I read every single comment after seeing how intriguing the first few were. The audience at Mamapedia Voices is a general audience of moms (and dads, I’m sure), whereas my regular readers are mostly Objectivists, a lot of them parents. It was fascinating to see the difference in the responses. The Mamapedia comment that captured the difference best was from Kala, who said, "Wow...I don't even know how to respond to this. I've never seen anything like it." I was surprised to hear that because this particular post didn't seem like anything too unusual to me. But then I thought about it:
- I say that my husband and I are having a child for selfish reasons.
- I say that our priorities are career, marriage, and then child, in that order.
- I say that with rational people, there are no conflicts of interest so that what is good for us as parents is generally good for the child.
All of these principles are so integrated into my life (and most of my friends and readers share them) that I don't think about them as being that far from the norm. But, of course, they are – especially the idea that selfishness is a virtue. In my world, it’s easy to forget that most people think selfishness is the biggest vice in the book.
The most interesting comments were those that misunderstood the essence of the post. First, it seems that many people believe that career means money. I was chastised for putting money ahead of family. That’s so funny to me. The idea that the only value in a career is the money it brings is so foreign to my way of thinking that I never would have thought to clarify it (and I’m not going to clarify it here). Even more common was the misapprehension that when I said that my husband and I were clueless when we wrote the Children Vows, that I meant we now think they were a mistake and we now renounce them. And re-reading the post, I can see that the readers did have some basis to think what they did. Coming from their context of believing selfishness to be a vice and parenting to be the ultimate act of altruism, it would be hard to believe that I was truly advocating selfishness in parenting. When I said we were clueless, I was a little unclear about exactly in what way, and I don’t think it was a totally unreasonable interpretation for some to think that I was saying that I had no idea that I was going to have to sacrifice.
Of course, I did not mean that at all. We were clueless about the details. We still hold the same principles, but now we know that the challenges in holding them are different than what we thought they would be. Travelling with a small child is easy. Showering is not. And, according to my principles, I have worked hard to keep showering. I will never, ever use the cowardly excuse of sacrifice to give up a value. I will keep working for all of my values. That is the point of the Children Vows.
These comments reminded me of how difficult it is to try to communicate to both Objectivists and non-Objectivists at the same time. I’m not interested in defending or promoting Objectivism, but I do like to write about how I apply Objectivist ideas in everyday life. It’s hard to strike a balance between setting enough context for a general audience and not boring those who already share the same core beliefs.
And then I realized that this tension is exactly what has been so difficult about coming up with good plot-theme ideas for my fiction writing. I have no interest in defining an entire philosophy in a novel as Ayn Rand did. I want to write good stories with what I’d call “medium-depth” themes. But because my most basic beliefs are so unconventional, it is difficult to get to those themes without going all the way back to the core ideas.
I’m going to be doing a lot more thinking on this issue.
One commenter "Rose" replied on that site:
ReplyDelete"Sacrificing your self interests for another human being--out of choice--is one of the most humane things man--or woman--can do. That is the sign of a magnanimous, benevolent, and noble human being."
"Study cultures, religions, societies, histories, etc. and their perspectives on life, humans, living, sacrifice, etc. I think your approach to life--and parenting--will change 180 degrees."
Well that certainly lays it all out there doesn't it. Really, the comments aren't awful however. Many of them seem simply baffled but honest.
While there are a lot of people clueless about Objectivism, many many people are somewhat knowledgeable and with the particular events of a story, they probably won't be in the dark about what you (or your characters) mean when they act or talk.
ReplyDeleteI'll admit that your original post left me pretty cold. It was particularly the vow that you listed here as "I say that our priorities are career, marriage, and then child, in that order." I'm as selfish as the next guy but I can see many times where those three priorities can conflict. Our time and resources are limited and so we are regularly confronted with each of these three priorities requiring our time and attention.
ReplyDeleteSaying that "career" trumps "child" lays out a hierarchy of values and implicitly states that the resolution of such a conflict will have the child lose out. Anything less would be a Sacrifice. So it's reasonable to see your vow—as stated—as "self-centered" rather than selfish.
Myself, I put the three priorities on equal footing. That makes situations where I must work extra (and can't consequently see my children or spend time with my wife) more of a tradeoff than a sacrifice. I think that is how you view the three from your new vantage point as a parent, but maybe not.
"But because my most basic beliefs are so unconventional, it is difficult to get to those themes [in the course of a novel] without going all the way back to the core ideas."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that's true. Why not just write a novel the way you've been writing this blog up til now? In other words, why not just go on assuming that your readers already "get" where you're coming from? What's wrong with a novel that's shocking and direct in its honesty? Or, with assuming a world that isn't but ought to be?
Me, I have to write almost blithely about what I believe, otherwise everybody in the story goes flat, all cardboard-like, basically PC not Mac; dialog comes out dyslexic and forced, like a bungled frog-in-a-blender joke, which no one ever thinks is funny even when you get it right; and worst of all, I get bored. (Well, okay, that sometimes happens anyway, but it's far worse whenever I try to get preachy-teachy.)
Anyway, good luck finding your own way with this. You gotta write your own book, as they say.
I also have my values ordered career, romantic relationship, and child, but I don't think that means I must choose a higher one in every single conflict. I must choose the higher one over time, but not in each moment. For instance, I would not give up sex with my partner for Livy. Over time, my sexual relationship with Aaron must be upheld, child or no. But if I was having sex and Livy had a nightmare, I would stop and comfort her. In that moment, I know that she is truly frightened and needs me NOW. The long-term consequences to my sex life are none. I think that is the same reason a devoted worker can take time off for his child's school play. He isn't sacrificing his career, just choosing to pursue a different value right now.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I like to have my values explicitly ordered because that lets me know my ultimate priorities. It makes it easier to plan long-term. When deciding if I should be in school almost full-time for next fall, I can weigh my career vs. my child (who is home with me half of the time). When Aaron has to work late lots of times in a row, he can weigh his work vs. me and make that call.
Kelly
Bill, I've been struggling with a response to your comment for a while now, and Kelly just nailed it. Because, no, I have not changed the hierarchy. I would add that the conflicts between the values are almost non-existent. I have been continually amazed at how, when one is selfish, there is no conflict between being a parent and other priorities. But then I was struggling to express why I needed the hierarchy, and why in that order. I knew it had to do with something long-range and was more about holding context than about choosing between competing values, but, Kelly, you really helped clarify it for me. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI don't get why Kelly's comment nailed whatever trouble you were having in replying to Bill. I thought he said he puts the three priorities on equal footing, trading off as the situation dictates, with no sacrifice involved. Kelly's comment simply showed that she'd stop having sex if her child had a nightmare -- what? what parent wouldn't? -- and then she stated that she needed the career/marriage/child hierarchy in that order without expanding on the point at all. I still don't get it.
ReplyDeleteAs a working dad, Bill's points resonate perfectly with me, and I don't understand how they conflict with what you and Kelly are talking about, and why her comment clarifies anything.
I think the fact that work-life balance is a perennial problem with parents indicates that conflicts between the three most important facets of a full life do arise and are quite common. Not all of it can be written off as a legacy of altruistic ethics because, at least implicitly, these are rational, selfish values.
ReplyDeleteWell, it nailed it for me, at least in a general way. I was struggling even to express what Kelly did. There is a focus on the long-range that can get lost if you don't explicitly have your hierarchy set this way. It's easy to fall into the child-centered mode because the demands of the child are there all the time. As with many selfishness issues, it ends up being more of a long-range focus than anything else. I could be happy if I never had children, but I could not be happy without productive work. If I don't keep that in mind, productive work will definitely fall off my radar by default because my child is always there with all of her needs and the pleasures she brings.
ReplyDeleteMarriage falls in between. It's easy to stop working on that relationship if you don't choose to hold the long-range focus. Many comments at Mamapedia seemed to understand the marriage-before-children issue, but not the work-before-children issue, and it seemed that this was because they viewed work as just a way of "getting" money.
There is a difference between priorities and a hierarchy of values. I probably do need to think about this more, but there is already too much in my head. Isn't it great when you need to make a list of all the interesting things you want to think about?
Priorities are a short-term expression of your hierarchy of values. They can change, be shuffled, or even set aside as needed. Your priorities shouldn't conflict with your hierarchy of values but they can deviate temporarily.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I had with your initial statement was that you seemed to conflate the two. It seemed (and I submit that it probably did to the general audience also) like you would put your child last in the short-term. That would be monstrous, just like refusing to attend to your child because you're in the middle of sex would be.
Conflicts, I submit, arise in the long-term because short-term priority shuffling averts them. So Kelly is trying to decide between caring for her child and going to school full-time. *That* is a conflict: she can't do both though she could say that she will put off education a little while longer because her child is at a developmentally-important stage that requires her attention. If her child were a higher value than career, then she would forego school so that she can spend time with her child. If her child wasn't, then she would take the classes. Since she explicitly values career over child, then she will take those classes--otherwise it is a sacrifice because she has foregone a higher value for a lesser one.