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Dear Readers,
If this introduction seems to sound a note of familiarity with the last Staying Awake ezine, then you’ve got a good memory. There’s a theme that for me keeps playing day after day: we humans are —one of millions of animal species— hanging around on a planet that’s rotating and revolving in space; breathing and roving infinitesimal creatures are we compared to the enormities of Earth and the nearly unimaginable expanse of the Universe.
The comprehension to have constructed a statement, like the one above, is usually taken for granted, but should not be, because our cognitive capacities are entirely profound. Ponder for a moment just how inconceivably your brain functions for observing yourself breathing while observing yourself reading this ezine, remembering to add rice and milk on the grocery list while imagining expanses of galaxies.
That mental teasing is just one exercise for reminding you that you have a brain, and, hopefully, more times than not, memories and all sorts of fascinating information spring back to memory without too much hesitation.
Magic Drop
The memory you’re about to read reveals an alertness I displayed early on, and an experience for which long ago proved an obsession for an explanation. It’s no wonder I remember the experience. As you read, imagine yourself as a three or four year old with the voice of that wee kiddo.
My body is only like three feet tall. I wear the kinds of high topped shoes that strengthen my ankles. I wear ‘em all the time. But Mommy doesn’t like it when I go in the house after playing in the dirt in the back yard. She says my shoes are supposed to be white.
But, I kinda forget about my shoes when I see more int’resting things in the yard. Like caterpillars. And flies that land on my hand. And little snakes that I walk away from.
Most times, I squat down to see what’s to see somewhere, anywhere. I’m always lookin’ someplace. One day, I found new kitties and their mom. They were huddled behind a big tall bush against the house. Mommy and Daddy said we’d give ‘em away. So we did, and I felt bad.
One day, I saw something that actually spoke to me. Well, I think it did. I was squatting, lookin’ to see what was on a leafa grass. I think I saw a little droppa water. I know it was a droppa water. Kinda wobblin’ in one place, but not movin’ anywhere.
I think I heard that drop say somethin’ like, ‘There’s a world inside me.’ I kept lookin’, kinda starrin’ at the drop, wonderin’ what to do next. I was feeling kinda like I didn’t know what to do ‘cept stay put. So I did. I couldn’t see good enough to see the world inside the drop.
Not So Exceptional
How did that young brain and mind come up with an idea that as an adult I would call a dew drop a magic drop? Knowing my life as do my friends, my youthful magic drop is a philosophical notion, and, for what it’s worth, I stand by it by dropping the drop into my personal cosmological bag of jewels!
If there is one thing we adults could say about the magic drop experience is little people, and even infants too, do not complicate what is simple; and, the same ideas that adults assume complicated for children can actually be simple for children.
As a few psychologists like Alison Gopnik might suggest: the magic drop experience is not so exceptional yet expected. Young children know the difference between imagination and reality much like scientists and technologists and innovators much prefer imaginary worlds to real ones.
Hover Here for video reference.The following two sections and text in the right column are excerpted from Ms. Gopniks’ transcribed video conversation here.
The World Can Be
“The biggest question for me is ‘How is it possible for children, young human beings, to learn as much as they do as quickly and as effectively as they do?’ We’ve known for a long time that human children are the best learning machines in the universe. But it has always been like the mystery of the humming birds. We know that they fly, but we don’t know how they can possibly do it. We could say that babies learn, but we didn’t know how. … ¹
“Think about everything that’s in this room right now, there’s a right angle desk and electric light and computers and window panes. Every single thing in this room is imaginary from the perspective of the hunter/gatherer. We live in imaginary worlds.
“When you think that way, a lot of other things about babies and young children start to make more sense. We know, for instance, that young children have these incredible, vivid, wild imaginations. They live 24/7 in these crazy pretend worlds. They have a zillion different imaginary friends. … [O]nce you start realizing that the reason why we want to build theories about the world is so that we can imagine other ways the world can be, you could say that not only are these young children the best learners in the world, but they’re also the most creative imaginers in the world. That’s what they’re doing in their pretend play.”
Learning, Imagining, Thinking
“When you actually study children, you certainly do see a lot of innate structure. But you also see this capacity for learning and transforming and changing what you think about the world and for imagining other ways that the world could be. In fact, one really crucial evolutionary fact about us, is that we have this very, very extended childhood. We have a much longer period of immaturity than any other species does. That’s a fundamental evolutionary fact about us, and on the surface a puzzling one. [What makes] babies so helpless for so long? And why do we have to invest so much time and energy, literally, just to keep them alive? …
“The way that evolution seems to have solved that problem [of extended human childhood] is to have this kind of cognitive division of labor, so the babies and kids are really the R&D [Research & Development] department of the human species. They’re the ones that get to do the blue-sky learning, imagining, thinking. And the adults are production and marketing. … There’s really a kind of metamorphosis. It’s like the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly except it’s more like the babies are the butterflies that get to flitter around and explore, and we’re the caterpillars who are just humping along on our narrow adult path.”
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