Growing Up Absurd

Growing Up Absurd

Growing up as a human being, a “human nature” assimilates a culture, just as other animals grow up in strength and habits in their appropriated environments, that complete their natures. Present-day sociologists and anthropologists don’t talk much about this process, and not in this way. Among the most competent writers, there is not much mention of “human nature.” Their diffidence makes scientific sense, for everything we observe, and even more important, our way of observing it, is already culture and a pattern of culture. What is the sense of mentioning “human nature” if we can never observe it? The old-fashioned naive thought, that primitive races or children are more natural, is discounted. And the classical anthropological question, What is Man?—”how like an angel, this quintessence of dust!”—is not now asked by anthropologists. Instead, they commence with a chapter on Physical Anthropology and then forget the whole topic and go on to Culture.

On this view, growing up is sometimes treated as if it were acculturation, the process of giving up one culture for another, the way a tribe of Indians takes on the culture of the whites: so the wild Babytribe gives up its mores and ideology, e.g. selfishness or magic-thinking or omnipotence, and joins the tribe of Society; it is “socialized.” More frequently, however, the matter is left vague: we start with a tabula rasa and end up “socialized&...