I spent the weekend getting acquainted with my new nephew, now about two and a half weeks old (and unbelievably cute. We call him Bug.) I love kids; at this stage, I tend to be fascinated by the question: what on earth is it like to try, with that endearing total earnestness that infants have, to figure out an entirely new world without the benefit of an already existing mind to help you out? I love trying to figure out new languages and cultures; what on earth would it be like to try to work out an entire world, from scratch? How kids manage this is a complete mystery to me, but I can spend hours watching them try.
Whenever I do, after a few hours of lying down with a perplexed infant snuggled on top of me, I find myself wondering: and how on earth would I be thinking about this if I hadn’t read Rousseau? Rousseau was admittedly a jerk, and insane, and of course he did give up his own kids. But he was also one of the most insightful thinkers about kids ever. He thought, for instance, that the origin of idolatry is the fact that when an infant wants an object and screams at it to come, it generally does. That thought alone, with its mixture of insight and sheer oddness, is worth the price of admission all by itself.
we want pictures!!!
I have often said that the terrible twos are caused by the child’s new found understanding that it cannot fly. At some point, perhaps when we learn to walk and are forced to walk as much as possible, it dawns on us that we were carried.
Such understanding is dissapointing to say the least.
crionna,
Interesting, but I had always heard that the terrible two’s (as my daughter is inflicting upon us now) are caused by a realization that there are other actors in the world (especially Mommy and Daddy) who decide on their own what I can and can’t do. The conflict between a kid who has a very very limited understanding of consequence and parents who think primarily of consequences is what makes it so terrible. It is only when the kid learns that the parents’ rules are there for good reason (whether they are take your turn or take your medicine) that the kid becomes less of a terror.
I actually waded through Rousseau’s A Discourse on Inequality on the way over to China, three years ago. His ideas about how primitive man lived were absurd. The Introduction was the best part by far, and just over half as long as the discourse itself. This is the Penguin Classic printing, mind you.
I also brought Herodotus’ The Histories with me, which I’ve only made moderate progress into.
Nah. Humans are born with an undeveloped brain. It doesn’t get finished until about age five or six. And you can generally see the light simply being turned on at some point around that age, and you get that wonderful facial expression that indicates they suddenly get it.
Dantheman
I’m sure you’r correct. Still, I CANNOT FLY 🙁
or spell
“Still, I CANNOT FLY :(”
I strongly doubt my 2 year old can, either. She seems aware of this, as she climbs the ladder to the sliding board (and did before she turned 2), rather than trying to get to the top in a single bound. She knows that if she wants to touch the ceiling or the wind chimes, Daddy needs to lift her, and she sometimes asks me to do so. She actually seems very much aware of her surroundings, even those not within sight, so that when she is near an edge of the jungle gym, she never seems to go over even by stepping backwards (in spite of Mommy or Daddy hovering around in case of that circumstance)
the terrible twos are caused by…
Dave Barry’s theory was that the “terrible twos” are given that name not because two-year-olds’ behavior is any worse but that they’re at about the right size that if they swing at you they’re hit you right in the crotch.
At our household, we’re currently dealing with the terrible twelves. No crotch blows, but the emotional abuse is far worse.
As a side question, why has your family inflicted the nickname “Bug” on an innocent baby? Is his first Junius?
“what on earth would it be like to try to work out an entire world, from scratch?”
A tabula rasista? Say it ain’t so!
Why Bug? I don’t know, but for now it sort of fits. (Not Junius — too many Philadelphia Story jokes — but Erik.)
I’m not a tabula rasista, but I do think it must be confusing before you figure out things like sorting stuff into objects, or even self and other.
Slart: try Rousseau again. (The one about kids is Emile.) The Discourse on Inequality is better if you note that Rousseau says, at the outset, that it doesn’t matter if it’s not true; he’s not playing anthropologist. He’s doing something he often does, which is taking some thought that lots of people have had and saying: yes, but once you realize how deep this goes, you’ll see that things are infinitely worse than you had thought.
In this case: lots of people had tried to understand and justify government by asking: what might things have been like before it was there; and would it have made sense for people to agree to form a government? If so, what exactly would it have made sense for them to agree to, and subject to what conditions? Hobbes had argued that it would make sense to agree to an absolute monarchy. Locke said: no; we have been given life and liberty by God, and we hold them in trust; this being so, we cannot give them away, since they are not ours to give. (This is why, on Locke’s view, we always retain the right to revolt against tyranny: the only valid agreement we could have entered into would have had such an escape clause, since we cannot surrender our liberty, since we hold it in trust for God.)
Rousseau says: none of you have begun to imagine what ‘the state of nature’ would be like; how much you have to strip away in order to imagine it. Not just the state, but society, language, everything that makes us what we now think of as human. We should not wish to go back, and we couldn’t if we wanted to, but that — a condition roughly like the one orangutans actually live in — is what it would be like. And then he adds: while we can’t go back, for most people that life is better.
He also, in the Discourse (and elsewhere), more or less invents the idea of inauthenticity. Lots of people had had the related idea of hypocrisy — being one way, acting another — but Rousseau took it further, and said: look, most of us don’t have any clear idea of who we are at all. We’re much worse off than mere hypocrites. We say things because they sound impressive, or because we think we should; we don’t just react directly to anything; and thus we have no real hold on ourselves at all.
Emile is, basically, a book on how to bring up kids to avoid this fate. But it turns out, Rousseau being Rousseau, that this involves surrendering your kid to a tutor, who has to be essentially omniscient and perfectly wise and capable of controlling the kid’s entire environment, and who must live with the kid throughout the kid’s childhood and adolescence. When I teach Rousseau, invariably someone says: but that’s completely impractical! and I say: yes, that’s part of the point. This is what it would take to raise a whole, sane human being, and it’s impossible.
In the process, though, he says a lot of very, very interesting things. (He also more or less invented the idea that kids learn by making mistakes, and thus that it’s a very bad idea to keep them from making any.)
If you read him looking for psychological insight rather than an accurate account of childrearing/prehistory/whatever, you get a lot more out of him. Plus, you can never forget that he was, in fact, insane. But in a very interesting way.
I’m now beginning to see how book-learning in a vacuum can be a very, very difficult undertaking. It probably doesn’t help that I tend to return again and again to the [seeming] wrongness as one’s tongue returns helplessly to a chipped tooth. Which is one reason why I can’t get much past Genesis.
The book, you idiots. Not the group. Thanks for the pointer, hilzoy, and I’ll certainly give Rousseau another whirl. I do recall it being interesting, but the bit about prehistoric man is what stuck. Odd, that.
I just leafed through it again, and it seems as if he’s building this house of cards on how inequality came to be on quite a bit of misunderstanding. He might be right, but how he got there is a mystery. So here I am fixated on the literal wrongness, again.
Three words
Comenius, Comenius, and Comenius.
Enough to make one become a Moravian
A tabula rasista? Say it ain’t so!
Could be worse: give him some dreadlocks and you’ve got yourself a tabula rasta.
Do you mean to say that it’s necessary to have read Rousseau to wonder about that stuff? Because I think that’s a huge overstatement. I myself have read no Rousseau beyond a little bit of Social Contract (is that the title? I forget) that I failed to pay any attention to in college, and yet I wonder about that stuff all the time, and especially when I am in the presence of babies. I think wondering about that stuff is far more widespread an attribute than having read Rousseau.
Jeremy: I didn’t mean that at all; just that what I think when I do the wondering owes a lot to him.
I love holding little babies. Time runs more slowly for them, and while I hold them, for me too. It’s like being in a sphere of wonder. A moment of transcendence. Infinite compassion.
Could be worse: give him some dreadlocks and you’ve got yourself a tabula rasta.
And then when he spills noodles all over himself he becomes a tabula pasta.
“And then when he spills noodles all over himself he becomes a tabula pasta.”
And when he spills root beer over himself, he becomes a tabula shasta.
Or, if you gave him a drum, he’d become a tabla rasa.
Or, if you gave him a drum, he’d become a tabla rasa.
Unless he learns some Indian classics, in which case he’d become a tabla raga!
If he got a pet frog he could name him Pablo Rana.
And if he were interested in stars? Tabula Astra
“It’s full of stars”.
“And then when he spills noodles all over himself he becomes a tabula pasta.”
Or “Penne” for short. Oh wait, no that’s “tubular pasta”. Nemmine.
Basta, basta!
Late, late (I was on a holiday in France with the family – and that includes 2, 5 and 6 year old energetic boys and big dog. Hilzoy is welcome to come and enjoy, if only she lived closer 😉 ). But I had to comment on
Why Bug? I don’t know, but for now it sort of fits. (Not Junius — too many Philadelphia Story jokes — but Erik.).
In Dutch you have the 50 yr old classic Erik en het klein insectenboek, translated as Eric in the land of insects. Last year they even made a film out of it.
It is probabely outdated now, especially in translation, but I loved it as a child and will read it to my sons soon 😉
If the powers that be are reading this, I’d like to humbly suggest a ‘what was/is your favorite children’s book’ open thread.
ps Dutchmarbel, I mentioned your name in the previous thread on Tolerance. All corrections gratefully accepted.
ps Dutchmarbel, I mentioned your name in the previous thread on Tolerance. All corrections gratefully accepted.
I saw, I am working my way up through time 😉
But I usually don’t respond in threads with more than two days silence and Reinier allready answered the more important things.
I agree with Edward that people who commit crimes should be punished no matter their religion, I agree with you that educated youth (not just the man, the young women too) seem to be the biggest problem and I disagree with lots of people about how big the problem in the Netherlands is. But we have discussed that in other threads and I think we will discuss it in future too 😉
I disagree with Edward about a muslim saying that militairy basis in the Netherlands would be a legal target. As long as he does not act I think he is perfectly entitled to the opinion – a lot of people who are not muslims felt that way when we were in Iraq and some still do because we have forces in Afghanistan and probabely hand prisoners to the Americans; that makes us parttakers in both occupation and possible warcrimes for anti-war people.
Italics begone!
oeps