The Barbarian's children

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."

John Adams

I wonder how it will be for my unborn children as they grow up within a world made comfortable through safety. Will they really sit in air conditioned auditoriums, copying philosophical platitudes and calculating mathematical minutiae with the scions of American Exceptionalism? It thrills me that this may be a real possibility. To imagine my children growing within a cocoon of safety, unaware of the combustible nature of humanity's inhumanity is dreamlike indeed! Or is it?

My own education lacked the quiet contemplation one imagines is necessary to learn effectively. My classmates tended to be a tad uncouth and my teachers more than a little rough around the edges. The study of conflicted politics and polarizing war does tend to force the subtler subjects aside in devotion to the baser arts of human depravity. The picture above encapsulates my childhood and early education.  

I find it interesting that my early education created a person who feels a natural affinity with conflict, and an uncomfortable comfort with adversity. My childhood created a Barbarian, well able to handle a violent life. Then in my 30's I journeyed into more civilized lands and learned how to be more comfortably civilized, which eventually created someone who can enjoy the fruits of a wealthy civilization while retaining the strengths of my barbaric beginnings. Taking the Barbarian and clothing him in Plato's robes makes for a blend of barbaric philosopher that can often cause consternation among the more delicately enlightened.

Barbarians are thoroughly educated in the basic inhumanity of humanity and so are well equipped to deal with the natural equations that awful subject brings into the lives of human beings. Tragedies are rarely shockingly incomprehensible to a Barbarian.

Civilized citizens on the other hand, are thoroughly educated in the higher humanities and can handle the complexities of peaceful human interaction. The result is an adult better able to navigate the torpid waters of normalcy.

I recently read an article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html about the causes of unhappiness among Millennials or what has also been termed "The Generation Y." It discusses humorously the challenges that this new generation faces in discovering happiness, and how their posture towards their own exceptionalism may be a root cause of their discontentment. Someone forgot to teach a generation of youngsters that skinned knees and painful falls are part of learning and living. Pain and Prosperity normally share a comfortable cohabitation. 

My kids will need me to be intentional if I am to offer them the opportunities of learning how to handle the painful falls and failures that enable one to overcome adversity by owning a tolerance for conflict that allows them to knowingly enter hardship and harm, while constantly living within the safety of a more civilized environment. 

Air conditioned auditoriums are wonderful places for my future children to receive the bulk of their learning, as long as I remember to also seat them in more conflicted crucibles of higher learning.