the giving tree

In a locked post, i had a conversation yesterday about Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree. Say what you want about this book, it arouses some powerful emotions and strong reactions. This book depicts a tree who loves a boy so much, the tree gives up everything it has to suit the boy's needs, whims, and wishes. There is nothing to show that the boy recognized the depth of the tree's sacrifices or was even grateful; there is nothing to show that he considered the cost to the tree of accepting its sacrifices; he just took what was offered.

There's a part of me that has never quite forgiven Silverstein for writing this book; it cut me deeply.

It boggles me that there are people who think that this book straight-up encourages "the joy of giving". Others see in it a glorification of motherhood. I disagree most profusely with that kind of interpretation; i see the work as satire and cannot believe that Silverstein wanted us to see the relationship between the tree and the boy as a positive thing.

If i had to guess at Silverstein's purpose, i'd say he was making a statement about human misuse of the ecosphere -- about the sense of entitlement to take what humans deem to be freely (even lovingly) offered by nature. It occurred to me yesterday that the book could also be said to depict male privilege, the kind of privilege and entitlement that men are encouraged to think is a natural part of the way the world works and which actually involves a great deal of conscious sacrifice on the part of women, sacrifice that goes largely unacknowledged.

But none of the wrongness of this is explicitly acknowledged in the book, which makes it entirely feasible that Silverstein was comfortable and okay with the status quo. I don't personally think so, but i coud well be wrong. But then, that's the danger when you make a work of satire and don't put a disclaimer on it; you run the risk of being misunderstood, especially when your satire is particularly subtle.

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In what will be a small and relatively private ceremony, lady_babalon and i are planning to be handfasted on May 28.

We've asked ubiquity to perform the ceremony, and she agreed!

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He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or the United States of America. God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone.'

With these words, Pat Robertson has demonstrated, in his usual sublime and statesmanlike way, why Israel and its supporterts should disavow any political or financial support from the Chaliban. American Jewish supporters of Israel have always been a bit nervous about allying with Christian Fundamentalists, and with good reason: they know that alliance will stand only so long as it gives the Chaliban what they want, and not a moment longer. As Robertson made crystal clear, the Chaliban does not care one whit about what might really be in Israel's best interest as a nation, they care only that the Jews continue to play a role which they assert was unswervingly scripted for them 2,000 years ago.

The White House is becoming accustomed to separating itself from Robertson's comments, but Robertson, along with James Dobson and Franklin Graham and others of their ilk, still commands disproportionate influence over Bush. Besides, what's one more lie on top of all the rest?

"enabling," deontological ethics, and "spirituality" as apology for privilege

In response to my post this morning about Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree, bifemmefatale and legolastn pointed me towards this page with a variety of different interpretations. The first author mirrored my comments about the book as a satirical commentary on anthropocentrism and male privilege. The second gave the "mainstream" interpretation of the book as an ode to motherhood, to selfless giving and to unconditional love.

Then about a third of the way down, there's this:

On a philosophical level we can use the relationship of the tree and the boy as a way to remind ourselves of the very different judgments produced by utilitarian and deontological ethical systems. Judged by the results of her actions, the tree is culpable before the bar of utilitarian judgment because she produced a spoiled little snot. Judged by her motives, however, the tree remains deontologically pristine.

In talking about ethics before i've mentioned the distinction between utilitarian and deontological ethics.

From the respective Wikipedia articles:
Deontology posits the existence of a priori moral obligations; it suggests that people ought to live by a set of permanently defined principles that do not change merely as a result of a change in circumstances.
Utilitarianism is a theory of ethics based on quantitative maximization of some good for a population.

In the past i've made it clear that i fall strongly on the utilitarian side; in fact i implied this quite recently when i defined the common political good to be maximized as personal empowerment.

From this perspective the tree's giving crosses over into the realm of unhealthy when she offers to let the boy chop off her branches. Without her branches, she is no longer an individual, able to flourish; her personal empowerment has become hobbled.

But let me take a different tack than the view i quoted above. I do not believe the tree is culpable, as Rabbi Gellman wrote. There's a common perception that exploitation within a relationship is a problem for which both participants are equally culpable. The person who is being used is nowadays called an "enabler," never mind that frequently her (most commonly) free will has been weakened and co-opted by emotional or physical abuse. From my perspective, "enabling" is more properly referred to as "survival."

Think: who is served by the idea of "enabling abuse"? This whole idea is an apologetic favoring the perpetuation of privilege. It allows the privileged to say, "But i'm a victim too! She let me take whatever i wanted, and never even tried to stop me!"

However, the Rabbi is right that the situation is "deontologically pristine." Many of our traditions about unconditional love promote selflessness, with the expectation that it will be mutual. But even when it is not mutual, it is something that is still praised, still asked and expected of us (especially, oddly enough, if we are female). Deontology makes moral absolutism possible; and moral absolutism is the root cause of ideological divisiveness.

The Rabbi continues,

In the end I am convinced that the tree was a well-meaning but foolish giver, and yet I am strangely in awe of that foolishness- perhaps because it is so Buddha-like, so profoundly indifferent to the demands of keeping and protecting assets in this selfish and wounded world. The Buddhists call this virtue tanhakaya and they mean by it the release from attachment to the things of the world. It is the third of the four-fold noble truth that stands at the heart of Buddhist dharma. The cause of suffering is attachment, and its cure is release, a simultaneous release from both the world and all need. In that final liberation-perhaps come to sitting upon the tree stump- both the tree and the man are free.

The tree is not an example of someone who is "released from attachment." This interpretation is an example of what i've said before about the development of religious doctrine as a cultural misappropriation of radical mysticism by the upper classes, whereby the apologists of privilege promote the idea of "spirituality," which is radical mysticism safely divested of its threat to the status quo and turned into a sanitized diversion to keep the masses in their place. Do the rich get and stay that way because of their unconditional love and their release from attachment? But with a sanitized version of "spirituality" at hand, even the rich can appear to be pious and righteous, even while beggars starve to death on their doorsteps.