Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I used to laugh at the parents who claimed to have raised their boys in total isolation from any depiction of guns saying that the boys "magically" started using the pointed finger and "you're dead" during play. Silly them, I thought. The boys must have seen someone with a gun between their no-TV households and their ultra-crunchy Montessoris. They had to have seen it somewhere, right?
Until I read a magazine article about so-called primitive cultures in the South Pacific experiencing the same phenomenon going back centuries. Entire cultures that hadn't seen guns, and yet they do the finger-pointy-you're-dead thing during play. Turns out, it's the ancient fantastic wish for the power of the Evil Eye --- the desire to cause effects over long distances, combined with the desire to do harm.
ETA: As for trucks versus dolls, I heard a child development psychologist say that boys seek toys involving the interaction between materials and surfaces (e.g., percussion instruments; sliding things across the carpet) while girls seek toys involving the interaction between proxies for people (i.e., dolls). There's probably a solid evolutionary basis for that development.
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It surprised me that those completely unexposed to guns might have some sort of concept of violence thorugh the pointing of a finger, and I can understand it.
And I'm also not surprised that there is _some_ evolutionary basis for certain types of play and behavior. However, these types of influences are greatly overshadowed by the effects of the exposure to society and society's ideas about what's appropriate for little boys and little girls.
So, while I think it's neat to consider how, if raised without societal influence, a child would like to play, I don't think it's relevant.
It also grates, I think, because I find the idea of parents using biology as a justification for indoctrinating their children with their social and religious ideas about what is appropriate to be offensive. It's just a hop, skip and a jump from there to "Homosexuality is wrong, because God made man and woman to lie together and make children," and those are the kind of (I think) troglodytic attitudes that children carry for their entire lives.
