The Unspoken Lesson in Harambe's Death

Nearly everyone has read by now of the unfortunate shooting of the gorilla named Harambe at the Cincinnati zoo the other day. Animal activists are outraged. The barrier, they say, around the gorilla pen should have been impenetrable. Maybe they also think the zoo keepers should have been more resourceful in saving the 4-year-old (some accounts say 3-year-old) who entered the enclosure. But zoo staff saw a child in the hands of an adult male gorilla and took quick, sure action. (This stands in contrast to the staff at the Palm Beach zoo a few weeks ago who chose to shoot a tranquilizer into a tiger who was mauling his keeper; the drug took enough time to take effect to ensure the keeper's death).

But there is a lesson in Harambe's death I have not heard mentioned. Obedience. The young boy, according to eye witness accounts, was told by his mother and a bystander NOT to try to go in with the gorillas, as he said he wanted to. The mother, busy with other children, did not notice her son as he ignored her instructions. As he proceeded through the barrier, he also ignored another woman's warnings, then fell into the moat, where Harambe zeroed in on him.

I see many parents who seem to feel that obedience to their commands is optional. Whether it's "No, you can't have any more gummi worms right now" or "No, you can't go into the gorilla's pen," the child has learned that his mother probably doesn't really mean it. He always manages to snatch another handful of candy, or get another half-hour in the pool, or not have to sit next to his brother if he just pushes it enough.

Many parents allow these defeats, telling themselves that it's not that big a deal. But the story of Harambe brings the error of this approach into painfully sharp focus. For centuries children have been taught to obey their parents for their own safety. A habit of doing what you're told must be formed as the stakes rise in the  child's life and more and more dangers present themselves. "No, you may not go out in the backyard" can one day be as important as "You may not beat on the fallen hornets' nest." Or worse.

Naturally, no parent can completely ensure that his child will not do something terrifying, especially when they have a very strong-willed tot. But a pattern of ignoring one's parents from a young age is almost sure to have serious consequences of one kind or another as the years go by. And since this little boy's willfulness led to the death of a magnificent silver-back gorilla, imagine his own difficulty in the years ahead as he grapples with the fact that his stubborn behavior brought about the shooting of the captive--and no doubt confused--gorilla.

Harambe reminds all parents to please, as the old song says, "Teach your children well."

Mirror, Mirror, on My Phone

We had just finished watching an odd movie based on the Snow White story when my husband observed, "Isn't the cell phone the new 'Mirror, Mirror, on the wall'?"

I stared at him. "Why, that's positively profound!" I found myself saying (not something I admit often to this sweet man).

We are all familiar with today's phenomom of young people staring incessantly at their phones--or maybe I should call them "hand-held electronic devices" since they are so much more than telephones. The obsession reflected on their faces indicates that something big is at stake in this digital activity. This is not a casual checking of messages or peeking at the forecast to see if they should have brought the umbrella after all.

Rather, what we see is a fixed, almost unblinking stare at the little screen in her hand. And yes, it is usually females I see afflicted in this way. She passes you on a narrow sidewalk without looking up. She walks through an ancient fort at the edge of a sparkling sea (a tour that her parents  paid a lot of money to take the family through) without even a glance at the venerable stone walls or colorful soldiers. When she goes out with her friends, you might see them lined up on a bench, all silent, and furiously tapping out messages to someone, somewhere.

What is so urgent, so absorbing? Well, like the evil queen in Snow White, these young ladies are checking on how they compare to all the other young ladies in the world. How many messages do I have? How many people "liked" the photos that I posted this morning? Did anyone comment on my comment when they saw how brilliant it was? Did those guys from last night accept me as a connection? Am I, at this moment, the electronically fairest of them all--or at least not completely pathetic???

This level of anxiety makes the evil queen's tension, as she waits for her mirror to confirm her unmatched beauty, look like a warm, bubbly soak. And if this variety of networked self-absorption were not enough, today's young damsels can load an app that turns their phone into an actual mirror. Yes, thank goodness for those  front-facing cameras and their vivid screens. She can buy the Makeup Mirror app and stare at herself as she walks along, checking her look in every light at every angle at every hour of the day. The app promises "awesome image visibility" and even has "gesture controls" (whatever those are).

This all makes me remember a classmate of mine in junior high. She had gone off to a camp one summer for a week. When I saw her afterward, she approached me grinning and said it was the best week she could remember. "Really? Why?" I asked.  The best part of it all, she said, was that they did not provide any mirrors. For an entire week she did not think about how she looked, she just did things like hiking and swimming and making camp fires.

How wonderful, I thought. To be looking out, not in. Such a shame that we have gone explosively in exactly the other direction.

Image courtesy of Pinterest.

No such thing as a dragon

In a recent episode of ABC's 20/20 (2/12/2016), Diane Sawyer interviewed the mother of one of the shooters from the 1999 tragedy at Columbine High. Seventeen years after the nightmarish attack, Mrs. Klebold spoke eloquently but tearfully about her experience as the parent of a teenager who proved, as a complete surprise to everyone and especially herself, capable of shooting down his fellow students in cold blood.

At one point in the interview, Mrs. Sawyer asked Mrs. Klebold whether she believed in evil. The mother knit her brows and slowly replied that no, no, she did not believe in evil.

I was stunned. Satan, I thought, must be pinching himself to be sure this is not just a dream. If even this poor woman does not believe in the presence of evil--a woman who witnessed her own son, whom she described as sweet and loving, transform mysteriously into a cool, calculating murderer--then who on Earth would?

So, imagine for a moment that you are intent on conquering your enemy's fairest city, carefully laying out a strategy and reckoning up all that this effort will take. Then your scout returns with miraculous news: The enemy does not believe you exist. They have built no fortifications, they have disbanded their army, and have even removed all mention of you from the children's textbooks. In short, they are wide open. All you need do is march in and claim the place and its surprised inhabitants as your own.

So it must be for the Prince of Darkness as he harvests legions of modern souls without firing a shot.

Mrs. Klebold's answer, that she does not believe in evil, goes a long way toward explaining the horrible acts that our fellow humans, often very young humans, are committing all around us today. The modern man says there is no such thing as some dark force, either outside or inside of us--just bad decisions and faulty environments that work upon a person until they find themselves deep into "damaging behaviors."

We don't talk about sin. The talk show host leans toward his guest, a young woman who has robbed her parents and grandparents, destroyed three cars while driving drunk, and threatened her brother with a large kitchen knife, and asks her if she would agree that she has made some "poor choices."

Saint Paul famously warned, "“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (1) But rather than a timeless statement of fact, St. Paul's words are derided as so much old-fashioned superstition. Evil does not actually exist, we contend, and neither does that scary place called hell.

Add to this sophisticated delusion the new ease of accessing those old forbidden fruits. We can feed a temptation to violence with a host of brutal video games, as well as a taste for depravity by quietly clicking into any of the countless pornography web sites. And when we follow a dark path to the point of committing a crime, our defense lawyer will convince the jury to be lenient because we suffered trauma as a child or had no good role models.

Naturally, many ugly things in our lives affect how we behave. People can decide to do terrible things, and these take their toll on us. But this is not an excuse to let ourselves be carried along into wickedness. Our situation is summed up well in the Vatican's 1965 statement Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope):

The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity. (2)

So we need to stop kidding ourselves. We can take a lesson from the children's book in which a little boy finds a small dragon at the breakfast table one morning, who proceeds to eat all the boy's pancakes. The child complains to his mother, who responds simply that "there's no such thing as a dragon." As the day goes on, the dragon grows larger and larger, filling a room, then the whole house, while the mother continues to assure her son that there's no such thing as a dragon. Only when the family finds itself riding high above their neighborhood, perched on the back of the beast, does Mom admit that this really is a dragon. And with this recognition, the dragon shrinks back to a manageable size. (3)

Indeed, there is good reason to keep praying the familiar words we have invoked for nearly 2,000 years: ". . . and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, Amen." (4)
____
1 Ephesians 6:12 (King James Version).
2 GS 37, 2.
3 There's No Such Thing as a Dragon, by Jack Kent
4 The Lord's Prayer, by Jesus Christ, ca. 30 A.D.
Dragon courtesy of Bing free images.

Talk about disappointment . . .

Last Saturday my husband and I made a sudden decision to hustle over to Daytona to watch (part of) the Rolex 24 race. Four different classes of cars roared around the 3 1/2-mile course for 24 hours, tires smoking around the curves, engines screaming along the straightaways. We sat in awe of the technology streaking past us, amazed that now each car sports a lighted number on each side of it displaying for the crowd its current position.

One prototype class car, the DeltaWing, caught our attention with its narrow nose and patriotic paint job ("God bless America" emblazoned along its side). We watched as lap after lap, it took the lead, slipped a bit, and took it back. Go, Car Zero!

We dove back into the monstrous grand stand to find another vantage point. As we passed a TV screen, we stopped in our tracks. There was the DeltaWing being towed off the track on the back of a truck.The race was over for Car Zero.

I considered: How must this feel for Katherine Legge, who drove the car to the lead during the first shift? How about the hapless second driver, Andy Meyrick, who slammed it into a stalled car shortly after getting behind the wheel?  Then there are the grieving owner and the entire pit crew, not to mention the two other drivers who never got their turns.

Myself, I do not handle disappointment well. When I have prepared for something with great anticipation and it gets rained out, called off, or just goes kaput, I do not bounce back quickly. You'll see me sulking (or worse) for some time, throwing dark looks around and muttering about my rancid luck.

I need to remember the DeltaWing. Professionals like that crew, although deeply disappointed, have a way of looking toward the next race, the next game, the next campaign. They can't get stuck. And though it left the famous Daytona track trailing pieces and parts, the DeltaWing surely has not run its last race and will show up again, even better. Hope I can learn to do that.

Photo: Two prototype cars take an infield curve at the Daytona Rolex 24, Jan. 30, 2016. Overall winner was Car #2, Tequila Patron ESM, shown at right. Photo by Michael Doyle.

"Agnes Somerset: A Victorian Tale" Is Now on Kindle

My novel Agnes Somerset is now available on Amazon/Kindle as an e-book. The whole story, all in one place, for the astonishingly low price of $2.99. I invite you to take a look. 

Once upon a time in the 1880s . . .

Set against the lush backdrop of the New York countryside, Agnes Somersest brings to life the tumult of life in Victorian America. Our heroine Agnes struggles to hold together the family estate following the death of her parents. Now comes one magical summer, distinguished by the arrival of young Lord Phillip, a failed missionary just returned from India, who kindles in her feelings she cannot deny. But romance with this unusual man is soon challenged by scandal and sabotage. What’s more, cousin Wilbur and his wife have done something they refuse to discuss—but what? And all the while, Agnes cannot know that her life is about to be changed forever by a shy Indian girl who dances for a living in a caberet in Marseilles.

Crooked relatives, wicked neighbors, and creeping time conspire to pull from Agnes her ancestral home, its beloved staff, and the love of a lifetime that seems to have arrived just a little too late. Peopled by a wide cast of characters, both honorable and evil, Agnes Somerset takes the reader down a winding road from exhilaration to agony, then turns again. (Appropriate for both young adult and adult readers.)