The Berenstain Bears Have a Nervous Breakdown

Remember The Berenstain Bears series that once delighted or may still continue to delight your children or grandchildren. The Berenstains are the Emily Posts of early childhood with titles like The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers, The  Berenstain Bears Show Some Respect, The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV, The Berenstain Bears Get In a Fight, The Berenstain Bears and a New Baby, The Berenstain Bears Go to School, The Berenstain Bears’ Bedtime Battle and The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners. But we live in a tell all culture where childhood is no longer an innocent place. It never was, of course, according to Freud whose concept of childhood sexuality still continues to perplex, irritate and enrage those who believe that man’s fall occurs  after puberty. These Berenstain Bears volumes are mild jeremiads meant to protect our little ones from the potholes of early development and it’s surprising there isn’t The Berenstain Bears Stick Their Finger in a Wall Socket or The Berenstain Bears Stick Their Knife in the Toaster (with a cover illustration of a Berenstain Bear getting electrocuted). But what if we let all the talk about equality titrate down to the little ones? What if we included them in the conversation by producing volumes like The Berenstain Bears Deal With Suicidal Ideation (cover illustration showing a bear standing on the ledge of a window that has no protective bars) or The Berenstain Bears Have a Nervous Breakdown (which shows that not very farflung notion of a Berenstain Bear receiving an SSRI and then trying to jump off the same window ledge). Or how about getting down and dirty with The Berenstain Bears Face the Realities of Erectile Dysfunction (who says you can’t teach pre-pubescent bears about Viagra), The Berenstain Bears and Menopause and The Berenstain Bears Read Up on BPH (benign prostatic hypertrophy) under the theory that it’s never to early to think about anything.

Confucius or Confusion?

Confucius by Wu Daozi (680-740)

Does wisdom come with age? It’s often said that the Chinese, for example, respect the elderly and revere age in a way that is foreign to Americans who treat age as a burden. The Buddhist cultures of countries like Thailand and Cambodia also venerate the dead in a way that is anathema to Western Culture for which “carpe diem” is the most popular shibboleth. Westerners live it up like there’s no tomorrow while if you go to a Buddhist temple in say Vietnam you will find cardboard boxes which once housed appliances being offered up on pyres, so that the dead will be taken care of in the afterlife. But all that being said, it’s hard to feel there's much to venerate in age. The brain declines and the calmness one may read into an aging face is not so much the result of an overarching wisdom, as a loss of brain cells. Any serenity you might detect is the result of resignation, or worse dementia. As Jaques says  As You Like It, “Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is Second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." If you turn to CNN, during those hours that attract an older demographic of retirees, you will find advertisements for daily Cialis which is prescribed for both ED and BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia). The drug treats accidents and makes it possible to have an erection in a case one accidentally feel desire. It’s a hardly a celebration of anything. The same is true of using drugs that deal with aging appearance. If you take Botox and have the wrinkles and removed, the theory is you will feel and then act younger. However, the outside/in approach often has questionable results. How many women do you know who have had their faces done, their breasts lifted, their cellulite removed, vaginoplasties and rhinoplasties have seen a concomitant reformation of sensibility? Confucius or confusion? Medical science can achieve ever greater feats of longevity. But is the lust for life really such an admirable thing or is it just another form of gluttony? Certain people overstay their welcomes and other suffer with chronic diseases that are living deaths. Is the idea of prolonging a life to the point where a half sensate creature is a burden who uses up their own resources on medical care and taxes those of their children really such a great thing? One thing is certain, youth is too often wasted on the young.