I Have This Theory

Last updated: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:01:00 GMT

Capricorns have a lot of theories.

I have this theory about horoscopes, and about how there might be some actual truth to them. It may not be original, but I don't remember reading about it anywhere else, so I'll write it down here. It occurred to me a million years ago, when I was but a teenager, but now that I'm a father it seems to make more sense.

Kids develop in fits and starts. Long periods of equilibrium punctuated by sudden leaps in ability. One day, your kid'll be lying on his back, waving his arms around in the air, unable to even roll over. He'll be like this for weeks. And then, one day, it'll come to him that if he just leans ... a little ... further then, bang, he can turn over. Wow!

Two days later, he's crawling. The next day, you find him standing at the security gate.

And then there'll be nothing more for weeks and weeks. As they get older, the leaps in functionality become more complex, more subtle, and the plateux of stability between them become longer.

A good friend, on hearing me describe this phenomenon, mentioned a theory he'd read in a book by Marvin Minksy about versions of mind. As he described it to me -- we were drunk, it was four in the morning, we were avoiding watching Frank Herbert's "Dune" -- the gist is that children have one mind in use, and the other in development. One maintains the status quo, gets the body fed, the other slowly becomes more capable until -- flip -- the new mind takes control, a new set of skills and tools in place.

This fitted well with what I'd seen, and I found it amusing. I've not had the time to track down the book and read it myself though. Kids take up a lot of your time.

The rate that they learn is awe-inspiring. Anyone who's had to learn something physical as an adult -- to cope with a new physical geometry or a limitation in control; after an accident or illness for instance -- will appreciate just how hard it can be to master what the able take for granted. But this compressed learning presents a steep curve; it's not like your kid can wait all year to learn to walk. He's got other things to get on and do, his Gantt chart don't got no slack.

So, your kid's born in summer. He's pretty much learning to sort light from dark, quiet from loud, hungry from full. Give him six months, it's winter, he's learning to crawl. He's all over your living room floor. Another six months, the little bugger's running around trying to stick anything he can reach into his mouth. It's summer again; you let him out, he's running around in the fresh air. The days are long, the nights are warm. You're busy outside fixing the garden up, but he's there with you. He's got plenty of space to run around in and, thank God, at least he's not in the house while he's got all those beans to burn.

But, wait, your kid's born in winter. Six months later it's summer and he's learning to crawl. The days are long, the nights are warm, he's crawling about in the grass. Six months later and he's terror on two feet, but it's winter now. The nights are long, the days are cold. Your kid's indoors, dragging stuff off the shelves, getting under your feet. You're miserable because you go to work in the dark and you come home in the dark and -

What's your kid learning? These phases are short, and they pick a lot of information up. Information your brain discards because you no longer need it, because you've learned that it's irrelevant, or because it's axiomatic; it never gets further than your subconscious.

Those first few years are important. Every day is important on this scale. And the surroundings in which a child finds himself will inevitably alter what he learns, and so who he becomes. Is it so hard to believe that a child learning to walk inside, in the dark, will be a different person from the child who learns to walk outside?

Could this lead to a more general overlap in behaviour in groups of summer kids as opposed to groups of winter kids? Could it be more subtle than that, maybe a slow variation in personality and behaviour, dependent of when you were born? A range of different personality traits that you might reasonably predict from a date of birth?

That's not a million miles from reading a horoscope, is it?

Of course, there are a lot of other environmental variables. Your parents may be poor, they may be rich, they may be Inuit, or they may be Maasai. Difficult to tie the whole seasonal thing with a distribution like that, I know.

But then again, what kind of retard believes in horoscopes? Mainly comfortable white European and North American retards, last time I checked.