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Texan Flying Stars & Stripes from SUV Until It Shredded Jailed for Desecrating the Flag
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"Get Drunk Drivers into Pink Subaru's" Proposal on Hold
| Diaper Perils
by Dr. Kay S. Esteau
Any self-respecting psychologist will tell you that our behavior is rooted in our past. This is true both at the individual and societal levels. Our response to traffic lights, for instance, is explained when we remember that placenta is red and meconium (fetal feces) green, an explanation that also reminds us that humans have always been fascinated by things unsalubrious. At the national level, we find that the apparently innate desire of Americans to clear-cut forests and lie about it has origins in our first president's relationship with cherry trees. The famous bell that sent Paul Revere scurrying to herald the arrival of the redcoats explains why a ringing bell got Pavlov's dog to salivate for red meat.
It is not by chance that I use the last example, that not only crosses national and cultural boundaries, but even those of species. Indeed, we find that dogs and humans are really not that different. They are both social animals that like serving their masters, playing, and eating pre-packaged, over-processed food (replete with copious questionable animal bits) declaimed by marketing strumpets on television. Humans and canines are also very territorial, and it is this similarity that perhaps can resolve today’s dilemma facing behavioral scientists, who are at a complete loss to explain the current US administration's actions.
Our leaders have told us Saddam is Osama, war is peace, freedom is defended by robbing us of it, safety comes from waging war on the weak while steering clear of anyone with a nuke, and we'll all be secure under our multi-billion dollar space umbrella that has a minimal chance of protecting us against the least likely of all attacks on our country.
This warped perception of self-preservation and territoriality can be traced right back to diapers. It appears our puritanical disaffinity for grappling with fecal matter has kept us in denial, kept the secret behind closed doors, in the isolated solitude of restrooms, on the “see no evil--smell no evil--think no evil” diaper-changing altars where we repeatedly administer the moist-towlette cleansing ritual to our offspring with the same blind ignorant faith with which Neanderthals erected four-twig shelters to ward off hurricanes, or early Cro-Magnons climbed the highest trees to face down lightning, or the lost species of Islanders knocked two coconut shells together to hold back tsunamis. We try to whisk off, wipe away, and hide a key function of our development, of our existence. And then we expect it won't warp us?
In a galaxy not far from here, there is a sub-group of beings called Gemads, who are obsessed with ownership; they are viewed as clowns by their fellow beings, and are placed in big sand arenas where they entertain the crowds with their futile attempts at grabbing and owning all the sand grains they can. But I trust the Gemads are no match for humans, and surely all anthropologist telescopes are turned toward planet Earth, where, while we applaud as multinationals orchestrate war, starvation, and destruction to make tabula rasa of all natural resources, including humans, we fuss and fret when our offspring screech “Mine! Mine! Mine!,” make futile attempts at grabbing all their toys in their tiny arms to save them from others, or pick out the heaviest toy to wallop their friends on head. While we reward such behavior by adults with political office, we are appalled when our children display it, yet we persist, as if we had no clue, to seal up their nether-regions in extra-super-absorbent groin-huggers.
Puppies learn to demarcate their territory by urinating; they establish boundaries that regulate their social behavior, and territorial rules provide clear parameters that give them confidence as they grow. Children, too, need to develop confidence. They need to know where they are safe, what belongs to them. So Johnny wants to establish his space; he lifts his leg, and urinates, but thanks to Huggies, Smilies, or Grunties, he sniffs afterwards to find no trace of himself. Thanks to the all-absorbent powers of diapers, instead of feeling empowered, the child who urinates begins to question whether he even exists: “I'm sure I peed here, but I can't find it. Did I really pee? Am I losing my mind before I developed it? Do I even exist?” It should hardly be surprising that the appearance of another infant, an opponent, who makes for the child's toys, is not just a challenge in ownership, but is perceived as a challenge to the child's own existence.
Without the ability to mark territory, and too young to transcend instinct by understanding that the disappearing pee is a function of the uncomfortable girdle which the infant innocently accepts from those who gave him life and who he assumes love him, the child's reaction to challenges and perceived aggression becomes a hysterical lashing out, a frenzied battle for survival.
After a few years of such concerted demolishing of the child's confidence and self-worth, parents finally introduce “potty training,” the ultimate demoralizing act. The child is now forced to demarcate his territory in the exact same small ceramic bowl where all others do, and when he is done, all evidence is flushed away--the sweet-smelling toilet fresheners expunge even the last vestiges of his power of ownership. How can children so brutalized from birth, so degraded, demoralized, so frustrated, not develop a thoroughly warped sense of ownership?
Analyzing this problem helps understand many psychological inadequacies affecting human adults: self-definition based on things owned, incessant feelings of low self-worth, kleptomania, a need to buy People magazine, lying, voting for politicians who support wealth and ownership without thinking that these politicians only support their own wealth and ownership, religion, carrying cocked concealed weapons pointing at one's genitals, working in financial markets, solving disputes about whether someone was looking at one's girlfriend with sawed-off shotguns, building militaries, hating your parents, going “postal,” embracing nuclear Armageddon, or putting a happy, democratic smile of freedom on death and destruction.
While a truly free child can grow up with the confident “I'm in control” developmental model, reaching a happy adulthood of being chained up in a little wooden hut and howling at the moon, most children have been warped, forced to surrender all healthy forms of confirming their existence by a “U'rine control” model that breeds anarchism, nihilism, or, worse, corporate CEO's and politicians.
Despite the substantial human contribution to the Intergalactic Encyclopedia of Aberrant Behavior, and the hours of entertainment we must be beaming out into the far reaches of space and time, it would serve our own species well to put an end to this behavior, and the first step is to stop the diaper madness.
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