I am gradually getting back into a work routine.  Tomorrow will be two weeks since my surgery and, save for a bit of late afternoon/early evening fatigue, the effects of the procedure are receding.  I will not regale you all with details but if any men out there want to discuss the various side effects of prostate removal, i am happy to have that conversation off line…

Now, let's get to some ancient Chinese thought in modern American life!

Alison Gopnik had an op-ed in yesterday's NYT, summarizing her new book, The Philosophical Baby, and I could not help but notice the Daoist resonance.  Take the opening paragraphs:

GENERATIONS of psychologists and philosophers have believed that
babies and young children were basically defective adults — irrational,
egocentric and unable to think logically. The philosopher John Locke
saw a baby’s mind as a blank slate, and the psychologist William James
thought they lived in a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” Even today, a
cursory look at babies and young children leads many to conclude that
there is not much going on.

New studies, however, demonstrate
that babies and very young children know, observe, explore, imagine and
learn more than we would ever have thought possible. In some ways, they
are smarter than adults.

The notion of children as adults manque can be found in Confucianism as well. Adults, for Confucians, should be morally mature (of course, we know, not all are).  Children, by contrast, must be nurtured and developed to achieve adult moral understanding.  This is not quite the sams as Locke and James, who seem to be more focused on cognitive ability, but the conclusion is the same: children are something less than adults.

Daoism differs in this regard.  Given its general skepticism toward human knowledge, whether that is empirical or normative, Daoism sees children in a different llight.  Since they have not yet been fully expose to, and thus contaminated by, adult human learning (of whatever sort), children are, by nature, closer to Way.  They are more open to direct experience of their immediate surroundings, more apt to explore and play.

Indeed, children, especially the youngest infants and babies, are sometimes presented in Daoists texts as superior to adults.  Take, for example, this excerpt of the opening of passage 55 of the Daodejing (Ames and Hall edition):

One who is vital in character (de) can be compared to a newborn baby.

Wasps and scorpions will not sting a baby, snakes and vipers will not bite him, and birds of prey and ferocious beasts will not snatch him up.  Though his bones are soft and his sinews supple his grip is firm.

The wasps and scorpions and deprivations of adult "learning" and "knowledge" cannot hurt him.  The infant is without expectation, without calculation, without guile.  And thus much of the human world – the dashed hopes and desires, the plans gone bad – cannot harm him.

And Gopnik urges us in the direction of Daoist parenting:

The learning that babies and young children do on their own, when
they carefully watch an unexpected outcome and draw new conclusions
from it, ceaselessly manipulate a new toy or imagine different ways
that the world might be, is very different from schoolwork. Babies and
young children can learn about the world around them through all sorts
of real-world objects and safe replicas, from dolls to cardboard boxes
to mixing bowls, and even toy cellphones and computers. Babies can
learn a great deal just by exploring the ways bowls fit together or by
imitating a parent talking on the phone. (Imagine how much money we can
save on “enriching” toys and DVDs!)

But what children observe
most closely, explore most obsessively and imagine most vividly are the
people around them. There are no perfect toys; there is no magic
formula. Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying
attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just
allowing them to play.

Just let them play…and from that we can all learn something.