“When teachers and parents disagree, it’s rarely goals they disagree on. It’s the means of achieving those goals. St. Paul teaches, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” We all want a harvest of righteousness, but what unpleasant things are we willing to endure that we might get to it?
The dream of a sentimental age—which ours mostly certainly is—is that discipline doesn’t have to be unpleasant. We believe there’s a way around the unpleasantness of discipline. If authority figures are just warm and encouraging and nice enough, they won’t have to make anyone’s life really difficult. The unpleasantness of discipline was a convention of some antiquated cruel and patriarchal age, but we have finally realized that niceness is the real key to righteousness. After all, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” which means we can reorder affections without hurting feelings, correct without punishment, prune without cutting, operate without incisions, crucify the passions without a cross.”
-from my latest for CiRCE
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. 