What determines which ideals will grow inside each particular human mind? Each family, culture, club, or group evolves various social and moral codes—by inventing some ways to decide what is right and wrong. Those codes of behavior have awesome effects on all of our organizations; they shape the customs, traditions, and cultures of nations, professions, clubs, and religions. They can even make those institutions value themselves above everything else—and make their members happy to die for them, in endless successions of battles and wars.
How do we grow those powerful standards and codes? I’ll parody several philosophers.
Naturist: I deeply believe that ethical values are, by their nature, self-evident. Surely everyone would be naturally good, unless their minds were corrupted by having been raised in unnatural states.
Rationalist: I’m suspicious of statements like that because ‘deeply’ and ‘self-evident” seem only to mean, “I cannot explain why I believe this,” and, “I don’t want to know what makes me believe it.”
Social Contractor: There is no absolute basis at all for what we call moral and ethical values. They’re all based on social conventions and contracts that each of us makes with the rest of us.
Socio-biologist: That’s a neat concept—except for one thing: no one remembers agreeing to it! A better idea is that ‘morals’ are based on traits we evolved in ancient times, as when certain breeds of dogs were selected for becoming attached to only one master. In humans, we call this ‘loyalty’.
No doubt, such traits are partly based on genes that we have inherited, but they’re also based on contagious ‘memes’—that is, ideas that spread from one brain to the next as part of each cultural heritage.[14]
Fundamentalist: Our values stem directly from divinely inspired religious texts—and woe unto those who transgress them.
Theologian: Some ethical rules can be deduced on the basis of logical reasoning.
Logician: Logic only helps us deduce what’s implied by the assumptions we make. It says nothing about which assumptions to use.
Mystic: Reasoning only clouds the mind and disconnects it from reality. You will never achieve enlightenment until you learn not to think so much.
One can sometimes improve a skill by suppressing the urge to think about it. But if one turns most mental critics off, and relies on primitive instincts too much, that could retard one’s mental development.
Existentialist: Whatever goal you happen to have, you should ask what purpose that purpose serves—and then you’ll see our predicament: we’re all trapped in a world that’s completely absurd.
Sentimentalist: You’re too concerned with a person’s aims. Just watch some children and you will see curiosity and playfulness. They’re not seeking any particular goals, but are enjoying the finding of novelties, and the pleasures of making discoveries.
We like to think that a child’s play is unconstrained—but when children appear to feel joyous and free, this may merely hide from their minds their purposefulness; you can see this more clearly when you attempt to drag them away from their chosen tasks. For they are exploring their worlds to see what’s there, making explanations of what those things are, and imagining what else could be; exploring, explaining and learning are among a child’s most purposeful urges and goals. The playfulness of childhood is the most demanding teacher we have. Never again in those children’s lives will anything drive them to work so hard.
§2-7. Attachments of Infants and Animals
“We want to make a machine that will be proud of us.”
The young child Carol loves to explore, but also likes to stay near to her mother—so whenever the distance between them grows, she quickly moves herself closer. But should she discover that she is alone, she’ll shortly cry out and look for her mum. That same behavior will also appear even when her mother is near, if there’s any cause for fear or alarm—such as the approach of a stranger.
Naturally, this dependency stems from our infantile helplessness: no human infant would long survive if it could escape from parental care. Of course, this doesn’t happen because young infants cannot move much by themselves—but this comes with the disadvantage that, in those first few months, our infants also can’t follow their mothers. Fortunately we usually come to no harm from this because we evolve a second bond that goes in the other direction: Carol’s mother is almost always aware (to different extents at various times) of what is happening to her daughter—and her full attention is quickly engaged at the slightest suspicion that something is wrong.
Clearly, each infant’s survival depends on bonding to persons concerned with their welfare. So in older times it was often assumed that children would attach themselves to the persons who gave them physical care, and this is why most psychologists called such a person a ‘Caregiver’—instead of using some word like ‘Imprimer’. But more systematic research on attachment suggested that this theory was wrong:
John Bowlby: “That an infant can become attached to others of the same age, or only a little older, makes it plain that attachment behavior can develop and be directed towards [persons who have] done nothing to meet the infant’s physiological needs.”[15]
Then what factors do determine the persons to whom our children will become attached? First, Bowlby recognized that physical nurture could play an important role, because it provides occasions for children to learn to like to be with particular other persons. But eventually he concluded that usually, these were more important factors:[16]
The speed with which the person responds, and
The intensity of that interaction.”
This will usually include the child’s parents—but could also include other children, which suggests that parents should take special care to examine their offspring’s companions and friends—and, especially, the ones that are most attentive to them. And when one is choosing a child’s school, one might examine not only the staff and curriculum, but also the goals that its pupils pursue.
What happens when a child is deprived of Imprimers? It appears that an Imprimer’s absence produces a special variety of fear, and a powerful impulse to find that Imprimer.
John Bowlby: “Whenever a young child … is separated from her mother unwillingly he shows distress; and should he also be placed in a strange environment and cared for by a succession of strange people such distress is likely to be intense. The way he behaves follows a typical sequence. At first he protests vigorously and tries by all the means available to him to recover his mother. Later he seems to despair of recovering her but nonetheless remains preoccupied with her and vigilant for her return. Later still he seems to lose his interest in his mother and to become emotionally detached from her.”
16
ibid. Bowlby bases this on some research of H.R. Schaffer and P. E. Emerson, ‘