Cat’s In The Cradle
“And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
He’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.”
— Harry Chapin
“The recipe for monster is really kind of simple: you take a small human being and you surround him or her by the people that, having been designated to be the protectors, now mistreat the child. You have the child’s cries being heard by the larger parent, the government, and you have that government pat the abusers on the head, giving a seal of approval, and walk away. You have now created a child who will believe that all that can be relied upon is himself. That all he should care about is himself, because, after all, who cared about him?” — Andrew Vachss
Get that? Start with an average human being, twist it and abuse it and deny it a connection to love and softness, and its natural survival urge will turn it into a knife with a handle so sharp it is unsafe to hold. Some of these break down and become helpless magnets for all that is horrid in life. Some become protectors, of savage clarity. And some become predators, become the thing that hurt them. It is better to hurt than be hurt.
Clearly, there are components of both nature and nurture here: not everyone abused becomes an abuser. Not every abuser was abused. But if you want to increase the number of predators in a society…there is the recipe.
Don’t care about them as children, and when they grow up…you can have something beyond the capacity for empathy or rehabilitation. And if you’ve never met one of these creatures, you may not believe they exist. Thank your lucky stars you have not…but it is wise to wonder from whence the universal myths of werewolves and vampires spring.
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You can do this with individual abuse, or with widespread social neglect. One acute, the other chronic, a slow, soul-destroying poison. There are those beyond the reach of warmth and therapy, for all practical purposes. It would require an epiphany of “Saul on the road to Damascus” proportions to change or save them, and too many good people have been destroyed trying. This is why we have prisons: we simply don’t have infinite resources to try to save everyone.
But how, then do we deal with it as a culture? Men like Mr. Vachss should be listened to closely, because he speaks both of how to limit the damage from the damned, and how to save as many as possible from that damnation.
He focuses on having the strength to draw lines and take no bullshit in protection of the innocent. I very literally could not agree more.
It is also vital to look at the other side of the equation. If we know how to create a monster, we also know how to grow strong and healthy human beings.
Love. In the most important formative years, those before and clustering about puberty. A safe and nurturing space where they are adored for their potential, for who they are, not for what they can do for you, and sure as hell not as meat.
Who would I trust to raise children?
People who love themselves, and love the child within them enough to fill with that essence, producing a surplus to share.
And those who have committed to die before they let others be hurt the way THEY were hurt.
The very very most dangerous…in a good way…are those who were hurt enough to see the monster in themselves, but somehow chose a path of love. Perhaps someone embraced them. Perhaps they were mentored, or accepted in some way they didn’t expect. Some are made vulnerable by illness and forced to drop their guards…and find themselves accidentally in the company of caring, loving people. There, they experience the nurturance they should have received in the cradle, in the bosom of a loving home, and remake themselves. It happens.
EVERY child deserves this. If they all received it, we would still have some predators, of course…but far fewer. And the systems of incarceration, rehabilitation and prevention would not be overwhelmed by their numbers.
When you tell and show a child he does not matter, you are foolish to expect him not to understand the meaning of the message. If there is one thing parenthood teaches is that the very best thing you can do is model the kind of human being you want your children to be: it is folly to expect them to rise above their role models, above their treatment. Some do, of course, but that is to THEIR credit, not yours.
Most horror films deal with predatory forces outside the human experience, panthers disguised as human beings. Creatures that feel no pity, or empathy, or love for us…who see us as meat. Others, as in Jordan Peele’s new film “Us” are the sad creatures who are “tethered” to the human experience but see it from the outside, crave what we have, or what they believe we have. And will do anything to be a part of what they are denied. Zombies see us as meat. The “Tethered” crave what we have. They don’t want to be us, though…they ARE us. We are the ones who cannot see it, and they are mostly unconcerned with our opinions. They are simply here to take what is owed.
We make monsters. We can unmake them as well. Some suggest that we pay no attention to them, blame them for the wounds we or others have inflicted, and so denying their humanity, we become the perpetrators, make no mistake.
Those of you who do not see yourself in their weeping eyes? Who blame them for their wounds . If you were them, you would HATE you.
Those who could survive that treatment and still love? Those are the ones who look at their pain and seek to alleviate it.
The road is not a lack of “selfishness”. It is an expanded definition of Self. One Soul, looking out through many eyes. That is the doorway. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you…BECAUSE THEY ARE YOU. They are “Us.”
It is when we refuse to see this that monsters are created. But the most terrible monster is always the one in the mirror.
Namaste
Steve