Amously, Plato held the thesis that a person could not knowingly choose to do that which is wrong.  Alas, contemporary society would suggest that, although Plato was no doubt an intellectual giant, he was sorely mistaken about this point; for if contemporary society bears witness to anything, it bears witness to the reality that people knowingly do what is wrong all the time.  Indeed, it happens with poignant frequency that people knowingly do what is harmful to their very own person. 

Now, if Plato’s claim is obviously false, what is equally problematic is the fact that people knowingly do what is wrong—even harmful to themselves.  I mean if people do not have the wherewithal to refrain from harming themselves, then it is all the more implausible to expect people to refrain from harming others.  And how on earth is it possible that people knowingly do what is harmful to themselves?

Significantly, and most importantly, the harm that people knowingly do to themselves is rarely a direct and immediate form of harm such as putting a gun to their head and killing themselves.  Out of the more than 6 billion people on the planet, comparatively few commit suicide.  So we mortals are comparatively good at avoiding direct and immediate harm to ourselves.  By contrast, we seem to be comparatively disastrous at avoiding embedded harms.  An embedded harm is a piece of harmful behavior that can be ostensibly characterized as pleasant behavior, but which in fact is known to be harmful. 

If listening to the Dr. Laura program is any indication, then romantic involvements are one of the paradigm examples of an embedded harm.  For instance, it is not uncommon for Dr. Laura to receive a call from a woman who dated, had sex with, and became pregnant by a man whom the woman knew from the outset to have serious anger management or drinking problems.  Dr. Laura invariably asks: How on earth did you let yourself become pregnant by a man whom you knew, from the start, to be so unsatisfactory as even a mate, let alone a father? 

The question is a very good one.  But if it is, then it would seem that there is something to Plato’s thesis after all.  A similar point can be made about any number of other activities such as people putting themselves into significant debt by gambling. 

The explanation for why numerous human beings subject themselves to embedded harms lies in one word: self-deception.  And it is the capacity for enormous self-deception that distinguishes human beings from all other animals on the face of the planet. 

One way of understanding Plato’s thesis, then, is as follows: (i) psychologically healthy individuals are not prone to self-deceptive behavior; accordingly, (ii) a psychologically health person will rarely if ever know the Good but go on to choose to do that which is bad for her or him. 

What is particularly of the moment here is that Plato held that only those who received the right kind of upbringing were apt to be psychologically healthy individuals and so not to be the kind of individuals prone to self-deception.  What on earth did Plato suppose was occasioned by the right sort of upbringing?  The answer, I suggest, is the ability to distinguish between (a) the intensity of desire for a given good and (b) the reality of that which has presented itself as satisfying that desire, but in fact does not—a reality impostor. 

In fact, one might argue that the move from infancy to childhood maturity is tied to making this distinction with sufficient finesse.  A properly developed adult is one who has the capacity to make this distinction to yet a much, much greater degree. 

We all have intense desires for all sorts of goods.  And if we are sufficiently fortunate the thing which presents itself as satisfying an intense desire for a given good does precisely that.  But is not uncommon for an intense desire that we have to go unsatisfied, and that all we encounter in terms of satisfying that desire is one reality impostor after another. 

If I understand Plato correctly: he held the quite simple, but yet ever so profound thesis, that with the right upbringing an adult would rarely if ever accept a reality impostor for the real thing, no matter how intense the individual’s desire for the thing in question might be.  And, of course, living well is inextricably tied to exercising precisely this sort of self-command in our lives.  This, in turn, tells us something that we all know, namely that the real problem is not so much in having desires but giving into them we should not.  And precisely what is thought to distinguish human beings from animals is that, even in the absence of any kind of threat, we can choose not to give into our desires. 

This is the freedom of the self of which Plato wrote.  It is the only freedom that he thought worth having given that one is a human being: the freedom, and so the wherewithal, to refuse to do that which one knows to be bad for one.  Plato held that we cannot take ourselves seriously as human beings without taking seriously this kind of freedom.  Contemporary society is too busy ignoring the reality of its human to take seriously this truth about its humanity. 

here is an innate sense of right and wrong.  Or so it would seem.  Children would seem to have a very clear sense of when they have been abused even when they cannot put this into words.  Indeed, this would seem to be written in the very fabric of the each child; for children who have been the victim of sustained abuse typical grow up to be dysfunctional in a variety of ways; and the exceptions prove the role.  

I want in this essay to advance the argument of chapter 1 of The Family and the Political Self in a completely different direction. The argument owes much inspiration to the Dr. Laura Program.

Now, resentment is nature’s ever so natural response to the wrongs which we have experienced at the hands of another.  It is simply not possible to be psychologically healthy, and not be resentful of egregious wrongdoing.  And insofar as religious figures are the exception, they are the exceptions that prove the rule. 

If there is one thing that a child wants from her or her parents more than any other, it is parental love.  Punishments and chastisements are fine, provided that they do not overshadow the child’s sense of being marvelously loved by her or his parents.  And while no parent can be at a child’s beck and call every single time, there is yet a fundamental difference between neglect and not always being available. 

Most significantly, the absence of punishment and chastisement does not entail the absence of the abuse of neglect.  And it is this truth that is often lost on modernity. 

It would seem that many children feel profoundly neglected by their parents; and if this is right, then what one might naturally expect from children is a great deal of resentment on their part. 

No child asked to be brought into this world.  Accordingly, every child rightly resents parents who bring her or him into the world only to be too busy doing any and everything to be occupied with the very child whom they brought into the world.  It is not just that a child rightly feels resentment in this instance, I maintain that resentment is precisely what a child in fact feels in such circumstances.  Resentment is what a child feels even if she or he does not have cognitive skills to understand herself or himself as having such a feeling.  In this sense, resentment is very much a natural sentiment.

I am prepared to suggest that much of the horrendous behavior that we are seeing among young people nowadays can be explained in terms of resentment owing to the abuse of neglect by their parents during the most formative years of their children’s lives.

We know that world was far from perfect in years-gone-by.  Indeed, the prominence of corporal punishment once upon a time makes it painfully clear that it was rather routine for parents to treat their children in ways that we now deem woefully inappropriate. 

But here is what is most interesting.  In the vast majority of instances, corporal punishment was not an impediment to children of that era having a very deep and abiding sense of being wonderfully loved by their parents. 

The central argument of chapter 1 of The Family and the Political Self is that parental love at its best bestows upon children a sense of cherished uniqueness not tied to invidious comparisons.  It is very interesting, indeed, that corporal punishment as such is not incompatible with parental love doing just that.  By contrast, the absence of corporal punishment coupled with parents who are too busy to be present is, in fact, a recipe for children not coming to have a sense of cherished uniqueness not tied to invidious comparisons.

This should come as no surprise.  Why?  Because there is simply no other way to make a person feel that we love her or him than by spending time with that individual.  This is so obvious in the case of romantic love that it seems rather otiose to draw attention to the point.  If I may speak in the traditional mode: At the beginning of courtship, there is no better sign that a woman can have that a man really loves her than that he is prepared to move heaven and earth in order to be with her.  He can send her all the flowers in the world.  But if he is consistently too busy to spend time with her, then she rightly concludes that his love for her has serious limits.

In so many respects, the parent-child relationship is rather like an on-going courtship, where the adults have the role of suitor.  This is the natural order of things.  And when parents are too busy to spend time with their children "courting" them, I maintain that it is part of the natural order of things that children resent it. 

The account explains why there is such discord nowadays between parents and children—unlike yesteryear.  Children are given more material goods than ever before; yet, children wonder more than ever before whether their parents love them.  In times past, material goods were much fewer and further between; yet, children were so very secure in the conviction that they were loved by their parents. 

Where there is this security on the part of children vis à vis their parents' love, there is greater harmony between children and their parents.  By contrast, there is greater disharmony between children and their parents when this security is absent.  I hold that resentment owing to the absence of that security on the part of the children is what gets the disharmony off the ground. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I do not hold for a moment that children of yesteryear were masterfully obedient to their parents in every way.  That would at best make for a nice fairy tale.  Children of every generation have explored in ways that did not meet with the approval of their parents.  Alas, there turns out to be all the difference in the world between exploring but remaining ever so mindful of the love of one’s parents and exploring out of anger with one’s parents.  The former is a natural part of the generational difference between parents and children.  The latter is a consequence of the resentment owing to the abuse of neglect. 

Modernity has engaged in a marvelous form of self-deception—a most ignoble lie, if you will.  We have learned to trivialize the abuse of neglect by focusing upon the absence of corporal punishment and the absence of physical or sexual abuse and also focusing upon the material benefits that children enjoy all the while convincing ourselves that, given this constellation of factors, the amount of time spent with children does not much matter. 

Although this ignoble lie flies in the case of commonsense, as the example of courtship makes abundantly clear, it is stunning just how brilliant we have been in concocting explanations that contravene the deliverances of commonsense.  Going against commonsense has no equivalent in any other species.  So while human beings have no natural enemy, that may very well be good enough, precisely because, unlike any other species, the human species is quite capable of being its very own enemy, as its treatment of its young makes abundantly clear.