The Land of Childhood

I’m thinking more of that vision people have of an ideal carefree country that has the same golden haze over it that we can see when we remember our own childhood or when we observe children.  (You don’t experience this much when you are an actual child until you are on the point of losing childhood, but the outside observer can see that it is very real).

The peach blossom country.

Never never land.

Going down under faerie hill for a night, or maybe a century, of happy revelry.

Arcadia.

The Garden of Eden.

There is of course a ‘bad’ version of all these.  A distorted destructive attempt to ape arcadia.

Faerie hill has a foot in both camps.

Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island.

The Land of the Lotus Eaters.

The Eloi from HG Wells.

The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas

(The Ones Who Walk Away is not a book I recommend.  Preachy, self important, and so on.  But a number of critics miss the mark when they complain that walking away doesn’t actually help the tortured kid.  True, but as literature its resting on the theme of transition from being a child to being an adult, which requires you to walk away from childhood.  You can’t remain a child while fixing the problems of childhood).

Generally the idea of some land of innocent fun sounds pretty good to people so the artist has to “cheat” a little by slowly revealing the dark underbelly, as in Omelas, the Eloi, or Pleasure Island.

But the best artists show that the problem isn’t the dark underbelly, its the thing itself.  Paradise can’t last and wasn’t meant to.  Attempts to make it last beyond its natural bounds are inherently destructive.  Tolkien is the king here.  It sounds weird to say that LotR is an epic about puberty blockers, but it kinda is.

But if we have a good thing, and a distorted version of a good thing . . . hmm, I feel a virtue chart coming on.  We think that virtues are just admirable personal characteristics, but the concepts work for anything good or desirable.

Lets try it out.  My antonyms here are tentative, feel free to propose alternatives.

Lets talk about the vice that contradicts childhood.    I call it “trying to be a grown-up” here.  We all know the people who think that being serious means acting serious.  I think their vice is they don’t actually have an actual goal in mind, their goal is to be an adult.  But this is a contradiction, because being an adult is about having actual aims and undertakings.  Having a goal to act like someone who has a goal is a mess.   Maybe more than a mess, I believe that deliberately rejecting childhood is spiritually dangerous.    Anti-nostalgia is a much worse trap than nostalgia is.  Striving for the appearance without the reality is a deadly trap.  Adults go through the tedium of budgeting because they cherish their family and their resources.  “Trying to be adults” do it because they relish the tedium.  They feel a warm glow of self-approval that they are doing something dull.

That is the real story of Susan in Narnia.  Narnia is a complex, mature version of a never never land.  Only children can go there, its full of whimsy and talking animals.  Its written by a real artist so it isn’t just a carefree paradise.  But it is still recognizably related to those childhood lands we see in stories.  Susan’s problem isn’t that she’s grown up and interested in boys.  Her problem is that she is trying to be grown up and has rejected her childhood.  Peter and the others have ceased to be children but they didn’t reject being children so its still there inside them, still latent, and able to be revived.

I think its significant here that the two virtues are things you generally can’t try to accomplish.  Trying to be a child is childish (a vice).  Trying to be an adult is also vicious.

Think about the synthesis of these two goods.  What does it look like?  I would say its the celestial kingdom.  Specifically, I think its the “time and eternity” concept where you are able to experience everything you are and were at the same time.  Peace like a River. All Things Before My Face.

Coincidentally, as I was preparing this post I found an old virtue chart that is on the same theme but at a much more homespun and less high-falutin’ level.

P.S. Joyous Labor post here.