hould living well be modeled on the order of airplane flying?  As we know, flying is very, very, very safe.  All the same, it stops sort of being 100% safe, as everyone knows.  The advantages of flying are thought to outweigh dramatically the loss of life occasioned by the relatively few airplane accidents that occur.  So I ask should airplane flying be our model for living well?

On the one hand, we could have no risks whatsoever involving the well-fare of our children thereby excluding all forms of marvelous social warmth, but avoiding fulsome forms of sexual misconduct.  On the other, we could in a very minimal way risk the possibility of sexual abuse, while allowing for children to experience marvelous instances of social warmth.  I have asked this question because in effect I have just described the difference between nowadays and yesterday. 

Lest I be understood, let me be very clear: I regard fulsome forms of sexual misconduct as a horrendous horror.  What intrigues, though, is that our efforts to preclude it entirely from the learning environment, for example, has had a most untoward consequence, namely that we have also excluded the social warmth that animates, inspires, and comforts so very many lives. 

By contrast, it is a striking feature of yesteryear that what I have just characterized as social warmth was much more prevalent, although the possibility fulsome forms of sexual misconduct between instructor and student was more real. 

I shall not even come close to suggesting that there should be intimate relationships between students and instructors.  All the same, what everyone knows is that, for instance, letters of recommendations do not mean much at all these days.  And, I suggest, that this is no accident.

It is not just that most instructors do not know their students well.  Most are afraid to do so.  Both points probably hold more so in college than in high school. 

A better illustration of the point might be that we now tell all young children not trust strangers.  And one interesting consequence of this is that children are almost afraid to speak to children even when they are with their parents. 

There is no mystery behind the imperative “Do not trust any stranger”.  Understandably, it is seen as a way of protecting children from sexual predators.  But it is protection that comes with a price—an enormous price, in fact.  For think of all the moments of encouragement and admiration that young children no longer receive.  Adults loved offering the affirmation and children basked in it.  Today it is gone. 

Nowadays, an adult stranger can address an infant in baby carriage or something like that.  Otherwise, approaching a child is something that is deemed reproachable. 

One consequence of all of this is that children grow with a profound distrust of adults and with little respect for adults.  In the name of protecting our children, we have squeezed public warmth out of the public square.  And it is not so obvious that we are better off. 

Is it plausible to argue that the social climate that allowed for affirmation from adult strangers made for a better world although inherent in that social climate was greater risk to the well-being of children?  Well, it is certainly not implausible to argue this.

Suppose that the probability of something going wrong was directly proportional to the rate of airplane accidents.  Would we be comfortable with that?  If not, then why not? 

Is it better to run the risk of an accident now and then, but have the convenience of travel?  Obviously, millions upon millions of people think so.  Is it better to run a proportional risk of something going wrong but have the social warmth that so enriches life?  If the answer to the first question is obviously an affirmative one, then why isn’t it just as obvious that the answer to the second question should also be an affirmative one?  

Interestingly, it seems to me that most parents of years gone by would have answered the second question affirmatively; whereas that most certainly is not case nowadays.  But how can that be?  It is plainly absurd to think that nowadays parents love their children more than parents of yesteryear did.  So what could explain the difference.

The answer is perhaps surprising: Parents of yesterday year know more clearly that they loved their children because they had made the self-sacrifices to prove it.  So the occasional risk that produced something undesirable did not render their parental love into question.  Parents of yesteryear did far less juggling and far more hands-on parenting. 

I maintain that parents nowadays are far less certain of their own love for their children.  This is because parents of today have not made the kind of obvious and explicit self-sacrifices that warrant such a self-assessment.  If my wife and I madly pursuing our careers while our children are at the daycare center, then we have not made the self-sacrifices that affirm our love for our children that was akin to what our parents did. 

I shall not really answer the question that I have proposed.  But it is striking to me that, as I suspect, we have become a society that is so worried about the risks of harm in the setting of teaching.  In the meantime, so many of our children are growing up shorn of the social affirmation that they need in order to lead meaningful lives.  And in the end, the behavior of many children is even more risky, downright reckless.

If the case of airplanes is at all relevant and analogous, then one thing we know is that safety, even safety that involves life as most airplane accidents do, can come at too high of a price.  We can protect ourselves to death.  The death in this instance is not a physical one, but a moral and social one (following the thought of Orlando Patterson in his work Slavery and Social Death).