Kinderhattan
The end of April - already?
In local news, the Claremont Riding Academy has closed "for good." I am not an equestrian, and I don't remember even passing by the Claremont, but it reassured me to know that the stables were there, proof that anachronism is viable. Well, apparently not. It seems that it's not much fun to ride horses in Central Park anymore, what with all the dogs and baby carriages.
A nutcase who suited up as a fireman and tied a coworker up in her Chelsea flat for thirteen hours is pushing the envelope of "neurolaw" in his defense. He doesn't deny doing what he did. He just claims that, because of bad brain chemistry, he never intended to do it. In the unlikely event that this argument persuades the jury, I will not join the chorus of commentators who will undoubtedly bemoan the end of personal responsibility. Our legal system, advanced as it is, rests on a folk wisdom about human nature that is increasingly out of touch with what we are beginning to know about ourselves.
I was thinking about this over the weekend, thanks to Robert Wright's Op-Ed piece, "Planet of the Apes."
We may more often have to resist the retributive impulse that worked fine in the environment where it evolved but now often misfires. We may have to appreciate how our moral condemnations - which can help start wars - are subtly biased in self-serving ways that, in some contexts, no longer serve our selves.
We may have to cultivate our moral imagination, putting ourselves in the shoes of people who hate us. The point wouldn't be to validate the hate, but to understand it and so undermine it. Still, this understanding involves seeing how, from a certain point of view, hating us "makes sense" - and our evolved brains tend to resist that particular epiphany.
I am going to work on my moral imagination to see why it "makes sense" for moms pushing gigantic strollers to hate me because I radiate the longing to banish them to the suburbs. The occasional kid is cute. The current plague of infants threatens to take the "Man" out of "Manhattan": Kinderhattan.
Comments
The trailer truck sized perambulators are not confined to Manhattan. They are clogging the streets of Boston as well. The charge is led by an army of smug, entitled mothers. As far as I can ascertain, this whole yuppie breeding program is just one more form of "me too" competitiveness. Once they acquire the brat, they immediately farm it out to an au apair, so they can concentrate on finding new ways to irritate others with their new extension of their own importance.
I will not go so far as to suggest a Swiftian solution, but don't think it hasn't crossed my mind.
Posted by: Tony | April 30, 2007 01:07 PM
Never, ever having had the desire to have children, I for years have been generally oblivious to their existence, my nieces and a few others being an exception.
My builidng in Lincoln Center was devoid of children : people had them, went to the suburbs.
Now the new yuppies choose to stay in the City and leave their manners and common sense, if they ever had any, behind.
The sense of entitlement includes just barging into an elevator when the door opens, the assumption being it is for their sole use, and my new favorite is using the hallways to play games in.
I frankly don't care what they do during the day, but squealing children and balls bouncing off walls when I get home after a 10hr+ day does not hunt. My neighbors and I are headed toward an ugly scene.
How do I like children? Slowly cooked with a dash of Tabasco.
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April 30, 2007 02:26 PM
Rude people come with and without children.
Posted by: flather | May 1, 2007 11:57 AM
Do we feel left out, not having a hand in the next, future, generation? Perhaps, but when I was growing up, my parents made my siblings and me toe the mark and taught us that we were part of a community and not the sole inhabitants of the planet - and this at a time when children were literally EVERYWHERE.
The solution to huge perambulators and rude, self-important and entitled people, with or without children, is to politely but firmly confront them when they transgress the bounds of civil society. It will make you feel a whole lot better than doing a slow burn to going postal, and it may awaken these folk to a larger sense of community.
Posted by: LXIV | May 1, 2007 02:26 PM