The Urge To Destroy In This Year 2020 ?

The nineteenth century anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin famously asserted "The urge for destruction is also a creative urge." This concept came to mind recently when I came across a tree trunk that had clearly been vandalized. I suppose it could have been an animal or some other natural phenomenon that created the hole in the trunk, but it sure looked to me like the work of human hands, and it did not strike me as the result of any sort of creative urge.

I live in a densely populated urban area where I am regularly confronted by the human urge to destroy. Graffiti I can understand as the result of a creative urge, but branches ripped from saplings, litter, and over-turned city bikes? Not so much. I imagine that someone could argue that destruction is a precursor to creativity, like slums that must be bulldozed to make way for palaces, but it's a stretch. The most one can say for random human destruction is that it can, maybe sometimes, like in the case of graffiti, be considered in the benevolent light of creativity.

Every day in every preschool classroom, the urge to destroy is nevertheless evident. Even if it isn't part of the creative urge, it is, apparently something deeply human. Paper is torn into tiny bits and scattered on the floor, carefully constructed block towers are joyfully toppled, pages are ripped from books, toys are dismantled in ways that they can never be put back together. Some of it is accidental, of course, but as a boy once replied when I asked him why he had intentionally broken something, "I wanted to see if I could break it."

When I passed around to the other side of the tree with the vandalized trunk, I saw that it was notable in the sense that it's trunk was bizarrely deformed, looking something like one of those candles in a Chiati bottle stereotypically found in an Italian restaurant. It was strikingly different from the trees around it and because of that it roused my curiosity. It occurred to me that perhaps it had been curiosity, the primal scientific urge, that had caused someone to begin picking a hole in the trunk. If the trunk was so different on the outside, one could wonder if the interior was equally deformed.

I think it's safe to say that much of the "destruction" we see around the classroom can be marked up to curiosity, even if misguided, but that still leaves the question of broken bottles, wantonly discarded fast food wrappers, and knocked over bicycles. I suppose some of it could simply be chalked up to laziness, although psychologists tell us that there is no such thing. Feelings of depression, alienation, disenfranchisement, or just plain old anger at the world seem more likely causes of this sort of destructive behavior.

A psychologist friend told me that he was once engaged to treat an eight-year-old who had been referred by his parents for his "destructive behavior." The boy slumped into a chair and started the conversation by declaring, "I'm bad because I'm sad." If only we all could be as insightful as this kid.

Humans destroy to create, we destroy to explore, we destroy to express despair, and perhaps we are sometimes unconsciously driven to join the universe's unstoppable quest for ever-increasing entropy. As teachers and parents, we are too often poised to punish, to scold the child for something that he's broken, but it's never that simple with us human beings.

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How About If We Focus On That Personality

As any preschool teacher will tell you, every parent knows their child is a genius. And they're usually not shy about talking about it. Sally, can already recite the alphabet. Raphael can count to 500. At the same time, every parent is concerned, worried that their child is in some way "behind." This, they're usually not as eager to talk about. One of the wonderful aspects of cooperative schools, schools where the parents work in the classroom as assistant teachers, is that they come to see that they're right, their child is a genius . . . But so is that one and that one and that one. At the same time, they see that perhaps their child is "behind" at something or other, but again, so is that one and that one and that one. It's a chance to learn what preschool teachers know: every child is a genius and every child is "behind." Indeed, the range of what can be called normal, especially in the preschool years, is enormous, so  huge that it's hardly worth talking about.

And, frankly, who wants to be normal anyway?

I can't tell you how many parents have spoken to me over the past twenty years about their concerns that their child is developmentally delayed or autistic or has ADHD or something. I give them my best counsel, of course, referring them to their doctors or other professionals only to have them return to me, relieved to find that their child is normal. Of course, I'm happy that they're relieved, but this tendency to spot imperfections in their child often doesn't go away, they just shift their attention to some other concern. I know it's done out of love, but honestly, no one can thrive under the eye of an omnipresent critic, let alone young children.

Too often, our critical eye, our judgements, our urge to improve our children, causes them to believe that they must earn our acceptance, which is for young children indistinguishable from having to earn our love. When we say, or even think, "I'm doing this for your own good," we are not. We are doing it for ourselves, out of our fears, in order to create more normal in a world where normal doesn't exist. Identifying and fixing the problems of our children is actually a very, very small part of our job as parents. Our main role is to simply love them, to accept them, unconditionally. As Mister Rogers would say, "I like you just the way you are." The rest of the world is the place to prove and improve ourselves, but our strength to go out in the world and test ourselves comes from our parents' unconditional love.

Deepak Chopra wrote, "If a child is poor in math, but good at tennis, most people would hire a math tutor. I would rather hire a tennis coach." Every parens, no matter how worried, also knows that their child is a genius. How about we focus on that instead? Imagine our world if instead of parents hiring all those math tutors, we instead hired tennis coaches.

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Irrevocable Decisions Education

Author and Yale University professor of philosophy and cognitive science L.A. Paul proposes a puzzle in which you are to imagine that you are approached at a party by a charismatic stranger with whom you exchange a few minutes of delightful banter. He says to you, "I'm a vampire and I think you would make a great vampire." He goes on to offer to make you into a vampire, telling you how wonderful it is, how you will be immortal, how you'll have super strength and speed, the ability to fly, and, like him, you'll be irresistibly charming. You have to admit, that all sounds pretty good, but you have some concerns. "What about the blood drinking? I don't like the sound of that. And I don't know if I can live without ever seeing the sun again. Those seem like a pretty big downsides." The vampire nods, "I get it, but let me assure you, once you're a vampire, those things won't matter."

Dream the Combine and Clayton Binkley

What do you decide? Becoming a vampire is an irrevocable decision. You can't really know if you'll be able to abide the negatives so you have no choice but to take the vampire's word for it. Becoming a vampire means you will become a whole new individual. Not only will you have super powers, but you be someone for whom drinking blood is not repulsive and never seeing another sunrise is no big deal.

Paul's point is that transformative experiences require something irrevocable to happen. Of course, we don't always get to choose our transformations, such as the type that happen when, say, someone loses a leg, but others we do get to choose, but only if we have the courage to make irrevocable decisions. Deciding to become a parent is in many ways quite similar to the decision to become a vampire. There's no going back and the moment that baby is born everything changes.

I recently sat down with a friend who is considering a major life change. He's decided to leave his current job and is seriously considering going into a whole new profession. He's in the process of weighing options, assessing the pros and cons, considering the impacts on his loved ones. That he's going to make a change is clear, the only question is whether or not it will be a transformative one. Another friend in a similar situation has defined her fulcrum as being between "safety" and "following my heart." Both of these people are looking at being "vampires" from the other side of their irrevocable decisions: they see the cool stuff, but aren't sure if they'll be able to live with the blood drinking. They've both asked for my advice and I've urged them to choose transformation.

I am not the person I was 50 years ago. Every atom in my body has changed, numerous times, between then and now. I have encountered hundreds of moments that irrevocably changed who I am. Transformation is a fundamental aspect of how the universe works: if you don't choose your transformations, they choose you, and there is no way to know what it means until you are on the other side. We live in an ever-emerging now, so in that sense, every moment is a transformation. We are always in the process of emerging, but I've come to see that we don't always have to live at the effect of transformation. We can be the cause as well, at least sometimes, but it requires doing something frightening. It requires stepping into the unknown. It requires making an irrevocable decision and then summoning the courage or gumption or whatever to embrace it like a parent embracing their newborn baby.

As for regrets, we all have them, but the worst, I think, are those we harbor about things we didn't do. We're all going to be transformed. The question is: do we choose our transformation or does it choose us?

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!