Page 101 - The Irony Board
P. 101
Into the Cosmos
Children build mental models
In their play annoying
Elderly philosophers
With ideas toying.
Another intellectual blind spot results from the conceit that adults
can think better than juveniles. To arrive at new concepts or
viewpoints, an older person has to make great efforts to get the rusty
gears of his imagination turning again. A child, of course, lacking the
psychological wear and tear of decades of routine and repression,
spins out fantastic scenarios and symbolic restructurings of reality
without hesitation or prompting. The subject of this poem is the
irony of children at play disturbing old men trying to think
creatively.
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