Class Consciousness, Instance Unconsciousness

In a reply to my last post, Malene raised the example of bilingual children (or children growing up in bilingual environments).

This is very interesting. The child is put under extra stress, but this is not a bad thing. He only 'suffers' when the adults frown at his apparent lack of progress.

Parents are encouraged to look for evidence of learning, so if a child appears to be a little 'slow', they might imagine there is something wrong, when in fact it may just be because the child has more 'work' to do - filtering out the distortions, whether they be sarcastic language, violent family members, or something else. In such a case, the child should be applauded and encouraged just for hanging in there, and integrating what can be had.

In the case of the bilingual family, each language acts as a kind of 'noise', distorting the signal of the other, but not entirely, because both languages will ultimately map the same phenomena, and as Malene points out, this early 'work' carried out by the child has great benefits later in life. He knows that signifier and signified are distinct. A bilingual child is an intuitive semiotician almost from the moment he can name any object in two languages.

Contrary to adult intuition, the 'slow' child may actually end up better equipped for life. There are various examples of 'geniuses' who were late-developers. Maybe these individuals were slow because they were observing and understanding things more completely than we did. Maybe the 'normal' children learned one lesson too early: Swallow your curiosity and keep up with the curriculum. These 'normal' children are in danger of developing a dread of all that is different and unknown.

Perhaps the worst thing is to reach adulthood and to live in fear of the margins - what is often called 'narrow mindedness'. Most of us have epistemological taboos of one sort or another, but there are apparently some people who are so anxious about straying into the margins that 'normalisation' is seen as good medicine, not just for themselves, but also for their fellow humans. This is the root of totalitarianism and indoctrination.

Here in central Copehangen we are witnessing the gradual erosion of the 'free town' Christiania, a sprawling, beautiful, imperfect jewel, squatted since the early 1970s on unused military land, where misfits of all kinds can meet an important fundamental need: A sense of belonging.

The government plan to close it down, a process they call 'normalisering' (always said with a straight face). The hidden agenda is to erect luxury flats for the bourgeoisie on what must be a very lucrative piece of land, but it is being sold as a way of clamping down on the drug trade, and various other disreputable activities.

Little connection is made between the gang wars which have flared up all over town since the police started raiding the Christiania hash stalls, and there are no suggestions offered for what may be done afterwards to cater (for example) for the Greenlanders, the childrens' theatre, the stables, the shrines, the organic stores, the 'gay house' (where young homosexuals can escape persecution from family members), the womens' metal workshop... each of which would have difficulty surviving in 'normal' society, but have their own special place to unfold in this protective margin called Christiania. To unfold, and to give something back to society as a whole, instead of being a forgotten and neglected underclass.

If it were more widely known (widely taught!) that margins like these are the source of all innovation, all creativity and all progress, not just in human culture, but in evolution, design and any other viable system, then we may be rescued from that brand of idiocy that seeks normality at all costs. There is nothing new without randomness (basic information theory), and randomness does not thrive under 'normal' conditions.

So we have a good argument for tolerating 'slow learners' and deviants. Not just tolerating them, but perhaps even encouraging others - and ourselves - to learn more slowly, and to deviate from the syllabus. So that we can explore the richness of the margins along the way.