A former student of mine from Syracuse University has two children.  He and I speak often.  And since the birth of his very first child several years ago, I think that I can count on hand, without moving all 5 fingers, the number of conversations that we have had during which he did not mention his children at some point or the other.  He strikes me as a Platonic instantiation of a proud father.  A doting parent is what every parent should be and is what every child needs.

A doting parent stands in sharp contrast to outsourcing parents.  This is the new breed of parents who outsource their parenting responsibilities: “Want to learn how to ride a bicycle sweetie?  Well, we have someone from Bike-a-Kid come over right away and teach you”.  Oh my, I misunderstood.  It is potty-training that you want: “Well no problem.  I just saw a wonderful ad by a new company called Gentle Bottoms.  We will have someone within an hour.  Mommy and daddy love you so much”. 

Now, the first thing to notice is that outsourcing parents are not poor parents.  Quite the contrary, they have considerable means.  Moreover, they are usually well educated.  So we are not talking about folks of the “all bronze and no brain variety”. 

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I think that outsourcing parents are fully despicable parents who need to have their children taken away from them.  What, I ask, is the point of having children if one is going to outsource some of the most memorable moments of learning that take place in a child’s life?  Outsourcing parents treat their children like mere trophies: “We have 3 children.  Umm, would you be so kind as to remind us of their names, Madame Mother Surrogate?” 

There is nothing on the face of this earth like parental pride.  But parental pride at best presupposes that parents actually have been a part of child’s life—and not simply that they have provided their children with some third-party assistance for the tasks that the child wishes master. 

If this isn’t commonsense, then I do not know what is.  Parents who are too busy to potty-train their child or to teach the child how to ride a bicycle are simply too busy to be parents.  Imagine saying to a potential lover “I love you with all my heart.  Alas, I cannot always be with you.  So here is Hilary who will stand in for me on those occasions when I must be absent.”  Can anyone imagine arriving at a restaurant for a romantic dinner with ones's beloved only to have Hilary be sent by one’s beloved as a replacement?  At best, all of this would be a cruel joke; at worse it would all be an unforgivable insult.  I cannot for the life of me imagine a scenario in which this sort of thing would be appropriate.  Why hell, this sort of thing doesn’t even work with friendship. 

Yet, there are well-off and well-educated parents who think that outsourcing the tasks of parenting is perfectly acceptable.  And one has to ask how is that possible? 

Here is one explanation.  Children can be extremely angry.  However, they are rarely able to display the indignation, wrath, and utter consternation that an adult can display.  In both words and deeds, adults can display the depth of their hurt and disappointment in ways that can shame us.  The mere words “I expected so much more from you” when uttered in just the right way and followed by just the right behavior can leave us feeling utterly exposed with regard to the error that we committed. 

Things are quite different with young children.  They typically lack both the vocabulary and maturity of behavior to shame us.  What is more, they certainly do not have the freedom to walk out on their parents. 

All the same, outsourcing parents do irreparable damage to their children.  Such behavior on the part of parents occasions bitterness and resentment in their children that simply have not yet found expression.  The lover example above is instructive here. 

So there I am at the restaurant expecting to have a romantic dinner with Adrian my beloved.  Alas, Hilary walks over to the table.  I can see all too well that Hilary is more beautiful than my beloved and with a few remarks from Hilary it is clear that she is in fact more articulate than my beloved.  Indeed, it is for these reasons that my beloved thought it would be just fine to send Hilary as a replacement.  But, obviously, this is just so much nonsense.  The person I am love with is not the more beautiful and more articulate Hilary.  Rather, it is Adrian.  It is Adrian with whom I have a romantic history and with whom I want to continue having such a history.  The more beautiful and articulate Hilary simply has no place in this.

Well, here is the moral of the story when it comes to parental outsourcing.  It is utterly relevant that a more talented specialist in with regard to the task at hand is being employed.  For that person is not part of the parent-child history and that person is not the individual whom the child wants to be proud of her or him.  And therein lies the basis for resentment and bitterness on the part of children towards their parents. 

I would that I were saying something novel or at least profound.  But I am not, of course.  And that, alas, is precisely the point.  For every single child who grows up with parents who outsourced those bonding tasks that make the parent-child relationship the memorable experience that it should be will know that there was no excuse for the way in which her or his parents behaved towards her or him.  And the child will rightly detest them.  For a moment that should have been filled with such memories will have been lost forever.  And the child’s emptiness in this regard will be an ever-present reminder of this, as well as an ever-present source of bitterness and resentment.

To parents who outsource their responsibilities: Dante did not, and could not, define a hell low enough for people like you. 

I grew up in a world that was full of hope.  Tomorrow was definitely going to be better.  The only interesting questions were in what ways and to what extent.  I can make this claim although diversity as we now understand it had not even been articulated when I was growing up. 

I do not recall any interesting fears about society during my youth.  There were certainly no fears about public transportation or buildings being blown up.  Nor did I ever fear for my life.  There were bad neighborhoods back then.  But there was always the sense on everyone’s part, and with justification, that if one stayed clear of those neighborhoods, then everything would be just fine.  And even a mistake in this regard was rarely thought to result in the loss of one’s life.

I grew up knowing both hope and trust.  They nourished one another.  Because I was able to trust others, my life was so full of hope.  And because my life was so full of hope, I aspired to be the sort of individuals whom others would find trustworthy.  

Hope and trust are human gifts.  As I have argued in the epilogue of my forthcoming book The Family and the Political Self, the ability to nourish these two sentiments is what distinguishes human animals from all the other animals on the face of the earth.  Whatever it is that animals can do with regard to trust and love, they most certainly cannot nourish these sentiments, let alone construct institutions that can underwrite these sentiments.  This I believe is at the heart of J-J Rousseau's justification for the move from the State of Nature to Civil Society. 

I so very much enjoy living; and I so profoundly delight in being able to make a difference here and there in the life of others.  Insofar as I can rightly claim to be that kind of person, it is because hope and trust were so abundantly nurtured in my life. 

To speak in metaphorical terms: Hope and trust are like giant trees whose branches extend far and wide thereby offering a shelter in some cases and a buffer in others.  Together, they are the bridge that we all need over troubled waters.  They serve as the lenses through which we can look at things from a far thereby avoiding the mistakes that come with acting out of desperation.  Hope and trust are the pillars upon which the virtue of self-command sits.

I think that there is nothing on the face of this earth that can substitute for a sense of hopelessness.  The absence of hope is utterly eviscerating.  To be without hope is be a zombie: a member of the walking dead.  And the absence of hope consumes the will to trust, making the acting of trusting so very worthless.  And without trust, our souls ache for the depth of affirmation that can only come in trust’s wake. 

But as I look at the future, I ask myself: Will hope and trust survive?  I would that a resounding “Yes” would bellow forth.  That is not happening, however. 

Young children are growing up in a world today and they are being told to trust no one; to be suspicious of everyone.  And this makes the simplest act of human affirmation in possible.  The simplest of compliments from a stranger “What a nice young kid” now has to be negotiated through layers of concern about ulterior motives.  And way to often the compliment is not worth the concerns that it might raise.

And if this were not enough, safety in public spaces can no longer be taken for granted.  In a word: it is becoming increasingly difficult to trust the very ground we walk on.  Needless to say, this is a horrendous environment in which to be growing up. 

I think that the absence of hope and trust explains a lot throughout the world.  Their absence is undoubtedly part of the explanation for so much of the rampant dysfunctional behavior that we see.  For what on earth counts as appropriate behavior in a world that has come to make next to no sense.  For another, hope and trust require that there be reasons that we take seriously in interacting with one another.  Yet, it is precisely reasons of this sort that are continually being torn down on the grounds that we should be suspicious of everyone.  Finally, the absence of hope and trust precludes those majestic moments of affirmation that continually nourish the soul. 

Although there is probably no one who believes in the good of parental love more than I do, the truth of the matter is that we cannot take our rightful place in society if hope and trust do not extend beyond our family. 

The author of the Song of Songs wrote that “Jealousy is as cruel as the grave”.  In my youth I remember thinking that this was such a silly claim; for how can a mere sentiment be as bad as death itself.  If one is lucky, age occasions a measure of wisdom.  I now see the truth in the claim. 

Jealousy is typically destructive and has no genuine basis.  Or, in any case, things are blown way out of proportion.  So while it may be true that I smiled at Rachelie, my jealous wife will turn that smile into a full-fledged sexual fling—something that never entered my mind.  The hallmark of jealousy is that it does not listen to reason, no matter how loud and clear the voice of reason is.  At least in death, reason has the last word.  Not so with jealousy.

Bitterness is rather like jealousy.  Typically, bitterness takes a wrong that has been done to one and turns the wrong done to one into an explanation for practically all failures that follow.  There is absolutely nothing to be said for being wronged.  Wrongs should never be trivialized.  However, there are very few wrongs from which a person cannot recover significantly if not completely; and a substantial recovery always diffuses the sting of bitterness. 

Bitterness invariably results in missed opportunities to make oneself better off; and, of course, the fault for even missed opportunities is always said to lie elsewhere.  I hold that the wrong that someone did to me is never an excuse not to do for myself the good that it is within my power to do. 

Bitterness at its worse is none other than self-hatred masquerading as self-respect.

A striking difference between bitterness and jealousy is that bitterness is readily inculcated.  So if children are taught from the outset that they have been wronged by others and that this wrong is the explanation for why they do not have certain advantages, then children can become bitter.  Such children will become bitter even if it is manifestly true that the explanation for the plight that they are in is not so much the wrong that others have done to them, but the misguided behavior of their parents and community members.  This was the substance of Bill Cosby’s point regarding blacks and racism, a matter that I have already addressed.

The Muslim Arab world in the Middle East seems to be a very bitter world.  It is certainly the case that the U.S. and other governments are partly to blame for the predicament that Muslim Arabs are in.  But, alas, so are Muslim Arabic leaders; and it is this truth has got to be grasped.  Both Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat had access to million upon millions of dollars which they could have used to build schools and universities for their citizens.  Citizens could have been elevated beyond their wildest dreams.  But this is not what happened.  And who is to blame for that?  The wrong here is independent of the wrongs done by the U.S.  Yet, both Arafat and Hussein were masters at creating a culture of bitterness among their denizens. 

Rather than build schools, both leaders saw it as more fitting that their citizens believe, for example, that Jews eat the blood of children for Jewish religious holidays.  For the record, this view about Jews has its roots in Christian antisemitism.  That, alas, does not change the fact that the Muslim Arabic world in the Middle East has mightily availed itself of it. 

I believe that evil is opportunistic.  Evil will use any crevice or portal available.  And nothing serves evil better than hard-core bitterness towards a people or country; for such bitterness will excuse, if not entirely justify, any wrong doing committed against the people or country.  Moreover, with hard-core bitterness towards another, then one’s own shortcomings or those of one’s compatriots are utterly irrelevant. 

I do not know whether the world will go up in flames in the very near future.  But I do know that if the Arabic Muslim world of the Middle East were to be as ingenious in educating their children as they were in carrying out the terrorist act of 11 September 2001, then the Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East would be second to none in the realm of intellectual power.  If their cooperation in terms of educating one another were as extraordinary as their cooperation in carrying out the terrorist attack in London on 7 July 2004 or Madrid on 11 March 2004, then the Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East might very well have what it most wants, namely a West that is utterly beholden to it. 

But alas the Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East seems hell bent on destroying the very world that it wishes to rule.  But this is one of the signature marks of bitterness:

One is so committed to harming the other no matter what that one causes irreparable harm to oneself.

The horrendously jealous husband says regarding his wife “If I can’t have you, then no one else will”.  Then he kills her.  The horrendously bitter person says “I will destroy you if that is the last thing I do”.  The problem is that those words prove to be more literal than metaphorical, because the bitter person is so besotted with the delight he gets from destroying the other that the irreparable destruction that he is doing to himself has no weight in his life.  

The Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East is inculcating raw bitterness in its children, laying all ills at the feet of the West.  Never mind the wealth that Hussein and Arafat squandered.  When the Muslim Arabic world succeeds in destroying the West, what then will it say to its children?

Many people think that what is fueling radical Islam are justified grievances against the West—in particular, the United States, for among things, its support of Israel.  Why, the U.S. is frequently referred to as the “evil empire”.  Of course, there is no point in denying that the United States has committed its share of wrongs against the Arabic world.  And while we are playing this particular blame game, we might also acknowledge that France has most certainly committed its share of wrongs against the Arabic world.  Why is the French language so prevalent in the Arabic world?  The word “colonization” comes quickly to mind. 

I suspect, though, that reality is quite different.  And for those of us living in the individualistic societies of the West it is really difficult to appreciate what in fact is happening.  This is especially true of those for whom the word “diversity” is tantamount to some form of biblical calling.

Grievances against the United States are, I suggest, but a pretext for what is going on.  I return to this in a moment.

One of the most striking things in modern times is that the Arabic world has not in unison condemned slavery and genocide; and one would have thought the practice of slavery and genocide in the Darfur region would have left the Arabic world vulnerable to unrelenting moral criticism.  What has been happening in the Darfur is morally egregious.  But where is the public outcry on the part of those who are opposed to black slavery and genocide?  How did it happen that such behavior on the part of whites in Africa would have whites taking to the streets in the capitals of the world, but when Muslims Arabs commit such atrocities newspapers and news programs that cannot tire of criticizing President Bush, who may deserve it for all I know, say next to nothing about the moral atrocities that Arabs are committing against blacks. 

Worse still—supposing that such a thing is possible—is that many black Americans find Islam attractive.  Not just blacks of any stripe and persuasion, mind you, but blacks who cannot see beyond America’s history of slavery no matter what.  How can it be that these same individuals would identify with a religion whose adherents cannot seem to find the wherewithal to condemn slavery and genocide against black people?  How should I put this?  Not even the threat of death could persuade me to identify with any such group of individuals?  But that is about believing that life is worth living only if one is prepared to die for something—an idea that I have already addressed. 

Now, I am painfully aware that some will read what I have just written as a tirade against Muslim Arabs.  Alas, that is precisely my point.  To my simple mind the wrong of slavery and genocide is not a function of who is doing it.  If such behavior is absolutely wrong and inexcusable when whites do it, then so it is when Muslim Arabs do it.  

This brings me back to the issue of pretext.  I believe that radical Islamic groups have been playing the card of victim hood with a mastery like none other.  To what end?  The end, I believe, is a re-assertion of the glory of the Muslim Arabic world.  And nothing aids that goal like the perception that Muslim Arabs are none other than victims of Western wrongdoing.  For the status of victim, which the Muslim Arabic world in general enjoys in the West these days, inclines people to excuse and to be merciful with regard to the very acts of terrorism that aid that end. 

I ask: What else does anyone honestly think that the terrorism of radical Islam is about?  People claim that the money that the United States spends on the military could educate and feed every American many times over.  Well, a very similar claim can be made about the money that terrorists are spending on terrorism. 

The terrorism of radical Islam is about world power.  And Allah is its pretext.  Radical Islam will use any means to obtain it, including exploiting the liberties that we in the West take for granted.  But for reasons that escape me, far too many are far too busy seeing the United States as the evil empire to take this seriously.  My response is the following: If, indeed, the U.S. is an evil empire, then to radical Islam I say: Take a good look in the mirror and behold thy reflection! 

If U.S. world dominance is wrong, this is not because Muslim Arabic world dominance is right.  Surely not. 

Many creationists and many evolutionists seem to think that either one believes in God or one believes in evolution, but not both.  And then evolutionists, with many of its proponents being quite mathematically sophisticated folks, more or less imply, if not assert outright, that creationists in general are feeble-minded people.  So there is a sense in which creationists are on the defense.  A lot of hope was riding upon the work of Michael J. Behe (Lehigh University) and his idea of irreducible complexity (IR) at the biochemical level, developed in his book Darwin's Black Box. 

IR is the idea that some capacities cannot be acquired serially in a step-by-step manner.  Rather, everything has to be in place at once.  IR is said to be incompatible with the random chance of evolution.  In particular irreducible complexity (IR) is said to portend intelligent design instead.  Ergo: God, as William Paley argued.  But even Kenneth Miller (Brown University), who is a devout theist, has found Behe’s argument wanting.  (By the way, it is interesting that God, tradittionally understood, surely stands as a paradigm example of an irreducibly complex system.  Unlike we mere humans who start as a lump of cells, God does not come into maturity in any way.  He is, from the outset, all that he is and could ever be.  

Now, what intrigues me here is the presuppositions that unless the case for intelligent design can be made, then belief in God is defensible.  This is because I don’t quite see the argument that belief in evolution is incompatible with belief in God.

What seems to go unnoticed in the midst of all of this is that evolutionary claims are themselves quite fantastic claims.  In fact, it is only with evolution that anyone seems to believe that one can start with next to nothing and, by pure chance (as Richard Dawkin's argues in The Blind Watchmaker), end up with complexity so great and rich—give or take millions of years here and there.  No skill or training is involved; just pure chance.  I guess the idea is supposed to be that it would be mind-boggling if this level of complexity were attained by chance in a mere few thousand years, but not so given that the process took millions of years.  I shall say more about this momentarily.

It has been said that if given enough time at the typewriter chimpanzees could type the works of Shakespeare.  But insofar as this retort is supposed to be a friend of evolutionary theory, it fails.  For we already know what constitutes the works of Shakespeare.  Contrast this claim with a different one, namely that given enough time at the typewriter chimpanzees would compose a 1000 page novel that had never been written before.  I have never heard anyone suggest that. 

The real point is this.  Chimpanzees at a typewrite need only be lucky enough to strike the right keys in the right order.  We are the ones who come along and call the order of those keystrokes, when taken together, a book or whatever.  But the claim of evolution is not that a series of strokes are produced which some being then comes along and interprets.  Rather, the claim is that by chance entirely new stuff comes into being.  That is much more impressive.  By the way, anyone who found a 1000 page novel typed by chimpanzees would surely be impressed and would treasure it.  This brings me to the creationists' side.

Some creationists want a very hands-on God: every single event or action is authorized or allowed to come about by God.  And, of course, a hands-on God of this sort is surely incompatible with evolution.  But there is a way of putting God into the picture less directly.  As I have noted the essential claim of evolution is that life started pretty much at zero and ended up with sophisticated creatures called human beings via natural selection and genetic mutation.  All that creationists need to claim is that God endowed the beginnings with the potential to unravel in the way that they did.  This allows for both chance and natural selection to operate.  Significantly, all that creationists need claim is that what has come about by evolution is so fantastic that surely God in his own mysterious way embodied the beginning with the potential for the outcome that we now behold.  There is nothing that evolutionists could say that could possibly refute that.  Moreover, invoking God at this point is certainly no more fantastic than what evolutionists are claiming.  This is because the probabilities involved in the theory evolutionary are absolutely mind-boggling, even when talking about the acquisition of a single property such as blood clotting.  It is not just 1 in a 1,000,000 (for instance) to get the entire human body in place.  It is often that or much more for one aspect of the human body such as the properties for blood clotting.  So to believen in evolution is, purely and simply, to believe in outcomes that defy absolutely fantastic odds across numerous layers.  Positing God at the beginning of it all hardly adds to the level of incredulity that one already accepts in subscribing to the theory of evolution.   The probabilities involved in evolution, and so for one thing after another, are so astronimically small that believing in God hardly stands as something fundamentally irrational.  The fact that we exists makes it rather easy for us to overlook the significance of how astronomcally small the probabilities are.  For these very small probabilities do not detract one iota from the reality of our existence.  It is significant in this regard that evolution explains rather than predicts.  Far from making the very idea of believing in God seem absurd, then, the astronomically small probabilities that come with most aspects of evolutionary development, makes the idea of God quite palatable from the standpoint of probability calculus.  To put the point another way: evolutionists are in no position to criticize believing in God on the grounds that the probability of there being such a being is astronomically small ! ! !

True, the approach I am suggesting, of positing God at the beginning of it all, does not have God meddling in the smallest details of everyday life that some religious folks seems to want.  Yet, it allows for an aspect of life that every religious person wants, to wit the awe and majesty of human life.  Moreover, there is point already noted earlier that this approach cannot be refuted by evolutionists. 

In an on-line version of the last chapter of Finding God’s Darwin, Kenneth Miller writes:

I think that Miller has it just right.  It seems to me that creationists are too busy worrying about the trees to see the beauty of the forest.  They can posit God at the beginning of it all and then see the marvelous unraveling of the universe is one aspect of the majesty and awe of God. 

I understand that some claim to be literalist regarding the Bible.  Alas, it has always intrigued me that some people are more concerned to fit God into a single sentence than to see Him as the Mighty Fortress that He is.