The holiday season is here, with its crushing depression, frigid weather, and overspending. To celebrate these wonderful gifts, I decided to make sugar cookies from scratch with my daughters. We had quite a bit of fun doing this, and the cookies came out great. They were much better than I'm used to, because a lot of people buy the corporate cookie dough and make about 50 dozen cookies in various shapes, possibly thinking that the shape is the point rather than a melt-in-your-mouth delicious sugar cookie. What was interesting to me was how the girls worked together based on their sense of fairness in relation to other human beings.
I wanted to let the girls experiment with the process as much as possible so they might figure out why a certain thing is done at a certain time, so I took on a supervisory role. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you need to get done quickly, especially since you have to wait two hours for the dough to chill. At some point we decided to make three batches of dough. With enough equipment and flat surface space, I might have tried three parallel processes, but because our operation was small, I had to go with serial batch production. From a process perspective, we were back in the pre-industrial revolution artisan workshop era. This yielded some delicious cookies and some amateur social science.
So with three girls and one batch of dough, the problem is one of full participation. Each girl wanted to be a part of every step in the process. The girls solved this quickly in their own way. Three cups of flour meant that each girl did a scoop, one cup of sugar meant three one-third cups of sugar, 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder was three 1/4 teaspoons, and so on until eventually all of the dry and wet ingredients were in a mixing bowl. Since we were doing three batches, each girl had a turn at mixing. We did this part of the process three times with flavor variation and eventually we had three good looking blobs of sugar cookie dough.
The first blob of dough was eventually ready for rolling and cutting which was when I made my first connection with a general observation: the girls were motivated by their own selfish instincts. Their sense of fairness was directed inward and it informed them of how to start the process. Each girl selfishly wanted full participation, and in took the form of dividing a cup into thirds, or three cups into one each, then it became dividing the 12 cutters to four each and then it became a fair number of cuts per child and so on. The fairness itself became draconian and oppressive and inherently inefficient. "You mixed last time, it's my turn" or "Cut here, I only did three, there's no room" or "Don't stand there, I can't see" nearly continuously. When one child was mixing, the other two were critics. "Push down harder" or "You missed that flour" or "Don't hold it that way, asshole!" The joy of making some sweet cookies was lost in a cacophony of bitterness and resentment for some moments. I tried to help them keep it together and we managed to eventually roll out, cut, decorate, bake, and redecorate some really good cookies. They did get better at it and a little more laid back after the first batch. I began to wonder what it would be like if their motivations for fairness were directed outward rather than inward. This led to some broader thinking for me, something surprising that came from a relatively simple holiday ritual.
When we seek justice only for ourselves or those who are extremely close to us, everyone who isn't helping us is a potential enemy. We may get what we ultimately want, but are the benefits worth the sourness and spitefulness required to meet our selfish needs? What makes a person stop worrying about his or her own needs and start worrying whether the other person is being treated fairly? It was obvious that children don't easily figure this out on their own, they are taught this. There is a spectrum of behavior between selfishness and altruism. Most of us fall in the middle somewhere. The girls found fairness by being selfish and parts of the process were miserable. If I wasn't there to act as arbitrator, one child or another may have dominated the proceedings, selfishly hoarding the process and the cookies. They rejected the joy of human interaction at first but the cookies came out the same from a quality perspective.
There is a similar situation in society at large and it seems to define our social strata. There are those who can't get enough and there is seemingly no arbitrator that will get them to stop grabbing everything in sight. There are those who get enough but feel bad for those who aren't treated fairly and resent those who take more than their share. There are those who get enough and don't feel bad for those who aren't treated fairly and admire those who grab everything in sight. Lastly, there are those who don't get enough and don't have a voice so it doesn't matter how they feel or who they resent or admire. It doesn't have to be this way, even though it always has been. When someone mentions social justice, this is what they mean, justice directed outward instead of inward.
How do we learn to be who we are? Why are some of us able to let go of our sense of selfish justice and embrace seeking justice for others? Are all human beings deserving of love, happiness, and adequate provisions? Merry Christmas.
I wanted to let the girls experiment with the process as much as possible so they might figure out why a certain thing is done at a certain time, so I took on a supervisory role. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you need to get done quickly, especially since you have to wait two hours for the dough to chill. At some point we decided to make three batches of dough. With enough equipment and flat surface space, I might have tried three parallel processes, but because our operation was small, I had to go with serial batch production. From a process perspective, we were back in the pre-industrial revolution artisan workshop era. This yielded some delicious cookies and some amateur social science.
So with three girls and one batch of dough, the problem is one of full participation. Each girl wanted to be a part of every step in the process. The girls solved this quickly in their own way. Three cups of flour meant that each girl did a scoop, one cup of sugar meant three one-third cups of sugar, 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder was three 1/4 teaspoons, and so on until eventually all of the dry and wet ingredients were in a mixing bowl. Since we were doing three batches, each girl had a turn at mixing. We did this part of the process three times with flavor variation and eventually we had three good looking blobs of sugar cookie dough.
The first blob of dough was eventually ready for rolling and cutting which was when I made my first connection with a general observation: the girls were motivated by their own selfish instincts. Their sense of fairness was directed inward and it informed them of how to start the process. Each girl selfishly wanted full participation, and in took the form of dividing a cup into thirds, or three cups into one each, then it became dividing the 12 cutters to four each and then it became a fair number of cuts per child and so on. The fairness itself became draconian and oppressive and inherently inefficient. "You mixed last time, it's my turn" or "Cut here, I only did three, there's no room" or "Don't stand there, I can't see" nearly continuously. When one child was mixing, the other two were critics. "Push down harder" or "You missed that flour" or "Don't hold it that way, asshole!" The joy of making some sweet cookies was lost in a cacophony of bitterness and resentment for some moments. I tried to help them keep it together and we managed to eventually roll out, cut, decorate, bake, and redecorate some really good cookies. They did get better at it and a little more laid back after the first batch. I began to wonder what it would be like if their motivations for fairness were directed outward rather than inward. This led to some broader thinking for me, something surprising that came from a relatively simple holiday ritual.
When we seek justice only for ourselves or those who are extremely close to us, everyone who isn't helping us is a potential enemy. We may get what we ultimately want, but are the benefits worth the sourness and spitefulness required to meet our selfish needs? What makes a person stop worrying about his or her own needs and start worrying whether the other person is being treated fairly? It was obvious that children don't easily figure this out on their own, they are taught this. There is a spectrum of behavior between selfishness and altruism. Most of us fall in the middle somewhere. The girls found fairness by being selfish and parts of the process were miserable. If I wasn't there to act as arbitrator, one child or another may have dominated the proceedings, selfishly hoarding the process and the cookies. They rejected the joy of human interaction at first but the cookies came out the same from a quality perspective.
There is a similar situation in society at large and it seems to define our social strata. There are those who can't get enough and there is seemingly no arbitrator that will get them to stop grabbing everything in sight. There are those who get enough but feel bad for those who aren't treated fairly and resent those who take more than their share. There are those who get enough and don't feel bad for those who aren't treated fairly and admire those who grab everything in sight. Lastly, there are those who don't get enough and don't have a voice so it doesn't matter how they feel or who they resent or admire. It doesn't have to be this way, even though it always has been. When someone mentions social justice, this is what they mean, justice directed outward instead of inward.
How do we learn to be who we are? Why are some of us able to let go of our sense of selfish justice and embrace seeking justice for others? Are all human beings deserving of love, happiness, and adequate provisions? Merry Christmas.
