Science Says

Remember the kids' game, "Simon Says?"
The leader gives the followers instructions, making those instructions as tricky as possible to distract players from the leader's actual words. If players get distracted enough, they'll screw up and accidentally accept instructions that they really have no need to accept. The only determination of whether the instructions need to be followed or not is whether "Simon" says you should.

I used to wonder who this "Simon" person was, and whether he knew the difference between right and wrong. Not that it was relevant to the game; Simon is authority, and that's enough right there.

This game is excellent for teaching young people how to conform to authority. Players that keep alert to any non-Simon instructions and fail to respond to them can feel really good about themselves. Players that mess up the instructions of the Great Simon... well they get laughed at and they lose the game.

All this is just in fun, of course.

Now, the purpose of fun in the lives of us mammals is to help us get into situations that will let us program our big brains. Fun exists to help us pursue learning opportunities, which we'd probably otherwise avoid strenuously. We need a reward for moving away from our security of knowing what's going on into any kind of unknown territory - it's scary to move into the unknown.

Young children have to explore a lot of unknown territory - it's all unknown when we're first born. If we're going to learn how to be self-sufficient adults (that is, not needing our nannies to take care of us our entire lives), we've got to explore a lot of territory. As kids, we've got to do a lot of playing. That's why kids are experts at having fun.
By around age 6, we've developed an ego. I believe that the reason for the ego is to help us safely explore sexual relationships when we become new adults at puberty, but our culture builds our ego in a very different way. Our culture builds our ego to do what "authority" says we should do to stay safe.

It's not that we post-pubescent "grownups" don't know how to have fun or don't want to... but when you've got an ego that's been built all around the notion that life is hard and dangerous, you're going to focus on looking for danger almost all the time. We learn and then teach our children to shrink away from the unknown. As a culture, we tend to decide that it's better to know less than it is to experience any kind of fear. And the first thing we do to make a child learn how to be safe is punish them for unsafe behaviours by taking away their fun.

Consider this: when a government inspector has a wilderness school cut all branches off trees in the playground if the branches are less than seven feet off the ground because children might injure themselves on these tree branches... is that still a "wilderness school?" What if the children who went to this school had a calling to become forest rangers? Will they be happy, instead, looking at photos in books and playing Virtual Forest Ranger on the XBox? Will such children, never being permitted to construct a treehouse, be able to understand how to design a bridge?

When kids aren't allowed to touch turtles because they might get salmonella from the turtles, are they going to have a chance to connect with a living reptile? What if a child is born to be a veterinarian and his grandmother screams at him and sends him to his room for the afternoon when he catches a live mouse and wants to make a pet of it?

If a child isn't allowed to play in a sandbox at the park because intravenous drug users might have left needles buried in the sand, will that child be able to develop a comprehension of how a quarry operation works? If a child is never allowed to mess around outside in the puddles and figure out how to pump water, can he understand the functioning of the human circulatory system?

When I was a kid, we got up in the morning, ate some food that we got out of the cupboard or fridge by ourselves, and we went outside and played. We'd come back at noon for more food. If our mothers were out and we had the house to ourselves, we'd mix together all the cleaners and solvents from under the sink to see if we could make a bomb. Now people get babysitters to come over and watch their 11-year-old children.
I don't believe this obsession with safety is innate to adulthood. I think it's innate to our culture.

I believe that adults know just as well as children how to have fun, but that we're more concerned with not losing the game of Simon Says. There's a tradeoff.

It's the ultimate result of spending most of our childhood and the first several years of our biological adulthood locked up in incredibly-boring classrooms, given almost no time at all for exploring the unknown. Our playgrounds are made of asphalt, with no hills or hidden nooks, and a chain link fence all around to protect us from the world. The only "fun" anyone gets to have is very carefully meted out by television producers, gaming companies and, of course, product developers.

It's not done consciously. It's just what works best for selling stuff. It's the system we live in.

There's a consequence of stripping the fun out of kids' lives. The consequence is that kids no longer grow up. This is wonderful for consumption and the money that can be made from billions of incompetent consumers, but all those human beings are left in suspended development. Nature puts our development on hold.

The Simon Says game and its variations are important to the developing human being's transition to the safe life. This game feels like play, like an exploration of the unknown. In fact, it's an exercise in learning to pattern all your responses after a known, established authority ("Simon"), rather than allowing the mystery to remain open. We're conditioned to ignore the voice of Nature that calls us to explore it at our leisure. The game of Simon Says teaches its players to explore nothing except that which takes place within the safe confines of handed-down wisdom. I never did find it any fun.

As with most schoolyard games approved by our culture, Simon Says is a game that seems to teach us one thing while actually teaching us something far more important...something that most of us fail to learn:

We don't actually have to do what Simon tells us to do.

So, here we are, biological adults who flunked the real test of the Simon Says game, so busy trying to do what Simon says that we never take risks, explore the unknown, and face the magnificent mystery as Nature intended. To the extent that we have not completed our growing up, we still seek to explore the unknown. We still seek fun and an exploration of the mystery. The compulsion becomes strongest during our life crises as teenagers, in our mid-twenties, at midlife, and again as we begin old age. But, conditioned as we are, we seek again and again to have our fun in safe, approved schoolyard games. Such as the "Science Says" game.

Look at the warnings on the news, during T.V. commercials, hovering in the corners of your web browser, giving sinister but subtle warnings from your magazine page, or in a quick glance at a billboard on your morning commute. You'll notice all kinds of little invitations to play the Science Says game: germs, allergens, your high blood pressure, psychological research findings about strangers, mental illness, signs of flaws in your children...

We are continually guided toward making the safest purchasing decisions.

Our economic system protects us from doing anything dangerous like learning how the world works and taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. The entertainment, tourist, and sports industries are gigantic - truly enormous compared to, say, the "make your own clothing" and the "take care of your own health" industries.
We continue to play Science Says throughout our adult lives. In fact, the more life experience we get, and therefore the more possibility there is that we will have to entertain the notion that there is more to learn, more of a mystery to explore, the more fervently we play the game of Simon Says. And the less attention we give to our own direct experience of reality (let alone anyone else's). All anyone has to do to bring us back into the game if we should begin to wander, is point out some danger that develops in the world and say, "Science Says."

"Science says there are only enough resources in the world for 2 billion people"
"Science says that you only have ten years to turn back climate change"
"Science says that the rise of autism is due to 'refrigerator mothers'"
"Science says that increasing our consumption levels will decrease birth rates"

Science says a lot of things. Most of us keep on failing the test of the game; there is no reason at all to believe that these things are truthful or correct. Who exactly is this "Science" person? I'm a scientist, but I know it's not me, because most people don't believe the stuff I come up with. It's too positive and spiritual.

Who's the leader in the game of Science Says, anyway? Think about it.

The only way to know the truth for yourself is to explore the mystery. It's time for every one of us to start having more fun in our lives.

This scientist says go out and do something you've never done before. Something mysterious and... unsafe.