Greek Gods, Parricide and Parenting

Hesiod’s Theogony isn’t very long, but it manages to encompass a hymn to the Muses, an account of the ancient Greek creation myth, a genealogy of dozens of deities, as well as tales of murder, war, love, rape, brute strength and political power. It also shows marvelous insight into human psychology.

In the introduction to the edition I have, translator Dorothea Wender raises an interesting point:

Hesiod has allowed his world of primitive gods and chaotic forces to remain primitive and chaotic. Particularly striking is the general pattern of an oedipal struggle between generations, with father attempting to destroy son, and mother assisting son to supplant father.

One such event is Kronos’s castration of Ouranos with a “long jagged sickle.” Kronos’s mother Gaia asked him to do this because Ouranos was hiding her children so they wouldn’t replace him as ruler. The second such event comes when Kronos begins eating his own children and Rhea secrets away Zeus, who later leads a rebellion.  The war ends with the banishment of the Titans to Tartarus and the ascension of Zeus as ruler of Olympus. Hesiod’s poem is centuries older than Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, but already we see the ancients were aware of the Oedipus in every man. To crudely summarize Freud: He wants to sleep with his mother and kill his father.

The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn, by Giorgio Vasari and Christofano Gherardi

It strikes me that these parricidal myths are less a representation of the actual early childhood situation than they are a reflection of the nascent Subject’s fantasies and fears. In the world we usually take for reality, fathers do not normally kill their children, mothers do not conspire to defeat their husbands, and children know nothing of sex and murder. In the subterranean reality of the child’s psyche, however, nothing is desired more than the mother’s attentions, and nothing presents a greater threat to that than the father.

The young Subject is faced with a dilemma: regain his lost power by defeating and supplanting the father or regain it by allying with and emulating the father. Similar dynamics occur in girls and are sometimes called the Electra complex. How this childhood drama plays out--and the possibilities are endless--has formative effects on the individual that will last throughout life. The ancient Greeks knew nothing of psychoanalysis, but their myths show they were well aware of the human realities that underlie it.

As a father, I have witnessed these realities firsthand. My son loves me and I love him more than either of us will ever fully comprehend, so father-son bonds are not to be discounted, but a rivalry also exists. It is not uncommon for a small boy to want to marry Mommy, and his father is likely to playfully express disapproval of this idea. Many a father feels real jealousy, however, when his wife’s affections appear directed entirely at their child. Boys are thrilled to best (or be allowed to best) Daddy in a game or feat of strength. And at some point, Mommy begins to encourage her child to be more independent so she can return more of her attention to her husband and the rest of her life.

My family demonstrates all of this behavior, and we try to resolve the underlying tensions in positive ways. There are no perfect methods, but spending time together is a great way to allow these human mysteries to work themselves out. If I’d played dominoes with my son this morning, maybe he wouldn’t have rebelled so much when it came time to get him out the door for school!

Over the years psychoanalytic theory and a burgeoning literature on parenting have helped explain and address what goes on inside families, but as usual, the ancient Greeks did all this first. They did it their own way and in some ways, no doubt, they did it better. Theogony is myth not science, but that doesn’t stop it from being enlightening. 

Saturn Devouring His Son, by Francisco Goya

Also on ancient Greek literature:
Heracles' Hope in the Midst of Suffering
The Ancients' Guide to Love and Sex

The Virtue of Muddling Through

"The major impact of this theory [pragmatism] is to shift talk about truth to talk about knowledge, and talk about knowledge to talk about the achievements of human powers and practices. . . he [William James] temporalizes knowledge and links it to human satisfaction and success."

     --Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy

“Hello, Jack? I’m Annette. You’re doing it wrong.”

     --Mr. Mom

***

A little while back, when I was thinking about starting a new blog, I began turning over a series of miniblogs discussing pragmatism, mostly as portrayed by philosopher Cornel West, in light of current events. That series never happened, but I’ve found my thoughts returning to pragmatism as I grapple with being a new parent.

Last summer, as I began to familiarize myself with West’s thought—through The Cornel West Reader, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, and his speeches and interviews on YouTube—I grasped something at the core of pragmatism that I hadn’t when studying William James’s Pragmatism.

Pragmatism is often summarized as “What works is true.” Instead of seeking the grounds of absolute truth the way epistemologists since Descartes had, the pragmatists said that if a belief works in practice then it must be true, at least to some extent. This simplification obfuscates as much as it explains, but it will have to do for this blog.

What I realized in reading West is how pragmatism is less concerned with knowledge than it is action. It is grappling toward concrete goals rather than trying to get it all right right now. Getting something right is a long, messy process of improvement, with mistakes, compromises and problems all along the way.

And this is true of being a parent. Despite the appearance of all the right answers being out there—the shelves of parenting books at Barnes & Noble; advice from friends, coworkers, pediatricians, lactation specialists, registered nurses, one’s own parents and well-meaning strangers; those parents you see in restaurants and on the street who act as if they have it all under perfect control—there are no perfect parents. We all get a lot right and a lot wrong.

An example arose this week when my wife and I took our baby for his two-month checkup at the pediatrician. While my son was lying there flopping around naked on the examination table, my wife and I noticed grime in the folds of his armpits—little rolls of the foulest stuff. Quickly, we wiped it out before the pediatrician could come in and discover what horrible parents we were. Despite nightly baths, we had missed these little crevices! 

Should we have cleaned him better? Yes. Could we have? Yes. Would it have been difficult? No. Given that everyone knows babies have little folds all over that we, as adults, might easily overlook, folds that will, if neglected, sequester the foulest stuff, couldn’t we, shouldn’t we, have paid more attention and discovered this problem area sooner, or better yet ensured that the potential problem never became an actual one? Undoubtedly. Really, it is difficult to come up with a satisfactory excuse for our negligence—other than that you can’t be perfect all the time.

There is a temporal aspect to this. It is impossible to have all the answers and do everything perfectly from the start, so it follows that there must always be a period before when you did not have all the answers and were getting it wrong. It is part of the nature of reality, of our being-in-time (to adopt a term from Heidegger), that we must get it wrong . . . until we get it right.

It cannot be otherwise.

I think of this as the virtue of muddling through and it is the essence of pragmatism. If you would be a good parent, you will get things wrong all the time, but you will seek to get them right and improve as much as possible. My son’s armpits got a good scrubbing during his next bath and they will never be dirty again.

On the Revelatory Nature of Parenting

Last November, my wife and I found out that we could expect a baby to come along this year. In June, he arrived, legs kicking, arms wheeling, hands grasping. So far, I have found the experience of being a parent—from pregnancy test to present—to be revelatory: thoughts and feelings I never saw coming are suddenly there within me.

During our first major ultrasound, during which the specialist checked to make sure the baby had all the usual limbs and organs, I suddenly found my heart beating faster and my palms sweating: What if she found something wrong?

Going in, I wasn’t worried at all, but here I was, nervous. Contrary to what I may have thought previously, I am the kind of person to worry about such things.

Another revelatory moment came when the specialist said we were having a boy. For no good reason whatsoever, my wife and I had expected we were having a girl. The thought of it was warming—I would have this delicate creature to care for, but at a bit of a distance, since my wife would attend to all the girl stuff.

When I heard we were having a boy, my feelings were firmer. Here was a little man whom I would have to prepare for the rigors of the world. I also found I was proud to have provided a son to carry on the family name, and even more surprisingly, I felt as if by fathering a boy I had somehow proven my own manhood! 

All very cliché, and even ridiculous, but there you have it.

Upon the birth of my son, I immediately loved him without any reason whatsoever. Thankfully, I am that kind of parent. And when a construction site at the shopping mall nearly sprayed him with wet cement (it got on my wife and the stroller, but not the baby), I was angry. How could the construction worker have been so careless? Doesn’t he know he could have hurt my son! What if some cement had gotten into my newborn’s eyes? Had anything happened, I would have had choice words with the construction worker—maybe even demanded to speak to his supervisor or threatened litigation!

Apparently, I am that kind of parent, too. 

From now on, I will continue to learn about myself through my reactions to raising a child, and perhaps not everything I learn will be good, but hopefully whenever less admirable traits surface, I will have the guts to face them and improve myself.