Being a Cause

Growing up all of us kids knew that we were supposed to play with our food. So when I rolled up my white bread into a little doughy ball, I kept it to myself. I don't know why I rolled bread into little balls, but I recall feeling gratified by being the sole cause of a process that transformed one thing into another: from bread to a perfect round ball. I strived for perfectly round and when I achieved it I was done.

German psychologist Karl Groos, in his 1896 book Play and Man asserts that humans find pleasure in simply being a cause. "How many of us," he writes want to scribble or whittle or do something with our hands all the time, to break a twig and chew it while we walk, to strike the snow off the walls as we pass, to kick a pebble before us, to step on all the acorns on the pavement, to drum on the windowpane, to hit the wineglasses together, to roll up little balls of bread . . ."

Being a cause is fun. Whenever I've taken young children to a beach, then invariably begin throwing pebbles into the water, delighting in the splashes they've caused. Children shout in high ceilinged rooms, they dig holes, they knock over towers of blocks . . . 

We often see these behaviors as trail-and-error science, and perhaps it is at first. The first time we form bread into a little ball, we may be driven by curiosity (or boredom, curiosity's less glamorous cousin). But when we repeat it over and over, we aren't proving our experiment. We already know that when we throw that pebble into the lake, it will splash and create ripples that spread outward in all directions. We throw those pebbles, we form those bread balls, because it brings us pleasure to be a cause. 

Evolutionary science tells us that behaviors persist because they improve chances of survival and reproduction. Deriving pleasure from being a cause serves that in some way or another. We can assume that educating ourselves is part of it. But no one forms bread balls because they are seeking to improve their evolutionary fitness. The immediate reason we do it is to have fun.

As adults we tend to channel the urge to be a cause into our work, but I don't think that's inevitable. I reckon that's more a function of the kind of society in which we live. There are still adults who shout to cause echoes or kick pebbles or form bread balls, but most of us have internalized lessons like "don't play with your food." We've bought into the so-called pragmatism that dictates that we be confident of the "effect" before we act as a cause. We don't want to be seen as "wasting time." 

And we all too often turn this self-judgement onto the children in our lives. Too many adults resent that young children do nothing but waste time unless we drive them toward a "purpose." They play with their food, they shout, they run into a flock of pigeons, they scribble on page after page after page. We stop them. We divert and detour them. We try to "scaffold" something that we think will be educational. And when we do, we rob them of the sheer pleasure of being a cause.

We are at our best, I think, when we instead join them, when we learn from them. When we also throw pebbles in the water. When we chew a blade of grass. When we form bread into balls. Just for fun.

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