Playground of mentality

By this we’re back at the age of distinguish between the Man and the Ape mentioned earlier. The Ape realized it’s limitation compared to the Child and slipped aside. This would have happened in a case were two Childs or two Apes were in the experiment also. However, during the transition from childhood to adulthood those would have learned that even if the opponent is better in some things oneself is better on other things and thereby the skills of empathy will begin to evolve. The skill of empathy needs to be fed with experiences of the contrasts between winning and loosing to be able to evolve. A winner has a lot easier to evolve empathy skills as he/she feel sad for the looser, but the looser on the other hand will have great problems to evolve empathy as his/hers mind will struggle with self-confidential disturbances.

This would make us understand that “Coming of Age” is not applicable in a cross cultural situation. Especially not if the cultures aren’t able to communicate with each others - like in the Child and Ape scenario mentioned earlier. If we had been able to communicate with animals, things most certainly would have been a lot different in our world today. However, Man is unique in this sense and by using language the child can learn from elders about the complexity of the world, which is vital to distinguish oneself from the primitive winning and loosing playground to be able to extend his/her abilities in playground of mentality.