Kids, Prejudice, and Traffic Lights

    I came across a quote from Clint Eastwood in a recent issue of Parade Magazine: "The mentality that someone is superior to someone else is shoved down at the kids, and they carry it all their life." In a similar vein, an Internet Movie Data Base synopsis for the movie Crash intones, "People are born with good hearts, but they grow up and learn prejudices."
    Now I think highly of the "Man With No Name," and IMDB is one terrific data base, but — Clint and IMDB and lord knows how many politicians and school teachers and social workers and media pundits — these platitudes, which everybody has heard ten thousand times, are utter crap. If anything is being shoved down the throats of the little ones, it is nonsense like this.
    My late mother was an interesting case — an all-purpose bigot. She disliked all races, religions, ethnicities, and nationalities (including her own) with equal fervor. My late father, whom I first met when I was 14, was more selective, his prejudices focussing on union workers and red-headed niggers,. The views of neither parent had any effect on me. Not only had I learned early on to ignore almost everything either of them said, but the little I did listen to only inspired me to disagree with them.
    I like kids. I have seven, all of whom I loved from the day they were born and will love until the day I die. But the chief virtue of children is their innocence. After all, kids emerge into the world as helpless blobs driven by one basic instinct, "What’s in it for me?" starting at birth when their sole preoccupation is locating the nearest milk-producing teat, and continuing through grade school and beyond when, driven by an all-to-human pack instinct, the outsider — the "different," the "other," the weak and defenseless — is despised by members of the "in" group who, cloaked in mob anonymity and thus insulated from retribution, ostracize, ridicule, torment, abuse, and sporadically terrorize and murder the objects of their disdain. It is only over the years that we humans occasionally learn patience, tolerance, kindness, and a grudging acceptance of differences.
    The issue before humanity is: Do we really want to eliminate prejudice and bigotry or do we just want to feel good about ourselves? Nothing objectively useful will ever be achieved by peddling bullshit about innate goodness, and inventing scapegoats to explain why so many of us are bastards. If there’s to be a solution, it will come from facing hard truths about human nature — from confronting, understanding, and controlling those dark species-specific urges and instincts that lead too many of us to abominations like fag-beating and Jew-baiting, to Jihads and Holocausts, to fanaticism and prejudice and misogyny and massacres and suicide bombings and mass murders and holy wars.
    Once upon a time it may have been valuable from a Darwinian point of view for one tribe to band together against an opposing tribe, for one sect to band together against an opposing sect, for one nation to unite against an opposing nation. For better or worse those days have passed and now, for our own self-preservation, we must move beyond that innocent golden age of brute interaction 
    What we should be seeking are solutions based on the harsh realities of who we are and what we are, not conjuring up mushy bromides about how we’re all little darlings who have been led astray by our parents or Darth Vader or George Bush.
    In short, we should seek a Traffic Light to control human destructiveness.
    Traffic Lights do not assume that all drivers have good hearts and are filled with Christian loving-kindness. Nor do they assume that all drivers are evil and want to murder each other. Nor do they assume that all drivers were polite as children, but have been brain-washed by their elders into becoming aggressive maniacs who keep Glock 9 mm’s in their glove compartments.
    In fact, Traffic Lights do not assume a damn thing — they simply do the job. 

● No sermons need be preached describing how Jesus welcomes into paradise those who yield the right of way.
● No White House speeches need be made announcing audacious legislation to repeal road rage.
● No social-worker fairy tales need be written into grade-school curricula about good little baby bears who let their neighbors cross the street without running them down versus big bad daddy bears who blow their horns and scream at old ladies.
● No acts of Congress need be passed requiring drivers to take a course on how to exit a shopping plaza politely.
● No devastating op-ed articles need be posted by Paul Krugman or insane screeds mouthed by Keith Olbermann demonstrating with steely logic that traffic accidents are caused by members of the Tea Party Movement.

    Traffic lights do not involve Morality or Ideology or even Toilet Training — they only involve Practicality. THEY WORK. If they didn’t work, we wouldn’t use them.
    That’s the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.
    Is there a Traffic Light for humanity waiting to be discovered?
    We better fucking hope there is before we’re all back in the Dark Ages doing Wudu 10 times a day.

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

Posted by dome of glass at 3/1/2010 7:43 PM
Categories: Children, Human Nature
 

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