When Your “Meaning in Life” Hurts Your Kids
Apr 21st, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 1 Comment |
“No Kidding, One in Three Children Fear Earth Apocalypse” (h/t Drudge)
It’s actually worse than that, though, if you read the article:
[M]ore than half—56 percent—worry that the planet will be a blasted heath (or at least a very unpleasant place to live), according to a new survey.
As with the apocalypticism of our version of Christianity (I speak to those of you who grew up like me in that branch of Christian culture that produced The Late, Great Planet Earth, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” [Larry Norman, covered by dc Talk] and Left Behind) environmentalist apocalypticism (carbon footprints, Silent Spring, global warming, Al Gore) is emotionally scarring to children.
It may give your life a sense of urgency, and therefore meaning (I speak now to adults of whatever culture), but it screws up your kids.
And if you don’t have any kids to screw up, don’t worry. You’re just screwing up other people’s kids. Neither of my parents were particularly interested in apocalypticism. The very fact that it was in the air was enough to damage me emotionally as a youngster.
(The episode of House from last week speaks very much to this issue.)
(Please forgive all the inappropriate uses of the second-person in this post. Perhaps I can clean it up later.)
The apocalyptism that scarred me wasn’t enviromental or biblical, it was nuclear. I had some awareness of the Silent Spring fears, but was much more sure that the world would end in a mushroom cloud, or atleast with our way of life destroyed by the evil commies.
The film “The Day After” Spoke to this, in a more symbolic way the first coupld Terminator films, even the goofy “Red Dawn” and “V” miniseries…
Like you, Micah, I didn’t so much inherit this directly from my parents as somehow internalize it from the wider culture.