Monsters Introduced

 

Dennis Prager, the great Jewish-American moralist, is an altruist like most Judeo-Christian thinkers, but he made a comment in a recent Fireside Chat which comes close to making him appreciate Randian-Ramsey rational egoism.

 

Prager dismissed leftist tendencies to rate and categorize each human as the sum of her group affiliations and identities. Rather what is important for Dennis is the individual’s moral character. Dennis adduces that the only two group classifications that matter to him is dividing people into decent people and indecent people.

 

He is onto something here. If we judge each person by the content of his character instead of the color of his skin, or his membership in an intersection of groups, then we judge him as an individual.

 

Prager and I as moralists advise parents that one of their primary functions is to raise children that are good persons. Children are born evil, but can be trained and taught to be good, loving, responsible, thoughtful adults, if at some point in their development (probably by the time they are 4 years old), they, of their own free will, decide to go along with parental guidance and training. The child must agree that she will become moral or civilized.

 

Prager the wise also warns that good parents often raise bad children and sometimes bad parents bring up a good child, so it is not clear or easy to assume that a loving, hardworking parent, attempting to rear his daughter or son to be good, will succeed. There is an element of luck and unpredictability built into life.

 

My concern is that if parents do not make the effort at all, there is a high probability that a naturally depraved child, especially boys, will, by their teenage years, be running the streets with other boys in a gang, and the life of crime, selfishness, violence, sociopathology and lawlessness is his future. He will end up dead or in prison.

 

His parents, by failing to assume the role of moral guide to bring him to adulthood as a loving, moral, self-controlling producer and citizen, likely will have created a moral monster that, filled with anger, rage, feelings of worthless and ingratitude, will attack society and the will out of revenge. Moral monsters introduced into society are now biological demons undermining civilization. Parental failure leads to real, negative consequences for society, and the hordes of the children of darkness are populated with millions of moral monsters whose allegiance to the Dark Couple as least initially and perhaps forever, is not their fault.

 

If when that criminal or monster is 30 years old, the failed parents might ask themselves what they have done, what have they created and inflicted upon the world.

 

When we die and approach the gates of heaven and St. Peter or someone like him interviews us about our admission through the pearly gates, one prime question will be if we, as successful or failed parents, introduced monsters or angels—our offspring—to the world.