that altruism is risky. a child must grow in a nourished environment in order to grow up to be someone who trusts and can be trusted. someone who cares about the "clan" as a whole.
the flip side of that is that altruism in the face of privation is stupid. it is a real threat to survival. it leads me to see some behaviors in children as testing the level of physical and emotional nurturance that is available to them. stealing is the most obvious to me. a child in the midst of a nurturing clan who steal will be seen, and a lesson will be taught. a child in a clan that is struggling will likely not be noticed. for that child the "decision" to hone the skill of stealing makes sense.
so, i see this as the mechanism by which poverty leads to crime. and i see it not as a failure of poor people to live up to some norm, but as people who took the route most likely to lead to their survival. and also as a failure of us all to make sure that all the children in our clan are nourished.
the book talks about, and i believe the science backs up, that the developing brain of a child that is soaked in it's mother's adrenalin, meaning that she is constantly stressed, will divert resources from the areas of higher mental functions to those of the more "brutal" functions. this does not have to be caused by poverty and malnutrition. it can as easily be cause by a mother dealing with difficult life circumstances of any kind- illness in the family, assholes and dysfunction in the family. but certainly lack of adequate nutrition is the biggest of stressors.
a lot of people think i am a little nuts when i say it, but if the government provided that any pregnant woman could have a steak dinner any time she needed it, no questions asked, no forms to fill out, we would raise a generation that would change the world.
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