Delphic Maxim 124: Love whom you rear
I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each of the Delphic Maxims for 15 minutes a day.
124. Love whom you rear
History and myth are littered with stories of children who are reared and nurtured by people other than their parents. Hephaestus, god of fire and the forge (and Vulcan in the Roman pantheon), was raised by Nereids Thetis and Eurynome after he was rejected by his parents Zeus and Hera (for being too ugly, savage). Ditto humans raised by animals like Mowgli or Tarzan, or kings and leaders like Oedipus or Moses — there are endless tales of people who are raised and loved by those who rear them.
This maxim is essentially about the duty to love those who are in our care. The most obvious is the way parents love their children unconditionally: this is a vital process in forming healthy and stable emotional development. Some are not so lucky, but that reinforces the point even more. Those people whose parents don’t take on the nurturing aspect of rearing someone can sometimes find someone else stepping into the breach.
To take an example from fiction (because fiction is always safer than fact, and often makes the point more clearly), consider the divergent approaches of ‘those who rear’ in Matilda and Harry Potter. In Matilda, Matilda’s parents are capricious, selfish and unloving to their daughter — it isn’t until the very end, when they allow Miss Honey to adopt her, that they display any kind of concern for their daughter’s wellbeing. Miss Honey occupies the place of the loving adult — the person who takes on the role of rearing Matilda (though this happens so late in Matilda’s life, because she is such a prodigious self-directed learner).
Contrast this with Harry Potter, where the Dursleys are not only adopted parents, but also deeply unloving and uncaring ‘carers’ for Harry Potter. He is locked under the stairs, he is abused and mistreated, he is reminded what an inconvenience he is. The Dursleys may be raising him to protect him (there’s a vague redemptive quality to that, though barely), but they don’t love him — and Harry’s emotional development is neglected by this family. It isn’t until his ‘adoption’ by Hogwarts, Dumbledore, and the crew of witches and wizards that accompany that, that Harry is given the love and nurturing that he needs.
The unreality of these films is, of course, that people who aren’t loved by those that rear them are often left with scars more emotional than literal. (I suppose there’s a blunt metaphor carved into Harry’s forehead — a physical reminder both of his psychic link to Voldemort, and also of the love his real parents had for him: so much that they gave their lives to protect him).
My 15 minutes is up, but the message is consistent with so many other maxims: don’t be a jerk, be a caring person instead, especially when someone depends on you.
