Author Archives: Christene

Discipline

When did disciplining your child stop being a thing? It often occurs to me that a lot of parents appear to be afraid of their children, when really it should be the other way around. I remember growing up I had a deep seated fear of my parents. I have to preface this with stating that they weren’t abusive or unnecessarily cruel. However, if I misbehaved, God help me.

And the punishment always fit the crime. Whining and general brattiness got no more than a slap across the face. Failure to stop, or anything more serious and my mother would not hesitate to remove the strap from her purse and put it to good use. A few times I tried resisting, or worse, swatting her away, but I quickly found out that was useless and then my father would have to become involved, holding me down for prolonged discipline. My point in sharing this is that most people reading this today are probably totally freaking out right now thinking I was maliciously beaten. And really, I wasn’t.

I am not sure how I feel about corporal punishment. I have swatted my children a few times for general brattiness, and I have physically removed them from stores and other venues kicking and screaming while being shoved in the car, but I have never used things on them, or slapped more than their hands. But having had experienced more than that, I can’t say it scarred me for life, or really did anything to me.

I am in no way saying that what my parents did is the answer to anything, but I can’t help wondering at what point the relationship between parents and children become so skewed.

What prompted this post was a trip to the grocery store. A woman was there with her daughter that looked to be about 3 years old – only a few months younger than Ally. The child wanted something and the mother said no. Then the child started crying and the mother said no. Then the child started screaming and the mother handed her the item she wanted. All the child learned was to scream louder next time.

I don’t know what the woman’s discipline tactics are since all I saw was an isolated event, and don’t even know all the details. I guess what bothered me was that she appeared to have no authority over her child. I think I would have had less of a hard time with this if she had let her child continue screaming. Not how I would have handled it, and yes, a screaming child at the grocery store is annoying (yet not the end of the world), but she would have exerted some control in the situation.

This happens all the time, so what exactly happened in the last thirty years to invert the parent/child dynamic? And I totally mean “invert” because there have been several occasions where the parents actually seemed to be afraid of their children, doing, saying, or giving in to *anything* just to pacify their angry child. And this is why I began this post by discussing corporal punishment. I am well aware that it is not just frowned upon, but in some cases illegal, but there seems to be correlation between the decline of corporal punishment and the increase in undisciplined children. Just an observation.

If I were to slap my daughter at the store for throwing a temper tantrum and not heeding my warning to stop, someone would surely call CPS. When my mother did it, not only did no one flinch, but it was practically expected. I was never big on temper tantrums (wasn’t really part of my personality, and I learned very early on that they would not grant me anything), but should I have done it, it would not have only been acceptable for my mother to take matters into her own hands, quite literally, but any other adult in the vicinity. We were living in New York, I was about six, at the grocery store playing with something I should not have been playing with, and one of the store attendants took it away from me, swatting my behind in the process. My mother hadn’t seen what I had done, but because the lady was upset with me I must have done something wrong so I got a strong glare from her just in case I even thought of doing anything else. Seriously folks, if you think hitting your own child in public is bad, try doing it to someone else’s these days. Blood bath in aisle five….

But aside from actually touching someone else’s child, you can’t even verbally discipline them. Somehow that is not okay. They are someone else’s precious jewel, can do nothing wrong, and if the mother didn’t see it, then it obviously didn’t happen. When I was a child I was never asked if what the other person said was true. If someone went to my mother and said I did something, it didn’t matter if I had done it, could have done it, probably did it, or thought about doing it, because as far as my mother was concerned, I did it. That too instilled fear in me because while I had some control over the things I did, I had absolutely no control over what others told my mother. However, my punishments were brief, and I learned to just take them and be done with it. My parents didn’t believe in taking things away, grounding me, or withholding anything. I got the strap, and I was done. Cookies anyone?

By the time I was seven I never had tempter tantrums, behaved exceedingly well in public, addressed people correctly, was getting perfect grades, kept my room clean, and hardly if ever talked back to my parents. In other words, I had the fear of God in me (or my mother’s purse strap… same thing).

Again, I don’t know if physically punishing children is an answer to anything, and just because it worked on me does not mean it will work on all children. Not to mention there are surely other parents like me who will practically cry at the idea of *really* hitting their children, and that wouldn’t do well for anyone. But seriously, when did child discipline of any kind just stop? And is it coming back any time soon?

Particles in a Circle

If time moves in a circular pattern (an idea that I believe I have now beaten into the ground), then does that mean nothing new is ever produced? I originally stipulated among several posts dealing with this matter that while time, and by extension history is circular, there is always a slight difference in each recurrence. However, how long before the slight difference also becomes engulfed in the closed circuit of time? Basically, at what point do events, all events, exist within a loop of repetition and a complete cessation of novelty happens?

So maybe history and time are not a single geometric shape, but rather a combination of circles, ellipses, and lines of various sizes, interacting and counteracting.

Small events, like a person’s life, revolve around the axis of one circle, whereas history, in the larger conception of it, operates along the axis of a different circle. Do these circles then become bifurcated, intersected and altogether skewered by infinitely continuous lines, reinvigorating circular repetition with an onslaught of newly produced events?
It would seem that the lines interact with everything to varying degrees where some gently graze circuitous paths, and can be identified as inconsequential events, while others violently impale respective circles to produce events of mass significance. But even so, these new events then become absorbed within the circular paths, hence recurring wars, or non human inventions like climate changes outside the immediately visible cyclical seasons and delving into categories like massive eras of varied temperatures.
While this seemingly alleviates the problem of lack with an ongoing infusion of new events that will eventually become consumed into the cycles, one of two things must occur. Either the cycles infinitely expand, or are destroyed. This is apparent in the human life cycle, abundant in repetition, along with seemingly new events, and the circular path each person follows expands until it ceases to exist at death. But how does this play out in the larger spheres of the universe? If each circle represents history and time, does time then expand? For how long? What happens when expansion can no longer be accommodated?
In The Gay Science Nietzsche first asks this very question of eternal recurrence, beginning his life long obsession with the repetition of time (and while most will recall this thread from Zarathustra, which is definitely his most quoted and often anthologized work, Gay Science precedes with this strand). I don’t believe he ever answered this question, and instead (perhaps ironically) came back to it on multiple occasions, getting a bit closer to some sort of truth, fully aware there is not one, but multiple truths that can satisfy his theory, and refused to fully acknowledge any of them.
His idea of eternal recurrence, despite the name, reminiscent of an ever complete circle, is actually more similar to particle theory in which events scattered throughout will randomly combine and recombine in almost identical patters in order for repetition to occur. I think his failure to pin down logistics to such a theory is partly due to his omission of a force acting upon said particles. While they may recombine there is little to suggest they should do so in any specific pattern, or that recurrence can happen with any regularity.
Kierkegaard earlier came to an understanding of a similar principle and did in fact take into account that something must act upon events in order for “free range repetition” or repletion to occur, but he too did not identify the force and for the most part simply acknowledged that it occurs through some sort of leap of faith (which for my purposes here is an exaggerated oversimplification of his many works).
Scientifically the universe is expanding, and has been doing so since creation (however you may want to believe that transpired), alluding to the idea that time exists within an even larger sphere, existing before itself. In other words, there was time, expanded to its point of saturation, ceasing to exist, and  regenerated ad infinitum. Otherwise how else could it be explained that time simultaneously exists cyclically and linearly? It would have to be one or the other, and it just simply is not.
I will not negate that there are particles, but I will argue that they are not free floating, and rather prearranged within the sphere; it is not the particles which recombine to form reoccurring events, but the sphere itself that moves them along. However, this too leaves several unanswered questions. To argue that the particles are prearranged implies agency to do so at some point. When? Further, it implies a start and a finish, relegated into the idea of recurrence where the beginning and end are but one, yet it still does not account for how they got there to begin with.
Do they randomly combine into a string along the circle, and then repeat over and over again, engulfing new event particles as they come into contact with the linear string of events until the entire thing implodes upon itself only to begin again? And if so, then the next time there is again no guarantee that they will represent the same formation, meaning it is not an eternal recurrence per se, but rather an approximation. Marbles scattered on an endless ground.
Where are we in all of this? Do we exist at some indiscriminate point of this repetition, or are we currently inhabiting a time right before the entire structure breaks down for renewal? Nietzsche was terrified of the idea that our lives, as they are, will be repeated without end. Camus accepted it. Kierkegaard seemed to be indifferent.
Nietzsche focused primarily on the negative aspects of life that must be played out over and over again across a multitude of lives, recirculating our pain with each recurrence. Camus filtered the theory through the microcosm of one life span in which we perform redundant tasks throughout.
Regardless of whether we are performing and reperforming the same acts, or bound to live the same life over and over again, the difference is only in whether repetition happens in the short or long term. I would think it is both (picturing the spheres of existence as nesting dolls) and repetition happens on every level.
The next series of questions has less to do with the physical or temporal limitations of this theory, but rather with the repercussions on the human psyche – a most fragile structure.
The idea that your life will repeat itself eternally is only horrific under two circumstances: focusing  solely on the negative aspects of your existence and the refusal to acknowledge and/or accept fate (with the various nuances and implications associated with that word). The first of these can deplete the human mind, stripping it of its most essential source of survival, hope.
Hope needs to be brutally murdered in a dark alley. It’s sheer existence presupposes disappointment because in hoping you are setting yourself up for failure. However, the human mind feeds off hope, blind to its degenerate nature, and when hope exists in short supply there is a preconditioning towards depression, nihilism, and general despondency. If where you are now you will be again, then hope for anything else is not just futile, but perverse. Should all notions of hope for “something else” cease to exist, a prevailing sense of acceptance can be born from that void, essentially counteracting the second horrific circumstance of eternal repetition, which is to say, resistance.
But how can the mind be scraped of hope? And, dare I say, is all hope bad? Does hope come in categories? If it does, how are they segregated? We live the same life over and over again, unconsciously even when cognizant of it. For example, I may now realize that the same events have transpired hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of times, but my cognizance does not breed consciousnesses; I do not know what happened after this immediate point of my existence in this very moment. In other words, I may have lived tomorrow a hundred times, but I, right now, do not know what will happen. So can I hope that X will happen even if it never did, and never will? And what if it does? Does hope provide some sort of relief? Does the relief not then get taken away when what I hoped for does not transpire? Is hope in itself a never ending cycle where we are all destined to continuously hope for that which we will never have?
The more I continue and offer posits to reduce the gaps in understanding time and how we interact with it, it appears infinitely more questions arise, ones which I cannot answer, and don’t believe anyone else can either except with further theories that themselves will produce further questions. If that in itself doesn’t prove everything is a giant loop, then I can’t imagine what would.

Grades

I don’t understand people. Especially when you think you have someone relatively figured out, they appear stable, and then they do something completely out of the blue that makes no sense, essentially ruining themselves in the process.

As I am tabulating final grades, I have several students who have been diligently coming to class, doing all of their work, earning good grades, did well on the final, but have not submitted their final papers. Papers were due last week, and depending on the class they are worth 20-25 percent of the final grade. I even sent out a mass email last night to all of my students stating that I will give them until Sunday to turn in any late work for partial credit.

Why would someone expend this much energy all semester, only to totally drop everything at the end and receive a C in a class where they had an A in the week before?

I have some students that have been on and off all semester, turning in some things but not others, and then at the end they came through and managed to pass the course. None of that was terribly shocking.

But a couple of the students I am referring to are exceedingly bright, write very well, understand the concepts, and as I have to enter a C on their final grade it makes me cringe. Which is basically why I emailed everyone giving them until Sunday night to submit any late work. I am really hoping they take this very last chance to produce something grade worthy.

I knew grading would be stressful (and so far has been my least favorite part of teaching), but no one warned me it would be emotionally draining as well.