We need a bit more revolution, less normal
Science, a bit more daring methods, a lot
More daring hypotheses. Brother, can you
Paradigm? Humans are studying our babies,
Our cultures, our little monsters, but we are
Hovering, reluctant to let go. It’s not just
Neophilia motivating our sort-of creations.
Oh, there’s plenty of parallel evidence
From biology. Alison Gopnik is here to note
How children can be more exploratory
Than adolescents or adults. and Emma Flynn
Shows how kids manage innovations. And
It’s not just humans, as Lucy Aplin provides
Field evidence that the younger Great Tits
Are better at mastering new puzzle boxes.
But everyone’s tying it back to organisms,
To genetic fitness or maladaption in animals,
Whether as individuals or perhaps as groups.
Proud parents, everyone here feels like
Our offspring, cumulative culture, makes us
Special despite our minor biological distinctions.
But who dares cut the umbilical cords, untie
The apron strings? Culture adapts to us
And manipulates us, and all these research
Presentations are cultural forms and norms.
Perhaps it’s culture’s own fault, that kidult,
Reluctant to too closely examine itself. Perhaps
The parent-child analogy is too strained.
It works only insofar as the same analogy run
Back from human populations as the children
To the forest, the ocean, the mountains
As their parent functions. On Earth we were
Possible and, so far, still are. We adapt
And manipulate our world. Ok, using culture
Ok, but perhaps it also uses us. Perhaps
We are the forest, the ocean, the mountains,
Mother Humanity to all ideas, just as, in one
Of our ideas, Earth was mother to us. A bit
More revolution in the way culture studies
Itself is all I’m demanding, is all the harsh
Environment of this beast provides.
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