A society of wimps is a very bad thing

What happened to 'toughness'?

What happened to people making decisions --either good or bad -- and then being responsible for the results of those decisions, even if the results were less than desirable?

How did we get caught up in a syndrome of 'pansification' with our offspring in which they are on the one hand protected from the realities of life and, on the other are told that whatever they do -- regardless of how lame, uninspiring, or repulsive to the community-at-large it might be is A-OK?

It's common knowledge to sociologists and history students that childhood, as we understand it is a recent invention. While there have always been children they were, throughout much of history and in many cultures considered reasonably expendable. Cute but not as valuable even in a truckload as any single hardworking adult. In becoming an adult in rigorous times you had earned your stripes, and were accorded respect. If a child balked at showing proper respect for his elders, and was rude or insolent, he was cuffed soundly until he acquiesced and offered the supplication the adult felt he or she deserved.

In the brutal days of bad teeth and madrigals, if one child didn't make it through the rigors of disease and deprivation, then a couple could always have another. It was a simple process to sire progeny, albeit the bearing' partt had its risks for the mother. But, as in the case of children, there were always other women available for that capacity, too. Grown men were what counted. It wasn't that anybody wished their offspring (ortheir wivess) ill, it was just that the odds against attaining adulthood in bygone times were huge by modern standards. Read some Victorian literature, and you'll find that kids were forever wasting away from consumption, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhoid, or some other hideous affliction. That was when they weren't being beaten, sent up chimney flues, only to get stuckand perishh in the most miserable manner, or being transported to the Antipodes for stealing a sticky-bun at the Covent Garden Market.

A similar mortality rate for children persists today in much of the so-called Third World, and it renders us in the spoiled and affluent 'West' aghast, guilt-racked, and definitely wanting to change the channel when one of those starving kids ads comes on. How can a body enjoy the antics of the bratty and rude youngsters on an inane sitcom when faced with a hollow-eyed urchin whose skeletal structure is so starkly delineated he could be used for an anatomy lesson in a medical school? Better to just not watch, and resolve to send ten bucks to Save the Children at the end of the tax year.

In the third world -- much as in our own in times past -- it's recognized that life is harsh and cheap, and there isn't much that can be done to protect those societies' frailest citizens. It's Darwinian and it means only the fittest survive. It's an indulgence only in affluent nations to protect society's weaker members. In impoverished societies the attitude is, why waste the grub on somebody who's going to go out before the age of ten? Let him or her die in the first year, and be done with it. We see that attitude as cruel. They see it as practical and even benevolent.

In North America, it wasn't really until the end of World War Two that we truly began, at all social levels, to embrace childhood as something that must be cherished, cosseted and protected. Prior to that, while early Twentieth century kids weren't as overtly abused and neglected as they had been in Victorian times, they still fell victim to epidemics, were too often physically and sexually abused, and were generally seen, once they reached a certain age, as cogs in the bread-winning machinery of the family.

"Times are tough, son, once you've finished eighth grade this year, get your ass down to the factory or the mine. If you can't get a job there, then hit the road and keep going until you find one."

.While Depression-era reality still exists in a few deprived enclaves of current society, such abject poverty and its consequent toll on children is alien to most of us. Kids, we now believe, must be protected and indulged, educated and prepared to take respectable and honorable roles in the new millennium. Nothing wrong with that per se. But, we seem also to have come to believe that in the name of protecting our kids, they must be perpetually interfered with. They cannot ever be left to their own-devices.

Yet I, in my middle-age, know it wasn't thus when I, and my contemporaries were young, and I think we're the better for having been left to our own devices to a greater extent than kids today.

Here's an example of what I mean: A few years ago my wife and I took a trip to the Cook Islands in the Polynesian South Pacific. While there we spent many hours of each day snorkeling in Muri Lagoon, a bit of liquid azure paradise that surrounds the island of Rarotonga. For hours of each day we'd be down among the wrasses, butterfly fish, surgeonfish, big voracious jacks, coral and anemones. Died and gone to heaven time, no doubt.

While snorkeling one day, a thought struck me that of all of God's creatures, those in the sea are probably the least interfered with by humans. While its so that we pollute the waters, and we have caught some species in sufficientnt numbers that we have virtually, and sometimes even literally, wiped them out, what I'm suggesting is, the environment remains alien and hostile to us, except for periodic visits when we don diving or snorkeling equipment. Most of the time the creatures of the coral reef are on their own. Not only are they on their own, they manage just fine without our input. If between this day and doomsday no human were to ever again venture under the water, it would make no difference whatsoever to the reef creatures. We are irrelevant to them. They do what they do, and we do what we do, and rarely does the twain meet.

I saw an analogous situation between the Rarotongan fish and the Rarotongan children. With the kids of the island, 'non-interference' seemed to prevail in the raising of a group of what we saw as very happy kids. It was a common sight for us, as we traveled the one road that encircles the island, to be stuck behind a small motorbike, and on the motorbike would be Mom, and with Mom would be one or two kids of little more than toddler age perilously hanging on while holding bags of groceries during the weaving journey. All were helmet-less, I might add.

In front of our condo there was a long wharf that thrust out into the waters of the lagoon. Regularly, after school was a handful of kids, some as young as five or six, would come to dive from the jetty into the enticing waters of the lagoon. All very idyllic, except that at tide change, there was a fearsome rip current that ran through the canal and out through a narrow channel that flushed water into an open and tempestuous Pacific.

The kids, unwatched by adults, were undaunted as they swam and dove -- as they had done for generations. We mentioned once to the Maori caretaker of the condo how treacherous the current seemed to be. "Yes," she said pleasantly, but showing utter lack of concern, "You have to be careful." That was it. No warning about not swimming at such times, or how lifejackets should be worn when plying the lagoon in the little kayaks that were available to guests. Indeed, I never saw a lifejacket there. All one needed to do to keep oneself safe was to "be careful." It made a great deal of sense.

It says, the call is yours, buddy, and if you're not careful, you'll drown. I liked it. It was reminiscent of when I was growing up when on a summer day a bunch of us would head down to swim in a nearby lake. No parent bothered to come along and supervise. They were too busy. It was assumed we wouldn't be stupid enough to get ourselves drowned. The assumption was valid. None of us drowned.