Tuesday, January 04, 2011

"A Whole Bunch of Blind People"

I have no idea what exactly started this conversation. Sunday evening Noah and Eve were down in the den watching Dr. Who and Noah comes up and begins to pontificate. This is a common occurance. Victoria and I have learned to listen closely when he's at the podium.
“Hey, Dad. The way I see it if somebody pucks your eyeball out and you go pluck out theirs pretty soon you’re just gonna have a whole bunch of blind people.”
I assured him that he was exactly correct and then pulled up a quote that sounded very similar to Noah’s epiphany.
“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Mohandas K. Gandhi
Noah though it was cool that somebody else had the same idea. What I thought was so cool is that this basic philosophy seems like complete common sense to a ten year old. Yet it was also rather sad that this logic completely escapes most politicians.
As I read this over I think I prefer Noah’s phrasing to Gandhi’s. Something about the childish use of the word eyeball and pluck reminds me that it came from a ten year old and makes it seem whimsical yet no less profound.

5 comments:

  1. I loved that you used the word "pontificate"!

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  2. Everytime I think about this I see Noah holding his little fist at eye level and twisting as he says "pluck".

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  3. Reminds me of a Radio Lab podcast I listened to over the break. I think it was called "The Good Show" and was basically about the evolutionary benefits of empathy and altruism. They ran a bunch of computer programs back in the 60s to see what would happen in a variation on "The Prisoner's Dilemma" and the one that won was something called "Tit for Tat" that the guy described as "8 parts Moses (an eye for an eye) and 2 parts Jesus (turn the other cheek)" because first of all retaliation can be good, but you want to just take an eye for an eye, not EVERYthing. And you can't ALWAYS retaliate or then things will always escalate and never get better. It was basically saying you need to show you're not going to take everything people dump on you, but it's okay to let some things pass or we'll never get past our differences.

    I agree that Noah's wording is the best!

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  4. It is good to know we are not the only ones with a "pontificater" in the family. We too have learned to listen closely when our son starts to spout his wisdom.

    I agree with Jim — Noah's wording is best!

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  5. Sounds like a smart kid - I hope he goes into politics! :) e

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