Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood, Essay Example

Personality development has long been a subject of clinical study by both social scientists and medical doctors. To put their studies in perspective, we might say that the more they learn, the less the rest of us know. Just as one example, no one still really understands what dreams are and how they are important. Yet a vivid and unforgettable dream must become an essential part of each developing individual who has one (Piaget, 1951). And the culture you live in will surely affect what kinds of dreams you have — members of primitive tribes in the Amazon rain forest will have none of the airport dreams I have had in the course of my travels to fifteen countries on four continents. I will conduct this self-analysis by briefly summarizing my own development using some standard categories: genetic/biological influences; parental behavior and environment; and the interaction of environment and temperament.

I myself am of Jordanian/Palestinian background and grew up speaking Arabic and English (with some conversational Spanish and basic French as well) in an upper middle-class environment with two younger brothers. My father owns his own successful business. My mother mainly raised us but had a greater influence on us than my father because she stressed the value of education above that of commercial success alone. I have a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue and have worked for or completed advanced studies with (among others) Ernst & Young, Porsche, and PERA (formerly known as Production Engineering Research Association).

Genetic and biological influences remains volatile unknowns in everything they touch. Even the word “influences” can arguably be disputed. Genes are binary in nature: they are either switched on or off. But more macro-biological effects are analog: they can change like the turning of a radio dial. Beyond clear abnormalities such as Down Syndrome, we really do not know whether genes are more important than environment. It is likely that the interactions between those two warring camps is a fluid, ever-changing one beyond exact measuring, but those interactions do seem to have definite boundaries. People can only be trained or pushed to change so far, beyond which a breakdown occurs or (more likely) they just begin seriously gaming the system they find themselves in, to physically preserve themselves as individuals. Examples would be the changes people undergo to survive in a concentration camp: some do anything to survive while others prefer to die.

Dealing with conflict is clearly a part of what Middle-Eastern cultural tradition is about, and that conflict exists outside of any definite genetic factors. For example, a 2001 study shows that “Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences.”  (Arnaiz-Villena, et al., 2001). Regarding such differences, the only separate trait of mine that I can think of that might be genetic in my own family background is that of having a temper that can sometimes veer out of control. But it is hard to say, and it is generally known that academics disagree on the role of genetics and environment on childhood development. My father has a hot temper and it either rubbed off on me, or I have the same active temper-genes that he does. But it may also be that the fields of commerce and engineering demand a sustained attention to micro-detail that tends to make people in those fields hostile to larger forces beyond their control.

As so often happens in families, my mother acted as a buffer to and interpreter of my father’s occasional rages. She would then punish me when I would vent my own real or imagined anger at my two younger brothers. Today I often remember my mother’s protection of them and me when I am in danger myself of exploding at someone or something, and wonder if the anger and the protection from it was just genetics or cultural or some combination. Either way, having a temper is a common trait and found equally among men and women, at least in cultures that allow women to express themselves. Here we can see that those with a tendency to lose their tempers will do better — or worse — in some cultures than in others.

The kind of families people grow up in often if not always depends on the wider culture that families find themselves in, whether those cultures are normal or under extreme stress (Turnbull, 1987). In other words, families don’t shape societies, societies shape families. An example of this is that in Jordan, multiple marriages are legal even while they are not recognized in the West. So it had a huge impact on me and my brothers that my parents had a Western-style unarranged marriage. It was also a happy marriage too, although there were some rough spots when my father had to do a lot of business traveling. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I’ve always wondered if that was really true across cultures (I don’t think it is), but my own family culture and those of my closest friends were basically Western in outlook and mostly happy in the same way. We spoke English and traveled in the West and, in doing business with Westerners, adapted to many Western expectations in how business should be done.  Or maybe I should say that success in business — particularly international business — demands that you follow a certain set of standards like honest competition, a respect for contracts, a willingness to collaborate easily with strangers and travelers alien to your own culture (Jacobs, 1992). This is an international culture all of its own.

Being both Western and Middle-Eastern in outlook, I sometimes have a problem with traditional Jordanian standards of dress. They are very conservative. This always strikes me as old fashioned and constricting when I return to my home from traveling. But after awhile I get used to it again, and am back to wearing trousers in public, even if I would be wearing wear shorts in Spain. My father also adapts easily to wherever he is. He is young enough to remember when places like Cairo were much more Western than they are now. He once showed me pictures of Egyptian women publicly wearing miniskirts and beehive hairdo’s back in the 1950s and 1960s. You don’t see that kind of Western-style personal expression today.

Many sectors of Middle Eastern culture have become much more conservative than they used to be, and in many cases it is the younger people who are leading the charge, and in doing so resemble their grandparents. Their own parents were much more liberal and in many cases still are. I see this sort of thing in the differences between my two younger brothers and me. They are already much more conservative than I am. It may be that they are doing that as a reaction against me and not our parents, as I tended to boss them around a good deal and play all kinds of tricks on them when we were growing up. One or two years makes a big difference.

I think that, regardless of the culture you live in, having more or less normal genes and overall biology like I do has the effect of just letting things happen to you. I remember once I overheard a mother talk to her traveling-companion about her young son who apparently had some kind of development disorder. They talked on and on about the boy, who clearly got a lot of attention in his life. But he was not present. Instead, sitting next to her mother was her perfectly normal daughter, also just a child. She sat there unattended, listening vaguely but mostly just off in her own thoughts. Life was going to happen to her in ways far different from her protected brother. He got the attention, but she got the freedom, the freedom to simply be ignored, or, if you prefer, to be left alone. I think that is a big difference between the West and the Middle East: in the West it is easier to be left alone if that is what you want.

Different people react in different ways to this. Some prosper, some do not. I’m fine with it. In general I am fine with whatever culture I find myself in. It’s not Jordanian. It’s just me.

References

Arnaiz-Villena, A., Elaiwa, N., Silvera, C., Rostom, A., Moscoso, J., Gómez-Casado, E., . . . Martínez-Laso, J. (2001). The Origin of Palestinians and Their Genetic Relatedness With Other Mediterranean Populations. Human Immunology, 889-900.

Jacobs, J. (1992). Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics. New York: Vintage Books.

Piaget, J. (1951). Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood. Abingdon: Routledge.

Turnbull, C. M. (1987). The Mountain People. New York: Touchstone.