'Lord of the Flies': too true to be just fiction

It's been observed many times by many people that nothing ruins a book quite like being told you have to read it.

There is, however, one book that stands out as an exception to this rule. Not even English class at John Paul College could dim the torch of this book as its light flickered through the dreary annals of required reading. That book was William Golding's "Lord of the Flies."

It's a short book, probably not even 200 pages, but I remember being fascinated by the stark realism that permeated the book. As the story begins, a group of boys has been stranded on an island with no adults. The boys, three of whom are named after major characters in "Coral Island," plan to establish a utopian society on this island while they wait for adults to come and rescue them. There's fresh water to drink, there are pigs they can kill for meat, and fruit they can eat, and one of the boys has Coke bottle glasses they can use to start fires when they need to.

But there are signs early on that their society will be less utopian than they intend. Without the restraining influence of adults, the boys' behavior becomes wilder, more dangerous, and angrier. Soon there is Betrayal. Torture. Murder. The boys split into two tribes, and under the sway of their leader, the tribe of choirboys launches a war of extinction against the other.

Eric Ziolkowski, my religion professor freshman year of college, cited "Lord of the Flies" as an example of the Christian doctrine that human nature is depraved. With a chuckle he described the book's view as pessimistic, and got a huge laugh. From what I could tell, I was the only one in the class to think Golding's depiction of human nature was pretty accurate.

It would be nice to think that violence and hatred -- and their close cousin, callous indifference -- don't come naturally to us, that, as Lieutenant Joe declaims in "South Pacific," such values have to be carefully instilled. It would be nice to believe in the noble savage, ruined by corrupt civilization. Life has taught me otherwise. It is not society that is corrupt but we ourselves. Society, if anything, acts as a deterrent. The evidence lies no farther away than the nearest school.

I've often suspected that people who talk about socialization as a benefit of public education either didn't attend a public school, or were part of the group that made it hell for the rest of us. In my recollection, at least, it was no picnic.

It was in sixth grade that one of my classmates decided it would be funny to put pins into the cap of his pen and stab people in the rear end with them between classes, when teachers couldn't see what he was doing. Another schoolmate, when he was 17, picked up two 12-year-old girls at the mall, and took them both back to his home where he raped and murdered them both.

It wasn't just where I grew up, either. A few years ago, a senior in Norde Bastille beat a freshman so badly the younger student had to be taken to the hospital, all because he had moved the senior's book bag out of the way so he could seat down and eat lunch. If it was anything like the fights they used to have in my high school, teachers had to force their way through a crowd of spectators packed shoulder to shoulder at least six people deep.

Nobody has to teach children to hog all the best toys and refuse to share. That's just natural and -- God help us -- even logical. It makes sense. At least to some degree, we have to be selfish in order to survive. But human nature goes deeper than that. No one needs to teach us how to be petty, cruel and vicious either. Every child wants to be well liked, but for some reason most children also want to decrease the popularity, esteem and success of others.

When we enter preschool or kindergarten, I doubt very many of us are reminded by our parents to call another child a "poo-poo head." We just do it. The school bully who shakes down smaller kids for their lunch money isn't strapped for cash. He's doing it because he enjoys the rush he gets from causing fear and humiliation.

And that's what is so engaging and so chilling about "The Lord of the Flies." We live it. It doesn't matter if you're in church, Sunday school, or at a soccer game.

Children are never more than a few minutes from anarchy and savagery. All that holds them in check is the presence of a mature adult to remind them how they should behave. Let the adult leave the room for a minute, and the savagery emerges. Sometimes it's only spitballs and cruel names, but sometimes it's much more. And sometimes, it doesn't even matter if the adult has left the room.

You're not going to find "Lord of the Flies" kept in a genre any more specific than fiction, or (more deservedly) literature, but the truth is that it's horror through and through. Literary convention may have persuaded us that a book must use preternatural monsters to externalize the human condition, but those boys show a true face of humanity, unpleasant as it is. The phrase "man's inhumanity to man" is a strange one, as "inhumanity" seems to be one of the hallmarks of humanity.

A week after we marked the seventh anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers, Jon Stewart made a sobering point on The Daily Show about 9-11 and all the battles that have been waged because of it. "Nineteen people flew into the towers. It seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that nineteen people wouldn't want to do harm to us."

Obviously, we can't. We won't stop violence by answering it with more violence, but we also won't stop it by ignoring it. The truth is, we simply won't stop it, period. All it takes for violence to occur is a single man with a gun, or even a kid with a baseball bat.

And that is a level of horror that fiction can never reach.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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This post was re-written from a similar post by The Brucker. Anyone who reads it should feel free to re-write it again, and keep the meme going.

raising children with a wild streak

"I, like many college professors, yearn for rarer traits -- curiosity, passion, a wild streak. Yes, teamwork and leadership skills will help your child to implement someone else's ideas, and extensive extracurricular activities will foster responsibility. What your child really needs, though, is an inventive, self-reliant, restless spirit.

"For me, the heart-wrenching interview moment is when we ask these teenagers what they would choose to do on a day spent alone. Many say they never have the chance. Worse still, some have no answer at all. This should disturb and sadden any parent. In the end, my scholarship votes ride on two questions: Is this someone that I'd be excited to have in my class? And is he or she open to being changed by my class? Class rank and extracurricular activities are less important than genuine individuality or enthusiasm. It matters not whether someone is bold or shy, worldly or naﶥ. Is there a flash of determination, a streak of independence, a creative passion, an excited curiosity?

"We need more students like the ones who leave after graduation to work as missionaries or in the Peace Corps. More like the ones who start successful businesses while in school. More like the ones who find the courage to go overseas for a summer or a semester because they know their own worlds are far too small.

"Some students are team players and high achievers, but I'd trade them for stubbornly creative iconoclasts. Some students as children were taught to color inside the lines, watch Barney the purple dinosaur, and always ask permission. We need students who found out what Crayons tasted like, loved reading 'The Cat in the Hat' and paid little attention to rules -- students whose parents encouraged their children's curiosity."

-- Mark Pruett, from"Raise children with a wild streak"

who's on first

This remains one of the best Star Trek fanfics I've ever read, doubtless because of the strength of the Abbott and Costello routine. I have no idea who wrote this particular adaptation, though I did modify the ending myself to its current form, back in college, in order to take things to their ultimate conclusion.

"Who's on First?"

Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty are huddled in a corridor near a transporter room, talking with one another, in the distance, Spock rounds a corner and heads toward the group.

McCOY. Shh! He's coming! Scotty, go act like you're adjusting the transporter or something.

SCOTTY. Aye, doctor.

KIRK. Ah, hello Mister Spock.

SPOCK. Good day, captain.

KIRK. Are you familiar with the game "baseball," Mr Spock?

SPOCK. Baseball is a tactical game played on a geometric pattern of four sides with a spherical object. The purpose is to deflect the object with a long wooden stick called a "bat," amidst loud verbalizations of "Hurrah" and "The umpire must be blind!" Is this correct?

KIRK. Indeed. We are in the process of learning about one of the baseball teams from old Earth.

SPOCK. Oh? I am quite versed with old Earth history. Perhaps I may be of assistance.

KIRK. That's the idea.

SPOCK. Very well. Proceed.

KIRK. All right. Who's on first.

SPOCK. I am unable to determine who is on first without proper information concerning the team and year, sir.

KIRK. So?

SPOCK. Perhaps we could start with who the team is, and I can test the accuracy.

KIRK. No, Who's on first.

SPOCK. I do not know.

McCOY. Third base.

SPOCK. Who is?

KIRK. No, he's first base.

SPOCK. Who is?

KIRK. Correct.

SPOCK. Who is correct?

KIRK. Sometimes.

SPOCK. Who is sometimes?

KIRK. No, Who is first baseman. I'm not familiar with Sometimes' identity.

SPOCK. Whose identity?

KIRK. No, him I know -- he's first baseman.

SPOCK. Who is?

KIRK. That's right.

SPOCK. Perhaps we can discuss the identity of the second baseman.

KIRK. What.

SPOCK. I said the second baseman.

KIRK. What.

SPOCK. This is highly illogical. You have no apparent auditory disfunction, sir. Now, as I asked: who is the second baseman?

KIRK. No, you didn't ask that, and Who is the first baseman.

SPOCK. Very well. Captain, I ask you politely: Who is the second baseman?

KIRK. No, Who is the first baseman. What is the second baseman.

SPOCK. That is incorrect, captain. The second baseman is obviously a sentient being, and therefore should be referred to as who, and not what. "Who is the second baseman?", not "What is the second baseman?"

KIRK. Wrong, Spock. Who is the first baseman, and What is the second baseman.

SPOCK. That statement is most illogical.

KIRK. Wait a minute -- we'll get Scotty. He's Scottish, he must love baseball. Oh, Mister Scott?

SCOTTY. Enters from the transporter room. Aye, cap'n?

KIRK. Who is the first baseman of the team we were talking about.

SCOTTY. Aye, cap'n. It ain't never been any other way!

KIRK. You see, Spock?

SPOCK. Yes ... very well. Mister Scott, who is the second baseman?

SCOTTY. Ach! No, Mister Spock! That be What you're talking about!

SPOCK. I know that be what ... er ... is what I'm talking about. I am very intelligent, and rarely lose track of what I am talking about.

SCOTTY. Ach! Dinna bring track inta this! That be a bloomin' field event.

SPOCK. What has this got to do with field events?

SCOTTY. Ach! No! What's the second baseman.

SPOCK. Again, I note that a person should be referred to as "who" and not "what," Mister Scott.

SCOTTY. Only if he's tha fairst baseman, Mister Spock.

SPOCK. What you are saying is most illogical.

SCOTTY. Ach! No! What's a real bright fella.

SPOCK. Who is a "real bright fella" Mister Scott?

SCOTTY. No, sir. Who ... now he's a real dope, sir.

SPOCK. Who is?

SCOTTY. Aye.

SPOCK. Captain, this is most illogical, and I do not feel as though we are getting anywhere. Perhaps we can discuss the identity of another player, such as the pitcher?

KIRK. Tomorrow.

SPOCK. Tomorrow? If you are genuinely interested in this discussion, today would be much better.

McCOY. Well, Spock, Today is good, but he's the catcher.

SPOCK. Who is?

SCOTTY. Nay, Mr Spock -- Who's the first baseman.

SPOCK. I do not know.

KIRK. Third base!

SPOCK. What?

KIRK. No, he's on second.

SPOCK. Who is?

KIRK. No, Spock, Who's on first.

SPOCK. I do not know.

McCOY. Third base!

This continues on for quite some time until finally we see a medical team in the corridor, gathered around Spock, who is bound in a straitjacket. Spock is babbling incoherently.

KIRK. Bones, do you think maybe we went too far this time?

five favorite quotes

It has come to my attention, almost by accident, that I have been tagged and given the task of providing five of my favorite quotes on any subject I desire, by the JJ herself. So, out of a desire to be sporting, here they are:

1. "I would like to know what Jesus meant when He said, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' I would like to know poverty of Spirit, for poverty is all I am left with. I would like the courage to be made poor before the shattering depth of the Creator and alongside the unthinkable breadth of humanity. Spiritual poverty is all I ask for now, and it is more than I can handle."

-- Gordon Atkinson, in the Wittenburg Door

2. "You are so full of what is right that you have lost sight of what is good. I do not believe you have taken a Christian stand, but a legalistic one -- one from which even the Apostle Paul would recoil."

-- Del Terry, religion professor, on an ethics paper I wrote in college

(In a lecture two years later, he said I had the role of Satan in his class)

3. "The boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see written that which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it! Slander those who tell it to you! Admit it but do nothing about it, and make it worse! And bide the end!"

-- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"

4. "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just ... nice."

-- Stephen Sondheim, "Into the Woods"

5. "It is not the slander of our enemies that we will remember, but the silence of our friends."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

And as a bonus:

"It's K-K-K-Ken, coming to k-k-k-kill me!" -- Otto (Kevin Kline), "A Fish Called Wanda"

Since it now falls to me to tag three other people, and the JJ already tagged Liadan, I suppose I shall have to pick three other people. So, I choose MJ, Brucker, and Greg Hartman, especially as Sir Ian McKellan never responded to the last time I tagged him.

Doing the math and getting the social nature of relationships

I never thought of it this way before, but love is actually pretty mathematical.

Picture the beginning where boy meets girl. We'll call this Point A. A little over the X-axis and a little farther up on the Y-axis is when they fall in love. We'll call this Point B. A little more to the right, a little farther up, they get serious and become a couple.

Once you calculate the slope, you can find other points on the line: the first time they kiss, when they meet one another's parents, when they marry and so on. It's so simple and so straightforward, it's a linear progression,

It was like that for me and my wife. We met Homecoming weekend at my alma mater in fall 1994, a little more than two years after I had graduated. Point A.

We bumped into each other a few more times over the course of the school year, mostly because I lived in the city where the college was located, and the following June our relationship had its proper beginning as a romantic one. Point B. Three years later we married, and now here we are.

Of course it's not that simple. I never realized just what into forming that linear progression until a friend of mine spelled it out recently, My friend Liadan is gay, and only recently found a romantic partner. Here are her observations:

Before all this happened, I had no idea that relationships between two people would involve so much strategy and networking on the part of so many other people. It struck me during all this how... social dating is. It's not just about the two people involved; all these social connections are intertwined based on who knows who and what their relation to each other is. It's hard for me to conceptualize, being someone who builds friendships one by one, but there it is in all its six-degrees-of-separation glory: society.

In this sense, gay marriage bans can be constructed as an attempt to exclude gay people and their relationships from the community, partly to delegitimize them, since relationships outside the general social network and the auspices of legal obligation can be seen as less "real", and partly to make it harder for them to exist at all-- I wouldn't have known Iris even existed were it not for the people I knew that did know her, and it wouldn't have gotten to even this tentative stage were it not for the encouragement and social support of my friends. (I was frequently threatened with bodily harm for being
waffly on sending the invitations.)

Read the entire piece

I didn't meet the woman who would be my wife until I was 24. During the long years before then, people reassured me I just hadn't met the right woman yet, and obviously that's true. I just never considered the social network that was required for meeting her.

Let's break this down. I didn't just happen to be at my alma mater that Homecoming weekend. I was there specifically because of social connections I had made in college that I was planning to draw on that evening. I was visiting a chapter meeting of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students because of a social network I had built in college. When none of the people I knew arrived, I stuck around because of a tenuous relationship I'd established with one student who was there.

Secondly, I continued to return to campus that academic year because of the ties I had there as an alumnus and as a former member of a social organization on campus. In fact it was because of Kirby House that I returned to campus as often as I did, and continued to come into contact with Natasha, who was friends with two of the new Kirbs I had met independently and hit it off with.

The third point of contact was an explicitly social event, organized by an acquaintance of mine who invited me. Her roommate was friends with Natasha, and invited her. And lastly of course a friend of mine pushed me to take the risk and ask her on a date.

It was this vast web of social contacts that made our relationship possible, a web where heterosexual relationships are accepted as the norm. We didn't just meet and become attached. We had a social network facilitating the relatonship at every step of the way, deliberately or not, and providing us with repeated opportunities to interact and then to pursue a romantic relationship with one another.

And realizing all the advantages that even I had at my disposal for finding a romantic life partner, I suddenly have a sense of what the absence of such a network would mean to a gay person like Liadan.

Liadan has a network of friends, but in networks where being gay is considered abnormal, immoral or weird, finding someone to be with can be a problem. People who assume that you're straight won't make a point of introducing you to their single gay friend whom they also assume is straight.

Thanks to hurtful stereotypes of gays, in fact, they might not introduce you to anyone, if they do find out that you're gay. They may even stop seeing you and either cut you out of their circle of friends, or encourage others to cut you out as well. The effect is to leave the gay person isolated and removed from the social networks that people rely on for regular day-to-day living and company.

The odds of finding a partner were in my favor just by the numbers. It's socially expected to be straight and it's also more common. Only about 6 percent of the population is gay, which means that of 100 hundred people I might have in my extended network, about 47 of them are going to be heterosexual women. In a population that same size, Liadan might have found three gay women, including the possibility that some or all of them remain in the closet.

That crowd will shrink a bit once we eliminate women who already are in relationships, but it still easily may end in the teens or twenties. Pairing off with one of them doesn't end the social network. If anything, it brings it together as two formerly separate groups grow increasingly intertwined as they interact with the new couple.

Liadan's potential matches easily could drop from three to zero. If she connects with someone and word gets out that they're a couple, their social network could grow closer. In more conservative areas, the trend is for it to get smaller as people cut off contact with them.

Now there are social networks and structures intended specifically for gays to meet one another and to socialize, but they exist as a subculture that the larger society often considers deviant and unhealthy. Until the 1970s they were illegal, and even now they may still be targeted for other social ills like drug use, depending on the biases of the police and the community.

The single gay or lesbian can look for a partner at gay bars, gay clubs or other establishments aimed at the LGBTQ community, but there are risks even without raids. If a single gay person is still in the closet, she can run afoul of her community's censure and disapproval once she is seen at a gay-friendly establishment. She could lose family, friends, social outlets like church and even her job, since many states offer no protection against wrongful termination for gay workers.

There's also an increased risk of abuse or being played. When I called Natasha and even when I first met her, there were other people around who knew her and who would watch out for her interests. Until she felt comfortable with me, there were a dozen people or more whom she could call and check with to see if I was safe or had a bad reputation. A person entering a gay bar, or visiting a club often is going to lack those resources.

In other words, not only do our social norms make it harder for gays and lesbians to find partners, we push them to find alternatives that aren't as safe, and then punish them heavily if they find a way to balance the scales. By getting together with someone they love, they risk losing social standing, good-paying jobs and the relationships they've had their whole lives with church, with family and with friends.

And the message from the churches that push this sort of ostracism is "We're doing it because we love you."

I don't know how we live with ourselves.



Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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old ghosts

Way back in 1988-89 when I was a college freshman, I had a fairly close friendship with a woman named Sharon. At the time she was going steady with a football player from another school -- and, you know, this is getting pretty hard to write. I have 15 years' distance from the situation now, so I think my perspective is a little clearer now. Let me tackle it another way, now that I've rewritten this paragraph 32 times.

We were pretty close. I characterized our relationship, to myself at least, as one where we were fairly transparent with one another. We talked about our goals, our struggles, our faith and our pasts with an openness that I had never known before. I don't know that anyone ever considered us a couple -- certainly she didn't -- but I wouldn't have minded. I even asked her to go out with me, knowing full well that she was dating somebody at another school.

Know something? This isn't getting easier to write about. I'm getting more confused the longer I write.

Essentially what it boils down to is I was in love with her. She was the first woman I ever had those feelings for, and even now 15 years later I'm stirring up something as I think about freshman year.

Sophomore year was completely different. Sharon distanced herself from me dramatically. Previously when I had visited her room, we could talk for hours. Now, she pretty much pretended I wasn't there. She was still friendly to me, but there was a very big and invisible wall. At the time I told myself that she had been bothered by how close we had become and had distanced herself from me. That probably is a bunch of post-adolescent hogwash, and the truth is that she didn't share my attraction and hoped that with distance I would eventually leave her alone.

I did, but oh how it hurt. It still hurts thinking about it, and I'm happily married to Natasha now and have been for five years. Throughout the rest of college, I felt like I had been ripped in two and kept waiting for her to come to her senses and "come back" to me. It wasn't until she got engaged to someone else that I realized that not only wasn't I in the game, I was playing the wrong sport. I must have held the candle out for Sharon for four years after my freshman year before I finally saw the light.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that men are essentially a bunch of losers. When we've been in a relationship with a woman and thought that she might be The One, it's damn near impossible for us ever to get her out of our mind and stop thinking that What If is really Should Be, and that given the right combination of events, things will work out the way we know they should. Am I making sense?

Probably this is why the Song of Solomon cautions us not to awaken love until the proper time arrives.