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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