Hi.
So, my ninth grade biology class basically sucked.
You would think it might be possible to interest a bunch of hormone-racked adolescents in a
subject like – I don't know – the human body?
No.
I only remember two things from that class.
One was that we dared Aaron Mittleman to swallow a pithed frog and his breath smelled like
formaldehyde for a week, and the other was this obsolete formula, coined by one Ernst
Haeckel, that had been debunked like a hundred years earlier but was still being taught as
if it were cutting edge science: "Ontogenesis recapitulates philogenesis."
Translated into the language of normal human beings, this means that the stages in the
growth of a single embryo resemble the stages in the evolution of that embryo's species
over millions of years, such that for instance at a certain point during gestation a human
foetus develops what look very much like gills around the neck, and that's because, says
Haeckel, according to Darwin our ancestors of eons and eons ago were… fish.
Haeckel's theory is wrong, but it's pretty, so rather than discard it I thought we might
make use of it today for an alternate purpose, namely, to try and find a way out of the seemingly
intractable conflict between progressivism, on the one side, and conservatism, on the
other – a conflict that is currently, with no exaggeration whatsoever, ripping our world
apart, whether we are talking about Trump supporters versus Trump antagonists, the Western
versus the Muslim world, the European Union versus Brexit, or…
Orthodox Jews versus liberal or secular Jews.
Are we really condemned to live forever on the gory battlefield between these two extremes,
to suffer endlessly the miserable effects of this obstinate dichotomy between "forward-looking"
and "backward-looking" ideologies?
Do we really have to choose between one camp and the other?
Well, in an attempt to answer that question, let me proffer for your consideration a slightly
altered version of Haeckel's pseudo-scientific formula, to wit: that the progress of a species
in macrocosm is parallel to the lifecycle of its particular members in microcosm, or
in other words, in the case of homo-sapiens, that humankind as a whole moves forward in
history in a manner analogous to the growth of the individual human being over his or
her lifetime.
Now in this sense, just as each one of us goes through, let's say, three main stages
during the process of maturation – childhood, adolescence and adulthood – so too does
civilization at large.
Anyway let's accept the validity of this comparison for the sake of argument.
On this model, mankind may be said to have spent the majority of its historic career
in a state of childhood, a prolonged epoch of innocence, security, mystery and fantasy,
and also of regulation, supervision and subordination.
For millennia we accepted a great deal on faith, and we were content to be guided by
the time honored codes of our predecessors.
The rise of modernity – commencing, let's say, with the French philosopher Rene Descartes
in the 17th century and culminating with Bob Dylan in the 1960s – constituted humanity's
teenage rebellion, in the course of which the uncompromising rationalism and ruthless
passion for justice of the nouveau adolescent went about slaughtering sacred cows, exposing
baseless fairy tales, eradicating logically indefensible customs, and in general throwing
off the chains of the past.
Notions of authority were cast to the ground in the fierce struggle for independence, and
the need for law and tutelage and precedent and decorum – in short, almost everything
parents try to instill during childhood – was disdained by youth's proverbial conceit.
I remember myself.
My dad was this big, important doctor, and my family was always being invited to these
formal dinner parties at the society of pediatric osteopathic hematological whatever-the-hell.
My mother would send the thirteen year old version of me to my room to get ready for
the party, and this was the moment I had been waiting for: my golden opportunity to show
up my parents for the irrational, superficial, old fashioned fools I had recently discovered
them to be.
I lost no time in putting on a pair of jeans that were so ripped in so many places that
there was easily more leg than dungaree (and back then, I hasten to add, those holes were
the products of genuine, arduous wear and tear – we didn't buy the pants already "distressed"
or "destroyed" like you lazy, pathetic throwbacks!).
I topped that off with a violently stained Grateful Dead T-Shirt that I hadn't washed
for a year, and proceeded down the hall to make my grand entrance: "I'm ready for the
party!"
My Mom would essentially faint dead away and my Dad would start in with how "your attire
is completely inappropriate for the occasion" and "the clothes make the man" and more of
the same – and that, of course, was my cue: "You know, I really feel sorry for you, Dad!
You hold on to all of these antiquated ideas that have no logical basis to speak of.
It's sad.
I mean, give me one good reason why it should matter what a person wears?
Are you saying you should judge a book by its cover, Dad?!
If you wear a suit and tie does that make you a better human being?
Seriously, give me one good reason why I should change my clothes.
Come on, just one!
You can't, can you!"
That's the indomitable, relentless, merciless logic of the teenager talking, and my parents
were mortified and used to pretend I was someone else's kid.
Anyway, this is what modernism, with the best of motivations and intentions, did to humankind's
hallowed traditions: it ripped them up by the roots and tossed them out of the garden,
because they could boast no satisfactory explanation, because they were deemed unscientific, irrational,
or even immoral and unjust.
Both of these phases – childhood and youth – are, of course, essential to growth, but
there is a third and final stage in human development: adulthood.
What characterizes this phase?
Well, for one, adults begin to figure out that rationalism is not the be all and end
all, and that, in fact, a whole slew of the things that make life worth living in the
first place are specifically and fiercely irrational: like, oh I don't know, love.
Adults therefore tend to moderate the iconoclastic enthusiasm of their teenage period, and they
start to look back with increasing fondness on the warmth and wonder of their tender years
(a perception which grows exponentially stronger with the advent of parenthood, let me tell
ya…).
A new appreciation dawns for all that was simple and ingenuous, for precedent and etiquette,
for magic and awe.
Suddenly the silly, romantic, inscrutable customs of our parents and grandparents regain
a lot of their charm.
Not everything, we discover, has to make logical sense to be valuable.
For instance, while strict reason might militate for full-fledged egalitarianism, you gentlemen
just try using that line on a young lady you've taken out on a first date in order to justify
"going dutch" – in other words asking her to pay for half – and let me know how that
works out for ya.
At the same time, however, that the adult revives respect for many of the mores of childhood,
she or he is justifiably unwilling to forfeit the all-important liberty and enlightenment
that was acquired during the interim phase, during the teenage years.
And so mature members of our species eventually come around to the realization of realizations:
that in order to create the full human being, in order, as it were, to fulfill our teleological
destiny and forge a true grown up, a finessed amalgamation of teenage and childhood values
is what's required.
Adulthood, in other words, is an exercise in ambiguity, a constant, agonized effort
to balance the demands of one's immediate past with the demands of one's distant past.
In other words, check it out: true progress entails more than a modicum of regress.
Let me repeat that: true progress requires more than a modicum of regress.
And so it is with humanity in the present era: we have come to the realization, or at
least we should come to the realization, that the unrestrained faculty of reason let loose
by modernity on our faiths, on our families and on our mores – with all the undeniable
improvements that it brought in its wake – has also wreaked inordinate havoc on these precious
institutions in many ways, and that the rationalist radicalism that came on the heels of the Renaissance
– necessary and productive though it unquestionably was – must now be reined in, must be tempered
and seasoned through admixture with the norms and narratives of classical times.
This, then, is humanity's current imperative: to arrange and maintain the stormy marriage
between modernity, on the one hand, and tradition on the other – to combine the adolescent
with the child in order to produce… the adult.
Are we doing this?
Some of us are.
But most of the Western world is kind of stuck, stuck in the teenage phase.
A couple of years ago there was this big brouhaha at an American university – which will remain
nameless – because the professor of a not surprisingly popular course on human sexuality
decided to invite a pair of "professionals" to strip down to their birthday suits and
demonstrate various coital positions on the stage in front of the entire class.
A major hue and cry ensued in the media, and the president of the university, a professor
himself of course (and a Jew, I might add), subsequently granted interviews to several
major networks in which he evinced his dismay, in so many words, at the primitive, backwards,
reactionary, unenlightened attitude of the university's critics.
"After all," he explained, condescendingly, "it's just the human body.
Why should we be ashamed of it?
What rational reason is there for not exposing our students to something so natural?"
(sorry, condescension is for some inexplicable reason associated in my American mind with
a British accent).
And I was watching this, and I was like, "Alright, professor – strip!
Go ahead, take it all off, right there in front of the camera, let it all hang out:
you can leave your hat on!"
The guy is a teenager.
This professor, this president of a major university, this cream of our intellectual
crop, is employing the raw, right angle, untempered logic…of a thirteen year old.
That's pretty sad.
No less sad than those who are, at the other extreme, stuck in humanity's childhood and,
for instance, are all scared and repressed and ignorant about their bodies and their
sexuality.
So let's not be knee jerk conservatives.
And let's not be knee jerk progressives.
Let's engage in the highly challenging but no less highly rewarding task of combining
aspects of the two tendencies, of allowing the thesis of tradition and the antithesis
of modernity to fight it out inside us in a never ending battle: because pace Fukuyama,
history is not at an end, and there will always be more new things that we will have to balance
with the old things.
What are the proper proportions of this balance?
Each one of us has to figure that out for themselves, obviously.
But if our analogy between the way individuals grow and the way humanity as a whole progresses
is useful at all, then it should forewarn us against stagnating in the past, on the
one hand, but it should also make us aware, on the other hand, that every genuine move
forward entails a certain amount of doubling back.
If we were all to adopt this principle, it would help moderate extreme positions, and
bring us close enough to actually engage in fruitful dialogue – as opposed to what we
have now, both in the general and in the Jewish world, which is polarization so severe that
there is virtually nothing to say and nobody to listen on the other side if you said it.
So let's be conservative progressives and progressive conservatives, instead of making
our lives easy – and wrecking the world – by remaining blindly and obliviously loyal
to one of these two camps.
In a word: let's grow up.
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