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November 16, 2004
Wolves and other stories
Over coffee this morning I failed to explain myself. This happens to me all the time. I do not think in words, but in something related to metaphors.
Karine explained that one of her children -- I think it was Thomas -- had been told a story about a wolf or wolves at school. When he came home he couldn't sleep before his parents opened all the closets and cupboards to show him no wolves were hiding in the house. Karine's husband David asked the teacher why they'd told the story about the wolves. The teacher responded children need to confront their fears, and they do that through these stories.
Gilles concluded that was true, that children need to confront their fears, or they remain too afraid to try anything.
Before he said that, I tripped over my words. But I saw what I later wrote down, an explanation Occam might have cut to shreds. In essence, Gilles's explanation is the surface explanation, put there to protect the hidden story from discovery, which is that somebody at l'Education Nationale was taking aim at the church, intentionally helping children build their superegos from flimsy fears of wolves and other unlikey happenings. The unconscious would respond to these fears; the children would first appear to become socialized. Other stories about scarcity, unemployment, etc. would round out the superego scaffolding.
But in the end, the ego would notice the flimsy core materials of the scaffolding, would put two and two together to deconstruct the superego, which would vanish once exposed. The ego would see the unconscious confused by the boundaries of the flimsy, fake superego, and begin the work of taming blind, unconscious drive. No God above, no demons below, only rationality remains.
Yet behind the hidden story hides another short story. Rationality is only a tool. It constructs nothing on its own, but disintegrates into its own relativism, and thus anarchy. In the absence of structure, the ego makes no sense, so it must disappear as well.
Thus at one level, the story about wolves is an object lesson in Zen Buddhism. I'm still looking for the hidden story behind Zen.
Posted by Mark at November 16, 2004 08:52 PM