azurelunatic | Book Pimp: Cherryh vs. Lackey; innocence, ignorance

norabombay, I recommend that you find the C.J. Cherryh novels Cloud's Rider and Rider at the Gate and read them immediately you finish To Catch a Thief.

I vaguely recall that the books about the Nighthorses (mercurial, hungry, omnivorous-verging-on-carnivorous, telepathic alien horse-type things with their own agendas (said agendas often consisting of getting fed, laid, or both) ) were written in reaction to the Companions (white, blue-eyed, Special Magical Pure & Good Reincarnated Spirit Horses), but I can't recall where I heard that said. Since I have a vague impression of it being in Alaska at Guardian, it was probably onList, but I can't recall who said it.

Rider at the Gate especially is a good antidote, as it's got a lovely blonde spoiled brat female delicate angel 13 year old, Brionne, who is In Tune with Nature (just the nice creatures, not the nasty mean scary ones) who is utterly out of tune with anything approaching reality, and it gets her in a royal mess of trouble.

I came to the conclusion that one of the more potentially explosive themes of the Lackey books is that innocence is one of the most powerful forms of Good and Protection that there is, and that often ignorance and innocence go together. (What the hell is 'innocence', anyway? That's one of those slippery words that escapes me at this hour of night.) This is the sort of innocence/ignorance that lets characters be happy and everything is all right as long as they don't know about the bad things that are going on, and if there are bad things going on that they know about, they have to Make It Stop in order for things to be OK again. Even so, once the characters have found out about all the bad things that can happen in the world, they'll never be completely OK again.

Thing is, when you're trying to preserve innocence as a virtue, what often goes along with it is ignorance of the basic life skills to cope with bad things. Take the Buddha, for example. He was kept ignorant of death and disease and poverty, and lived in a charmed dreamworld, and it was a major shock to him when he learned that Bad Things could and did happen to people. He managed to recover; a lesser mind might have gone boink and broken.

Innocence as a virtue only happens when there is an active force working to shield a protected class from reality, and those who are so shielded never learn, or learn too late, how to cope with reality. Think of immune systems, and the archetypical person shielded from all dirt and disease. Their immune system will be shot to hell, and the least sniffle will take over and kill them. A kid who eats poop and drain cleaner will, of course, suffer for it, but a kid who gets to play in mud, play with sick friends, and eat the occasional thing that's been dropped on the floor will develop a robust immune system unless there's an uncommon medical factor at work (such as AIDS).

I wonder if there's a correlation between people who are vehemently against all forms of vaccination, and the people who are vehemently against allowing any form of something they consider 'bad' to get to their children.

The preservation of innocence at the price of knowledge and skills to deal with reality is anathema to those of us who value knowledge and experience. Little cute fluffy-bunnies who have never been exposed to General Dodginess will not have an instinctive revulsion for everything that is bad for them; instead, they will have a revulsion for certain classes of unfamiliar, having learned only that Things That Mommy Says Are Bad Are Just Bad, M'Kay?, and will not have the experience to pick out why that person who is buttering them up and saying they're perfect and wonderful is actually not having their best interests at heart.

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There may be some correlation, but I think a significant portion of the anti-vaccination movement aren't looking to protect their children from all harm. They're just looking to protect the children from unnecessary harm, and they see vaccination as dangerous. I suppose that they would prefer to have a hale, healthy child whose immune system in general is strong, so that when a new bug hits, it doesn't take them down for long.

That is the sensible way to look at it. Unfortunately, I've run into a lot of eetee parents out there, by virtue of my having joined some parenting communities.

eetee? Qúe es?

Slang from Cyteen meaning weird and/or crazy, with no normal-person-trackable link to actual sanity/reality. What happens when you have nonsocialized Alphas and you let them run without supervision. What happens when you have Alpha-class CITs that don't get feedback on themselves.

It's formed from e.t., extraterrestrial, alien, strange, senseless, illogical, weird.

I came to the conclusion that one of the more potentially explosive themes of the Lackey books is that innocence is one of the most powerful forms of Good and Protection that there is, and that often ignorance and innocence go together.

My major problem with this theory is that I have had intelligent children. Lots of them. And let me tell you, children may be ignorant, but the one thing they are NOT is innocent.

There are three applicable definitions in Mirriam-Webster:

1 a : free from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil : BLAMELESS
b : harmless in effect or intention
2 a : lacking or reflecting a lack of sophistication, guile, or self-consciousness

Given that children are the most unselfconsciously SELFISH, conniving, deceitful, headstrong creatures on the planet...none of these apply to them. My first child received his first spanking at the tender age of 9 months old - before he could *walk*, even. Mind you, I only spank for *deliberate disobedience* to known rules. I judged a 9 month old to have done this. I was sitting on the couch, reading a book, and he was sitting on the floor in front of his father's bookshelf, something he knew full well he was not allowed to touch (it's easy to teach a child over a short span of time what they're not supposed to touch by means of painless but startling smacks on the hand when they reach for the object in question - if you're consistent, they learn quickly). I watched him out of the corner of my eye, and he did not know I could see him. He looked at me, looked at the bookshelf. Looked at me, looked at the bookshelf. Looked at me, and then while keeping his eyes on me to make sure I wasn't watching him, reached for the books and grabbed one.

Nine months old, and the child was not innocent of guilt, harmless in intention, *or* lacking in guile. Lacking in sophistication, certainly. Which is why it is imperative to teach children morality from the very youngest of ages, so that by the time they *have* the sophistication to get away with much worse stuff without us knowing about it, they will no longer *want* to.

We are not born innocent. We are born deceitful and uncaring of anyone else in existence. Caring about others is a learned behaviour...and ignorance is no protection from *anything*.

Thank you. You've had the experience with small children that I haven't.

I wonder if there's a correlation between people who are vehemently against all forms of vaccination, and the people who are vehemently against allowing any form of something they consider 'bad' to get to their children.

I have to chime in with

popefelix here. Mind you, the only people I know who are vehemently against *all* forms of vaccination are the people like Christian Scientists, who are against all forms of medication in general. However, my children did not receive vaccination until the courts required it of me - by then, thankfully, the one that I would have steadfastly continued to refuse them having was no longer in use - the DTP shot. The information on the shot in the Physician's Desk Reference clearly states that any sort of seizure disorder in the family is a contraindication for that shot, yet it is legally required for *all* children to have it in order to attend public school. (Two of my three sisters and my mother have a mild form of epilepsy.) The DTP shot has *killed* more children than pertussis has in the past half-century. (I have no problems with the diptheria or tetanus vaccinations - there have been no serious problems shown.) Thankfully, there is now a killed version of the pertussis shot (DTaP) and the DTP version has fallen into disuse. I would rather my children not have the MMR shot, because the diseases themselves are not generally fatal...UNLESS you get them when you're older than a young child - which is far more likely when your protection is from the vaccination than from having the disease itself. Again, I was thankful that most of my kids had already *had* two of those three diseases (mumps not being very common) before they were forced to receive these shots.

It's simply an issue of an informed choice between dangers. I judge that the risk of the diseases themselves, for some of the vaccinations, to be far less than the risks provided by the vaccinations.

Regrettably, since this child will probably have to go to public school, I will not have that choice. The state takes it away from me. (Despite the theory that all those vaccinated kids should be perfectly safe even if my unvaccinated child *does* get the illness...it's yet another case of the government attempting to protect me from myself. Grrrr.)

At least with some of the diseases, those vaccinated kids won't be perfectly safe. Some vaccines have a 9x% success rate, which is enough to keep a disease from going epidemic among a population of vaccinated people (not enough vulnerable people to spread to before getting better), but not enough to protect everyone if there's a large enough population of unvaccinated people to maintain a disease pool (every vaccinated person who's still vulnerable gets exposed often enough to get it).

I'm liking the Cyteen model of government even better now, with representatives of each profession meeting to craft laws about their respective areas of influence, rather than crafting a race of professional politicians who know little about medicine or economics.

What I would like, for some of the Lackey books, is the clear object lesson that good intentions get you absolutely nowhere if you're operating from the viewpoint "clueless".

A Woman With A Heart of Gold up against a Beastly Monster Male-Type? If she's clueless, she's toast. A Cute Kid with Good Luck Who Already Knows It All, going into an experience-needed situation? Unless they're willing to learn and accept correction on their mistakes, they're also in a lot of trouble. And no teenager is going to be universally pliant and willing to learn everything they need to learn, based on the nature of teenagers.

Book Pimp: Cherryh vs. Lackey; innocence, ignorance

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