Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Fidel Castro at 100: Ask Whether the Children Still Play
The Children have to dance -- YNOT!
Fidel Castro would have turned one hundred years old this week, and I see people here and there celebrating the occasion.
Celebrate him if you wish. I prefer to remember what he cost everyone, especially the Children of Cuba. The Picture above is not Cuba. If you want to see Cuban Children go to the bottom of this post.
History has a peculiar habit of admiring revolutionaries from a comfortable distance. A man gives a long speech, grows a beard, waves a flag, promises equality, and fifty years later somebody prints his face on a T-shirt.
The people who actually lived under him rarely had the luxury of viewing the experiment as romantic. And when I think about Fidel Castro’s legacy, I keep coming back to something much simpler than Marx, capitalism, socialism, communism, geopolitics, or economics.
I think about the children.
The greatest tragedy of a failed political system may not be found in its speeches, prisons, ration books, economic statistics, or government ministries.
It may be found in the moment when children stop having much of a childhood.
A healthy civilization ought to produce one sound above all others:
Children laughing. Children running through neighborhoods.
Children making up games that make absolutely no sense to adults.
Children kicking a ball down the street. Children arguing over whose turn it is.
Children getting dirty. Children dreaming ridiculous dreams.
That is civilization working.
A child should have the great privilege of wasting an afternoon.
That may sound insignificant to revolutionaries. Revolutionaries are always terribly busy improving mankind. They have five-year plans, ten-year plans, committees, slogans, ministries, campaigns and enemies of the people to identify.
Children, unfortunately, have their own plans. They would rather play.
And perhaps that tells us something.
When adults construct a society in which ordinary families spend enormous amounts of their energy obtaining food, housing, transportation and the basic necessities of life, childhood inevitably pays part of the price. When young people grow up believing their best opportunity lies somewhere outside their homeland, the damage goes far beyond economics.
You have robbed a country of something that cannot easily be measured. Hope.
Castro promised to create a new man. That is always a dangerous sentence.
Whenever a politician announces that he intends to create a new man, you would be wise to keep an eye on the old one.
Because human beings are stubborn creatures. They want to choose their work.
They want to complain about their government.
They want to own things. They want to travel.
They want to fall in love. They want to marry whom they please.
They want to build a home. They want their children to have more than they had.
And children, inconveniently enough, want to play.
No revolutionary committee has yet improved upon that arrangement.
This is why I would suggest a very simple test for every grand political philosophy.
Forget what it calls itself. Socialist. Communist. Capitalist. Democratic socialist. Progressive. Conservative. Revolutionary.
Forget the label for a moment. Look at the family living underneath it.
Can two young people reasonably imagine building a life together?
Can they afford a home? Can they raise children without regarding children as an economic catastrophe?
Do they believe tomorrow may be better than today?
Can parents spend an afternoon watching their children play instead of spending that afternoon fighting merely to get through another week?
Those questions may tell you more about a civilization than a thousand political speeches.
And America shouldn’t become smug about it either.
We have our own warning lights flashing. Loneliness. Anxiety. Families postponing children. Young adults wondering whether they will ever afford homes.
Children spending enormous portions of childhood staring into screens instead of exploring the physical world around them.
A society does not have to become communist before it begins failing its children.
It merely has to become so obsessed with its theories, institutions, technology, politics and arguments that it forgets whom civilization was supposed to serve in the first place.
That is the lesson I would take from Fidel Castro’s hundredth birthday.
Don’t ask me how magnificent the revolution sounded in 1959.
Ask me what became of the people born afterward.
Don’t show me the posters. Show me the kitchens.
Don’t show me the speeches. Show me the grocery stores.
Don’t show me the revolutionary youth organization.
Show me the playground.
And the next time somebody presents you with a wonderful new political theory guaranteed to reorganize society, redistribute everything properly, correct human nature and finally produce justice on Earth, ask one embarrassingly simple question:
What happens to the children?
Do they grow? Do they dream? Do they build families of their own?
And, every once in a while, are they fortunate enough to have absolutely nothing important to do— except play?
Because perhaps the measure of a civilization isn’t how loudly its leaders promise a better world.
Perhaps it is whether the children living in that world still have reason to laugh.
Do you want your children to be born and raised in the United States or Cuba? Europe or China? Canada or Russia?
It is a simple question, but perhaps a more revealing one than all the political arguments we spend our lives having.
If you are reading this, chances are you were not raised in a communist country. You may be frustrated with America. You may be angry about inequality, housing costs, healthcare, wages, billionaires, corporations, or a hundred other things. Some of those complaints may even be justified.
But forget all of that for a moment.
Forget political parties. Forget slogans. Forget left and right. Forget what somebody promised you in a university classroom or on television.
I have one question:Where would you choose to raise your children and grandchildren?
Not where would you like to vacation.
Not which country has the most beautiful propaganda.
Not which economic theory sounds fairest on paper.
Where would you actually send your own child to grow up?
Because becoming a parent changes the way you look at the world.
Before you have children, politics can be an argument about ideals.
After you have children, it becomes much more practical.
Will my child be safe? Will my child be free?
Will my child have enough to eat?
Will my child be able to speak his mind?
Will my daughter be able to choose her own future?
Will they be able to work, build something, own something, fall in love, raise a family, and believe that tomorrow might be better than today?
And perhaps the simplest question of all:Will they spend their childhood crying—or playing?
If you do not have children, do something very simple.
Go to a local playground. Sit there for twenty minutes and watch.
Watch children run for absolutely no reason. Watch them laugh.
Watch them invent games with rules that change every thirty seconds.
Watch them fall down, get back up, argue, forgive each other five minutes later, and continue playing.
Then ask yourself: Would these children have a better future under the socialist or communist system you are proposing?
Not theoretically. Not according to a manifesto. Not according to a politician.
Actually.
Would you willingly put your own child into that experiment?
Because it is very easy to gamble with somebody else’s future.
It becomes considerably harder when the child standing at the table is yours.
So before embracing any political system promising equality, justice, revolution, or a completely redesigned society, ask yourself one question and answer it without slogans:
Where would I want my children to grow up?
And then be honest with yourself.
Because every generation of parents should want one thing above almost everything else:
That their children inherit a future better than the one they were given—and enough freedom, security, and hope to still have time to play.
