Morality Is Not Solely A Human Condition

Self-recognition
 Ju was completely oblivious the last time I performed the mirror test on him with a dab of pink lipstick on his forehead. Fail! And get this, no matter how interested your child may be in his reflection, he may gesture at it, smile and laugh at it or reach out and touch it as if he were actually interacting with his reflection, he DOES NOT UNDERSTAND that it is himself in the mirror so long as he fails the mirror test. Trust me, I was fooled by Ju too.

It is difficult to get inside the head of a toddler without scientific inquiry and experimentation. Sure, Piaget did it by observing his kids, but Piaget was a psychologist who kept meticulous records which I doubt any common parent would care to replicate before  she declares proudly to others that her kid is so and so. It is the same with Ju's self awareness. That is why I do the experiment every month or two just to be sure. Apes are the only other species that recognises their reflection. 

Empathy

It is still too early to start on the experiments on morality, specifically what is fair and what is right or wrong since Ju cannot yet speak. But at 16 months, Ju is surprisingly empathetic. Some time ago, I decided to see if Ju could feel empathy. He could, by then, tell us with gestures that he was hurt (even though these days, I think he feigns pain to get some sympathy and attention). We would naturally go to his "rescue" and blow or stroke on the "wound" or hug him. So as I played with him one day, I pretended to hurt myself and I made a whole charade of wincing and grimacing and moaning in pain. The first time, he was taken aback and stopped to stare. Then as I said, "Oww! It hurts!" (in Mandarin) a few times, he reached out his hand to stroke my face. I was really surprised but he did it again the next time. He is more skeptical when Daniel tries it with him and needs a lot more convincing. It's either Daniel is not as good an actor or Ju doesn't believe that boys can feel pain. I don't have a means to test his understanding of gender yet, so I can't rule out either explanation.

The other clear evidence that Ju can feel empathy is when we read his picture books. In two books, there is a picture of someone hurt next to an ambulance. In "Busy Town", a flap book, we open the flap on the ambulance to see a little boy inside, with his arm in a cast and a paramedic tending to him. In the second, "Mein Puzzlebuch Tatutata", Grandma is lying on a stretcher with her leg in a cast. Of course when we read the book with Ju, we would describe the pictures to him, like "Look at Granny's leg, she's hurt. She needs to go to the hospital." Here's the interesting part, Ju gets visibly concerned and starts pointing to his leg, or to his arm (if it's the boy with the injured arm) and looking distressed. Now, EVERY time he sees the pictures, even before either Dan or I says a word, he gets really upset. He would wear a distressed look and point vigorously at the injured body part, then go "unhhh, unhhhh!" and point to his corresponding body part. He would not stop until we validate his concerns. We would say, "Brother's arm is in a cast, it's alright, he's going to the hospital now. Give Brother a kiss." And Ju would kiss the picture! He is also more fascinated by these scenes and would pay more attention and time to these compared to the others.

So Ju is almost 17 months old and he doesn't yet share or cooperate, not surpringly, since he still isn't self-aware. But he can feel empathy for others' pain. He shows concern and is visibly upset by the sight of someone in a cast (I haven't got any other books with pictures of crying kids). He may be reacting to the words and concept of "pain" and "hurt" since he has experienced these himself. Empathy is clearly a developmental milestone that every child hits (save in serial killers or children with disorders like autism) but it cannot be taught, I believe it either is there or it isn't. You could nurture it, of course, and some children have more of it than others.

Monkeys Are Moral Too

They really are, and we shouldn't be surprised, since we share more than 99% of our DNA with them. To think otherwise is sheer arrogance. Whether you belong to the essentialist camp (morality is given to us by God, for those of us who lack creativity; or it is intrinsic to human nature) or the social scientific one (morality is nurtured through socialisation and education), you can't deny that morality aids survival of the species in that it facilitates cooperation and social order - two key factors for survival of the group.

Frans de Waal, renowned primatologist, shows several experiments where monkeys clearly show empathy, cooperation and even a sense of fairness. At 13:00, the most amazing experiment of all reveals that Capuchian monkeys actually reject income inequality!

Absurdly Hard Chinese Characters #1

Today's absurdly difficult Chinese word is

邋 遢

lā       ta

 邋 遢 is the adjective "sloppy". 

Let's first look at 邋 which has a whopping 19 strokes to the word. I saw so many radicals (parts) that I had to blow up the word to actually figure out how it is written. On its own, the word is an enigma, I couldn't find the etymology so I will try to break it down into its component radicals so it makes more sense than a mass of squiggles.

You would first recognise the 巛 (chuān) radical on top because you would have learnt or come across the word 巡 (xún), to patrol or tour. 巡 is made up of radicals 巛 (chuān) and of course 辶 (chuò) which means "road" or "to walk". 

Incidentally, 巛 is an archaic variant of the radical 川 (chuān) which means stream or river.

Next, you would recognise the bottom part that looks like the legs of a cockroach lined up in a row. It occurs in the word for "mouse" or "rat", 鼠 (shǔ). Notice how this word has no component radicals, I checked the etymology and the seal character looks like this:

It is the remnant of the primitive ideograph of a mouse with legs and whiskers!

You of course write the mass on the right first, then the 辶(chuò) radical last. Much like the icing that goes on at the end of making that big cake.

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Next, the word 遢 (ta) which is in the neutral tone. 遢 which itself has 14 strokes, means "careless" and "slipshod". It's pretty easy to write as it has three fairly common component radicals: 日, 羽 and 辶.

日(rì) is the word for "sun" and it does look like a sun doesn't it? The bronze and oracle characters in fact were circles with a dot or little dash in the middle.

羽 (yǔ) , a feather, goes commonly with the word "shuttlecock": 羽毛球

Finally, we've already talked about  辶 (chuò), which is written last.

So there you have it. Two absurdly hard to write Chinese words which most Singaporeans probably would never use on a normal day even though they are common enough in our standard vocabulary.