How Do People Find the Monster?

Privileged Americans may not be aware of the entire monster that operates each tentacle. We usually find only one tentacle. It might be anything:

This could go on and on. For me personally, my first tentacle was the mistreatment of children in schools. When I first became a teacher, I reacted strongly to the corporal punishment that was common in those days. I’m glad to say that the “good guys” largely won that battle, at least in major metropolitan schools.

I went so far as to start a private school dedicated to non-coercion. They were called “free schools” in those days. When I learned that Danish schools already eschewed corporal punishment, I named mine “Lille Skole.”

But even before I started the school, the Houston police murdered civil rights activist Carl Hampton. I was forced to learn a lot from that. Then there was the war in Vietnam, which I had been trying hard to ignore. I remember thinking that even if my idealistic notion of raising better children came true, America would have to stop me because they still needed young people to go to Vietnam and my students, obviously, wouldn’t do it.

Lille Skole nearly killed me. After nearly 3 years of constant hassle with parents, finances, and government rules, I was a wreck. But I didn’t quit. I found other ways, many of them just as ill-advised as Lille Skole, to go on trying to make a better world. I’m 85 now, and still trying.

That’s the Trick

Those who stay in the fight, even against their one tentacle, will eventually find the monster. It’s the same one. Only the tentacles are different.

A lot of people experience their one tentacle. Millions of young people, for example, opposed the war in Vietnam. But that was as far as many of them ever went. They didn’t inquire successfully into the causes of war, or of racism, or of homophobia, or of any of the other tentacles.

But people get distracted. They get burnt out. One way or another, they get discouraged. What is more pathetic than hearing some old dude say, “I used to be full of vinegar, but I learned.” What they learned was defeat.

I think it’s true that we’ll never argue our way into solidarity. At the same time, I think that history is teaching all of us. Those willing to stay in the fight will eventually recognize the monster and then embark on the greatest intellectual challenge of anybody’s life: how do we defeat the monster?

–Gene Lantz

You can hear me every Saturday at 9 on knon.org or 89.3FM in Dallas. I’ve put my more personal thoughts on http://lilleskole.us