Whitman boys.

Like most parents of three-year-old boys, TDW and I live in a context of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends. At breakfast, The Gus wants to eat his (Trader Joe’s version of) Cheerios and Puffins while watching an episode of Thomas and Friends on Teh Intarnets. When he’s home sick, as he was on Sunday, he’s content to let several hours of Thomas and Friends wash over him.

There’s plenty to commend Thomas. There’s no violence, no sex, no foul language (all things which we enjoy in great measure, except for the violence, which makes TDW leave the room whenever I flip over to UFC Unleashed or WEC WrecKage).

But I have serious questions about what these stories teach. In a typical episode, Thomas (or Percy, or Rusty, or James, or Rheneas, or Henry, or Duncan, etc. etc. etc.) learns a Serious Lesson. Typically, the protagonist engages in some self-centered sin — wanting to explore a track line he doesn’t know, or wanting to play a prank on some engine he correctly perceives is arrogant and overbearing, or wanting to do something other than push freight cars around in the yard) — and never does this sin, this ambition, lead to any good. Instead, Failure ensues, with Sir Topham Hatt strolling out and pronouncing that [offending engine] has “caused Confusion and Delay.”

Hang on to your socks and garters, young Objectivists, there has been Confusion and Delay!

The offending engine promptly repents, mends his ways, and is rewarded with the boon of being a “Very Useful Engine.” Being Useful gives our formerly wayward engine True Fulfillment.

I mean, there’s plenty of cooperation. That’s a good thing. There’s comeuppance for blowhards and for smack-talkers. But there is no room for reward for individuals. All is sacrificed at the altar of Usefulness. And so far, as Gus has dawdled and diverted when presented with a concrete task (let’s take brushing his teeth as just an example) I have not invoked Usefulness, or suggested that he is causing Confusion and Delay. After all, it’s his unique approach to things, and his belief that life is just a negotiation, that is filling up our book of “The Gus Quotes.”

But still, it’s tempting.