RETREAT FROM ADULTHOOD -- NUMBER ONE

RETREAT FROM ADULTHOOD – NUMBER ONE:

FOUR LITTLE PIGS AND CHARLIE ROSE WITH THE WOLF AT THE DOOR THE WORLD AT LARGE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 23, 2011

As I walked today, meaning no disrespect to New York Times reporters around the table with Charlie Rose (PBS) as moderator, I thought of  “The Three Little Pigs” (plus one in this case) with the wolf at the door as the world at large.

Bruno Bettelheim’s THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT (1977) read many years ago came to mind.  The psychoanalyst saw the fairy tale in terms of Sigmund Freud’s “the pleasure principle” (CHILD) versus “the reality principle” (ADULT).

The “three little pigs” dramatize the idea we must not be lazy or take things for granted because if we do we shall perish.  Intelligent planning and foresight combined with hard work will make us victorious no matter how ferocious our enemy (wolf at the door).

The houses the pigs build are symbolic of man’s progress in history, from a lean-to shack to a wooden house to a house of solid brick. The fairy tale suggests a transformation from the pleasure retained to the demands of reality.  The wolf is tricked and falls down the chimney into boiling water, and ends up as cooked meat for the wisest pig.  The demise of Osama bin Laden comes to mind.  In our retreat from adulthood, the reality principle is often demonstrated counterintuitively.

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Moderator Rose gave a litany of the challenges facing the United States and the President such as 9.1 percent unemployment, $14 trillion national debt, the current gridlock in Congress, and a myriad of other problems on the eve the president was to speak on troop draw down in Afghanistan, a war suggesting a lean-to shack.

These four New York Times reporters, David Brooks, Tom Friedman, David Leonhardt and Roger Cohen have the pusillanimous power of the word when it comes to leadership. 

Their role as pundits is to lead the discussion of a bifurcated audience of skewed political, social, economic and cultural preferences.  They use the power of media to subliminally bombard our unconscious 24/7 until we sound like them, and unfortunately, so do our leaders.

They write columns on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, syndicate these to other newspapers, write books, and grace television with reports as they come back from globetrotting expeditions.

Profiled as the crème de la crème, I confess to growing weary of reading and seeing them as they practice Freud’s “morality principle” (PARENT) criticizing and critiquing those in power with sound bytes of enchantment, but little else. 

Chances are these four men are programmed products of our most prestigious universities, citadels of learning that we constantly congratulate ourselves as being the best in the world.  If true, then they have been well schooled in the ecclesiastical authority of the salience of timeliness.   What do they do?

They observe, report and distill the significance of the leadership of those in power when, at best, their leadership and management skills might be confined to a research assistant or two.  It would be ludicrous to consider them otherwise if they were not taken so seriously.

I find them entertaining but unsettling.  They would have us see them as the wise pig when they are not in the frame at all.  They have the luxury of gain without pain, ticking off options on their fingers when they can skirt the ADULT (reality principle) with opines as the CHILD (pleasure principle) with immunity. 

These four journalists have power, have no doubt about that, but it is not the power of action in the caldron of the daily hell of decision making, but from the luxury box far above the fray where they can reflectively meet column deadlines or book contracts.  Scribes have climbed onto the shoulders of giants to whisper into their ears so subtly that these giants believe it is their own voice they hear. 

They remind us we are stuck in the past, stuck in the present, stuck in our culture, stuck in trauma, or stuck in short term strategies at the expense of long term necessities.  It all sounds rational, realistic and insightful, but despite their efforts (could it be because of them?) we are frozen, paralyzed, marooned, trapped, isolated, enchanted and enslaved to white noise.  Forgive me, but this bubbled up from my subconscious as I walked today.  Perhaps tomorrow I will champion them all as Oracles of Delphi.

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