I Am On The Whole The Best Of Men
Jack Rousseau was one helluva guy!
Almost “Master of the Internet,” champion Twitterer, erudite blogger, and (almost) most popular commentator of all time on cable networks.
Well, sortta.
‘Cept he wasn’t.
‘Cept he couldn’t have been.
‘Cause he was born in 1712 and died in 1798.
But to read (we really can’t “hear”) him tell it, he was the world’s great expert at “how to rear an emotionally, intellectually and physically healthy child.”
Rousseau’s two books – Emile and Social Contract – introduced “Naturalism,” an educational movement based on the idea that the natural growth of children in a natural environment constituted an adequate education. He argued that one should not impose training on children in terms of adult tastes and ways; he wanted to teach more from life and less from books; he believed teachers should try to win children’s confidence in order to stimulate their minds with things they can understand.
Against harsh discipline, he insisted that freedom is essential for children and believed they grew best in a natural environment. In essence, he believed that humans are born pure and it is contact with our environments that negatively affect our development.
Sounds pretty good.
‘Cept.
‘Cept
Foundling Hospital, Bloomsbury, London – 1750
Jack’s mother died of puerperal fever (postpartum infection) nine days after his birth and dad was “a man of scrupulous integrity, and possessed of that strength of mind that makes for true virtue.”
‘Cept dad also used up Jack’s inheritance and, when the money was gone, abandoned ten-year-old Jack – “Good luck, kid.”
That’s okay, ‘cause when he was sixteen, Jack began – in today’s parlance – to “hook up” with Madame Francoise-Louisede Warens, fourteen years his senior. Jack called her “Mamma” – even after she became his paramour (how’s that for a nice way of putting it?) into his twenties. She was, according to his Confessions, a woman of angelic purity and goodness. Of course, it helped that her wealth and education gave him access to the movers and shakers of the day.
‘Cept she eventually took on a string of other (presumably older and far more affluent) men and Jack was not inclined to share “Mamma” – “All her faults, I repeat, came from her lack of judgment, never her passions.”
So, Jack moved to Paris, where, eventually, he proved himself especially unsuccessful at engraving, music and teaching before making a name for himself as a philosopher and, in The Social Contract (1762), provided the arguments for Robespierre’s (in)famous “Liberty–Equality–Fraternity” – the theme of the French Revolution (1789-1799). Jack’s writings on economics, personal dignity and liberty - together with those of John Locke, Voltaire and Montesquieu – were well known to Thomas Jefferson and find echoes in the Jefferson-authored Declaration of Independence (although it remains an open question how much of these Jack was willing to share with women).
Jack’s 1762 Emile or On Education and his 1770 Confessions (actually published in 1782) are filled with advice on parenting, education and how-to-raise-a-successful- (presumably boy)-child.
As Hamlet said, “Ay, there’s the rub.”
Years after walking (or running) away from “Mamma,” in 1745, Jack set his sights on Therese Le Vasseur, 24 and working as a laundress and chambermaid at the Paris Hotel Saint-Quentin. Nine years younger than Jack, she supported him until his death in 1778.
In his autobiographical Confessions Jack described his new paramour as a woman of low intelligence from a family that exploited her. (Presumably an 18th Century version of “the pot calling the kettle black.”) Nonetheless, they went through a legally invalid marriage ceremony on August 29, 17678 - shortly before his death.
Oh yeah! She also bore him four children.
St. Vincent de Paul and his Sisters at Paris Founding Hospital
‘Cept.
Cept, Jack insisted that immediately after the birth of each of his five children – in 1746, 1747, 1748, 1751, and 1752 - the midwife deliver them to the Enfants-Trouves, a “foundling home.” A baby entrusted to the Paris Foundling Home had only two-chances-in-three of surviving his or her first year and only a five percent chance of reaching maturity.
In his 1978 article “Rousseau’s Children” published in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences journal Daedalus, Yale University professor of psychology and pediatrics William Kessen reports:
“The mechanics of disposal were easy enough: find a reliable midwife to manage the delivery and then let her take the newborn to [Saint] Vincent de Paul’s Founding Home where the child could join the three thousand or so other abandoned infants of that year. There were one or two trickier problems to be solved, to be sure. Therese did not like the idea – ‘I had the greatest difficulty in the world persuading her to accept this sole means of saving her honor..’ She did not like the idea any better when the episode was repeated with her second child the next year, and we may guess that she was scarcely happy on occasions three, four, and five…
“But for Rousseau, the gravest difficulty with the depositing of the foundlings lay in the future. His first child would have been an adolescent, when, on June 12, 1761, Rosseau, exposed by Voltaire’s charges of hypocrisy, retrospectively discovered his scruples. In a letter to Mme. La Marechale de Luxembourg, he wrote:
‘Five children were born of [our] liaison, and all were placed in the Foundling’s Hospital, and with so little thought of the possibility of their identification that I did not even keep a record of their birthdates [or their gender]….’”
This from the man who declares in Confessions “I am on the whole the best of men.”
Ah hypocrisy!
There’s nothing quite like it!
“Error never shows itself in its naked reality,
in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly,
so that the unwary may be led to believe
that it is more truthful than truth itself.”
Irenaeus of Lyons
“When I was thirsty, you gave me to drink….”
Matthew 25:35
In mid-June, forty-six-year-old construction worker Felipe Pascual was pouring concrete at a construction site when he passed out. He died in the emergency room of Texas’ Memorial Herman Hospital Pearland. His was the first Texas hyperthermia-related death of Summer 2023.
On Monday, June 19, 35-year-old Justin Cory Foster, a lineman from Hurricane, West Virginia working for Appalachian Power helping to restore downed power lines in Harrison County, Texas, told coworkers he was sick after working the day in the heat. He received some medical treatment, drank water and took a shower before going to bed in his hotel room, where, at 9:00 p.m. EMTs pronounced him dead – apparently from heat-related causes.
Eugene Gates worked for the U.S. Postal Service in the Dallas area for nearly forty years. On the day he died in mid-June, the heat index hit 113 degrees, the highest since 1980. He had enjoyed a spotless work record until the previous month when he was cited for “a lack-of-productivity infraction” and “stationary events.” Essentially: Being too slow on his route. He collapsed as a result of hyperthermia and died in the yard of a USPS customer.
“The right to water, as all human rights, finds its basis
in human dignity and not in any kind of quantitative assessment
that considers water as merely as economic good.
Without water, life is threatened.
Therefore the right to safe drinking water
is a universal and inalienable right.”
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (§. 485)
In June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed laws overriding local measures requiring water breaks for outdoor workers. The newest laws, which become effective on September 1, are part of a wide-ranging “Death Star bill” that Houston and Harris County leaders have denounced as a power grab designed to gut local governance. Texas labor leaders have described the new law as a death sentence for constructions workers.
The new law wipes away local requirements that workers like Felipe Pascual, Justin Cory Roster and Eugene Gates be allowed regular cooling and water breaks. Sponsors, including Governor Abbott, claim the new law simply bans actions by cities to regulate work conditions that go beyond state law.
However, Texas law does not provide for worker water and cooling breaks; neither does federal law, nor do most municipal codes. Austin laws require that construction workers be allowed at least a ten-minute break every four hours. Thanks to Governor Abbott, these breaks will be completely at employer discretion starting in September.
“But Jesus said, 'Let the children come to me.
Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of
Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.'
Matthew 19:14
Guatemalan Duvan Perez, 16, became entangled in a conveyor belt he was cleaning in a Mississippi poultry plant in July. He died from traumatic asphyxia and blunt force trauma.
On June 29, sixteen-year-old Michael Schuls was attempting to unjam a wood stacking machine at the Florence Hardwoods (Florence, Wisconsin) lumber mill, when the conveyor belt he was standing on moved. He suffered severe injuries and died two days later. The company has a history of injured child laborers and employing children 14- and 12-years-old.
Sixteen-year-old Will Hampton was killed while working at Lee’s Summit Resource and Recovery (recycling) Park in Lee, Missouri, when he was pinned between a semi and its trailer.
At the beginning of June, Iowa and Arkansas had already passed laws to loosen child labor restrictions and four other Midwestern states were advancing bills through their legislatures. In 2022, New Jersey and New Hampshire legislators approved measures to lower age restrictions around child workers.
The Iowa law will allow minors to work in jobs that were previously prohibited, including demolition and the use of power-driven machines. Other bills aim to remove requirements for work permits and increase the number of hours children can work.
According to a March report from the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, in one of the tightest job markets since World War II lawmakers have proposed loosening child labor laws in at least ten states over the past two years. Employers are attempting to relax child labor laws in order to address worker shortages, which are driving up wages. Employers have struggled to fill positions that have been open as a result of spikes in retirements, deaths and illness from COVID-19, and decreases in legal immigration.
On Friday, November 19, 2021, Pope Francis expressed a position on child practices radically different from governors and legislators n the United States. While some might claim the pontiff was referring to conditions in the least developed nation of the world, the Bishop of Rome was unambiguous:
“It is shocking and disturbing that in today’s economies, whose productive activities rely on technological innovations, so much so that we talk about the ‘fourth industrial revolution,’ the employment of children in work activities persists in every part of the world.
“This endangers their health and their mental and physical well-being, and deprives them of the right to education and to live their childhood with joy and serenity…”
He distinguished between child labor and “the small domestic tasks that children ... perform as part of family life, to help parents, siblings, grandparents or other members of the community.”
The pope noted
“Child labor is something else entirely. It is the exploitation of children in the production processes of the globalized economy for the profit and gain of others.
It is the denial of children’s rights to health, education and harmonious growth, including the possibility to play and dream. This is tragic.”
So, here’s a thought as we move further into primary season:
The next time a candidate solicits your vote, ask for his or her position on water and shade breaks and their position on child labor laws and the issue of right-to-life. If they describe themselves - in any way - “prolife” but have not committed to sponsoring and voting for water and shade rights for workers, if they will not work to establish and enforce protective child labor laws, think of Jean Jacque Rousseau. The guy who said “I am on the whole the best of men” and gave each of his five children away without knowing their gender or remembering the dates of their births.
And think about “hypocrites.”
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!
You are like whitewashed tombs,
which look beautiful on the outside
but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead
and everything unclean.
In the same way,
on the outside you appear to people as righteous
but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Matthew 23: 27-28