The more formal term for “making strange” is “stranger anxiety” or “separation anxiety”. There is a huge variety in how much and how intensely children make strange, but it is thought that they can make strange up until 4 years of age.
COPLAC Digital Humanities
The more formal term for “making strange” is “stranger anxiety” or “separation anxiety”. There is a huge variety in how much and how intensely children make strange, but it is thought that they can make strange up until 4 years of age.
I’m left to wonder: could we, perhaps, be experiencing a phenomenological de-evolution by interacting with other individuals? Where a new-born is comfortable within the first few months being around anyone, as their sense kick-in they begin to perceive things differently and “absorb” more than before. Could that exposure to the human condition, at the level experienced by a few-month-old, revert the child from a higher sense of being and capacity into a more simplistic state? Furthermore, as one grows up and is assimilated into the reality we’re birthed into, do we genuinely strip ourselves of our true nature and capability?
There have been human children raised by monkeys, wolves, jungle cats and more– perhaps we have the capacity to be anything(I’ve believed so for quite some time). As a species, we’ve seen the degradation that comes from sexual reproduction(the further the copy becomes from the original, the less it resembles the original and is able to function as the original), and we’re experiencing it in modern day life– where more folks and kids are emerging with allergies, sensitivities, and little quirks and added qualities the folks of the past never dealt with. Of course, that’s more attributable to all the crap we’ve polluted the world with than with human psychosomatic potential. Perhaps it’s all lost in translation, and a baby is simply it’s ability to comprehend it all into something more communicable than crying.