People-watching is a common behavior in airports and bus terminals. Variations in human shapes capture our attention for various reasons, but primarily because of our need to compare as a mechanism of self esteem. If we are curious about the variations in form among members of our own species, then our curiosity about other life-forms that differ in shape, size, and habit seems unavoidable. That interest in form and function of objects that are unfamiliar reveals itself in a walk upon a beach with shells and in a store with shelves of toys.
Who among us has walked on a beach with shells and not stopped to pick one up? Our curiosity extends beyond just looking as we do in plane and bus terminals. On the beach we touch, pick up, and hold for examination. (Caution: Do not do this in a terminal regardless of your curiosity about the strange and unfamiliar shapes of humans) Mollusks are especially interesting because they offer a seemingly indefinite variety of shapes, colors, and sizes in tens of thousands of living species that produce hard parts mostly made of calcium carbonate minerals.
Shell variety is fascinating. Don’t have the time or wherewithal to travel to a beach to collect? See photos of shells online as posted by The Natural History Museum Rotterdam. Be warned: I think the museum has more than 100,000 of them to see. That’s a rabbit hole of time consumption. I know because I’ve looked through many genera and species in an effort to identify shells for a collection I put together for a friend’s high-end resort. *
Although I am not a conchologist, I did make an A in a graduate course on mollusk zoogeography that piqued my interest in their worldwide distribution and habitats, and I learned a little more about them in studying and eventually teaching invertebrate paleontology and in collecting fossil invertebrates on many field trips with my college students. But even after having garnered a modicum of expertise, I still find myself as curious on a beach as a little kid who picks up a shell and says, “Look, Mommy.”
Thus, I deem my own and many others’ curiosity about shells to be nearly universal, especially for those who don’t live near a beach. See a shell? Pick up a shell. Someone is doing that as you read this, and another person is in a shell collector’s shop buying one as a souvenir or as a personal ornament like earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Remember that wampum, essentially shells, served as currency in pre-Colonial and Colonial America, and wampum had other uses significant in the cultures of Native American tribes. Shell collecting? It’s not just a kid’s thing or a hobby gone wild among conchologists; it’s a people thing, even, back centuries ago, an economic thing. Go to Sanibel Island in Florida, where shells are so abundant that shoes are preferable to bare feet on the beaches, if you need proof. You’ll find shell-collecting a primary draw for Sanibel’s tourists.
All Marginally Interesting, but What’s the Point of the Preceding?
For most people, the shells are pleasant distractions and aesthetically pleasing. The iridescent insides of abalone shells reflect light like car oil on a puddle provide an example. What captures the eye captures the brain as both shapes and colors stimulate the production of dopamine. We’ve been naturally engineered to derive pleasure from seeing.
But in this Age of Social Engineering Gone Wild, leave it to the socialists to force us into an unnatural world in which seeing isn't personal, it's communal and directed by government authorities. "Look here, and not there. See this, and not that." And there’s no better place to start than with redirecting the curiosity of children.
Toy Sales
I suppose that each of us could be accused of social engineering to some extent. We choose our friends, for example, our clubs and churches, and new neighborhoods because we believe we can “fit in,” possibly benefit from, and contribute to the micro-society, in some way bending each a little to our will. And, of course, I need to include families: We socially engineer our offspring, more or less since rebellion in ensuing generations is a constant. Social participation of all kinds is a means of engineering for all but the shyest of wallflowers. Once embedded in the group, each contributes to the makeup either through leadership or compliance. But our lives also have a natural underlayment that is the product of evolution, and with color vision and the ability to distinguish shapes and functions, we have a difficult time suppressing our curiosity and desires just because the government says we should.
Say what? Where is this going?
It's going to the recent law in California that requires big box stores to have gender-neutral toy aisles.
Social Engineers Aren’t the Scientists They Believe They Are
In this Age of Social Engineering, Left-leaning politicians seek sameness through differentiation. And nowhere is this more evident than in California, where a new law requires big box companies to add a new aisle to toy sections, an aisle devoted exclusively to “gender-neutral” toys.
Are you wondering what I’m wondering? Does a ball fit into the Venn diagram of toys in both separate and overlapping sections? What about Legos? Chemistry sets? Models? Paints? Toy ambulances? Toy computers and sound equipment like microphones and baby pianos? Wonder Woman and Superman statues? Board games?
Anecdote: I remember carrying my first granddaughter into a large grocery store/pharmacy and seeing her eyes open widely when she saw all the colorful boxes. The shapes and colors were a feast for her young brain. Think computer games, modern video slot machines, and art museums: Our brains are attracted to and feast on visual experiences. That happens to children in toy stores, where not just the products, but also the toy boxes attract attention.
Question: And who in the history of department stores' attempts to make money from toy sales has said to a customer, “No, you can’t have that baseball glove because you’re a girl”? Or "No, this aisle is just for gender-neutral people."
Who among us has walked in a department store and not picked up a toy? What child has not been attracted to a toy in a store?
Do Stores also Have to Carry Age-Neutral Toys?
Believe it or not, some adults buy toys for themselves. I have, for example, a bobble Einstein sitting on the windowsill beside my computer at this very moment. It’s solar powered, so it bobbles only in the daytime. His head and body are fixed, but his hand with a raised index finger keeps pointing to his head as if to say, “Think.” I bought two of the little statues, one for me and another for a granddaughter who is majoring in astrophysics. Is my bobble Einstein a gender-neutral toy? Is it age-specific? Would my great granddaughter not be attracted to the moving hand repeatedly pointing to the disheveled head even in the absence of knowledge about physics or Einstein? Would that toddler not be intrigued by the moving hand?
It Doesn’t Take a Toy Scientist…
If I ever run into Democratic California Assemblymember (I didn’t know the term assemblymember until I read the article) Evan Low or Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, I’m going to ask about the new law. CNN reports that Evan Low introduced a bill that requires department stores with 500+ employees to have separate aisles with gender-neutral toys (Cheri Mossburg, CNN). Low was inspired by an 8-year-old girl who asked, “Why should a store tell me what a girl’s shirt or toy is?”
What is a gender-neutral toy? I’m at a loss. Children play with whatever attracts their attention and interest at the moment. And then they abandon one kind of toy for another, as attics and closets and storage rooms in homes attest with all those piled up and forgotten toys.
Toys, like shells, attract because of their form and function, because or their cultural association, and even because of their potential worth, call it toy wampum. Collectors trade them, make money from old toys and new.
What prevents any parent with sufficient means from buying whatever toy interests a child? The department store? Certainly not. The goal of a department store is to sell for profit. The money is gender-neutral. More than a few commentators have pointed to the new law as an example of government overreach burdening commerce and free speech.
Imagine a Trip to the Beach
Imagine taking kids to a beach and pointing to the shells with the admonition that you can’t have that one. It’s not gender-specific or gender-neutral. Silly stuff, right? (I suppose one might note the hermaphroditism of gastropods) But isn’t silly stuff the norm for most social engineering in the twenty-first century. Pronouns? And now toys? (Not to mention electric vehicles and lawn mowers, gas stoves, and even house plants, all-Black sororities, sororities with trans women, all, and more, falling in the grand plan for social engineering and all with the purpose of re-engineering what previous generations engineered)
Should California’s department stores move around toys as a conman moves around shells? Which one is female? Which, male? Which, neither? Come on, kid, make a choice.
Did Newsom play with toy wrestlers or super heroes when he was a child? Would he consider those "dolls" inappropriate for boys? Evan Low and Gavin Newsom need to go back to their childhood homes and look in the attic. How many different toys over their childhood years attracted their attention like shells on a beach, toys that they played with for a time and then abandoned for other toys? Those toys in the attic are like those many shells collected during vacations to the beach.
People take toys of all kinds home, put them on shelves, move them around for a couple of years till dust accumulates, and then throw them out or store them in some box to be forgotten. And during all that collecting, displaying, and storing, no one asks, “Is this a gender-neutral thing?”
*Plug: You can see the collection at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania.
Who among us has walked on a beach with shells and not stopped to pick one up? Our curiosity extends beyond just looking as we do in plane and bus terminals. On the beach we touch, pick up, and hold for examination. (Caution: Do not do this in a terminal regardless of your curiosity about the strange and unfamiliar shapes of humans) Mollusks are especially interesting because they offer a seemingly indefinite variety of shapes, colors, and sizes in tens of thousands of living species that produce hard parts mostly made of calcium carbonate minerals.
Shell variety is fascinating. Don’t have the time or wherewithal to travel to a beach to collect? See photos of shells online as posted by The Natural History Museum Rotterdam. Be warned: I think the museum has more than 100,000 of them to see. That’s a rabbit hole of time consumption. I know because I’ve looked through many genera and species in an effort to identify shells for a collection I put together for a friend’s high-end resort. *
Although I am not a conchologist, I did make an A in a graduate course on mollusk zoogeography that piqued my interest in their worldwide distribution and habitats, and I learned a little more about them in studying and eventually teaching invertebrate paleontology and in collecting fossil invertebrates on many field trips with my college students. But even after having garnered a modicum of expertise, I still find myself as curious on a beach as a little kid who picks up a shell and says, “Look, Mommy.”
Thus, I deem my own and many others’ curiosity about shells to be nearly universal, especially for those who don’t live near a beach. See a shell? Pick up a shell. Someone is doing that as you read this, and another person is in a shell collector’s shop buying one as a souvenir or as a personal ornament like earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Remember that wampum, essentially shells, served as currency in pre-Colonial and Colonial America, and wampum had other uses significant in the cultures of Native American tribes. Shell collecting? It’s not just a kid’s thing or a hobby gone wild among conchologists; it’s a people thing, even, back centuries ago, an economic thing. Go to Sanibel Island in Florida, where shells are so abundant that shoes are preferable to bare feet on the beaches, if you need proof. You’ll find shell-collecting a primary draw for Sanibel’s tourists.
All Marginally Interesting, but What’s the Point of the Preceding?
For most people, the shells are pleasant distractions and aesthetically pleasing. The iridescent insides of abalone shells reflect light like car oil on a puddle provide an example. What captures the eye captures the brain as both shapes and colors stimulate the production of dopamine. We’ve been naturally engineered to derive pleasure from seeing.
But in this Age of Social Engineering Gone Wild, leave it to the socialists to force us into an unnatural world in which seeing isn't personal, it's communal and directed by government authorities. "Look here, and not there. See this, and not that." And there’s no better place to start than with redirecting the curiosity of children.
Toy Sales
I suppose that each of us could be accused of social engineering to some extent. We choose our friends, for example, our clubs and churches, and new neighborhoods because we believe we can “fit in,” possibly benefit from, and contribute to the micro-society, in some way bending each a little to our will. And, of course, I need to include families: We socially engineer our offspring, more or less since rebellion in ensuing generations is a constant. Social participation of all kinds is a means of engineering for all but the shyest of wallflowers. Once embedded in the group, each contributes to the makeup either through leadership or compliance. But our lives also have a natural underlayment that is the product of evolution, and with color vision and the ability to distinguish shapes and functions, we have a difficult time suppressing our curiosity and desires just because the government says we should.
Say what? Where is this going?
It's going to the recent law in California that requires big box stores to have gender-neutral toy aisles.
Social Engineers Aren’t the Scientists They Believe They Are
In this Age of Social Engineering, Left-leaning politicians seek sameness through differentiation. And nowhere is this more evident than in California, where a new law requires big box companies to add a new aisle to toy sections, an aisle devoted exclusively to “gender-neutral” toys.
Are you wondering what I’m wondering? Does a ball fit into the Venn diagram of toys in both separate and overlapping sections? What about Legos? Chemistry sets? Models? Paints? Toy ambulances? Toy computers and sound equipment like microphones and baby pianos? Wonder Woman and Superman statues? Board games?
Anecdote: I remember carrying my first granddaughter into a large grocery store/pharmacy and seeing her eyes open widely when she saw all the colorful boxes. The shapes and colors were a feast for her young brain. Think computer games, modern video slot machines, and art museums: Our brains are attracted to and feast on visual experiences. That happens to children in toy stores, where not just the products, but also the toy boxes attract attention.
Question: And who in the history of department stores' attempts to make money from toy sales has said to a customer, “No, you can’t have that baseball glove because you’re a girl”? Or "No, this aisle is just for gender-neutral people."
Who among us has walked in a department store and not picked up a toy? What child has not been attracted to a toy in a store?
Do Stores also Have to Carry Age-Neutral Toys?
Believe it or not, some adults buy toys for themselves. I have, for example, a bobble Einstein sitting on the windowsill beside my computer at this very moment. It’s solar powered, so it bobbles only in the daytime. His head and body are fixed, but his hand with a raised index finger keeps pointing to his head as if to say, “Think.” I bought two of the little statues, one for me and another for a granddaughter who is majoring in astrophysics. Is my bobble Einstein a gender-neutral toy? Is it age-specific? Would my great granddaughter not be attracted to the moving hand repeatedly pointing to the disheveled head even in the absence of knowledge about physics or Einstein? Would that toddler not be intrigued by the moving hand?
It Doesn’t Take a Toy Scientist…
If I ever run into Democratic California Assemblymember (I didn’t know the term assemblymember until I read the article) Evan Low or Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, I’m going to ask about the new law. CNN reports that Evan Low introduced a bill that requires department stores with 500+ employees to have separate aisles with gender-neutral toys (Cheri Mossburg, CNN). Low was inspired by an 8-year-old girl who asked, “Why should a store tell me what a girl’s shirt or toy is?”
What is a gender-neutral toy? I’m at a loss. Children play with whatever attracts their attention and interest at the moment. And then they abandon one kind of toy for another, as attics and closets and storage rooms in homes attest with all those piled up and forgotten toys.
Toys, like shells, attract because of their form and function, because or their cultural association, and even because of their potential worth, call it toy wampum. Collectors trade them, make money from old toys and new.
What prevents any parent with sufficient means from buying whatever toy interests a child? The department store? Certainly not. The goal of a department store is to sell for profit. The money is gender-neutral. More than a few commentators have pointed to the new law as an example of government overreach burdening commerce and free speech.
Imagine a Trip to the Beach
Imagine taking kids to a beach and pointing to the shells with the admonition that you can’t have that one. It’s not gender-specific or gender-neutral. Silly stuff, right? (I suppose one might note the hermaphroditism of gastropods) But isn’t silly stuff the norm for most social engineering in the twenty-first century. Pronouns? And now toys? (Not to mention electric vehicles and lawn mowers, gas stoves, and even house plants, all-Black sororities, sororities with trans women, all, and more, falling in the grand plan for social engineering and all with the purpose of re-engineering what previous generations engineered)
Should California’s department stores move around toys as a conman moves around shells? Which one is female? Which, male? Which, neither? Come on, kid, make a choice.
Did Newsom play with toy wrestlers or super heroes when he was a child? Would he consider those "dolls" inappropriate for boys? Evan Low and Gavin Newsom need to go back to their childhood homes and look in the attic. How many different toys over their childhood years attracted their attention like shells on a beach, toys that they played with for a time and then abandoned for other toys? Those toys in the attic are like those many shells collected during vacations to the beach.
People take toys of all kinds home, put them on shelves, move them around for a couple of years till dust accumulates, and then throw them out or store them in some box to be forgotten. And during all that collecting, displaying, and storing, no one asks, “Is this a gender-neutral thing?”
*Plug: You can see the collection at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania.
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