By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them

Like the Greek myths and legends, the Old Testament seems full of dysfunctional families and appalling parenting. Starting, of course, with the first family, that of Adam and Eve.

You might have heard of Cain and Abel. But what about Noah, who curses one of his sons? Abraham tries to kill one, and abandons the other in the wilderness. Lot sleeps with both his daughters. Isaac grossly favours one son, Esau, over the other, Jacob. So does Jacob, driving his children to try to kill one another. David and his son go to war.

These are not attractive polaroids for the family album.

Yet there is a difference, and it is a disturbing one. The Greek myths and Greek gods are amoral in principle. One might expect Biblical patriarchs, on the other hand, to be models of righteousness. These, after all, are supposedly the men chosen by God for their moral fibre. Noah was the only man worth saving from the deluge.

So does the Bible endorse child abuse? Is child abuse righteous?

Surely not. For there are many other sins that can also be counted against the patriarchs. And not trivial ones. Moses was a murderer. Abraham’s marriage to Sarah was incestuous (Genesis 20:1-11). Everyone had concubines. Everyone had bonded servants—some would say “slaves.” Solomon put his brother to death, for no decent reason. David killed Uriah to take his wife.

Surely the Bible does not endorse any of this. It is simply honestly reporting things as they were. No sugar coatings.

The proper lesson to take away is surely that everyone is flawed. The upright man is not the one who never sins; he is the one who at least acknowledges God’s ultimate authority. If he sins, he at least understands this as a failure, an error, a flaw, not something he is entitled to do. When a prophet scolds him and points this out, he feels bad about it. He does not have the prophet beheaded. Anything more than this is probably unrealistic, dealing with actual human beings.

If there is to be hero worship of the patriarchs here, it is not sanctioned by the Bible. One is to worship only Yahweh, remember?

When Elijah, hiding out in fear for his life, experiences depression, the Bible reports:

“He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’” (1 Kings 19).

Elijah in the wilderness.

 This suggests a certain lack of awe for ancestors. None were all that admirable. None were purely worthy of emulation. They actually all deserved to die; and we deserve to die if we are no better.

In their defense, this was a rougher, less civilized time, a tribal time, with fewer restraints on human self-will. In a simple tribal culture, the head of each family and tribe is more or less a law unto himself. Absolute power does funny things to people.

If the Bible is an accurate account—and it has no reason to exaggerate the patriarchs’ transgressions—the next lesson to learn is that child abuse is a natural part of family life. Most parents, with nothing to stop them, will treat their kids as chattels, and will abuse. They will play favourites. They will sacrifice the child’s interests to their own. We see it, after all, in animals: most critters will, with little provocation, eat their young. Maternal or paternal instinct only gets you so far; it is not something that can be relied on.

The pressing issue of the time when the Old Testament was written was actual child sacrifice, of a brutal sort: burning children alive. Except among the Hebrews, Moloch, in his various versions, was lord of the land.

The prophets were solidly in opposition to the clear and present temptation he represented. But that moral fight was probably about as much as they could manage in the climate of opinion. Even Abraham perhaps had to go through the motions of sacrificing his child, or nobody, including him, was going to take his newfangled God seriously.

Ezekiel cites it as a common saying, a proverb, among the Hebrews, that “The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Ezekiel 18:2). Jeremiah cites the same truism (31:29). Job seems to refer to a similar aphorism: “You say, 'God stores away a man's iniquity for his sons.'” (Job 21:19). Repeatedly, God himself, Yahweh God, is quoted as saying “the sins of the father are visited upon the son”:

“He punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation” (Numbers 14:18). “He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7; Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 5: 9-10).

This is obviously unfair. Our conscience tells us so, and the ancient Hebrews had the same innate conscience we do.

So is God unjust?

Surely the Bible did not want to believe so. It was simply, again, reporting the obvious truth of the world: some children suffer for the sins of their parents, suffer brutality, loss, and permanent harm from their upbringing, through no fault of theirs; while other children benefit unjustly from their parents’ generosity or hard effort. It is the problem of evil: there is evil in the world. Necessarily, if there is evil in the world, God has permitted it. One may ask why, but this a given.

If the Bible is simply describing the obvious reality, that children suffer when their parents are bad, surely what it is referring to primarily is child abuse. That, at least would be the most extreme and obvious example of the saying.

The Bible does not accept this as just. Ezekiel, for example, after citing the proverb, goes on to prophecy a better time:

“As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child—both alike belong to me. The one who sins is the one who will die” (Ezekiel 18: 3-4).

Jeremiah says, of the coming time,

“In those days people will no longer say,
‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge” (Jeremiah 31: 29-30).

Jeremiah

This is also what God demands by the Mosaic law: the child must not be punished for the sin of the father. And Proverbs writes: “Discipline your son while there is hope, and do not desire his death.” (19:18). Apparently, then, a familiar temptation.

The prophet Malachi makes a similar prediction of a time to come:

“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction” (Malachi 4:5-6).

This is a fallen world: kids with bad parents suffer through no fault of their own. That is the point, and it is to be lamented. Is that not the essential idea of original sin?

The New Testament assumes the same dynamic:

“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, ‘Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?’” (John 9: 1-2).

The Bible does not clearly and straightforwardly show that child abuse leads to mental illness. But that is largely because it has a different conception than we moderns do of what mental illness is.

Saul in his depression

In the Bible, mental illness is caused by the action of evil spirits. It is demonic possession. The clearest example is that of Saul in the Old Testament, who pretty plainly suffered from what the DSM would call depression:

“Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Saul’s attendants said to him, ‘See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.’” (1 Samuel 16: 14-6).

“ … Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him” (1 Samuel 16:23).

In the New Testament, Jesus comes upon two men whom we would today surely call schizophrenic or manic, living in a graveyard:

“When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him, and he had his dwelling among the tombs. And no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain; because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Constantly, night and day, he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, and gashing himself with stones. Seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before Him; and shouting with a loud voice, he said, ‘What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God, do not torment me!’ For He had been saying to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’” (Mark 5: 2-8).

The Gadarene demoniacs

The Pharisees at one point say of Jesus himself, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?” (John 10:20)

This evil spirit idea may sound alien to modern ears, weaned on Freudian psychoanalysis. But it is an obvious and almost a self-evident interpretation. Even some of the terminology of psychiatry (“obsession” is really a lower-grade version of “possession”: being besieged by some outside force) implies the activity of evil spirits.

Consider the facts: you hear an internal voice telling you that you are worthless, and you ought to go jump off a bridge. Surely it is forced and an unnecessary complication to call the invisible speaker anything but an evil spirit: an independent consciousness or will acting upon you. It takes a mental contortion worthy of a circus side show to suppose or say instead that it is a part of yourself of which you are “unconscious,” otherwise unaware, a part of your will that has an independent will that works against your own.

How much sense does that make? Isn’t it clearer to simply see it as an independent entity? Only a doctrinaire materialism, surely, would deny this.

Very well; so please accept for a moment that mental illness is the action of evil spirits.

Modern Catholic authorities usually make a distinction here between garden variety mental illnesses and demonic possession. But this looks like an attempted modus vivendi with modern psychiatry. In the Bible, there is no clear concept of any “mental illness” apart from demonic possession; unless, say, you want to include anger as a mental illness.

But then what makes one person subject to the actions of evil spirits, and not another? Is their action simply random?

The Bible assumes not. Nothing is random in a world governed by God.

So the evil spirits may come to test us, or to open up to us our need for God. Job experienced this.

“Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people, fear and trembling seized me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped, but I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice: ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?’” (Job 4: 13-7).

Job being scourged by the devil.

Jesus experienced this too, being tempted in the desert.

In the case of Saul, however, the spirits are sent as a punishment for sin.

If they can come as a punishment for sin, again, as we have seen, said sin need not be on the part of the sufferer: it may be a sin of the parents. This may, for that matter, be the usual case.

In other words, mental illness is or can be caused by child abuse: the Dymphna Complex.

The New Testament seems to confront the issue of mental illness, of demonic possession, face on, almost as its dominant theme. The first miracle recorded of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the first act by which he announces himself and his mission to the world, is the casting out of a demon; the healing of a mentally ill man.

“They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!’

‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.’ News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee” (Mark 1: 21-7).

The possessed man in the Capernaum synagogue.

“That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons” (Mark 1:32-4).

This is clearly the new dispensation that Ezekiel foretold.

Luke more or less says so, and isolates the issue of child abuse:

“And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).

Next, we note the Beatitudes. They are Jesus’s description of his intended audience, those for whom he has come and for whom he will shed his blood.

They read almost like a standard diagnosis of depression.

“Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.
He said: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
You are the salt of the earth...” (Matthew 5).

Beatitudes 1, 2, 3, 4 are right on target: symptoms of depression, and specifically depression caused by abuse, include “low self-esteem,” that is, meekness and poverty of spirit, and a pervasive sadness. As we have seen in the literature, in the hero legends, and Oedipus Rex, and Hamlet, depressives also hunger and thirst after righteousness, after justice. They are, like Hamlet, especially disturbed by hypocrisy, by attempts to manipulate, and by double-dealing; they are, in other words, “pure of heart.” The word translated as “peacemakers” may refer to anxiety: the depressed crave peace and quiet. Soon after in the same speech, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus indeed gives specific advice on how to handle anxiety (“Consider the lilies of the field...”; Matthew 6:25-34).

And as to being persecuted, and spoken against, surely here Jesus is giving the Dymphna diagnosis for where these other symptoms come from: from being abused; and emotional abuse is the worst sort.

Jesus, it is often said, is primarily a healer; that is the essence of his ministry. People come to him for healing. Some of their ailments are physical; but most often his sphere of operations seems to be psychiatry: the healing of the psyche. Even some of the physical ailments sound like things Freud said were commonly symptoms of “hysteria”: blindness, paralysis, uncontrolled bleeding.

Charcot displays a hysterical patient.

Jesus himself describes this casting out of demons (read: healing depression and mental illness) as his signature, the core proof that he is who he says he is:

“But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12: 28).

According to St. Paul, this remains the core of the Christian mission:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

Clement of Alexandria sees exorcism, as much as the forgiveness of sins, as the point of Christian baptism:

“I would have you know for certain, that everyone who has at any time worshipped idols, and has adored those whom the pagans call gods, or has eaten of the things sacrificed to them, is not without an unclean spirit; for he has become a guest of demons, and has been partaker with that demon of which he has formed the image in his mind, either through fear or love. And by these means he is not free from an unclean spirit, and therefore needs the purification of baptism, that the unclean spirit may go out of him, which has made its abode in the inmost affects of his soul” (Clement, Recognitions, Book 2 Chap. 71).

Saint Clement of Alexandria

A formal exorcism remains part of the Catholic baptismal rite today.

This ability to cast out demons—to cure depression and mental illnesses—may account for the rapid success of Christianity, a despised and persecuted foreign sect, in conquering the Roman Empire. It seems more recently to account for the rapid spread of Christianity among the native peoples of the Americas, and in Africa. In A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity, Francis Young writes,

“Exorcism was a defining feature of early Christianity. Peter Brown described exorcism, without exaggeration, as ‘possibly the most highly rated activity of the early Christian church’. Whilst exorcism was not unique to Christianity, it found an unprecedented flowering in the new faith” (Young, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 28).

It may not be coincidental, then, that Jesus also makes a special point of warning against harming children.

“He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!’” (Matthew 18: 2-7).

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:10-14).

This passage is commonly read as referring to parenting that causes children to sin; and the “lost sheep” of the passage are taken to be sinners.

"Suffer the little children come to me..."

But this interpretation is not theologically tenable. Note that the passage makes the point that these are “little” children. Children below the age of seven or so, below the age of reason, cannot sin. Their consciences are not sufficiently developed to make this possible. Moreover, nobody can ever make another sin: for something to be sinful, it must be done with consciousness, understanding, and intent. To the extent, therefore, that a parent ever “causes” a child to sin, that sin is always simply the parent’s, and not the child’s.

Accordingly, Jesus must here actually be referring to child abuse: to a more literal “stumbling,” to a more literal child abandonment, and to a more literal and physical “perishing.” Granting that such abuse, and perhaps the worst sort of such abuse, is teaching the child falsehoods, “gaslighting,” modeling and advocating a false morality. But as we have seen, that is a usual and even an inevitable part of child abuse. It is almost always required to shield the actions and intent of the parent. Polonius has a forked tongue.

There are, of course, other themes in the New Testament; but this theme of casting out demons seems to be central. In Luke, Jesus announces his mission in the synagogue as

“good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:33).

That sounds a good deal broader than just the issue of mental illness.

But immediately after this, he casts out a demon, as if to illustrate by this what he means.

And Jesus’s sermon on not mistreating children seems to mesh with another element of the New Testament which might otherwise seem strikingly odd.

The Old Testament includes, as one of the Ten Commandments, “Honour your father and your mother.”

Yet Jesus, it must be noticed by anyone who actually reads the Bible, has little patience for “family values.” Besides not forming a family himself, he sends out his disciples with this instruction:

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10: 34-7).

He tells a prospective disciple not to bury his father:

“Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’” (Matthew 8: 21-2).

When his own mother, Mary, asks him for something, he answers “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” (John 2: 4). When he is told that she and his brothers have come to see him, but cannot make it through the crowds, he answers “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice” (Luke 8:21). As an adolescent, he disowns his parents in the Temple (Luke 2: 48-9).

Family values indeed.

The calling of St. James and St. John

When he calls James and John to be his apostles, they are out in a boat with their father Zebedee:

“When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him” (Mark 1: 19-20).

Is this not odd? They maroon their aged father at a word. Is it not making a point?

What then, you may ask, about the Old Testament commandment to “Honour your father and your mother?”

St. Paul parses it carefully:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’—which is the first commandment with a promise—‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’ Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6: 1-4).

The phrasing suggests that the commandment requires an explanation. You are to honour your parents as repayment of a debt: they looked after you when you were young, so you look after them when they are elderly, and then you have a right to expect your own children to look after you when you are elderly in turn, “so that your days may be long in the land.” This is a social contract. It follows that without a tit, there is no tat: the parents have a responsibility, not to exasperate their children. If they do not do their part, the contract is broken, and the child is released from the obligation. Note too that Paul adds the phrase “parents in the Lord.” Not everyone who is a biological parent, then, qualifies. Only those who act in the Lord.

To clarify, the New Testament is not saying families are evil. Neither is it, in condemning scribes and Pharisees, saying that writing and education are evil. All are good and necessary. Yet there is also and always a great danger that an educated elite, or a parent, will abuse the abundant power each gives them. The danger is comparable in either case. And this should always be taken into account.

In sum, both the New Testament itself, and Jesus speaking in the New Testament, represent their teaching as being there expressly or primarily for the mentally ill and for the depressed.

This, to be clear, is apparently a quality it shares with the other great world religions. Both Judaism and Islam have similar reputations in earlier times of being effective at casting out demons. The Buddha makes the same point in the first of the Four Noble Truths that Jesus does in the Beatitudes, that his teaching is for those who mourn: who experience life (correctly) as “dukkha,” “ill-being.”

It was the key proof of the superiority of the ethical monotheisms and universal religions to paganism; this ability to overcome mental illness.

How does this work? Not, surely, by convincing parents to truly love their children. Certainly the New Testament makes exactly this call; love, it says, is the answer. But this still leaves the sins of the father with at least some sons. It may have reduced the incidence of mental illness for the last few hundred generations, but it can hardly account for a sudden cure of an existing possession, as described in the Bible itself.

Jesus gives a hint of an explanation in this passage:

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation” (Matthew 12: 43-5).

In other words, demonic possession requires a soul that has somehow been “emptied.” It must, to prevent possession, be “filled” with something else.

There are obvious possibilities here. It can be filled, for example, as we have seen with our heroes, with a drive for the good, the true, and the beautiful—for the Logos, in Christian terms. It can be filled, many Christians would say, with the personal presence of Jesus. It can be filled with faith, hope, and charity, or knowledge of truth, or meaning—and then the demon must stay away.

This could indeed be nearly instantaneous: a sudden insight as to the meaning of it all, like the instant when one solves a puzzle. A revelation on the road; the moment of dawn on a mountaintop; an insight while sitting under a tree.

Saul gets the picture

Again, there is a need to clarify. There is no doubt some danger here that some might conclude that people are mentally ill or depressed because they are lacking in faith. If they had more faith, surely, they would not be mentally ill.

This would be true in cases when the evil spirit came of their own fault. But the Bible is insistent that the sins of the father are visited on the son. In that case, it would not be the son (or, of course, daughter) who “lacked” faith. It is rather that they have a greater capacity and a greater need and craving for faith, or meaning, or righteousness, than others, due to their upbringing.

It almost sounds like a cure.

What might Robert Burton have to say to that?

Old Democritus Burton, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, for all that he is trying to make out that the world and its every idea are folly, is surprisingly weak in dismissing this religious option. Of which, of course, he had to be aware.

“A gentleman in Limousin,” he reports at the end of one chapter, “saith Anthony Verdeur, was persuaded he had but one leg, affrighted by a wild boar, that by chance struck him on the leg; he could not be satisfied his leg was sound (in all other things well) until two Franciscans by chance coming that way, fully removed him from the conceit. Sed abunde fabularum audivimus,—enough of story-telling.”

Burton here ends the chapter (Subsection III: Particular Symptoms from the influence of Stars, parts of the Body, and Humours).

If this report is true, it is a compelling example of a religious cure. But Burton can only dismiss it by calling it “story telling”--at the same time conceding that such reports are “abundant.” But the fact that he offers no further rebuttal is itself telling.

St. Francis Borgia performing an exorcism

Further along, he reports,

“The papists on the one side stiffly maintain how many melancholy, mad, demoniacal persons are daily cured at St. Anthony’s Church in Padua, at St. Vitus’ in Germany, by our Lady of Loretto in Italy, our Lady of Sichem in the Low Countries: … twenty-five thousand in a day come thither; ... our eyes and ears are full of her cures, and who can relate them all? … Read but ... Coster and Gretser's Tract de Cruce, Laur. Arcturus Fanteus de Invoc. Sanct. Bellarmine, Delriodis. mag. tom. 3. l. 6. quaest. 2. sect. 3. Greg. Tolosanus tom. 2. lib. 8. cap. 24. Syntax. Strozius Cicogna lib. 4. cap. 9. Tyreus, Hieronymus Mengus, [a fine example of Burton’s painstaking scholarship here] and you shall find infinite examples of cures done in this kind, by holy waters, relics, crosses, exorcisms, amulets, images, consecrated beads, &c. Barradius the Jesuit boldly gives it out, that Christ’s countenance, and the Virgin Mary’s, would cure melancholy, if one had looked steadfastly on them. P. Morales the Spaniard in his book de pulch. Jes. et Mar. confirms the same out of Carthusianus, and I know not whom, that it was a common proverb in those days, for such as were troubled in mind to say, eamus ad videndum filium Mariae, let us see the son of Mary, as they now do post to St. Anthony’s in Padua, or to St. Hilary’s at Poitiers in France. In a closet of that church, there is at this day St. Hilary’s bed to be seen, to which they bring all the madmen in the country, and after some prayers and other ceremonies, they lay them down there to sleep, and so they recover. It is an ordinary thing in those parts, to send all their madmen to St. Hilary’s cradle.”

But Burton is writing in England in the heat of the Protestant Reformation. He does not have the option of pilgrimage to Dymphna’s shrine. Indeed, as a matter of personal security, he is probably obliged to scoff at all such reports, or face trial for heresy. Burton’s Protestant response is to point out that there were similar pagan shrines to various gods and goddesses who supposedly healed diseases. Beyond that, “for their catalogue of examples, we make no other answer, but that they are false fictions, or diabolical illusions, counterfeit miracles.”

Possible, of course; but not evidence nor argument, just an assertion of opinion. It could hardly he a weaker response. There is, as he himself relates, a prodigious amount of evidence otherwise. As the title of his chapter suggests (“Memb. III. Whether it be lawful to seek to Saints for Aid in this Disease”), Burton’s legally obligatory Protestant faith simply requires him to say this.

This, on the other hand, the religious option, is an obvious possible content for Burton’s image of solitude, which he seems to advocate. When one retires to the wilderness, what is one going to think about? Game of Thrones?

Perhaps “get thee to a nunnery” is the best advice.

Nazis at the Gates

Life in the 20-teens? Fifties? Or Thirties?

Psst—wanna read an actual white supremacist tract? A declaration of Fascist doctrine? Want to know what the neo-Nazis are really thinking?

You will be appalled.

Apparently, just such a piece was recently published by the Philadelphia Inquirer, written by two U of Pennsylvania law profs. We are talking Ivy League here; the enemy is at the gates.

A group of their colleagues, thankfully, sprang into action, and quickly published a rebuttal, actually several rebuttals, with a call that they at least be prevented from teaching first-year law courses.

“Professor Wax’s statements amount to an explicit and implicit endorsement of white supremacy,” they write. “Silence in the face of such dangerous ideas is unacceptable.” “Professor Wax’s rants are also a textbook example of how white supremacy and cultural elitism are used to denigrate the poor and sustain and justify the gross wealth inequality that defines American capitalism.” Her views are “morally toxic” and “intellectually bankrupt.”

Odd that, in something so explicit (their word), I cannot see any actual reference to “whites,” let alone to the idea that they are “supreme.”

Yet this, apparently, is as explicit as “white supremacy” ever gets. We have their word on it.

Draw your own conclusions.

Wax and her colleague Larry Alexander are advocating a return to the “bourgeois” values that were dominant in America in the 1940s and 50s.

Yes, they are aware that there were awful things in the fifties too:

“Was everything perfect during the period of bourgeois cultural hegemony? Of course not. There was racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism.”

The authors further disassociate themselves from any racial implications: “They (these values) could be followed by people of all backgrounds and abilities.”

As of course they could. This was the essential premise on which the American system, the American nationality, and these American values were founded: the melting pot.

Accordingly, we must necessarily conclude that the position of the left now is that one’s culture is genetically determined. And this is an indisputable fact; it is “racist” and “intellectually bankrupt” to question it. You are born with a genetic imprint to speak English, drink tea, or enjoy salsa. This is not something you could, or should ever want, to change.

What could be more profoundly racist than that? You may indeed, then, be judged by the colour of your skin. It supposedly reveals the content of your character.

So what are the genetic traits that the profs who objected to Wax’s editorial—not, please note, Wax—believe are inbred in people by white, Anglo-Saxon genetics?

From her essay—this is what she advocates:

“Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

It follows that anyone who is not a “white supremacist” must believe that all non-whites are genetically programmed to:

• have children before they get married, 
• avoid education, 
• avoid hard work, 
• prefer idleness, 
• not work hard for an employer or client, 
• have no feeling for their country, 
• be bad neighbours, 
• be selfish, 
• use coarse language in public, 
• disrespect authority, 
• abuse substances and 
• commit crimes.

And how is this not racism in its extreme form?

Among other things, it would mean that people have good reason if they redline neighbourhoods to keep out non-whites, refuse to hire African-Americans, or want to deport all Hispanic immigrants. They would be crazy not to.

Obviously, the Penn NLG claim that Wax’s views are “white supremacist” is a dodge. That is not their problem. They are the white supremacists. If they are serious, their claims are plainly hysterical. They have lost all contact with reality.

Something that seems to be seen on the left increasingly in recent days. As if a bubble is about to pop.

But their claims also presuppose something else—and this is their real problem with Wax’s views.

The problem is that they hate “conventional morality.” Any port in a storm: call it “racist” and hope that will make it go away.

They want for themselves the right, if they so choose, to have children without getting married ,and then divorce if the marriage no longer suits them. They do not want to feel any obligation to put out at their job or for their clients—students, in their case. They do not want to be constrained to not swear in public, to being polite and well-mannered, to avoiding drugs.

It is a neat smokescreen to pretend that their concerns are for others, and supposedly the oppressed, of some other race. It is for their own highly privileged selves.

If you are spoiled badly enough, you will see even the slightest constraint on your own conduct, even the constraints of morality, as Fascism.

And that is where all the Fascists and Nazis are suddenly coming from. Anyone who suggests there might actually be a smidgeon of difference between right and wrong is now a Nazi.

Ironically, because real Fascism was just such a free-for-all in which the constraints of morality were thrown off.

In just this fashion.

These are the racists. These are the white supremacists. These are the Nazis.

They are on the left.

I hope and suspect that the general public will see through their current hysteria, and we will not have to go through again the sort of thing we went through in the 30s. Or at other times in other places: the Cultural Revolution of the 70s in China, and so forth.

The Socialist Response to Hurricane Harvey

Had a lengthy discussion with a bunch of leftists over on Facebook.

It was prompted by a post from Bernie Sanders arguing, in effect, that Hurricane Harvey was an argument for socialism. After all, can we expect free enterprise to clean up after the storm?

A reasonable point, if debatable. A lot of businesses actually are chipping in, on their own bat. Given a free market, it is actually in their interests to do so. Good PR, good advertising. There is a lot of talk too about the “Cajun Navy.” As at Dunkirk, private citizens do seem able to mobilize to help one another in a real crisis without government being involved. At least, they do in a relatively healthy society. Granted that government should be involved at such times, Hurricane Harvey has not been an obvious model of the efficiency of government over private approaches.

Then someone chipped in in the comments that free enterprise was responsible for the hurricane in the first place.

This seemed to me obviously delusional. So they never get hit by hurricanes in Cuba?

He actually replied, “but look at Canada! Look at Sweden!”

Indeed, there are no hurricanes in Canada or Sweden. There may, on the other hand, be something other than socialism that they have in common, that might account for this. Need a hint? Check a map. Moreover, one thing they obviously do not have in common is socialism. Canada is less “socialist” in even the “social welfare” sense than most of Western Europe. If Canada is “socialist,” essentially any country other than the US would appear to be “socialist.” Sweden is more or less indistinguishable from that pack. It is a quaint urban myth that Sweden is “socialist.” Sweden has been moving to the right for a generation or more.

But others chimed in, and in agreement with this first comment. Even granted that government cannot control the weather, they argued that the damage was far more extensive than it should have been, because Houston has poor zoning regulations, and a lot of people had built dangerously; and then not bothered with insurance.

“Houston is famous for having virtually no city planning or zoning. Flood planes, build baby build. Insurance, who needs it. This is the free market loading up on risk. Well, the bets been called and it's time to pay up.”

The beauties of urban planning. 

Seems like a backwards argument to me. Surely this particular moral hazard is worse given more government intervention. Why indeed bother with insurance if you can be reasonably confident that, if the worst comes, the government will come in and bail you out with relief money? Wouldn’t people in fact be more cautious about such things precisely when their own money is on the line?

Ah, they replied, government is good for protecting people from things like their own greed.

“The government is wise, well intentioned and takes the long view. Therefore it won't let its citizens take unreasonable risks. It creates things like regulations, plans and standards to protect people from their worst desires, greed being one of them.”

Does that sound right? Wait a minute. Why should government be wiser at this, or less greedy, than the individuals involved? Surely only if we can confidently assume that government officials are significantly smarter than the general population, and significantly more moral. Not just a little smarter and a little more moral—a lot more. Because their special magical wonderfullness must overcome the probability that the individual has a better idea of their own wants and needs, and better knowledge of the immediate situation on the ground.

By what mechanism might this be possible?

In fact, it would seem that the risk of humans being greedy is exactly why the free market is the better approach, where it is practical. In a free market, if anyone gets greedy, they lose. People stop buying from them, or stop selling to them, or stop working for them. It with a socialist system, in which the government has enough power to reach in and tinker more or less at will, that greed gets free rein. Checked ultimately, in a democracy, at the ballot box, but that is a weak, infrequent, and very blunt method.

But, the leftists replied, civil servants are chosen by competitive examination, ensuring that they are in fact smarter than the general population.

I cannot quote them there. I find they later deleted this comment.

This is, certainly, the best idea in choosing members of a civil service. It is the old Confucian idea. But there are reasons why it does not work that well in practice—in China, it fell apart about as soon as it had to deal with the Western free market traders on its borders.

Not, mind you, that it is actually followed in Canada or the US in the first place. This “competitive civil service exam” seems to be a myth. I have several times been hired to essentially civil service positions, and there was no rigorous process involved. It seemed pretty ad hoc each time. Competitive exams may be used for some high positions, but not for civil service positions generally. And even when they are, I note that the current practice in the Canadian civil service, officially, is not to hire on merit. The requirement is only that managers hire someone who is competent for the position. Beyond that, if nothing else, “affirmative action” trumps merit. And that leaves a wide latitude allowing managers to exercise personal preferences, cronyism, or self-interest.

As a result, we can best assume that the average civil servant is of average intelligence. He or she is chosen more or less at random from the general population.

But even given rigorous tests and qualification requirements, as Confucianism used, there is an immediate and seemingly insurmountable problem: how do you qualify the people who wrote the tests in the first place? If they are themselves randomly chosen, just the guys who happened to be there, there is no telling whether the tests are meaningful. Confucians based theirs on the personal prestige of Confucius, who set at least the curriculum. You almost need to be able to appeal to some figure like that, and their own prestige is a matter of faith. Not that faith is a bad thing. But it is banned from consideration in the Canadian or US civil service apparatus.

Confucian civil service exam, Song Dynasty

The second problem—and this bedevilled the Confucian system—is that you have to be able to rely on the moral uprightness of those who give and mark the test. Without some supervision—and who then supervises the supervision?—they are entirely likely, in the natural run of human affairs, to cook results to help friends, those most like themselves, or those prepared to slip them something on the side. So that the qualification process is ultimately dubious on these grounds alone.

Confucianism assumed, to counter this, that Confucians would all have signed onto and would honestly practice a well-known code of ethical conduct. That was their defense against this; and that was the true core of the Confucian system. And it was not a strong defense, as it turned out. Not strong enough. But without a similar strongly shared sense of values and of honour, without a specifically religious mandate, no Canadian or American system can hope to do even as well.

Which brings us to our second problem: government will do better than the private sector only if we can assume that civil servants are more moral, less inclined to do things out of self-interest, less motivated by greed, than the general population. Otherwise, instead of tending reliably to the best interests of all, they will may exploit their powers to benefit themselves. If they are no more inclined to do so than the general population, they are still a worse solution than leaving it to the general population.

A leftist respondent replied, that so long as you pay civil servants an adequate salary, they will have no motivation to look to their own self-interest. They will do what is best for all.

A common socialist assumption, I guess. But surely the same assumption must then apply to businessmen, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives. They are already well-paid, the lot of them. So it stands to reason that they will always do what is best for everyone, and never act otherwise, without any need for supervision, checks, regulations, or balances.

So why have government regulation in the first place?

To be clear, there is a case for government regulation. Just not this one. An example: doping in sports. Given a completely free market, each athlete faces a cruel choice: either dope up, and risk their health, or not dope up, and risk their career against those who might. Accordingly, it is sometimes in everyone’s interest to have government, or some overseeing body, regulate.

But a more important issue is that it is always in the self-interest of those responsible for regulating to add more regulations. Each new rule increases their power, and their opportunities, if they are so inclined, for graft. Extra regulations will also find support among the regulated: for those already on the playing field, each new regulation increases the bar to entry, protecting their interests against competition.

Let me now point out that, without a strong religious mandate, any “Confucian” system of choosing the supposed best and brightest will actually work to produce a civil service morally worse than the general population, instead of one morally better. Making it that much more important to keep government out of any areas where it is not truly needed.

Because as soon as such a system, relying as it must on everyone behaving with strict morality in order to work, is morally breached, it actually selects for immorality. Once “everybody knows” within the organization that the selection process is bogus, or at least once those in charge of screening know it, as they would have to, it becomes in everyone’s interest inside the organization that any genuinely moral people, or at least any genuinely moral people of intelligence, be kept out. They could ruin everything! Everyone could lose their job!

We see this situation now, I submit, in our schools, in our universities, in our media, as well as in the civil service proper. I suspect it is common in the professions generally. It is only part of the awful price we pay jettisoning our traditional Judeo-Christian moral code. We started to do that in the late 19th Century, and it has been accelerating in recent years.

I’m afraid my friends on the left do not even have a case that government, unlike business or individuals, “takes the long view.” This is actually a fundamental problem with democracy. Each of us as individuals takes the long view: we are concerned about our own future for our natural life span, and, if we have children, for indefinite generations to come. This is the strength, too, of a monarchical system.

Democracy sacrifices that. While civil servants may count on job security until retirement, this still leaves them with less skin in the game, or no more, than the average citizen. And their political overlords, to whom and to whose interests they are largely answerable, have much less cause for forward thinking than this. For a US congressman, the natural horizon is the next election, in just two years. Granted, they may get reelected. Who knows? The president, chief of the civil service, has no reason to look more than eight years ahead—after that point, he cannot be reelected in any case.

By contrast, the typical corporate executive can count currently on holding his position for an average of 9.7 years. And most big corporations give executives stock options, ensuring substantial reason to tend to the longer future of the company.

For an entrepreneur, the horizon is a lifetime, plus descendants until Doomsday. That is where the real forward thinking will come. By comparison with a Steve Jobs, an Elon Musk, or a Jeff Bezos, government is always mired in the moment.

I hate to think of myself as "on the right." Ideology is a replacement for thought. I just want to find the best solutions to problems. But it seems to me that folks on the left, if sincere, must just be terribly naive. Or themselves in government.

Don't Buy that Toronto Condo

Toronto real estate prices have apparently been taking a hit this summer. The housing bubble in Canada’s big cities may be over.

I expect it is. The rapidly spiralling house prices to my mind have not made sense in terms of the real demographics. I suspect they were fuelled by speculation.

In the first place, the population has been aging: fewer new home buyers, and more older people looking to downsize for retirement. It ought, on this basis, to be a buyer’s market.

Retirees do not need to live in the city for work. It ought to follow that city real estate should lose value in comparison to town real estate, not vice versa.

Moreover, technological advances have rapidly been erasing the advantages of city life. Thanks to Amazon and online shopping, the advantages in terms of consumer choice of living in a big city have pretty much gone. As for entertainment or socializing options, these have been equalized to a great extent by the Internet. Now you can hang out with anyone from anywhere, always see the latest movies, or the art house flicks, if you prefer, and so on.

Since the advantages of city life have been declining, the extra money people are ready to pay in order to be there ought to be declining too.

And, of course, there is the growing practicality of telecommuting.

With self-driving cars, the transportation options should also become much cheaper. Soon, any small town can economically run its own public transportation network simply by using self-driving vehicles. Making said small towns a that much more attractive option for the retired and elderly.

Sooner or later, these factors should kick in. The wonder is that they have not been felt yet.

The Statues Debate Summarized

I think the tide of popular opinion is now running well against the idea of tearing down monuments. Even my friend Xerxes the left-wing columnist has now come out against it.

In doing so, he also recaps all the arguments that have been presented in favour of destroying them. And he does not actually disagree: he only sees them as insufficient reason.

Let’s go through them one by one:

1. Why would we put up monuments to traitors? Lee took up arms against the government. Do we have monuments to Benedict Arnold?

Memorial to Benedict Arnold at Saratoga, New York

Comparing Robert E. Lee to Benedict Arnold is a false moral equivalence. Arnold did not just take up arms against the government. That would be George Washington. Arnold was also a turncoat, a saboteur, and a spy. Lee could be accused of none of those things. The only thing that separates him from Washington, or Sam Houston, or Paul Revere, is that his cause failed, and theirs succeeded.

Even this may not be fair to Lee. It was far clearer in Washington’s case than in his that he was indeed taking up arms against the duly constituted government. After all, in the minds of most Southerners at the time, the states were sovereign. That is pretty much what the US constitution says; and that is why they are called “States.” Lee’s nationality, then, was Virginian. Had he taken up arms against Virginia, he would have been a traitor. Defending it, when it was invaded, he was a patriot.

He had, incidentally, no hand in secession; he was against it.

The situation from the point of view of a Southerner of the time is comparable to the situation if when Britain left the EU, the rest of the EU invaded to prevent this. Would you call a Brit who took up arms in these circumstances a traitor?

If the rule is to be “no memorials to those who took up arms against the federal government,” it would mean also tearing down our memorials to Louis Riel, who is honoured with a statue in front of the Manitoba legislature; or Louis-Joseph Papineau, after whom many places are named in Quebec; as well as most prominent native leaders in the US. No memorials to Crazy Horse—awkward, because the largest monument to any human being ever is currently under construction in his honour. No Pontiac, Michigan. No Sitting Bull memorial. No Chief Joseph memorial. No Geronimo memorial. And so on.

How would that sound? Would that seem proper or honourable?

2. Lee lost. We do not put up memorials to losers.

Monument to King Leonidas, Thermopylae, Greece

 No monuments to losers? That too would be novel; and the underlying message, surely, would then be “might makes right.” Leonidas lost at Thermopylae; yet he is remembered. Carson, Bowie, and the rest lost at the Alamo; yet they are commemorated. In Canada, this would mean no honours to Montcalm—he lost on the Plains of Abraham. No memorials in Scotland to Bonnie Prince Charlie. No memorials in Ireland to Michael Collins--his side lost that Civil War. Not to mention, no memorials to Pearse, or Wolfe Tone, or Emmet, or just about any of the other heroes of Irish independence.

And, if we are to ban the Stars and Bars on these grounds, we ought also by that logic ban the fleur de lys on any Canadian flags or public monuments, as it was the symbol of the defeated regime.

Think that would promote unity? Does that sound like tolerance? Why would anyone think banning Confederate symbols is?

3. Confederate monuments celebrate slavery.

This is the only argument, surely, that can justify the elimination of Confederate references. Slavery has to be the key.

Not the mere fact that the South practiced slavery, either. Just about everywhere and everyone did, up until that time or soon before; and some well after. The Confederacy was not special in this regard.

The argument must be that the Civil War was about ending slavery, and moreover that slavery was the raison d’etre of the Confederacy.

It is possible to make that argument. But there is no consensus among historians; there are arguments that the key on the Southern side was states’ rights, discriminatory tariffs, and/or a Southern right to self-government; and that, on the Union side, the main objective was to preserve the union, not to end slavery. No one faction has no right to impose their interpretation of history on the other. To you or to me, it might have been about slavery. Fine, that is a good reason for us not to put up monuments. But we have no right to insist that everyone agree and conform.

But let us suppose the war was indeed about slavery. Even so, that war ended over 150 years ago. There has been no slavery in the US for that long. Slavery is not today a very current or pressing issue. Slavery is banned worldwide. There is not a single voice being raised, no prominent public intellectual, political commentator, or politician, anywhere in the world who is now advocating a return to slavery. What then has suddenly changed? Why now is it suddenly a problem?

There is nothing useful or humanitarian or brave about publicly opposing slavery now. How courageous or deeply symbolic is it to shoot a dead horse? To desecrate a corpse?

Accordingly, what is the real case for removing these monuments? For the reason cannot be opposition to slavery. Everybody opposes slavery. By removing then, you are not doing anything against slavery. If you want them to stay, your motive is manifestly not to support slavery. The only plausible motive seems to be to bully and humiliate a minority group: American “white” Southerners. Or else to cop a cheap sense of moral superiority at no cost to yourself, but only to others. Pharisaism, in New Testament terms.

The flag that some Southerners still fly is not the flag of the Confederacy. It is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s command. It cannot, therefore, be fairly taken as representing any policy of that government. The person commemorated is generally not Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, who is not fondly remembered, or any political figure, let alone one who endorsed slavery as policy. It is Lee, or some other military figure: Jackson, Beauregard, and so forth. This strongly implies, if it were not already evident to common sense, that Southerners themselves are not being political about this. Those who want to preserve the memory of the Confederacy seem to have already taken pains to reject any support of slavery. The memorials and the flag celebrate the bravery, the gallantry, and the resourcefulness of the Southerners who fought and often won against long odds. And died in their hundreds of thousands.

Like Canadians, Southerners like to think of themselves as culturally different from Yankees, with their own distinct history and folkways. Surely they have the same right to think so as Canadians.

4. What about Cornwallis in Canada? Should his statue come down for calling for the killing of Indians?

A 19th century survivor of scalping by Sioux Indians

There was a war, or rather, an insurrection, on. He had a duty to preserve the peace. His crime, in the minds of the protesters, was that he put a bounty on Indian scalps. And this indeed sounds (and was) inhumane; but it is unfair to target Cornwallis here. Scalping was the established Indian practice. Anyone fighting against Indians more or less had to follow suit, or fight with one hand bound. Just as, in WWI, when one side used poison gas, all did; when one side introduced flamethrowers, all had to use them. It is the way with war. Not to follow suit would be a betrayal of your own people. If there is any blame for the practice of scalping, which was indeed inhumane, it falls on the Indians; yet they are the ones protesting Cornwallis. This is pure racism, surely.

5. What about Sir John A. Macdonald? Wasn’t he a racist?

I have seen no good evidence of Sir John A being “racist.” Somewhat corrupt, sure, but not racist. He seems to have been a rather moderate and tolerant sort. Sometimes the critics cite the residential schools, which makes no sense, since they were created for the benefit of the Indians and at their request. Usually people seem to just make the charge without any attempt to substantiate it. It looks to me like no more than the eternal human instinct to tear down others, out of envy for their accomplishments.

Incidentally, here my friend, despite his piece presumably passing through the newspaper’s editorial process, spells Macdonald’s name incorrectly, as “MacDonald.” He is a well-educated man, an opinion leader. His editors are professionals who are supposed to spot and correct any such errors. Wouldn’t you think the name of the country’s founder is a detail every schoolboy ought to know?

This illustrates the point that we know too little of our history. Yet this urge to tear down monuments is, beyond any other considerations, a new attack on anyone knowing history. How is that a good thing? Is ignorance better than knowledge? Is education a disease?

Beware any movement that seeks to keep the population ignorant.

We in North America also suffer from an absolute lack of history in the first place, compared to just about any other part of the world. Shared history is what builds a culture and a nation. How is it a good thing, then, to try to erase what little we have?

We also have too little art in our lives. How is it a good thing to tear down any public art we see? The better to keep all our noses to the grindstone?

6. What about Columbus? Wasn’t he a slaver? Didn’t he bring slavery to the Americas?

I hold no brief for Columbus. I have always thought his role in history has been overblown. But he is important to Italian-Americans and Italian-Canadians; and to Hispanic-Americans. He gives them a pride in their heritage and a sense of belonging in the New World. And in an American society in which they have not always been welcomed: Catholic immigrants were the main target of the Ku Klux Klan, not to mention of the Freemasons, the Know-nothings, and other nativist groups. To remove monuments to him, usually funded as a public service and a gift to their fellow citizens by Italian-American groups, is an attack on another minority and their sense of pride. It too ought to be offensive to anyone who believes in diversity and tolerance. You want monuments to your heroes too, fine. Just don’t tear down those of other people.

Nor did Columbus “bring slavery to the Americas.” Slavery was a feature of most, if not all, indigenous cultures in the Americas. Christian Europe was the odd man out in this regard. Columbus was adopting native practices. Changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day simply substitutes commemoration of one slaver with commemoration of several million slavers. How is that better?

Crossdressing for Lady of the Flies

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies

A number of people are getting upset about the planned new film based on “Lord of the Flies.” The backers say they plan to stay faithful to the book, but with one big twist: the cast, all boys in the book, will be all female.

I can’t get too upset. If these guys go ahead and do it, heaven will sent their punishment all on its own. They will lose their investment. The film will not interest audiences. Men and woman, boys and girls, are not interchangeable but for the dangly bits. They will react differently in the same situations. Have women do men’s roles, and it will all come across as stilted and not believable.

It might be quite interesting to imagine how girls would react faced with a similar situation. But that would take work. And talent.

And who is the audience? The theme, survival on a desert island, is one that would tend to interest men, not women so much. But it will interest men less with girls in the roles, while this will do nothing to draw women in.

Bottom line: Hollywood moguls are stupid.

More generally, I hate the conventional and unimaginative idea of taking a familiar work and gimmicking up the setting: Romeo and Juliet in modern dress, a black Human Torch, that sort of thing. It is like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. It is a type of vandalism.

Saturn's Children

Saturn spending quality time with the kids.

As we have seen, since ancient times, one standard explanation of depression seems to refer to the issue of child abuse: the idea that the depressed or melancholic are “children of Saturn.”

Klibansky et al, in their study Saturn and Melancholy, write that “Nearly all the writers of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance considered it an incontestable fact that melancholy, whether morbid or natural, stood in some special relationship to Saturn, and that the latter was really to blame for the melancholic’s unfortunate character and destiny” (Klibansky, R., Panofsky, E. and Saxl, F., Saturn and Melancholy, London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1964, p. 127). “For a sixteenth-century artist,” they add, “the task of drawing a melancholic was equivalent to drawing a child of Saturn” (ibid., p. 127).

This explanation bore no apparent relation to the “chemical imbalance” theory of the four humours. There was no association, for example, between Saturn and the spleen, the imagined seat of black bile (ibid., p. 147).

This reference to Saturn or Cronus seems significant, because it places the issue of depression at the apex of Greek mythology: in the very creation myth.

Here is the story of Saturn (Greek Cronus) as told by Hesiod:

But Rhea was subject in love to Cronus and bare splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker [Poseidon], and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken. These great Cronus swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother’s knees with this intent, that no other of the proud sons of Heaven should hold the kingly office amongst the deathless gods. For he learned from Earth and starry Heaven that he was destined to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was, through the contriving of great Zeus. Therefore he kept no blind outlook, but watched and swallowed down his children: and unceasing grief seized Rhea. But when she was about to bear Zeus, the father of gods and men, then she besought her own dear parents, Earth and starry Heaven, to devise some plan with her that the birth of her dear child might be concealed, and that retribution might overtake great, crafty Cronus for his own father and also for the children whom he had swallowed down. And they readily heard and obeyed their dear daughter, and told her all that was destined to happen touching Cronus the king and his stout-hearted son. So they sent her to Lyetus, to the rich land of Crete, when she was ready to bear great Zeus, the youngest of her children. Him did vast Earth receive from Rhea in wide Crete to nourish and to bring up. Thither came Earth carrying him swiftly through the black night to Lyctus first, and took him in her arms and hid him in a remote cave beneath the secret places of the holy earth on thick-wooded Mount Aegeum; but to the mightily ruling son of Heaven, the earlier king of the gods, she gave a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then he took it in his hands and thrust it down into his belly: wretch! he knew not in his heart that in place of the stone his son was left behind, unconquered and untroubled, and that he was soon to overcome him by force and might and drive him from his honours, himself to reign over the deathless gods (Theogony, ll ll. 453-491).

Here again we see the Dymphna legend. Its two options, absolute ownership or death, are combined in the one image of swallowing the child: destroying the child, on the one hand, and making it oneself, on the other.

Taking the kid to the park.

This is about all that is fixed about the myth of Cronus: that he was the original king and father of the gods, and that he ate his own children. Other stories about him seem vague and variable. So that calling someone a “child of Cronus” would seem to have one, obvious, meaning.

That this was the essential fact about Cronus, that he devoured children, is shown by the readiness of Greek authors to see the Carthaginian god Baal Hammon as the same person. The Carthaginians sacrificed children to him—that made him Cronus. Porphyry, in On Abstinence, claims that the Cretan Greeks too used to offer child sacrifices to Cronus in ancient times (Graves, p. 27). Such sacrifices indeed feature in the Homeric epics.

Diodorus Siculus attests to the Carthaginian custom of child sacrifice to Baal/Cronus:

“Himilcar, ... supplicated the gods after the custom of his people by sacrificing a young boy to Cronus and a multitude of cattle to Poseidon by drowning them in the sea” (Diodorus Siculus, Library, Diod. 13.86; describing a Carthaginian siege of Sicily).

Plutarch also documents the practice:

“... but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people” (De Superstitione 171).

This offended the Greeks—despite their own practice of infanticide.

“Gelon, the despot, after vanquishing the Carthaginians off Himera, forced them, when he made peace with them, to include in the treaty an agreement to stop sacrificing their children to Cronus” (Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata 19).

Cleitarcus writes of Carthage in 146 BC:

“There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Cronus, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the ‘grin’ is known as ‘sardonic laughter,’ since they die laughing” (Scholia, trans. Paul G. Mosca).”

So Cronus is definitively “the god who devours children.” And melancholics are his children.

Molech or Moloch

This also identifies him with the Biblical figure of Molech. Molech seems to be a generic term for a variety of gods around the Middle East: the Ammonite Milcom, the Tyrian Melqart, and others. Like Cronus, he is a king: the name “Molech” seems to be a variant of Hebrew Malek, “king.” The essential significance of these “Molechs,” again, was the custom of child sacrifice.

Leviticus 18:21 "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord."

Leviticus 20-5: "Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not. Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people.”

Deuteronomy 12: 31 “Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.”

Micah 6:7 The king of Moab asks, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?'” This is given as an example of Moabite wickedness. The prophet responds that this is not pleasing to Yahweh, who requires instead a humble, just, and merciful heart.

Psalms 106: 36-8 “But [some of the Hebrews] were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.”

Archeological evidence confirms that child sacrifice was indeed standard practice among the Carthaginians, the Canaanites, the Phoenicians, and other peoples in the general area of Palestine. The ashes of children have been found in sacrificial vessels mixed with the ashes of sacrificial animals. At an earlier period, it was also practiced in Greece and Rome.

Sacrifices to Molech traditionally took place in the Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem—also known as Gehenna. In the New Testament, we sometimes translate the word “Gehenna” as “Hell.”

Jeremiah 32:35 “And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin."

That makes the issue of child sacrifice seem central to the early Judeo-Christian as well as the Greek consciousness. It is one of the reasons why it is considered just for the Hebrews to conquer the lands of the Canaanites and show them no mercy.

Deuteronomy 9: 4-5 “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you...”

Child sacrifice seems to have been widespread in the ancient world—almost the usual thing. In the New World, the Inca practiced capacocha, in which “perfect” children, without blemish or scar, were gutted, strangled, or buried alive on a mountaintop. Females were selected for their beauty. The sacrifice of the children was supposed to extend the life of the king or some other prominent person. The Mayans thought the same. The Aztecs sacrificed their children to the rain god.

Aztec child sacrifice

The Babylonian Enuma Elish, the oldest known creation story, is in this respect like the Greek. Here the goddess Tiamat stands in for Rhea, and Apsu for Cronus. Our surviving fragments read:

And Tiamat roared...
She smote, and their deeds...
Then Apsu, the begetter of the great gods,
Cried unto Mummu, his minister, and said unto him:
“O Mummu, thou minister that rejoicest my spirit,
Come, unto Tiamat let us go!”
So they went and before Tiamat they lay down,
They consulted on a plan with regard to the gods, their sons.
Apsu opened his mouth and spake,
And unto Tiamut, the glistening one, he addressed the word:
...their way...
By day I can not rest, by night I can not lie down in peace.
But I will destroy their way, I will...
Let there be lamentation, and let us lie down again in peace.


… Mummu answered, and gave counsel unto Apsu,
...and hostile to the gods was the counsel Mummu gave:
“Come, their way is strong, but thou shalt destroy it;
Then by day shalt thou have rest, by night shalt thou lie down in peace."
Apsu harkened unto him and his countenance grew bright,
Since he (Mummu) planned evil against the gods his sons.” 

Their way was evil...

Apsu is then, like Cronus, defeated by his children, led by the hero god Ea or Marduk. Tiamat, following the usual pattern of the selfish parent, then forms an incestuous union with her son Kingu.

Again, it is the Dymphna complex.

Other creation stories widely spread both geographically and chronologically reveal the same concern. It seems unlikely, for example, that there could have been any direct influence from Greece or Babylon on an Iroquois creation myth from upstate New York:

“One day one of the Sky Women realized she was going to give birth to twins. She told her husband, who flew into a rage. In the center of the island there was a tree which gave light to the entire island since the sun hadn’t been created yet. He tore up this tree, creating a huge hole in the middle of the island. Curious, the woman peered into the hole. Far below she could see the waters that covered the earth. At that moment her husband pushed her. She fell through the hole, tumbling towards the waters below.” (http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_12.html).

Nor are Greeks or Phoenicians likely to have influenced the tale told throughout Polynesia, of the founder-god Maui:

“In New Zealand the hero is declared to have been an abortion, which his mother wrapped up in her apron or topknot, and either abandoned in the bush or threw into the sea. Although thus deserted by his parent, Maui survived, for the unformed child was tended by supernatural beings and reared to manhood, some versions declaring that he was taken up into the sky-world (Roland B, Dixon, Oceanic Mythology, 1916, Ch. 2).

Most versions of the story also seem to feature incest. Cronus fathers his children with Rhea. Rhea is his sister.

One might imagine this was a simple necessary: at the beginning of time, how many other options is a primordial founder god going to have? Zeus too married his sister, Hera. To clear up any such misunderstandings, Diodorus Siculus, for one, reports that Rhea was already married at the time, to Ammon, who some say was the king of Libya, others the Sun (Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride 12). She threw Ammon over for the chance to mate with her sib: “she forsook Ammon and, departing to her brothers, the Titans, married Cronus her brother” (Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Book III. 71. 1-4). Selfish physical desires trumped family duties in one, at least, of the divine parents.

The Semitic Lilith seems to be a female version of the narcissistic parent. When she is not admiring herself in the mirror, her chief occupation is seeking out and strangling infants.

Milton draws on a similar tradition in his poem “Il Penseroso,” making personified Melancholy the incestuous child of Cronus/Saturn and his daughter Vesta/Hestia:

Thee bright-hair'd Vesta long of yore,
To solitary Saturn bore;
His daughter she (in Saturn’s reign,
Such mixture was not held a stain)

It is the same complex that we have seen in the hero legends. Here, the hero is Zeus; we see the Laius/Damon/Claudius figure in Cronus.

The rest of Hesiod’s Creation story is a typical hero legend, with Zeus as the hero.

“Rhea was enraged. She bore Zeus, her third son, at dead of night on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, where no creature casts a shadow and, having bathed him in the River Neda, gave him to Mother Earth; by whom he was carried to Lyctos in Crete, and hidden in the cave of Dicte on the Aegean Hill. Mother Earth left him there to be nursed by the Ash-nymph Adrasteia and her sister Io, both daughters of Melisseus, and by the Goat-nymph Amaltheia. His food was honey, and he drank Amaltheia's milk, with Goat-Pan, his foster-brother. Zeus was grateful to these three nymphs for their kindness and, when he became Lord of the Universe, set Amaltheia’s image among the stars, as Capricorn. He also borrowed one of her horns, which resembled a cow’s, and gave it to the daughters of Melisseus; it became the famous Cornucopia, or horn of plenty, which is always filled with whatever food or drink its owner may desire. But some say that Zeus was suckled by a sow, and rode on her back, and that he lost his navel—string at Omphalion near Cnossus… Zeus grew to manhood among the shepherds of Ida.” (Graves, p. 26).

Like other heroes, Zeus is rejected at birth, but protected in a green world, a spiritual realm, a mountain cave. He is raised by tree and goat spirits, the horn of the spiritual goat becoming the cornucopia: an image of the limitless bounty of the imagination.

The cornucopia

Zeus goes on, as hero, to save his brothers through his efforts. Hesiod relates:

“After that, the strength and glorious limbs of the prince increased quickly, and as the years rolled on, great Cronus the wily was beguiled by the deep suggestions of Earth, and brought up again his offspring, vanquished by the arts and might of his own son, and he vomited up first the stone which he had swallowed last. ... And he [Zeus] set free from their deadly bonds the brothers of his father, sons of Heaven whom his father in his foolishness had bound. And they remembered to be grateful to him for his kindness, and gave him thunder and the glowing thunderbolt and lightening: for before that, huge Earth had hidden these. In them he trusts and rules over mortals and immortals” (Theogony, ll. 492-506).

Cronus/Saturn, then, is the personality that causes depression in children.

So what else can we say about him?

Here we have a problem. As Klibansky and his co-authors lament, the attributes assigned to Cronus/Saturn seem contradictory:

“It is true that the other Greek gods, too, nearly all appear under a dual aspect, in the sense that they both chastise and bless, destroy and aid. But in none of them is this dual aspect so real and fundamental as in Kronos. His nature is a dual one not only with regard to his effect on the outer world, but with regard to his own--as it were, personal--destiny, and this dualism is so sharply marked that Kronos might fairly be described as god of opposites” (Klibansky, op. cit., p. 134).

Some of these contradictions can be explained by the story of his change in fortunes: he was king of gods, then dethroned and made a prisoner in Tartarus. So there were two aspects of his experience.

“His association with celibacy and childlessness, widowhood, child-exposure, orphanhood, violence and hidden malice,” Klibansky reasons, “can be explained by the unfortunate experiences of the Greek Cronus in his family life; his association with the sad, the worried, and misused, beggars, chains, captivity, and concealment, derives from his dethronement and imprisonment in Tartarus; the attribution to him of ‘authority,’ ‘guardianship,’ great fame and high rank is due to his original position as ruler of the world and king of the gods” (p. 143 Saturn and Melancholy).

Maybe; this would seem more convincing if his banishment to Tartarus were a more certain element of the legends, rather than one concept among many. But the contradictions might also be explained simply by his being the source of melancholy. To begin with, consider that there are two distinct types who could be described as “children of Saturn” or “under the influence of Saturn”: those who are like Saturn himself, and those who share the situation of his children. And they are opposites: the parent is selfish, and the child has, as they say, “low self esteem.” In the same fashion, by popular convention, the name “Frankenstein” can refer to either the fictional scientist or his fictional monster; and “Orwellian” refers to things George Orwell argued against.

A second consideration: there may be two types of melancholy or depression addressed by the legend. Alice Miller’s work has suggested that there may be two types of depression: that formed by a childhood of abuse, by trauma, and that formed by a spoiled childhood. The latter might well remember their own Cronus, their dominating father, as the lord of the golden wonderland of childhood, now lost. It is the sense that this was once present, and is now lost forever, that causes, in these cases, melancholy. The adult world is painfully disappointing by comparison.

Hesiod describes the Saturnine Golden Age in terms that sound much like nostalgic memories of a happy childhood:

“A golden race of mortal men ... lived in the time of Cronus when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil: miserable age rested not on them … The fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things. ...” (Works and Days, transl. by Evelyn-White, l. 1100).

Notice something else here: the Golden Age was golden to men, not to gods. Even then, somewhere out of sight, the Olympian Gods were presumably being devoured.

This could illustrate the difference jealousy makes: Cronus, the self-absorbed, might delight in lavishing gifts on those he considered his pets, his belongings. But he might just as well be merciless to those he thought might rival him, who might end up his equals or betters. We have seen that depression, and so abuse, is a special problem of the exceptional, the brilliant, the beautiful: those who provoke jealousy. This could be another example.

Carl Jung once wrote that “sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality.” Hitler was a vegetarian who loved dogs. It is entirely possible, and, Jung thinks, the usual case, for brutality and sentimental favouritism to coexist in the same heart. It is a form of symbolic aggression to treat your pet better than you treat people, because it it yours: it is, primarily, putting those other people in their place, and putting their place that much lower than yours.

In either case, however, Cronus is not a model for parenting: either abusing or pampering leads to similar suffering in the end.

And so Cronus may be properly described as Alchandrinus does: “They [the Saturn type] were thieves; they were loquacious; they were persons who said one thing with their mouth but thought another in their heart; they nourished resentment, they were sons of the devil, they were miserly on their own soil, rapacious abroad, and so on” (Klibansky, et al, p. 179).

Note the same matter of dishonest, manipulative speech that troubled Hamlet. Miserliness is one form of selfishness; as, of course, is rapaciousness.

Dante writes that Saturn is “stella damnabilis, furiosa, odiosa, superba, impia, crudelis, malivola, hebes, tarda, multis nociva, sterilis, nutrix paupertatis, conservans malum, vitans bonum, dura, senex et sine misericordia.” [star of condemnation, furious, odious, arrogant, heartless, cruel, malignant, slow, recalcitrant, very harmful, sterile, nurse of poverty, conserving the bad, avoiding the good, hard, old and without pity]. He is “strong and powerful in wickedness, always signifying evil and not good” (Saturn and Melancholy, p. 191). According to Berchorius, Cronus is a “personification of the sin of greed” (Klibansky, p. 177; Metamorphosis Ovidiana, 1515). Bernardus sees him as a “wicked old man, cruel and despicable, constantly watching over women in labour so as mercilessly to devour the new-born infant. ... Saturn is here the reaper, whose sharp sickle destroys all that is lovely and bears blossom: he lets no roses or lilies flower, and cannot bear fructification” (Klibansky, p. 185; E. Gilson, La cosmologie de Berchorius Sinvestris, Archive d‘histoire doctrinale et litteraire du monyen age, vol. III, Paris 1928, pp. 5–24).

The hero in battle will confront his enemy face on; Cronus characteristically uses cunning. Dissembling is apparently part of his nature. Robert Graves describes his deeds as “thieving attacks.” “He lurked to spy upon the pregnant mother” (Graves, pp. 14-5). This suggests Polonius the instinctive spy, hiding behind the drapes.

This, Klibansky et al suggest, is why Cronus conventionally carries a sickle. It is a weapon that attacks backwards. It conveys something of the same sense as “snake in the grass.” (Klibansky, op, cit, p. 177).

And so the harmful, selfish parent is a standard figure in world mythology; it seems to be, by this, one of mankind’s prime issues.

A Russian mother throws her child to the wolves.

Child sacrifice is, of course, only the pinnacle of the pyramid of child abuse: it is only its ritualized form. Virtually all pagan cultures practiced infanticide. Its abolition was one of the important ethical innovations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Perhaps it was the most important. Infanticide is expressly prohibited in both the Didache, the earliest known Christian writing, and the Qur’an—among other things, this shows how common it was.

Infanticide in China.

Today, too, we have abortion: forty percent of children are currently aborted in the US.

That gives us some measure of how common it is for parents to put their own interests ahead of those of children.

But this in turn is only the icy tip of the berg. For every child that is rejected and destroyed at birth, how many others are kept and raised as something of use to the parent? As a pet or as a punching bag?

It is profoundly naive to accept the popular fiction that every child has loving parents.

And this indeed is a central issue of human existence.

Ride with Me in My Pink Cadillac

To be clear and to be certain, the Fifties and early Sixties were not a wonderful time. There is a reason why the Sixties happened. They were a reaction to something soul-destroying.

I think of endless suburbia, with spaghetti roads to thwart pedestrians or outside visitors, all housing and nothing resembling a community. I think of black and white TV, back when it was justly called a “vast wasteland.” I think of the constant anxiety over a possible nuclear Armageddon. I think of the struggle for civil rights.

But it all now seems so far away. Children today probably have no idea… it is like another world. As one commentator recently wrote, “Creationists believe that life on earth began 5000 years ago. Millennials seem to think it started with the Beatles. Or maybe Star Wars.”

There was a sudden rift in world consciousness right about then, and it is worth remembering what came before. We are losing our history, and when we lose our past, we lose our future.

Perhaps the time is ripe for someone to put together an open-air museum, a theme park, of life in the Fifties. We need a version of “Upper Canada Village” to show people what it was like.

And yes, it would also be of vast nostalgic value for us old museum pieces who still ourselves remember. Would that be so wrong?

It would have to avoid the really drab bits. Otherwise no one would come.

But there were fun bits too, and enough to make an amusing family outing. A lot of those fun bits are now forever gone.

Let’s call it “Pleasantville.”

Attractions might include:

Woolworth's lunch counter

A Woolworth’s, as they used to be, with a creaking wooden floor, and as much as possible with the kind of kitsch they sold. Black velvet paintings. Framed prints of children with unnaturally big eyes. Pink pearl erasers. Paint-by-number sets. Plastic pink flamingos for the lawn. The attraction could pay for itself: it is also the souvenir shop, and items could be branded with the park’s name and logo. “My grandparents visited Pleasantville, and all I got was this lousy poodle skirt.” The store ought to include a lunch counter, as they used to. But perhaps without full historical authenticity: no ban on serving blacks.

Fine art of the 1950s.

A real old diner. This is a popular thing anyway—a proven business. Retro diners are everywhere. But it would have to be included here, or something would be missing. The menu could feature the actual diner slang for the foods—“Adam and Eve on a raft,” and so forth. With explanations, needfully. I say no upmarket revisionism: a burger is a burger. Do the dishes as traditionally done, just with quality ingredients. Call it “Bernie’s Beanery” after the diner in Blondie strips (if I recall correctly). Or just call it “Dagwood’s,” or “Bumstead’s,” and feature Dagwood sandwiches. Stool and counter seating, plus booths. The booths, of course, all must have little jukeboxes.

A drive-in theatre, of course. Have it show double bills of old B-movies from the period. Nobody came for the movies, after all; we want to keep it authentic. The biggest problem is that new cars have bucket seats. And the B-movie is itself something lost. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes; Plan 9 from Outer Space; Creature from the Black Lagoon. Thanks to new technology, the sound could be far superior to what we/they had back in the old days.

To complement this, we need a regular neighbourhood theatre, with a proper marquee and a big screen. This would then feature the quality movies of the period, in a cycle: Psycho, North by Northwest, Vertigo, On the Waterfront, Rebel Without a Cause, A Streetcar Named Desire, Rear Window, High Noon, Sunset Boulevard, Singing in the Rain, The Searchers, Rashomon, 12 Angry Men, Strangers on a Train, African Queen, Roman Holiday, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blackboard Jungle, The Wild One, Paths of Glory, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Dr. Strangelove, Lolita, West Side Story, Spartacus, 8 ½, The Birds, La Dolce Vita, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Manchurian Candidate, Breathless, Lawrence of Arabia. These are all movies worth rewatching even if the audience has already seen them; they give a great feel for the time and for what people were thinking about; and it would be a rare experience for most to actually see them as they were designed, on a big screen. It might be a revelation.

Note that none of these movies post-date 1963. That, it seems to me, is the proper end point. That was when the world changed. That was when the counterculture began: in Dallas, November 22, 1963. That was the end of innocence. So no Beatles, no Vietnam, no VW microbuses.

Catholics would enjoy a recreated Catholic chapel of the time, with ad orientem setup, altar rail, and Latin Masses with bells and incense. One hopes the local diocese would cooperate. It is important to include this aspect of 50’s life, because churchgoing then was at an all-time high. It would be misleading to omit something like this. And the Vatican II changes are, as much as anything, a mark of the great rift that separates now from then.

We would want a candy shop selling common candies of the period. Some are still with us, and it might be hard to recreate others. But it would be a big attraction for indulgent grandparents to be able to but their grandkids the candies they liked as kids, and see how they react. Bubble gum cigars, Bazooka gum, Cracker Jack. Candy cigarettes. Life Savers. Pink popcorn—this may have just been a Montreal thing. Candy buttons. Cinnamon hearts. Chiclets. Jawbreakers. Bubble gum sold wrapped with baseball and hockey cards. Pez, in period dispensers. Wax lips. Candy bracelets. Red licorice. Tootsie Roll Pops. If we are in Canada, we must include Mackintosh toffee, Rolos, Smarties, cherry chocolates, and Thrills. There are sources online for many of these items—just a matter of putting them in the aisles of a bricks and mortar store again. It might be a workable business proposition to reprint some of the classic hockey or baseball cards of the period and sell them here. Add in the Pleasantville name and logo, and make them do double duty as souvenirs and advertising.

Of course, we need a soda fountain somewhere about. Taking in a theme park can be thirsty work in the summer. Featuring the now hard-to-find malts and floats. Shakes come with extra in the metal cyclinder from the machine.

Add in a vintage pinball arcade. The real old machines with the mechanical flippers. They never offered much action, but they were colorful to watch, and might inspire some pity for the poor grandparents who had to make do with them.

Other recreational opportunities might include a go-cart track. This is a good reminder of how crazy everyone was about cars in the day. We would need a bowling alley—still around, but not nearly as central to daily life any more. Offer rides through the grounds in a period red Corvette convertible. Or a pink Cadillac.

A nice sprung dance floor we can call the Sock Hop. Have live demonstrations of popular dances of the day: the cha cha, the twist, the locomotion, the mashed potato, the limbo, and so forth. Visitors would be welcome to kick off their shoes and give it a go themselves—or be coached by the pros.

Wandering the grounds, there would have to be a demonstrator who did tricks with a yoyo, the way Wham-o used to do in every neighbourhood. And a hula-hoop demonstration. Maybe also a boomerang demo. The demonstrations could probably support themselves by selling spectators yoyos, hula hoops, and boomerangs. Depending on copyright restrictions and availablity, cartoon characters distinct to the time could wander around the grounds for photo opportunities: Pogo and his friends, Li’l Abner and other Dogpatch personalities; Dick Tracy. Maybe Bullwinkle and Rocky from TV. The biggest strip at the time was actually Peanuts, I think, but it is too familiar from later periods as well. Have a cowboy in a mask—the Lone Ranger. A guy in a buckskin jacket and a coonskin cap—Davy Crockett.

In a bandshell, live retro cover groups could play the early hits of rock and roll. On another stage, reproduce the set of the $64,000 Question. Audience members could volunteer to compete.

And for contrast and respite, add in a coffee house, offering espresso, in which a guy or girl dressed suitably recites beat poetry. When he takes a break, someone with a guitar gets up and sings classic folk songs.

Recreate a bomb shelter of the day, just like the plans that were once common in Popular Science and Mechanix Illustrated.

Have a radio booth, where people can watch a real live DJ at work, in the style of the period. The feed could be broadcast to loudspeakers around the grounds. People could step into a vintage phone booth, call in, and make a dedication. The dime or quarter they put in to make the call could help support the attraction.

Did I miss anything?