Subtitle: The importance of personal responsibility

COMMON SENSE is getting pretty uncommon in our world today. If you doubt that, try reading the HOT warnings on a cup of coffee at your favorite drive-thru or quick-food restaurant. It is common sense that dictates a standard operating procedure for a good friend of mine who happens to like guns. This friend is not a rocket scientist, nor a holder of a Ph.D. degree and I would almost bet he doesn't even have a Bachelor Degree in anything past human nature. You know how he handles the problem, if it really is a problem, of having guns in his house? WHENEVER (emphasis intentional) a child comes in his house, the first thing he does is disarm EVERY GUN in his house! He actually keeps ammunition in some of his firearms and those guns automatically are checked and my friend, after having checked to see if there is a cartridge in the barrel, he simply removes the magazine clip and puts it in his pocket!

No child will EVER be able to find a gun to "pretend like he's a cop or a robber" in my friend's house. And that is the simple modus operandi in my friend's house and in my unscientific and non-politically correctness philosophy I maintain that this simple rule of safety is all that is needed, so Mr. Politician, get busy with some real problems in our country!

How could I be so naïve to think such a low tech solution could solve at least one of our nation's problems? Oh, I guess I forgot to remind you that there are STILL shootings of children going on--the latest being a child 6 years old shooting another child of the same age. Well, the answer is simple but my answer is not a placebo--it has to do with brains and using them.

Neil Postman, deceased 2003, was a University Professor, Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology, and Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. Among his twenty books are Amusing Ourselves to Death and The Disappearance of Childhood. Mr. Postman doesn't say much or anything about gun control in his books--rather he gets down to the nitty-gritty and talks about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.

In his most recent book, "Building a Bridge to the 18th Century", Postman addresses this problem in Chapter Seven (pages 116-135). Postman was one stalwart individual who happened to believe technology is not God's answer (or even man's answer) to our problem, and so writes: "There is some ironic comfort in our remembering that we are still suffering from the shock of twentieth-century technology, which has numbed our brains so that it is difficult for us to note some of the spiritual and social debris that our technology has strewn about us."

To facilitate the reader I will give the "punch line" (from Postman's writing) first; in writing about monitoring or knowing and applying principles and precepts about which parents and our society should be aware and practicing, Postman concludes: "...[such] are very difficult to do and require a level of attention that most parents are not prepared to give to child-rearing." Remember my friend and the control he exercises with his guns? Now, if you have the inclination, interest or downright sincerity required to really show concern about your children and your neighbor's children, read on.

Again, quoting from Postman's latest book, "If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture. This is especially the case in America. For example, for parents merely to remain married is itself an act of disobedience and an insult to the spirit of a throwaway culture in which continuity has little value. It is also almost un-American to remain in close proximity to one's extended family so that children can experience, DAILY [my emphasis, bv], the meaning of kinship, and the value of deference and responsibility to elders. Similarly, to insist that one's children learn the discipline of delayed gratification, or modesty in their sexuality, or self-restraint in manners, language, and style is to place oneself in opposition to almost every social trend. But most rebellious of all is the attempt to control the media's access to one's children." This is not all, obviously or we would have to reprint Postman's entire book so if you want to find a very simplistic approach to life and child-rearing then at least a few pages in Postman's book will be worth a trip to the public library to get your hands on his book.

This book cannot be read while watching TV by the way, and in fact it might be a good idea to prepare yourself by having a good dictionary at your side, and a willingness to evaluate related resources because Neil Postman's rhetoric includes massive usage of "big words" and more than often references to sages of generations past. One other side excursion in expressions worth mentioning, but not from Postman, is one Karl Kraus. Postman quotes Kraus on the subject of cultivating taste or "how to nourish the souls of students" in which Kraus thus nourishes students, "so that...they might know the difference between an urn and a chamber pot." Yep, that difference would be neat to know if the call of nature is profoundly present.

Remember, this book is not for the weak of heart or will, but if you honestly want to find another view, other than Uncle Sam helping you do something you alone are responsible for doing, then shut off the TV and the computer and pick up this book at our library.

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This essay was written in March 2000 - before "The Wordwright" days. While sorting through these old files, I discovered what many of us in the Senior Set learn early - the issues (we used to call them problems) of life do not really change; we simply adopt new buzz words and pretend we have solved the "old problems". If you care to upgrade your RAM (in the "computer" of your brain) you might use Micah 6:8 and I John 2:15-17. These biblical memory chips, although they do not address the above subject directly, once you allow them to be assimilated into your concepts and principles of life they will enable you to come to this conclusion sooner: "LIFE is not all that complicated."
Bill Venrick