The Good, the Bad and the Developmental Cognitive Psychology theories...

[Tabouli]

Pippin:
> MLK's dream was that his children would live in a world where 
they would be judged on the content of their characters. How we 
were supposed to go about determining the content of anyone's 
character, absent experience, MLK did not explain. As Tabouli 
points out, cultural clues don't work in the case of someone from 
a different culture.<

Hmm.  Now, I've ranted about individualism here and on the main list, but this has a whiff of the other Anglophone creed: universalism (which links in closely to the Anglophone brand of universalism).  The ideal of universal standards of behaviour (laws, rules, principles), which should be applied universally and equally to each individual, regardless of who they are, or their relationship to you.  (Supposedly derived from the Protestant rejection of the priest as mediator between the congregation and God: instead it's up to each individual to uphold God's law).

I'm wary of the eagle eyes of the list lawyers here, but isn't this a cornerstone of the legal system in English-speaking countries?

Hence the issue of "corruption" in Asia, especially nepotism.  In various Asian countries, it's taken for granted that you should have one set of rules for your own (family, notably, with friends on a second tier) and a different set for outsiders.  It's called family loyalty, and is considered laudable.  Of *course* you should help find your wayward nephew a job instead of giving it to a more qualified stranger... the nephew is Family!  The classic lines comparing the two philosophies go something like this.  "Those Westerners are so corrupt, self-centred and immoral - they won't even bend the rules to help out their friends and family!" versus "Those Asians are so corrupt, nepotistic and immoral - they bend all the rules to help their friends and family!"

Pippin:
> Would we label some 
character traits as "bad" when the truth is more complex?   
>
>Rowling obviously intends her adult readers to ask such 
questions, and they are absolutely beyond the scope of the child 
reader, who can't quite understand why Quirrel was the villain 
and not Snape.<

I wonder.  IIRC, according to the various cognitive development theories I studied (that ol' thesis o' mine), relativist thinking tends to have a lower age threshold of about 13, and most people develop the capacity for it in their mid-teens.  The theory is that all children are absolutists before then, can't process contradictory information, and need certainty, with clearly defined right and wrong, good and evil, and so on.  The ability to weigh up conflicting evidence and come to a probable, but not absolute decision (dialecticism) is meant to have a lower threshold of 15 or so, with most people developing this capacity in their late teens.  On this basis, yes, presumably understanding the complex portrayal of good and evil in HP would be beyond pre-adolescent readers.

All the same, I have lingering doubts, based mostly (I admit) on my own experiences of growing up bicultural.  Certainly at 6 or 7, the conflicting cultural messages from my parents were confusing and overwhelming.  Mum said one thing was right, Dad said she was wrong, and something different was right.  I couldn't cope with this.  I clearly remember deciding that only one of them could be right, and therefore I was going with Dad's version (closer to what the society I lived in said), and Mum had to be wrong.  All the same, even then I had inklings of how different things looked depending on your perspective.  They would use the same evidence from exactly the same incident and come to diametrically opposed judgments and conclusions.  Incomprehensible to my 7yo mind, but by the age of 12 or 13 I was already writing stories which presented the same situation twice from different people's points of view.

This experience ultimately led to my thesis, which looked at how "epistemological style" (essentially, level of black and whiteness of world view) is related to prejudice.  Reading all the developmental theories, I wondered whether I was a special case, having been pushed into relativism younger than I was cognitively able to deal with it.  All the same, I do think I was exhibiting recognisably "relativist" thought by 10 or 11, which suggests that it *is* possible for preadolescent children to see shades of grey, (or that black and white can be different depending on the person looking at them), given the sort of environment which fosters it.  Terry Pratchett's "Truckers" series is aimed at 8-12 year olds, I think, and it's definitely playing the cultural relativist card.  Assuming that his target audience is understanding his message, you'd have to say children of that age have *some* capacity for thinking outside the simple Good/Evil square (I've long mused that "Truckers" would be a great text to introduce cross-cultural ideas to children in late primary school).

Maybe the reason why children can't understand why Snape wasn't the villain is less because they aren't capable of understanding complex portrayals of Good and Evil, but because almost all of the books and TV and films and education aimed at them are indoctrinating them in simplistic notions of Good and Evil, where the hook-nosed mean guy with greasy black hair is by definition the villain...

Tabouli.


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