This answers your fundamental question Prof !!! Being Human - no I am not saying god makes us humans , yet social skill development , developing a team mentality , empathy , care , mannerism (I know restricted) etc etc comes when we are a part of a herd :)
In Kannada we have these 2 words : Bhaya and Bhakti that is fear and faith . They make us a humble /god fearing / devoted /evolved human being ...
Alternatively , the child would wonder - they look like me and yet why do they behave differently ?? Are they pretending (I would think) or are they just refined animals (the child would think) ...
This answers your fundamental question Prof !!! Being Human - no I am not saying god makes us humans , yet social skill development , developing a team mentality , empathy , care , mannerism (I know restricted) etc etc comes when we are a part of a herd :)
In Kannada we have these 2 words : Bhaya and Bhakti that is fear and faith . They make us a humble /god fearing / devoted /evolved human being ...
Alternatively , the child would wonder - they look like me and yet why do they behave differently ?? Are they pretending (I would think) or are they just refined animals (the child would think) ...
The wilderness have biological agents that are designed in such a way that they exhibit positive human attributes.
Animals show love, kindness, caring and other beautiful qualities which a child in that environ would observe and mimic without any human tutoring.
However, this does not undermine the often unparalleled healthy and close-knit human relationships we enjoy with our human families and our beautiful culture.
Human being acquire knowledge, and information through imitations. They imitate the language, activity (behavior), way of thinking and feeling (mentality), then, evolving through learning of the environment (interactions). If they interact in wilderness, they will imitate all situations there. But, human is human, they still have instinct, and mentalistic process that distinguish them from other creations such animal, and others.
Why not start the arguments as follows:
1. Child alone, dropped off by others.
2. Child and co-habitant
3. Child and family member
4. Child and mother
5. Child and father ...
7. Child and siblings ...
12. Child and tribe member ...
...
Dennis
Dennis Mazur
When we consider a story of the wild boy of Aveyron
https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/The-Wild-Boy-of-Aveyron
it is evident, how complicated was his return from the wilderness to civilization. After the initial aggression, the long process of acquiring the communication skills brought him closer to the society. The human characteristics surfaced during this process. The story of a painful journey from the darkness of isolation and silence is shown masterfully by F. Truffaut in the film: The Wild Child.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Child
The conclusion from the story of Victor from Aveyron is that, a child, growing in the wilderness, possesses all human characteristics but zero of the communication skills.
Dear Kirk,
Dear All,
Here you can see the results of a well-known experiment in the 19th century in Germany relative to your question
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser
By the way, the Tarzan story asked a similar question.
Many animals are social creatures so growing up amongst wolves etc (the old legends) would encourage social development, but unless language is picked up in the early years, it cannot be picked up at all. Language is really our most potent way of developing humanness.
The characteristics of human being would not change but could be moderated with that of the surroundings. The wilderness could teach survival skills and dexterity in the use of raw (stone age kind) tools.
Dear Kirk,
It seems that Kipling’s famous Jungle book stories must be society critique or desire for purity of nature.
If a child grows in the desert and has no contact with any human being, much less with human society; its human potential will have little or no development, but the germ exists in its genome, product of the evolution and humanization of its species.
What you need is to learn to live among humans, learn their culture, language and traditions. This interaction will be the trigger of his "sleeping humanity" and "little socialization".
Therefore, I consider that he will learn to be human and to socialize with his peers; although it probably has a delay in relation to its peers of the same age, and it may never reach the level of human development of adults who lived in more favorable conditions.
In a case of growing up without any contact with human beings, the child and later grown up human being will lose many aspects of nurturing/upbringing/socializing. However, I agree with colleague Hose, the lonely human being will still possess its unique genome code with the most powerful organ among all species - unique, one and only human brain.
The child grows according to the environment in which he lives and affects heredity. Some psychologists such as Watson also point out that the environment is a major storm on behavior and its famous saying give me 10 children, making them a doctor, a lawyer and a lawyer.
As far as possible, all reports about such cases (e.g. written by Indian missionaries who found abandoned children), the already mentioned "wild boy of Aveyron" or the German case of "Kaspar Hauser" were repeatedly reopened by scientists, especially physicians. Result: Obviously the entire childhood up to 6 years is an age range whose formative field of experience - if it is missing - cannot be made up later by later learning and cultural influence. Life expectancy is also much lower.
Hi Kirk
I wonder to find only few reads and answer on this question, think it points out very important aspects of human life at all. Thank you for asking!
First, we have to rethink the question,maybe we need to ask more detailed:
Do we think that a cultural identity is already predefined from the moment of our procreation or do we presume that a human subject is, in general an adaptive machine, where we can basically program every thinkable emotion, ability or context.
Do we talk about a subject, that was born into a cultural context, like the examples of Kaspar Hauser or Tarzan. They where children of a developed society that where cut off or taken from their roots and carried back after a delay.
While Tarzan is a nice literaric fiction, with possible real equal parallels, Kaspar Hauser was a real person, Maybe we had to add Victor de Aveyron, "the Wolfboy", he seems to necessarily fit too this list.
Interestingly, all three cases had a great influence to numerous people: writers, scientist, educators etc. and initiated many interesting processes.
A problem is that they where never completely proved; until today we have a big discussion about their authenticity.
We are lacking a "blank" too, something like a Neanderthal Baby, born before human culture already developed, or a baby from a very isolated culture, that suffered the same .
But even in case we had such possibility of comparison, we might only realize, that human babies always need a human context to grow with all their possibilities and we can never be sure that children like Victor de Aveyron only survived because he could, maybe adapt animal behaviour because of f.E. an authism (Kaspar Hausers case looks similar here)... and maybe it is impossible to really find this "blank case": a child, grown up in perfect isolation.
Nevertheless: these acheatypical cases have been and are a great inspiration, motivation and fascination for many people of different times.
Perhaps they show us a real magic and wonder, that everyone can observe, always:
Look to the huge learning and progressing that every baby can take from the moment of precreation up to a certain age. Realize how easily chidren can adapt to even the most complex languages and how less we understand from these miracles of creation if we only put this in a logic context.
...and perhaps we find arguments for both:
a precreated human soul & consciousness and a magical human ability for adaption
The more people we know the more human we become.
In wealthy and technologically advanced societies we are exposed to many ideas and many different people.
If one grew up in the wilderness they survived by mastering the skills needed in the wild. They would be out of place and a mere circus attraction in the city.
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