Decency

How do you teach basic decency to a child? I don't mean saying "Please" and "Thank you"; I mean, how do you teach a child to consider not just his own needs, but those of the people around him?

For now, of course, it's a matter of gentle guidance and repetition. "Gentle, gentle," I say, when he pulls on my hair or my nose. But when he gets older, how will I teach him all the myriad ways in which he will prove himself to be either a lout and a burden on others, or a decent and respectful human being?

Cormac McCarthy's character was right, in The Road: we constantly have to choose. Of course, Camus said as much in The Plague and other books. The difficulty comes in deciding how much we will choose to do for others.

McCarthy's message was stark: in the worst of circumstances, many humans will turn into vicious, amoral monsters. But what happens in our more prosaic, quotidian now? I see something disturbing in the recent turn towards fantasy and disasters in literature (including a novel like McCarthy's), if it diverts our attention even more than it already is diverted from the acts of indecency which pervade our real-life social interactions these days. Where are our Dickenses, our Balzacs, our Tolstoys? Not that everyone has to write about the great moral issues of the day--but how many authors even make the attempt these days? How many even pose the question: What constitutes "decent behavior" in our times?

But back to my son. How do I teach him that the small acts of decency--sharing his toys, responding promptly when someone asks him a question, offering to help someone who is obviously struggling with some burden or other and could be greatly aided by a few moments of his time--all these are acts that will make him nothing more and nothing less than a full-fledged member of society?

Then, how do I teach him to go at least a few steps beyond that?