Sylvia Plath as a case study in fatherlessness

Chicks dig jerks. That is one takeaway from this article, half about Sylvia Plath. Another takeaway could be that Ted Hughes was a jerk. And unstable women prefer jerkier jerks than stable women. Artists tend towards instability - creativity arises from disorder. The more disorder, the more options for something new. Creation is ordering of options into something useful. Without ordering, nothing useful arises. Without disorder, nothing new can arise.

You can read some background here. And you'll notice a coincidence. First, this happened:

Otto Plath died on November 5, 1940, a week and a half after Plath's eighth birthday

Then this happened:

Plath wrote poetry from the age of eight

Disorder caused creativity. But this disorder was destructive as well. Suicide at 30. Because of a missing father.

Civilisation advances by creating order from disorder. Lowering entropy. But there must be guidance, something shaping the ordering that occurs. Something regulating the ordering of chaos. Some engine lowering the entropy in a system - to analogise to thermodynamics, refrigeration doesn't just happen.

I prefer self-regulation to regulation by a tyrannical state. It allows more options for creativity. But self-regulation must be taught. Benjamin Franklin's quote about the balance of safety and liberty touches on an oft-ignored facet of human nature: People desire order. Disorder is scary. Order is safe. Imposed order is tyranny. Liberty is the lack of tyranny. Self-regulation is self-imposed order. Self-imposed order doesn't need a state to impose order for people to feel safe. Self-regulation is necessary for liberty to succeed.

And an eight year old girl without a father is missing nature's best teacher of self-regulation.