Or just in time maybe.
>
>This is IMHE the prevailing feeling among very many 20-somethings. A sort
>of terrible urgency, bordering on despair.
But that doesn't strike me as inappropriate right now.
> > This is about the Sixties. "Don't trust anyone over 30!" they used to
> > say in the Sixties. LOL!
> >
> > But it's a lot easier to get taken seriously after you're 30,
> > suddenly you find you don't have to bother about it much anymore.
> > Hopefully there's still something left by then. You know the old
> > saying: If you're not a liberal when you're 25 there's something
> > wrong with you; if you're still a liberal when you're 35 there's
> > something wrong with you. But that's the
> > if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them school of being taken seriously.
>
>Yes, the hard line.
>
> > Psychologists have said 80% or something of people don't show any
> > significant further character development after the age of 25. So
> > maybe your answer is 25. But idealism? They want to change the world?
> > Not 25 then, not if you're talking of the creative minority. But
> > who'd want to be part of the creative minority anyway? Ahead of their
> > time, out of step with everyone else, and totally essential. Yuk. And
> > never taken seriously. Every peasant village has its innovator
> > farmer, he tinkers with stuff, tries it this way and that way and
> > finds some better answers, but everyone else laughs at him. But it
> > turns out that when their sons grow up and take over they do it the
> > tinker's way, and when someone new suggests something different they
> > say Naah, you're nuts, this is the way our grandfathers and
> > great-grandfathers always did it and it's good enough for us.
>
>Why do people forget that?
Don't know. Maybe it wouldn't work so well otherwise.
>My mother was herself arrested in a political
>demonstration, yet is deeply horrified that my daughter would expose herself
>to the possibility. Okay, I guess she sees it as a low point in her
>political career.
I got arrested too, in a different sort of political demonstration,
but it's just something that happened.
There's no dishonour in such an arrest. But there's also Rachel
Corrie, and a hell of a lot of other people. That's something to be
concerned about.
> > When my friends and I started turning about 50 we started saying
> > things like this, with some dismay: "But the more I learn the less I
> > know!" LOL! At least it's a bit humble. A guy I worked for once told
> > me I'm the sort of person who never stops learning, which kind of
> > startled me at the time. He wasn't being nice, he was angry with me.
> > With any luck I'll go on knowing less and less until finally I know
> > nothing at all - nirvana! It makes you think of the 80% who stop at
> > 25, maybe it's learning that they stop doing. Well, I have no
> > argument with them at all, and it doesn't have to stop them growing
> > old and wise, and graceful, it seeps in by osmosis anyway.
>
>Hope so.
> >
> > Kids, I guess if you just love them it'll all turn out the way it
> > should, imsh'allah. But loving them can be really uphill work, they
> > can sure be hard to like at times. It probably doesn't matter though
> > because the chemo-psychological effects or whatever of the act of
> > having them in the first place turns their parents permanently
> > somewhat nuts so they go right on loving them anyway no matter what,
> > fool me twice doesn't count. It has to work like that or the species
> > would have snuffed it at square two, so nature in her infinite wisdom
> > provides.
>
>Yup, a world of heartache. Lots of laughs too, luckily.
>
> >Well, thanks but no thanks nature. Or was it Darwin. FWIW,
> > from someone who's been one and determinedly avoided having any ever
> > since. Not that I don't like them, of course I like them. But when
> > they're being unlikeable I don't have to be there, among other
> > advantages. They say people who have children and people who don't
> > have children always feel sorry for each other. I think that's really
> > funny!
>
>There's certainly regret either way. The way I heard it, those with
>children and those without ENVY each other.
Whoops! There we go.
I see I'll have to explain myself. I love lots of my friends and I
love their families and their children, but I've never envied anybody
for having children. Truly, never. No regret, not even a twinge, not
ever.
To a lot of parents that simply has to mean I just don't understand,
or that I just won't admit it, unless I'm some kind of inhuman
monster inside. I don't appear to be a monster, so I must simply be
deluded - it's self-evident that life cannot be fulfilled without
having children. Some people have told me "What a pity, you'd make
such a good father." But I'd make a lousy father - the only reason
they think I'd make a good father is that I'm not one.
People who want children should have them. People who wanted children
and didn't have them will have regrets instead and maybe envy, and
that's always sad. Then there are people who didn't want them but
didn't quite realise it and went along with the tide and it happened
to them anyway, which doesn't usually work out well for anyone.
But I don't think people who didn't want them and deliberately didn't
have them feel any regret, unless they made a mistake. But it's not
easy not to have children, you have to be determined, there's a lot
of pressure. You do get the chance to change your mind, to say the
least.
Like everything else that's alive, I'm the current keeper of a
portion of life that's been faithfully passed along millions of times
from generation to generation over more than a billion years. That's
all very humbling no doubt, but it doesn't mean I have any sacred
obligation to pass it along to the next link in the chain, that's up
to me. It might sound a bit specious to say that maybe if it
shouldn't have ended here and now with me I wouldn't have been able
to put a stop to it, but it might be true. Among other things. What's
so special about me anyway that posterity can't do without? Very
unconvincing.
Once you realise it's purely your own decision and you're free to
make either way, if indeed that's the case, it's kind of hard to find
any good reason for having them. You think it has to be brain
chemicals or something doing weird Darwinian things to people's heads
that makes them feel that way or they just wouldn't do it to
themselves. From this point of view it's the parents who're deluded.
The strange difference is that one wouldn't dream of applying such
thinking to anyone, it's just a thought, not a prejudice, but the
parents feel no such inhibition. Usually they don't want to mention
it because they'd hate to embarrass you, poor thing. LOL!
I wouldn't know if they're envious, but I've been told a few times by
parents that it's all very well for me, I don't have any
responsibilities to think about so I can do whatever I like. As if
I've shirked my duty or something. True that I don't have their
responsibilities, but they can't seem to conceive of any other kind.
I don't think that was envy, more like resentment.
Feel sorry for, envy... maybe it's just can't understand. But the
feel-sorry-for version tickles me. Quite often people with children
feel sorry for me, and I think it's funny. Not when they get to know
me a bit better though. Maybe then they just think it serves me
right, LOL!
> > Kahlil Gibran, also FWIW, wrote that children are the arrows of the
> > future, you can give them your love but not your thoughts, they have
> > thoughts of their own. Or words to that effect. Whatever, youth is
> > definitely wasted on them. :-)
> >
> >> I mean this not morphologically, but as a maturity thing.
> >>
> >> Kids today! So accountable! Like THEY have to fix everything. While
> >> listening to the Beatles!!!
> >
> > LOL! There's hope.
> >
> >> (I have not criticized my children on this,
> >> incidentally, they are still impressed that I know all the words.)
> >
> > But they do have to fix everything, just like we did. It's just as
> > well. On the other hand, we didn't listen to Frank Sinatra, though
> > our mums probably knew all the words. I think that means you get to
> > take the credit for the Beatles, not just for knowing the words. It's
> > thanks to your generation that they're not listening to Frank
> > Sinatra, they should be grateful. Hey, is that the Sixties in a
> > nutshell?? We saved us from Frank Sinatra. Just as long as nobody
> > saves us from Frank Zappa.
>
>My favourite. "Plastic People"? Or "Call Any Vegetable"? Or anything from
>"Joe's Garage".
Bonking a cybernetic German vacuum cleaner, LOL! Only to become the
Muffin Man. I can't choose... I have about 60 Zappa CDs and tapes,
about half of them get played fairly regularly. I suppose if there's
music playing there's a 10%+ chance it'll be Zappa. I like the
ensemble and classical stuff too, or some of it, like Don't you ever
wash that thing? or Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch,
or Revised music for guitars and low-budget orchestra, etc. Zappa's
guitar work is always a joy, like the long solo in "The torture never
stops" on The best band you never heard in your life (which I did
hear!), lots more in You can't do that on stage anymore, Shut up and
play your guitar. Er, yes, well.
>My Grandmother was sent to a convent when she was four, and never came back!
>(Dad widowed, new mom didn't like kids.) Nana thought it was enough to keep
>your children clothed and fed. My mother added that it would help children
>very much if they felt loved. Mom said to me, she had noticed I'd added
>something to the child rearing technique: "Say, you RESPECT your children,
>too!" This has got to be an indicator of something in the evolution of
>people. Less fear, maybe.
I really agree with that. Thanks, I hadn't quite seen it as respect.
My friends' children got a much better deal than we'd all had from
our parents, and schools and so on. Not that it always worked out
well, but mostly they treated their kids as equals, there wasn't any
discrimination just because they were smaller and weaker and less
experienced. When we were kids it was still the spare the rod spoil
the child era, children are best seen and not heard, they need
discipline, it's for their own good, they have to learn the
difference between right and wrong, this hurts me more than it hurts
you. We lived a secret life though. I think our parents probably had
an even stricter time of it when they were kids than we did, and I'm
sure they didn't live a secret life. And your kids don't need to.
Great. Less fear is a good guess, and that it's evolutionary. But how
will they treat their children?
Maybe it's that secret anti-authoritarian life lots of post-war kids
lived that grew up into the Sixties.
Best
Keith
> > Hm. I see you got your reply.
>
>I certainly did. Thanks Keith.
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Keith
> >
> >
>[snip]
>
>Best,
>Jesse
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