The curmudgeon in me says thank goodness Christmas has come and gone. Now we can return to a sort of normal as we wait out the New Year. I am in Orange County with the kids and have just returned from a nine-mile bike ride along the beach. The sun was setting over the five oil rigs that light up the sea like Christmas trees in the turbulent waters. A few dogs ran in the breaking waves. A faint breeze stirred the palm trees. Perfect winter southern California.
For Christmas I gave my grandson three Lego Power Miners. Green and orange with big wheels, tracks, and scoops to move the recalcitrant earth. I cannot believe it is my influence as a man of mining that set these presents apart from the play computer from his grandmother, or the wooden blocks from his mother, or the push scooter from his father, but he delights in the Power Miners more than the other presents. I cannot even be mining that attracts his attention for he is too young to know the meaning or methods of mining.
Maybe it is the simple intricacy of the Lego that attracts his attention. Maybe it is the scale and size: just right for his four-year old hands. He lines then up and puts the little people into the driver’s seat and sets them running into each other. They are lined up in battle array against the pirates of the Lego pirates’ world and the kings and skeletons of the world of knights in armour. Long and intricate negotiations ensue, and when deliberations break down, battle is engaged. The result is the chaos of war: pieces flung far and wide across the carpet and father and me called in to repair the devastation.
We try to set him right on the need for peace, the spirit of goodwill, sharing, and so on and so forth. But his instinct is to move machinery, to move men and castles, to compete and to take over. I sit and wonder at this: we do not teach it to him. He just does it, while his sister plays with the dolls and stuffed toys in a caring fashion.
True we allow it. But Lego Power Miners are hardly “violence-inducing” toys in and of themselves–even his mother approves of them, knowing full well how I paid for her education.
So as the final week of the year starts and the count-down to New Year begins, I leave you with this thought: mining is as natural and as instinct-based an activity as any of the others we celebrate and promote. All we can do is try to keep it good, productive, and as beneficial as we can, all the while recognizing the human tendency to violence, exploitation, and destruction. If you doubt me on this, get your grandkids a few boxes of Lego Power Miners and see how the kids respond.
PS: I paid for the Lego; am not sponsored by Lego: and in fact they do not even know I exist.
