Over the last several days, Helena Iara has been making lots of new sounds. Some of them sound like they'll someday become words, while others are more raw, sounds of desire and anger and hurt. Yesterday, as we had lunch, she began to make one of those angry sounds, and Rita and I began to lecture her on table manners... until we realized that she was imitating a lion. It was the same sound she used when she plays with her two stuffed lions, or with her feline finger puppets. Grrrrr....

This way of seeing the world might seem strange to a European adult, but to children, it makes sense. What is play, make-believe, or just acting out a scene between Barbie and a Teddy Bear? It is an attempt to step into the shoes of that toy, to see the world as that animal or doll might see it. They use their toys as a shaman uses Ayahuasca: to get behind the eyes of the other. Perhaps more significantly, I think that babies play for similar ethical and epistemological reasons: they want to see other perspectives on the world, and they want to get closer to the other.

And in fact, what is this blog, but an intellectualized version of the same kind of game? Helena can't tell me what she really feels or things, no more than a jaguar can explain its perspective to the shaman. So, like a child with a toy, I try to project myself into Helena's perspective, imagine what she is thinking, learning, seeing. I'm wrong most of the time, of course, but the effort changes the way that I see the world. And that's both ethics and epistemology.
How wonderful!
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