verything has its place.  While it is undeniably true that nothing in either heaven or on earth can replace parental love, it is equally true that that nothing whatsoever replaces public affirmation.  The respect that the proverbial little old lady used to receive from young people was none other than a form of public affirmation.  One politely said “Yes ma’am” even if one went right back to doing what one was doing as soon as she was out of sight.  Again, the pat on the head accompanied with a compliment that children used to receive routinely from adults who were otherwise strangers was none other than a form of public affirmation; and the child, of course, was instructed to say “Thank you” to the adult. 

In one sense, each of these moments of public affirmation was utterly trivial.  No adult or child needed any particular one of those moments of public affirmation.  No life would have been devastated in the absence of any particular instance of public affirmation.  Yet, the accumulative affect of each one of these trivial forms of public affirmation was in fact a tidal wave of affirmation that made a dramatic difference for the better in the life of each person who experienced them. 

Just because a single instance of this or that form of affirmation is trivial, what simply does not follow at all is that lots of instances of those forms of affirmation over time also turn out to be trivial.  Indeed, this is manifestly false.  The case of parental love itself reveals this to be so.

In the great scheme of things, no single kiss from a parent, as the child heads off to school, makes a difference in the child’s life.  No one is apt to even notice if, on a given day, the parent did not kiss the child as the child headed off to school.  Yet, if anything is clear, it is clear that the accumulative effect of all those trivial kisses reveals a depth of parental love that majestically affirms the child. 

Indeed, every teenage male who makes a fuss about his mother “slobbering” all over him with a kiss, would have a life of enormous emotional vapidity were his mother never to do such a thing.

Now, I hold the following very simple thesis: Lives shorn of deep emotional affirmation are lives that are ripe for unruly rebellious behavior.  This is because there is a kind of psychological tranquility, stemming from an unshakable sense of self-worth, that comes only in the wake of deep emotional affirmation; and deep emotional affirmation can only come from others.  Unruly rebellious behavior is not merely about challenging the status quo.  A defining feature of such behavior is that it is woefully self-destructive.

If all it took to have a profound and unshakable sense of self-worth is simply saying that one has self-worth, then blacks would be second to none in this regard.  From sayings like “I am black and I am proud” to songs like “I can be anything I want to be” to labels such as “African-American”, blacks have been remarkably creative in saying that they have self-worth. 

Yet, no one can think for a moment that in point of fact self-worth is an abiding feature of the black community—“the hood”, in particular.  This is because if it were, then the enormous self-destructive behavior that is characteristic of the black community simply would not take place.  A defining feature of “the hood” is unruly rebellious behavior. 

If I am right, then the real lesson to be gleamed from the unruly rebelliousness that we see in “the hood” is not simply that blacks do not have their act together.  Rather, the lesson is that the horrendous behavior we see in the hood foreshadows what we as a society will become like in the absence of genuine forms of public affirmation. 

Modern liberal society is paradoxical in that, on the one hand, it proliferates rights while, on the other, it radically undermines the very idea of public affirmation.  Rights in modern liberal society have come to be a weapon—a way of forcing the “other” to cower.  Consequently, as rights are understood nowadays, rights have little, if anything, to do with affirming the humanity of all members of society.  And the proof of this is that talk of rights has become radically particularized. 

There are the rights the elderly claim to have and there are the rights that women claim to have and there the rights that gays claim to have and there the rights that each minority group claims to have.  And so on.  There is no general affirmation of humanity.  For these rights claims are in many respects fundamentally inconsistent with one another. 

In the meantime, goodwill is evaporating.  This should come as no surprise, since the language of rights nowadays is about little more than extracting things from others in order to serve the interests of groups.  We no longer affirm others. Rather, we merely accede to their demands. 

As goodwill goes, so goes public affirmation.  And that necessarily makes society a less desirable—nay, in due course, an undesirable—place in which to live.  It is just this sort of social reality that is fertile ground for unruly rebelliousness.  For in a most disturbing sense, society becomes just the opposite of what was characterized by John Dunne in the immortal words that “No Man is an Island”. 

Modern society has turned its citizens into islands.  We do not salubriously affirm one another’s humanity.  Rather, we begrudgingly acknowledge it.  And this is the context in which children now live their lives and grow up to become adults.  Indeed, it is thought to be good for children that strangers now give them wide berth.  One consequence of this is that children grow up less appreciative of the society in which they live.  Another is that the kind of regard for the other that has been deemed a natural extension of the self is well on its way to vanishing.  Today, it is mere simple modes of courtesy and politeness.  This, tomorrow, will transform into an utter disregard for others.  And this will do in the name of some right or the other that we just cannot live without. 

Tbe real problem, however, is that our lives will be shorn of what we really cannot live without, namely public affirmation; and we will be too far in the throes of unruly rebellious behavior to grasp this reality.  Either that, or we will be too far gone to do anything about it.