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Sunday, September 26, 2004
What You Do Best
February 26, 2004
The Curmudgeon is out getting his teeth filed down to points, so Fran will write the column today.
In all seriousness, the subject of today’s rant has me too charged up to manage the Curmudgeon’s involute, gently satirical style. I am filled with anger and fear, and the only way I know to dissipate them is to write about the occasions of them.
A young colleague came by my office yesterday, wearing a peculiar expression, a blend of triumph and physical discomfort. Before I could even say hello, she’d turned about and yanked up her blouse to show me a tattoo: a large, garish tattoo of a winged snake that covered about half of her back.
I’m not often put at a loss for words, but what do you say to such a thing?
She looked back over her shoulder at me and said, “I got it Monday. What do you think?”
Before I proceed with this narration, I must mention that the young woman in question is genuinely young—she’s twenty-four—is single, and is aware that I’m an old mossback that has very conservative views on just about everything. We’re “hall friendly”; we smile and say hello in passing. We don’t dislike one another, but neither of us would normally seek the other as discretionary company. Yet here she was, baring her body to me to show me something she had good reason to suppose I wouldn’t approve. All of that occurred to me as I groped for a response.
What came out was, “They know what causes that, now.”
She giggled, mercifully covered herself, turned to me and said, “I knew you’d hate it.”
“Then why did you come and show it to me?”
Another giggle, but no reply. There was no need for a reply, really; she’d thrust her fresh mutilation in my face because she knew I’d disapprove of it.
“Tell me,” I said. “Did it hurt?”
She nodded. “It still does. You should have heard me screaming at the tattoo shop.”
“And that didn’t...suggest anything to you?”
She shrugged. There was a challenging pride to her expression, as if she were daring me to disapprove more explicitly.
I decided not to disappoint her.
“So," I said, “you put yourself through a painful procedure that involves prolonged suffering and the risk of a serious infection, to engrave a piece of second-rate art—something you probably couldn’t bear to have on your bedroom wall—on your own flesh, probably for the rest of your life.” Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. “If you become intimate with a man and he’s repulsed by it, there’ll be nothing you can do. If your skin loosens or the inks start to fade, it will look even more revolting than it does now. If you ever decide to remove it, you’ll have to undergo surgery and still more pain. You’ll never have your original skin texture back no matter what you do. Have you considered seeking professional help?”
She gasped and ran from the room.
My anger comes from the recognition that the lunatics are no longer under proper restraint. My fear is because, even if they’re not running the asylum yet, their time is fast approaching.
Mental disease and its indicators are the subject of a great many discussions. Not all of them are polite. Still, surely one of the contra-indications of sanity would be the predilection for damaging oneself. We consider those who slash their own flesh, or burn themselves deliberately, to be diseased individuals, persons in need of supervision by the more responsible.
But few are willing to say anything of substance about the craze for self-mutilation via tattoos and piercings. To cut into a healthy body, to destroy healthy tissue for no good reason, is mutilation. To replace intact flesh with bad indelible artwork or metal rings or prongs is a sign of mental disturbance.
If we look more widely, we can find a large number of related pathologies—related in the sense that they court pain, suffering, and long-lasting damage for no good reason—abroad and waxing as we speak. “Bug chasers” who actively seek to contract the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. S&M aficionadoes who engage in practices so vile that I can’t even bear to write about them. Women who deliberately get pregnant because they want to have abortions. Perfectly ordinary people, who look, dress and talk just like you and me, who repeatedly vote Democrat. Let’s say nothing about still more extreme practices. I know they exist, but I’m trying to hold my dinner down.
The mind reels. It more than reels; it withdraws in horror and disgust.
Yet nothing is more appalling, nor more puzzling, than the way the devotees of these madnesses parade them before those of us whose sanity is still firmly glued in place, expecting to shock us, then castigating us for being shocked.
What is the message? What is the meaning of this tide of folly?
Are they saying, “We are not like you, and here’s the proof”—?
Are they saying, “Look what you made me do”—?
Are they saying, “We hate ourselves, and we have no other way to express it than self-destruction”—?
What can we possibly say in response? What obligations do we, the sane, possess toward these others who rend and scar themselves in ways even the flagellants of medieval times would have condemned as pointless and evil?
No doubt someone out there is thinking, “There he goes again, assuming you can define normality.” No doubt someone is wondering how I’d defend the socially accepted “mutilations” of earlobe piercing and circumcision. And both of you can sit down and shut up. Earlobe piercing is a “gray zone” item—silly, but not really harmful—and circumcision serves a medical function, though not everyone agrees on the necessity. And not only can you define normality, it’s been done for us by Nature herself.
Savages in many lands have done exactly the same sorts of things our “civilized” lunatics are doing to themselves today. Note how poorly those primitive peoples have fared these last few centuries. It hasn’t always been because the Europeans developed machine guns.
The ascent from savagery begins when a people realizes that things happen for a reason, and with time, careful observation and hard thought, those reasons can be explored and systematized into bodies of knowledge. Savage peoples that learned how their savage practices crippled them, and rejected those practices, rose to join the world community of the civilized; those that did not sank into irrelevance, or extinction.
To abuse one’s own body carries consequences. Some fraction of self-abusers will die from it. More will suffer some lesser loss, perhaps of mobility, resistance to disease, or articulation of speech. Others will merely become objects of ridicule to the more sensible, who will disdain to procreate with them. Inbreeding among self-mutilators produces a declining line of descent; stupidity and self-destructiveness reinforced will almost always “improve” on their progenitors.
Granted that some mutilations, such as tattooing, are safer than they once were. At least, they’re safer than the ritual scarifications of primitive Africa. What’s the point? Why do this to yourself? Who are you speaking to and what are you trying to say? Must the argument be engraved on your flesh?
What was my young colleague’s point, that she was so eager to make to me?
If you disapprove of how I replied to her, what ought I to have done instead?
I dislike this feeling of incomprehension, of helplessness. I greatly fear that some switch has flipped in the minds of many, neutering their rational faculties, particularly their ability to look forward into their own futures. I fear even more that it’s a growing trend.
Demographically, the self-mutilation craze is firmly tied to the young, and appears to be waxing among them. We older folks are far less willing to court their resentment or scorn by reproving them than any of our predecessors were. Whether that’s because of lack of courage or lack of inclination, it cannot be good.
Still, there remain the questions: What can we do? What ought we to do?
Don’t speak of laws. No law against voluntary self-mutilation could possibly pass Fourth Amendment muster. Besides, one doesn’t control an outbreak of irrationality by force of law; the drinking craze of the early Eighteenth Century and the drug craze of the Twentieth have demonstrated that perfectly well.
Is it possible that there’s no constructive response? Must we simply write off those that fall prey to this ugly trend, and hope that their bad example persuades others to follow a more wholesome, self-respecting course?
I have no answers. I have anger and fear, and a single recommendation that I’d like to shout from the rooftops in a voice of thunder.
Guard your sons and daughters. Love them, but don’t indulge them. Monitor their activities and their associations. Restrain their destructive flights of fancy, should they have any. Be candid about your disapprovals, and give the clearest, simplest reasons you possibly can. Don’t think you have to bend to the latest fads, simply because they are the latest fads and every other parent in the neighborhood has surrendered to them. You are your child’s source for the wisdom of the race, as it was conveyed to you by your parents. If you fail him, to whom will he turn? Don’t succumb to the desire to have your child regard you as a friend. You were not put on Earth to be his friend. He was not given into your care for that purpose.
And pray for fortitude and resolve.
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