I know, I know it's ironic that my previous post was about how people procreate too much and this post is about how awesome kids are. It's my prerogative.
Kids can be simultaneously some of the most entertaining, inspiring, cruel, and heartless people on the planet. There are candy sweet stories of children saving puppies and feeding the homeless. There are horrifying stories of children killing children and abusing their siblings. I suppose children exemplify the extremes of humanity even better than most adults. They lack experience and logic to temper their thoughts and decisions. Those same characteristics that make them adorable also make them terrifying. Just take these situations for example:
1. Seven year old child heroically dials 911 while armed gunmen are still in the house holding his parents at gunpoint.
Watch the video
2. Two brothers age 10 and 12 attack two other children and leave them for dead in the UK.
Read the story
3. Eleven year old Mackenzie becomes paralyzed following an injury in a soccer game but maintains a positive attitude and regains the use of her legs.
Watch the video
4. Seven year old guilty of grand theft auto claims he just wants to "do hood rat stuff with my friends".
View the article
The list could go on and on. Kids pretty much just do whatever makes them feel good. If they want to go somewhere and their parents won't let them, they steal their grandma's SUV. But this self-serving behavior doesn't account for the acts of altruism you see many children carry out. What makes kids want to help others? It can be argued that there is a certain amount of self-gratification to that too. If it makes you feel good to make other people happy then why not do what it takes to make people happy?
Adults often get too caught up in the what ifs. What if I don't get anything in return for my efforts? What if the person I'm trying to help takes advantage of me? While these are all healthy questions to ask there are times when a childlike optimism and sympathy is called for. Adversely it is this same trait of instant gratification desire that causes children not to consider the consequences of their actions. Come to think of it, there are adults that act that way too, but by that point it isn't cute anymore. It's just sad.
2 comments:
(obviously I got the comment feature working on my machine)
Biologically it makes sense that humans would develop certain selfish traits for survival, yet also develop altruistic traits which help us survive through cooperation. Altruism is ubiquitous in nature if one looks. However, it always competes with drives for selfish behaviors. It's complicated even more by human culture layered on top of the biology. I wonder sometimes how much the complexity of life is just our rational brains just trying to build a framework to make sense of simple biological urges that don't fit into the nice black and white morality we like to construct in our ideologies.
SFS -
Yah! I'm glad you can make comments now. Hope you don't mind how I abbreviated your name.
It's true that our behavior is driven by so many contradictory factors and it's amazing that we have adapted so well given the circumstances. I guess that if we hadn't adapted, we wouldn't be here now though.
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