Language and its Baggage

When you sit down and try to see things through a two year old’s eyes, you start to realize how much work they have to do.  

Think about possession, for example.  It’s something we take for granted.  Mine, yours, hers.  We didn’t even have to learn it in school because by the time school started we already understood it. 

“That’s Scotty’s stroller” I said to Elliot today, as I held him back from pushing another kid’s Maclaren into the fountain by the Brooklyn Museum.  He resisted, and I repeated: “That’s not ours.  That’s Scotty’s.  We can’t touch it.”

And he paused.  He put a finger in his mouth and stared at the stroller.  His gaze went a thousand yards away.  He was either having a poop or a deep thought. 

I pondered what it (the deep thought) might be, and it occurred to me that “Possession” is something that takes a little getting used to.  It seems obvious to us, people own things, private property etc, but we didn’t pop out of the womb understanding this.  And it’s little moments like “Don’t shove Scotty’s stroller” that those lessons are taught and learned.

The moments may be small and fleeting, but the implications couldn’t be larger or more lasting.  Private property; capitalism; greed; sharing; selfishness; communalism; the acceptability of inequality in society.  All of these flow from that quick lesson about not touching someone else’s stuff.

Now imagine if it had been a banana sitting there instead of a stroller, and Elliot had missed lunch and was starving.  And what if I had forgotten my wallet and couldn’t buy him his own banana, despite a big pile of them sitting on the counter.  This is not such an implausible scenario.  Think about the lesson that sends about the importance of private property --- in particular, how the abstract notion of possession trumps concrete concerns such as hunger.

These are things he thinks about when he staring into the distance.  And this is why he has to sleep eleven hours a night and still nap during the day.  Because he’s doing Einstein-level brain work.  (This is not my idea.  Check this excellent TED talk by neuroscientist Alison Gopnik.  Money quote: “What’s it like to be a baby?  It’s like being in love in Paris for the first time after you’ve had 3 double espressos.”)