by the Editor
Dad has left the building.
It's been surprising to me, talking over different articles this month with their writers, where we're looking a lot at different places in the generations, it's struck me as odd how powerful and annoying a concept that turns out to be — "Dad has left the building" — for people when I say it, or take it for granted, or even just mention it in passing. "What?" they say, startled. "What do you mean, 'Dad has left the building'?"
I'm always startled by how startled they are. Surely we all know he's gone? But looking around, I see that we don't. We don't even know what it means. Either that, or we're afraid to know.
Dad has left the building.
It means, you know, that we are adults not children, and we are ON OUR OWN. Not alone — after all, we're all here, as together as we can manage to make ourselves, if we can live without too much squabbling. But we are ON OUR OWN with what happens next. It's our decision. It's our activity that creates the next stage for more activity to take place. There's no guidance past what we've already had. There's no one else to take the blame. There's no one else to take the fall.
Dad has left the building.
Now this has nothing to do with whether or not God exists. (Although it's probably worth mentioning that the psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell remarks somewhere that when people bewail the decline of religion, they don't notice that what's declining is patriarchal religion…and the fundamentalist reaction proves her point rather than refutes it, too.) We're on our own here. It is as childish to think that God is going to save us from our own stupidity in the modern age as it is to count on our parents to bail us out of bankruptcy.
Dad might be around somewhere. Maybe he is. Maybe he's not. But it doesn't make any difference to the matter at hand: for all our purposes, Dad has left the building.
Nor are you atheists and rebels necessarily without the unconscious wish for Dad, so don't get all smug on me and think about your superiority to the people who obviously worship something Up Above. I've watched a lot of you kick hard against what Is without getting on with it often enough to know that if there wasn't an image of Dad in there for you to kick against, you'd wonder what to do next.
We're all wondering what to do next. The trick is not to put off the hour of decision by quarreling among ourselves. Nobody's going to come and break it up if we do. That's for sure.
Dad has definitely left the building.
We're the adults now. And we're in charge. Think of it. This could be a lot of fun. Or it could be a mess of kids running around wailing that they've had to much sugar and they want a nap, and where's DAD?
On the other hand…
What next?