There was a farmer who had three teenage sons. Each Saturday, while their friends were playing video games, or cruising through town in their pick-up trucks,
the three boys were required by their father to work his corn field. One of the farmer’s neighbors took pity on the boys and suggested to the farmer that he could easily afford harvesting equipment to give the boys a break. “I don’t know why you’re raising corn that way anyway,” the neighbor said, “You could probably buy it cheaper than what it costs you to raise it!” The farmer just looked out at his fields where the three boys were busy at work and replied, “I’m not raising corn; I’m raising sons.”
I’ve seen this story several times, unattributed I’m afraid, so I’m not sure of it’s original source. Many such tales have been verbally transmitted for years, and serve to transfer the wisdom of past generations to the succeeding ones. We live in a time, though, where we no longer require such stories. We no longer respect such “wisdom”. We live in a time that holds no honor for the past; it is to us an embarrassment. We are a generation sufficient unto ourselves; we are the enlightened ones. Or so we believe.
“…And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
One such thing that seems to have been largely forgotten, and all but lost, is the way to raise sons. My apologies to those who, like the farmer, have tended to their families with diligence and brought forth men from their field; but largely we have spawned a sad crop in these times, and we are beginning to reap what we have sown. With our new found “enlightenment”, we have set aside the values by which we have raised our children for generations. On the basis of abuses and shortcomings of times gone past, we have swung the pendulum wildly in the opposite direction, and instead of building on the wisdom of ages we have favored the wrecking ball and demolition.
Today’s young men have not been taught that work is a good thing, that getting your hands dirty cleanses the soul, that all work is noble, and that no job is beneath us if done with honor and diligence. Today’s young men have not been taught that vulgarity is the mark of an impoverished spirit, that an eight letter word cannot be replaced with two four letter words, that women are to be honored and respected, not conquered and debased, that adolescence is something you are supposed to grow out of. Our young men have not known discipline. So many without fathers, they have been overly mothered by all but a few outstanding single moms, and not exposed to the concept of tough love, which is the natural duty of the father. In a culture anxious to set aside all judgement, our young men have been encouraged to accept the most aberrant, abnormal, and disturbed behavior as perfectly normal and to be embraced. In our reticence to push our children in particular directions, we have ignored the imperatives of nature itself, where offspring are born with some abilities, yet trained in others, especially in the higher species. With the gains made for women’s rights, we have sadly not positively effected our man children. In making the struggle into a war, manhood was mistakenly deemed the enemy, and the highest calling of a man became serving as his wife’s helper, or more often, irrelevant. The result of all this has been a bipolar society where we either castrate our sons or turn them into gladiators. Fatherless boys live on the streets in a Lord of The Flies dystopia, while suburban sons grow up like little girls.
IMHO: Sometimes a giving heart unwittingly becomes the agent of loss. In the face of the old adage, that there is no free lunch, we have become the generation that asks, “Why not?” We who have money, but little time, have tried to substitute our money for parenting. We give our children so much, but in giving we take something from them. We take the pride of working for something, the honor of making one’s own way, the dignity of independence. Even more for our poor; we have removed the value of work, the satisfaction of paying your own way, the self-respect of being a working man. Why not, a free lunch? Because free lunches make men sick, and our sons are a testament to that. I would sooner see a WPA type program than the massive giveaways that remove from people the pride of working for a living, particularly our sons. For too long we have allowed the inmates to run the asylum, the nosy neighbor to dictate our parenting, and manhood to be dragged though the mud. The days ahead are dark, and the world will need men… let us send our boys to the fields and raise some sons!
