Parallel Fears

The Circuits

After my stepdad died in 1989, I got to pondering how he had come to dislike me over the years simply because I was part of a youth culture he couldn’t stand, which included recreational drugs, rock and roll, and long hair. The whole hippie thing repelled him. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought: How sad. How poignant in a way. It was only because I was a product of my own generation, just as he was a product of his own generation (he’d been born in 1918), that he found me unacceptable. “I can’t stand to look at you,” he would say … because of my hair! But at that time, millions of young American males had long hair and took drugs.

So I got to thinking: What if I have a son some day and there is something about him I absolutely cannot accept, even if it’s not personal, but rather simply a result of him being a citizen of his own generation? Something millions of people his age are doing that I just can’t tolerate.

This train of thought led me to the idea for a story that I went on to write called The Circuits. (I wish I still had a copy, but alas …) The premise was that the father was an earthbound hippie who valued natural things and the son wanted to spend all his time – and eventually all his life – in worlds of virtual reality. In the end, the son migrates to “the circuits” full time. In the universe I created there were government incentives to do so. 

I wrote this story back in 1990. Virtual reality was a pretty new concept then. Nowadays it’s easy to imagine the gist of my story coming true! Back then it was pure sci-fi. Now not so much.

Absolutely Just as Weird, to Many People

I first heard the term “virtual reality” when I was about 30 years old. By contrast, I never heard the term “gender dysphoria” until I was in my 60s. 

Putting myself in the shoes of people who fear transgenderism, I get it. It seems freaky. And to the religiously inclined, it’s an impingement on God’s will. (Charlie Kirk once even called transgenderism “a throbbing middle finger to God!”) And I can see why, if the concept of gender fluidity is propagated in schools (as I hear it is in some locales), parents may fear their children are being indoctrinated into something bizarre, unnatural, and even unholy. 

I feel it’s a tragedy that thousands of loving, devoted parents in “red” states perceive the stress and misery of their gender dysphoric kids, and want to do everything in their power to help them, but are being defined (by laws) as child abusers when they seek out gender affirming care.  These unfortunate families are surrounded by a culture that is absolutely adamant that there is simply no such thing as a boy born into a girl’s body, or vice versa, and that the experience of gender dysphoria is nothing but a mental illness, case closed. From this perspective, a child or youth saying, “I’m really not the gender that my body says I am,” is no less bizarre than a child saying, “I’m really digital, not human. Please allow me to upload my consciousness into a computer and ‘transition’ into a cyborg.” 

Speaking of Unnatural Things

Genetically modified foods are proliferating at a frightening speed, as are the chemicals in our drinking water. There is an “island” of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean (the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”), 617,000 square miles in size, and growing (as well as major plastic accumulation zones in the world’s other oceans). And if present trends continue, there will be no more maple trees in New England within a mere 50 years, due to rising temperatures. 

The planet Earth, no less than the human body, is a miracle of Creation. And we are irrevocably altering and damaging its integrity, with massive consequences.

Now, of course, all of the above-mentioned ecological hazards are not as noticeable day by day as say, a transitioning teenager’s top surgery could be. (Which, by the way, apparently brings enormous relief and satisfaction to the transgendered or non-binary youths who undergo this procedure.) A lot of people don’t even believe in climate change, and they’re not worried about pollution. 

But even if one doesn’t feel that all this is a serious problem, doesn’t it at least make sense that recklessly altering the earth’s ecosystem may also be a sacrilegious dishonoring of our Creator’s gifts?

Meeting of the Minds

Put in slightly different terms, my question is simply: Even if I don’t convince you to change your views, can you at least understand why I am afraid?

I think I understand why you are afraid. I tried to describe it above. Did I get it right?

It’s a funny place to meet, and not what you might expect, but maybe one place we can come to some agreement – those of us on the “right” and those of us on the “left” – is that we all have things that scare us. And maybe, without giving any ground whatsoever, we can at least look at each other with some respect and humility, and say, “I can understand why you’re scared.”