The Bad Beginning

 

The only difference between children and adults is power.

On my Facebook I put up a picture of this book and called it "light reading". I was halfway joking, of course. I heard a lot of the front half of this series while I was a teenager, as my father read it to my younger siblings. I know it's a stupidly dark series, this book is about legalized child rape, after all! But, given that I've been climbing through books about the history of the 19th century and... well.... anything by Wolfe... I just thought I'd take a quick break into something simple.

And I'll admit it! The level of self-satisfaction in saying that is immense. There is a smugness to that comment that is very hard to cop to. Ooh, look at how smart I am! Looky me! Most of my life has been spent watching as groups of people make phenomenally stupid decisions that I am on the wrong end of.  It is satisfying to be able to sit down in front of a computer and vent how broken perception is,  because for me it is a way of trying to communicate that we inherently step on me, a white man living in the United States.

So in other words one of the most deluded class of individuals living in a country that is a personification of Mordor (if there ever was one) is complaining about how he is being stepped on inherently in a world where the "Not-Slavery" of the UAE, which I have spent time defending in a military capacity, exists.

The only difference between children and adults is power.

But you know what? It's fine! I can make these complaints while at my incredibly cushy job. Yeah, sure, it's stressful as hell, but I'm with the freaking government! I get health insurance the rest of the country pines for. I'm at 90% disability from the VA, for the rest of my life. That's right! There's a  pay-out (tax free!) from the VA for the pain and suffering the idiotic military put me through. And what's more I could sit down and try to make a case for 100%, which would give me (tax-free!) an income that equals (if not beats) what some of my friends make in a year, for doing nothing more than having some pieces of paper in with a government agency.

But no, somewhere in my head there's a narrative that somehow I have an extremely hard life. And I have the power to buy into that narrative. Because that's what defines an adult.

If my children made a claim about being unfortunate half as ridiculous as that you know I'd put them in their place. "Look at the blessings you have! Surely the fact that you're with Mom and I outweighs them, and we love you and will help you with the rest", is probably what I'd tell my six and three year old. I have the power to make sure that they get a good stiff reality check. Hopefully I wouldn't be too much of a dick about it but... Yeah.

The only difference between children and adults is power.

The adults in The Bad Beginning all have one thing in common: they're all hopelessly deluded. The banker, the judge, the evil man, they're all nice or not nice or just flat out evil or whatever, but they're all lost in a constructed world that the children don't have the power to go into. The orphans can't escape Olaf. They can momentarily lose themselves in something, but they cannot escape the situation that Olaf is after them. The adults? They don't have to look at that. No, they've spent their lives building up narratives and lies known as legality that allow them to look the other way, reflexively. 

But the children don't have the power to look away, not for long. They can't play the game because the game is power. And children have very little to none. They have to deal with the fact that the world is a wretchedly sad place. They can't lose themselves in drugs (no money for children to buy them because adults are hypocritical assholes), they can't bury themselves in their work (children are not mature enough for work that adults are certainly not qualified for, adults are hypocritical assholes), and they certainly can't plot revenge (adults are greedy about this last point especially because...), so they're just stuck.

But adults can. And they do.

The only fictional part of this book, besides the supposed absurdity of Count Olaf, is the children winning at the end. It is a false promise, made with a nudge and a wink from Mr. Snicket to us. Because the rest of us? 

We didn't win. We just got power.

And thus became an adult.

And can now ignore children, who are stuck until they get power.

Woe upon you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites that encompass sea and land to gain a single proselyte, and then make the proselyte twice as worthy of damnation as yourselves. Matthew 23:15 

If you doubt that, I'll ask you if the below photo is a little girl dressing up for fun or not.

Go ahead! Guess!

Hint: the fact that you can guess it's play-acting is because you have the power to delude yourself. I assure you she doesn't. And someday she will. I hope we didn't make her like us.

Light read indeed.