Re: [xmca] Any work on the development of egoism in the child(ren)

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Ulvi--

Last week I heard a talk about "branding" in which people "brand" themselves
(American think of burning initials into cattle as "branding" but it is also
the nike swoosh, etc.). It appears to be a kind of apex of the logical of
neoliberalism in which social mechanisms modeled on monetary transactions
become the measure of all things. It is a topic ripe for a
cultural-historical analysis and suggests many avenues of approach.
mike

On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 9:05 AM, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Andy, I share completely your point of view as regards the material
> basis of individualism.
>
> My initial question was just aiming a simple query if egoism could be an
> interesting theme to study from a Vygotskian perspective.
>
> I think that this kind of characteristics are very social. In October, I
> was
> in Cuba, within a children theater, called "Little Beehive".
>
> According to a principle of José Marti, children in this company, come
> together every week and they share their experience how they make a good
> action towards other people in the society. To make a good action towards
> peers or elderly people. But not superficially because José Marti also says
> that this good action should be quite voluntary, should come from within
> the
> child not imposed on him/her from without.
>
> I know these children since  several years. And I understood how they
> are brought up as good human beings. I do not aim any idealization of Cuba
> and her children but the children in this company are apparently formed as
> good human beings.
>
> And I also know that in Cuban society egoism is a human characteristic
> which
> is very much fought.
>
> Thus, my question was aiming to the study of the educational, psychological
> and other processes in which children grow up as egoistic persons...
>
> Ulvi
>
>
> 2010/11/14 Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>
> > Ulvi, I take egoism as individualism in ethics, sometimes called
> > narcissism, yes? Surely it is widely agreed that the roots of
> individualism
> > lie in bourgeois society (i.e., the economic activity of capitalist
> society
> > outside both state and family). Even Hegel referred to the "business
> class"
> > (both employees and employers) as "the individual class" before Marx went
> > further into the institutional roots of individualism. The current state
> of
> > bourgeois society in countries where the population is saturated with
> > advertising and a constant stream of propaganda telling people "you
> deserve
> > it" etc., etc., etc., together with political systems based on individual
> > voting in large geographical electorates and individualised consumption
> of
> > still more or less centralised means of communicaiton, build on the
> > foundation of commodity exchange and the fragmentation of all forms of
> > collaboration.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> > ulvi icil wrote:
> >
> >> Mike, David:
> >> Sorry for not being clear. I did not mean egocentrism of the child nor
> >> his/her egocentric speech.
> >> What I meant was the defective characteristic that some human beings
> gain
> >> in
> >> the process of being adults: Egoism. And I meant the process of how the
> >> chilld, on his/her lifetime, becomes an egoistic adult, I mean the
> >> thinking,
> >> speech, language of the human society which carries egoism into the
> child
> >> and in this sense the process how the child internalizes egoism from
> >> his/her
> >> social relations etc.
> >> Ulvi
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 2010/11/13 David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Ulvi:
> >>>
> >>> I think Vygotsky doesn't accept Piaget's idea that children are
> >>> egocentric
> >>> in their thinking, and if you read how he uses "egocentric speech" you
> >>> will
> >>> see that he guts it of all of its "egocentric" comment; he simply means
> >>> speech that is meant for the child's own ears rather than those of
> >>> someone
> >>> else. So Vygotsky essentially rejects the whole idea of child egotism
> and
> >>> even child egocentrism.
> >>>
> >>> Even Piaget eventually decided that the word "ego" was misplaced. In
> his
> >>> later work he describes the child's thinking as "non-decentrated" or
> >>> "centrated". What he means is that the child lives in a kind of
> >>> pre-Copernican universe (although of course our idea that there is only
> >>> one
> >>> universe may also be a vestige of centration!).
> >>>
> >>> Vygotsky uses the term "egocentric speech" the way that a thieving
> magpie
> >>> uses a stolen spoon to build a nest. It doesn't really fit his
> >>> construction
> >>> very well, because Vygotsky thinks that the child really HAS no ego
> until
> >>> quite late.
> >>>
> >>> Functionally, the child begins to act like an ego from the moment (the
> >>> Crisis at Age Three, according to Vygotsky's Collected Works Volume
> Five)
> >>> that the child seizes that great and powerful word "No!" from his
> >>> environment. But as Vygotsky points out, the child often uses this word
> >>> even
> >>> when the child wants to say yes.
> >>>
> >>> I remember promising my little neice-lette at five that I would take
> her
> >>> to
> >>> Seoul-Land if she finished copying seven Chinese characters. She
> dawdled
> >>> a
> >>> long time, but finally did it. So I asked her if she still wanted to
> go,
> >>> and
> >>> she said "No!" although she visibly did want to go, and she cried when
> we
> >>> didn't.
> >>>
> >>> So we can say that at this stage the child has an ego "for others" but
> >>> not
> >>> for herself; it is a purely reactive, interactional, functional ego and
> >>> not
> >>> a conscious, volitional, controllable one. (We certainly CANNOT say
> that
> >>> the
> >>> child has difficulty in detaching her own point of view from that of
> >>> others;
> >>> she is very conscious that "No!" suggests a fundamental difference in
> >>> stance
> >>> from those in her circumstance.)
> >>>
> >>> We can't really say that she has an ego for herself, because she is not
> >>> able to control her will and her ego. She is able to differentiate an
> "I"
> >>> from what Vygotsky calls "Ur-wir" (The proto-We, or as I like to think
> of
> >>> it, the "Royal We").
> >>>
> >>> But she does this only in action and reaction, and not in thought and
> >>> reflection. It's easier done than said, one of those things that is all
> >>> very
> >>> well in practice, but it doesn't quite work out in theory.
> >>>
> >>> When does "I" become "ego", that is, when do children seize conscious
> >>> awareness of the separateness of "I" from "we"?  It seems to me this
> must
> >>> happen about the time that children develop invisible friends,
> >>> hero-worship,
> >>> and become highly interested in role-playing games. Which strikes me as
> >>> non-coincidental.
> >>>
> >>> David Kellogg
> >>> Seoul National University of Education
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --- On Fri, 11/12/10, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> From: ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com>
> >>> Subject: [xmca] Any work on the development of egoism in the child(ren)
> >>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >>> Date: Friday, November 12, 2010, 3:03 AM
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Dear all,
> >>>
> >>> Did anybody meet any work on the development of egoism in the
> child(ren)?
> >>> (
> >>> Surely, from the Vygotskian perspective)
> >>> Thanks
> >>> Ulvi
> >>>  __________________________________________
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> >>>
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > --
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
> > Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> > Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
> > MIA: http://www.marxists.org
> >
> >
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