Don't Bother Children Skateboarding - Part 3
This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark or photo to tie it all together.
Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 11: Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding, pp. 317-332
Opening Thought: Peterson speaks
about how some social constructionist’s theory holds the belief that if boys
were more like girls (or at least raised to be) then the world would improve.
Now many of your reading this might brush those theories aside assuming
that there is no real following to them, but I, (and I assume Peterson too) would
caution you against this. I have in my own life experienced the subtle assault of
these messages and since growing to be an adult heard parents of young children
tell me that their children’s public-school teachers have articulated such nonsense
to the young boys in their class. Their message is, “if you were more female, you
would be better”. Whether it is guided as a “getting in touch with your feminine
side” or a straight-out assault, there seems to be hostility toward masculine
characteristics which has echoed into the vernacular and rhetoric of society. Peterson shows how this hostility seems to be
targeted at the aggressiveness of boys and men, and how people will often lump
all elements of aggression into the negative, also falsely oversimplifying aggression
as a learned behavior, ignoring the entire biological component of complex circuitry
in the brain. This ignorance gives the “anti-masculine” the false assumption
that masculine traits can be simply unlearned without consequences.
Peterson counters this false assumption by highlighting the more
nuanced value of a trait like aggression (which is more common in males).
Peterson notes:
Aggression underlies the drive to be outstanding, to be unstoppable,
to compete, to win – to be actively virtuous, at least along one dimension. […] Many of my female clients (perhaps even
a majority) that I see in my clinical practices have trouble in their jobs and family's
lives not because they are too aggressive, but because they are not aggressive
enough.[1]
Aggression may be more prevalent in men, but it is an attribute
of the human spirit which all people can learn to utilize well. It can give
backbone to both men and women. It is a masculine trait that needs to be
properly allowed for in society, partly because if it is left unchecked and without
healthy outlets, like sports, competition, and social circles, then it can manifest
itself in destructive criminal behavior, or worse.
The over-feminization of the post-modern era is eroding the
natural processes where masculine traits such as aggressiveness are properly executed
to foster growth. It robs boys of social development which helps to form
them into adults and focuses their development from boys to men. To give some
light on the health benefit of this formation, Peterson offers a wonderful
depiction of his time working as part of a rail line crew. There Peterson
learned that men have a way of organizing their social orders, through “aggressive”
social behavior, in the form of jokes and teasing. The teasing allowed the men
to test your grit and your sense of humor (both necessary for hard labor careers).
The teasing was a litmus test to whether you were durable enough in both body
and spirit to endure the tough labor of life. If you were unwilling to take
your blows and give them back, it was a sign that you couldn’t muster the long-term
weight of comradery and the demand of hard labor. Those who came to work on the
rail line who could not show the strength of character found themselves pushed out,
often willingly. Peterson learned an unwritten code of these hard-working men,
“Do your work. Pull your weight. Stay awake and pay attention. Don’t
whine or be touchy. Stand up for your friends. Don’t suck up and don’t snitch.
Don’t be a slave to stupid rules. Don’t, in the immortal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger,
be a girlie man. Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period."
These “codes” may seem counterintuitive to some, but it is what will build the bonds between men, and these bonds can be extremely powerful. Someone
you can openly mock, tease, sweet and bleed with over labor, and can even come
to fist with over silly and petty disagreements, is the same tough son of bitch
you want at your back when darkness finds your doorstep, or when the rig
collapses and you need someone to dig you out. Men are built like iron, iron toughens
iron. Masculine traits are the same.
Where does this ability for young children to endure the social
trial by fire begin? Play! The skateboarding of youth, the wrestling matches and the scuffs
of young boys on the playground, the young girl determined to climb the monkey
bars in record time, and the young kids balancing and sliding on ice, an ongoing
assault of trial and error, it is the cultivation of aggression and
determination into excellence and perfection. It is the falling on your rear
and being teased by your buddies, and then them offering you a hand up, and telling
you to get your “dumbass” back on the skateboard and try it again, which
toughens the skin of the next generation.
Opening Prayer: Lord, we ask you to bless us as we reflect on this
day. Help us to see the nuances of the human psyche, the breath of life, and the
Logos which you have created with. Help us to understand the unique attributes
you give each of us, and how we can best sharpen them to the ideal. Amen.
Scripture: Deuteronomy 22:5 - The woman shall not wear that which pertain
to men, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.
Reflection: The division between the sexes was very strict in ancient
Judaism. This kind of abomination language may seem very outdated to many nowadays,
but we should not make the mistake of assuming this expectation from Deuteronomy
was some arbitrary mistake of the ancients.
Peterson shows, with supporting research and expertise, that there
are both biological and social elements that contribute to the healthy
development of both men and women. This has been an agreed-upon fact in
psychology for some time. This means that for society to be healthy, both sexes
(which make up the populous of every nation) need to develop in a healthy manner
too, which would mean that the easements of healthy socialization of people in
ancient cultures would have been noticed. Thus, the ancients, completely dependent
on a reliable and consistent social order, would have stressed social boundaries
to help preserve the social support they needed to survive.
In our current era, with the advancement of technology and the easement
it provides, social cohesion, (in some ways), seems less necessary. So, it can
become easy to naturally assume this division of the sexes was merely the ignorance
of archaic people. This would be a mistake to make, sure some elements of the
extreme separations of the sexes should be eroded, we want as much equal opportunity
and accessibility for both women and men, but we do not want to assume that the
biological and instinctive social norms of the human creature should just be forgotten,
as the wisdom which has been learned could be lost and throw things out of
whack.
Peterson gives examples of what happens when both men and women
have their respective masculine and feminine traits thrown out of whack. The masculine
can become criminal aggressors or political tyrants, and the feminine can become
the abused door mat, or worse the villainous Oedipal mother, which smoother her
children, family, or even nation in a desperate attempt to have their subject
stay reliant upon them. (An interesting parallel between the toxic Oedipal Mother
and Marxist state). The healthy
development of masculine traits will help to offset the feminine and healthy development
of the feminine will help to offset the masculine.
Both men and women must find the balance of both the masculine
and feminine traits within themselves, but to do so we need stable archetypes
in society for people to build off, as well as acceptable outlets like competition and sport to foster merit and excellence. We cannot expect to develop well in a vague
free-for-all. We are not blank canvases, we are more akin to machines with preprogrammed
mechanics, there are limits on how far we can go before we become unstable and
need our Maker to heal us.
So don’t erode what our children need, let them skateboard.
Challenge for the Week: As we are nearing the end of Peterson’s
12 Rules for Life, I encourage you to find a copy of the book to read yourself.
Borrow one from a friend, get one from a library, or purchase a copy if you are able. Many of
these chapters are not given justice by why devotionals. There are much more thoughts
to play with, so do what you can to get a hold of this book!
Prayer for your week: Lord, bless our young boys and
girls. Give the sight to find good role models, people who will teach them to
be healthy and productive adults. Help them to find You Lord as well, and send each
of us, as ministers to the Gospel to help them find their way as they grow.
Amen.
Final
Thought and Picture:
I love
insult humor, I really do. I find trust is built on it between friends. If we
can point out each other greatest weaknesses and have a crack at each other for
it in good fun and comradery, it tells me that we both see each other flaws and know that we can both
also rise above them. It also tells me that we will endure as friends despite our present flaws. It is both a call to justice and mercy. With true friendship comes a sass like never before.
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