Ray Peat On The Concept Of Childhood

[jaguar43]

Philippe Aries, in Centuries of Childhood, showed that "childhood" is a modern phenomenon, that children used to be thought of as little adults. From an early age they participated in the work of the family, and the life of the society. (Some related ideas are discussed by Jerome Bruner in The New York Review of Books, Oct. 27, 1983.)

If children are isolated from any intelligent work that the parents may perform, the world that they learn is one of functionless entertainment. Any tradition passed down by their parents is one of attitude, rather than of ability. If the child is allowed to be present when the parents work, the child wants to participate, to help, and to the extent that the children can participate, they are apprentices, and they learn effectiveness, personal power. If they are not apprentices, they still adopt the world of their parents as it is present in their speech, and they may receive a sense of power, but in this case their experience is that to belong is enough to be effective, that they "deserve" status. And if they don't receive this inherited sense of status, they may inherit helplessness.

If work is removed from the presence of children, how is the enabling truth which is in our culture to be distinguished from the useless aspects of the culture? If we lack a tradition of skilled work, then the point William Morris made becomes essential--we have to learn to reject the bad which is present in all the products of our culture--literature, painting, science, and so on.

Generative Energy page 136-137.


What do people think about this ? It seems radical in a way because in the western world we are taught that children should play. And even though I think play is important, the "deserve" status seems to provide certain characteristics as describe by Peat to understand truth. For those who didn't grow up with that tradition I think we will have to learn to reject the bad, which means going against the status quo in just about everything.

 

[DaveFoster]

I think that adults should play. We all should play.

 

[Luann]

It seems radical in a way because in the western world we are taught that children should play.

Kids know that work often is play. That's why they want to use big-girl, big-boy toys like real phones, remotes, silverware, appliances.

 

[jaguar43]

Kids know that work often is play. That's why they want to use big-girl, big-boy toys like real phones, remotes, silverware, appliances.

Yes that could be it, I think children want to participate more than people think. But it has to be in a meaningful way. Whether in the work of the society or family.

 

[Luann]

[QUOTE="jag2594, post: 166637, member: 206" I think children want to participate more than people think. [/QUOTE]

Oh, for sure. stuff like school work, busy-work especially, interferes with self-esteem in kids because they too have a sense of what's worth spending time on. My mom has taught sunday school and vbs; she asked me recently where so-and-so got a certain packet of materials for something else, an event, at church. i said, Oh, busy-work Inc., some send-away magazine probably. She knows how it is. She's very anti-"sit here and shut up" education, too.

 

[ravster02]

Where does Peat say children shouldn't play?

 

[jaguar43]

Where does Peat say children shouldn't play?

He doesn't say that. I just said that in the west people think children should play instead of "work".

 

[cats]

I think he is on to something with the relationship between language and status, especially as it relates to medicine. One is considered a doctor when one successfully adopts the language of the medical establishment, that is, proving that one knows enough about the establishment's theories and procedures. So someone can be a doctor without ever actually doing what doctors are supposed to do - cure and heal. Give the expected advice, perform the expected procedures, and the result does not matter - you are a doctor regardless. Combine this with social pressure from outside the medical culture to be "successful" (which, by most people's standards, you are if you're a doctor) and pressure from within the medical culture to conform, and there's very little impetus to reject bad ideas. Status takes precedent over physical results.

This also ties well with the hard distinction that we make between work and play. Many jobs nowadays demand that a person follow a specific set of procedures, and it's up to somebody else to ensure that those protocols lead to a useful result. So people are disconnected from the result of their work. If you don't know what the result of your work is, or if there is no result, or if you can't control the result, then you can't think critically and creatively about how best to achieve the result, you can't experiment, and you can't be sure that the result is useful. This makes the work boring, unsatisfying, and incapable of exercising the full range of human capabilities. The fundamental aspects of "play" are experimentation, creativity, self-discovery, etc. and if we reintroduce these to work, then we can do more meaningful work. Similarly, if we reintroduce what is important about "work" (a useful result) to "play" then play will prepare children to do more enjoyable and purposeful work as adults.

 

[Ras]

I think he is on to something with the relationship between language and status, especially as it relates to medicine. One is considered a doctor when one successfully adopts the language of the medical establishment, that is, proving that one knows enough about the establishment's theories and procedures. So someone can be a doctor without ever actually doing what doctors are supposed to do - cure and heal. Give the expected advice, perform the expected procedures, and the result does not matter - you are a doctor regardless. Combine this with social pressure from outside the medical culture to be "successful" (which, by most people's standards, you are if you're a doctor) and pressure from within the medical culture to conform, and there's very little impetus to reject bad ideas. Status takes precedent over physical results.

This also ties well with the hard distinction that we make between work and play. Many jobs nowadays demand that a person follow a specific set of procedures, and it's up to somebody else to ensure that those protocols lead to a useful result. So people are disconnected from the result of their work. If you don't know what the result of your work is, or if there is no result, or if you can't control the result, then you can't think critically and creatively about how best to achieve the result, you can't experiment, and you can't be sure that the result is useful. This makes the work boring, unsatisfying, and incapable of exercising the full range of human capabilities. The fundamental aspects of "play" are experimentation, creativity, self-discovery, etc. and if we reintroduce these to work, then we can do more meaningful work. Similarly, if we reintroduce what is important about "work" (a useful result) to "play" then play will prepare children to do more enjoyable and purposeful work as adults.

I find your thoughts on the divorce of work and its results true for me. Excellent post.

 

[dfspcc20]

"We think of children as immature adults but we would be more accurate in thinking of adults as atrophied children."
Can't find source for the quote...

 

[GAF]

If children are isolated from any intelligent work that the parents may perform, the world that they learn is one of functionless entertainment.

Public "education" has 13 years to produce a functional adult but rarely do they appear to succeed. It takes 4+ more years of student loans to produce the beginnings of an apprentice. However, children who have passed thru the system excel at expecting and participating in entertainment.

 

[Luann]

Pboy said something once about how certain activities "massage" (his word) and weaken you if you do them often, like watching tv, stuff that entertains without teaching a skill or requiring anything of you. Seems like kids have an inherent nose for, and distaste for, stuff like that, stuff meant to keep them busy and harmless.

children who have passed thru the system excel at expecting and participating in entertainment.

Scary to watch isn't it

 

[Drareg]

Good work should be play, practicing a craft and getting paid is enjoyable, what isn't enjoyable is when you become a tax donkey for your earnings mainly by those whose craft is legislation,creating words and sentences to create the illusion that you have to pay so much.
The legislators are overpaid for a craft that uses little energy,they are essentially articulate gossips and con men,not too different to talking tabloids.

Replace legislator with modern banker/investors here for similar outcome, billionaire from trading stocks,never creating a product or owning physical stock.

I agree there are higher forms of work more coherent with underlying dynamic of nature,like great music v bad.

The self entitled without any work is more rampant than it ever was,in the past it was for inherited wealth types,now it's everywhere, working hard on your social media presence and blog about your entitled pop culture perceptions and whims!
We even have different types of pop culture archetypes everywhere, the intellectual pop culture watches discovery channel ,reads Steven Hawkins and other pop science types, regurgitates accordingly,we have the spornosexuals,this is when you get in great shape and have social media presence,most of them could never step into the arena of practicing a sport in front of thousands for fear of criticism,just pose on social media from the easiest thing possible,eat,lift weights and sleep,block anyone who has a differing view,can't block in the arena.

If you have the money you can hire PR and keep telling everyone you are great, you get found out but if you have made millions in the meantime people start to say you must be great cause making money means your great,logic!

It's the rise of lower energy parasitic work,it was always in society with charlatans but now it's like sewage overflowing into a busy city,everybody is tainted with smell.
In other words I'm scared of constructive criticism or differing views as I don't have the brain energy to hold different patterns from the energy sucking propaganda stuffed into my head since childhood.
Once criticism was an art itself,now it's full of charlatans who have said entitled attitude.

 

[jaguar43]

Public "education" has 13 years to produce a functional adult but rarely do they appear to succeed. It takes 4+ more years of student loans to produce the beginnings of an apprentice. However, children who have passed thru the system excel at expecting and participating in entertainment.

I have never heard that the purpose of public education is to produce functional adults. I actually never heard of any institution making that argument before, except for religious institutions.

 

[jaguar43]

I think he is on to something with the relationship between language and status, especially as it relates to medicine. One is considered a doctor when one successfully adopts the language of the medical establishment, that is, proving that one knows enough about the establishment's theories and procedures. So someone can be a doctor without ever actually doing what doctors are supposed to do - cure and heal. Give the expected advice, perform the expected procedures, and the result does not matter - you are a doctor regardless. Combine this with social pressure from outside the medical culture to be "successful" (which, by most people's standards, you are if you're a doctor) and pressure from within the medical culture to conform, and there's very little impetus to reject bad ideas. Status takes precedent over physical results.

This also ties well with the hard distinction that we make between work and play. Many jobs nowadays demand that a person follow a specific set of procedures, and it's up to somebody else to ensure that those protocols lead to a useful result. So people are disconnected from the result of their work. If you don't know what the result of your work is, or if there is no result, or if you can't control the result, then you can't think critically and creatively about how best to achieve the result, you can't experiment, and you can't be sure that the result is useful. This makes the work boring, unsatisfying, and incapable of exercising the full range of human capabilities. The fundamental aspects of "play" are experimentation, creativity, self-discovery, etc. and if we reintroduce these to work, then we can do more meaningful work. Similarly, if we reintroduce what is important about "work" (a useful result) to "play" then play will prepare children to do more enjoyable and purposeful work as adults.

I think you are 100 percent right on the issue. He brings up the problem of the medical institutions as a form of status rather than a form of solving problems. Let me know if you wan't the quote from it. This is a quote from the same chapter regarding work.

Several years ago, in the quarterly publication Social Sciences, I noticed an article by a man whose specialty was exploring the future of work; he projected a future in which a person's desire for growth and exploration is realized in his work. This person's job was to clarify the changes that must be made in the "economy" so that it will serve humanity--the workers and consumers--instead of vice versa.

Previously, in Mind and Tissue, I had briefly discussed some Soviet views on labor: That work tends toward percep-tion, as machines become available; politics, work, culture, and science interpenetrate; brain function, education, science, and work have much in common--an emphasis on purpose and goals, deep reorganization, and complex perceptual inter-action with the material. P. K. Anokhin and A. A. Ukhtom-skii, and their students have created a sound basis for the role of goals and future thinking.

The attitude toward the future is an important part of how we orient ourselves and what concrete things we do to prepare for the future. A mechanistic view argues that we can't intervene to change the future, that it must fundamentally resemble the past, and that if people just invest in things that promise to give them a good profit the future will be nice. Another view sees the future as being composed of choices which lead to new choices, with new possibilities emerging as choices are put into action.

It's important that people start talking about the possible choices we have. If we accept that "the choice" is between being unemployed and having a job, the job we get is not like-ly to be what we want to do with our lives. And "status" isn't what I'm talking about. Giving maximum meaning to our lives should be one of the basic things that we demand of our work. - Ray Peat Generative Energy page 139-140

 

[Such_Saturation]

"We think of children as immature adults but we would be more accurate in thinking of adults as atrophied children."
Can't find source for the quote...

 

[GAF]

I have never heard that the purpose of public education is to produce functional adults. I actually never heard of any institution making that argument before, except for religious institutions.

Exactly my point.

 

[jaguar43]

Exactly my point.

I still don't understand your point.....

 

[GAF]

Public education has an agenda other than assisting in the production of adults.

 

[somuch4food]

The fundamental aspects of "play" are experimentation, creativity, self-discovery, etc. and if we reintroduce these to work, then we can do more meaningful work. Similarly, if we reintroduce what is important about "work" (a useful result) to "play" then play will prepare children to do more enjoyable and purposeful work as adults.

Exactly, play does not equal entertainment. In the IT industry, they are trying to go to that, but I think they are missing the point. Free food and entertainment does not lead to creative innovative thinking. Empowerment, feeling that you have the skills to better yourself and the world, is the key.

Having a toddler makes you think about those things. He has started wanting to help with everything. He is so happy about opening doors, putting his diaper in the trash or clothes in the bin. He wants to be part of our life. I felt that was missing in my childhood I was not included in meal preparation or most chores and I struggled with doing them when I started living on my own. I was addicted to entertainment .

I intend to include my child in my everyday life as much as possible.