Comment by cbolton
7 hours ago
It never occurred to me to consider efficiency in piñata, but I dislike them because it's making a game out of violence.
7 hours ago
It never occurred to me to consider efficiency in piñata, but I dislike them because it's making a game out of violence.
This is only tangentially directed at your reply, but this is the kind of statement that I'll sometimes hear other parents say, and it makes me think that they've completely forgotten what childhood was actually like. Like, the idea that normal, fun activities and sports are bad because they bear some abstract resemblance to adult violence feels very contrived and misses what childhood play is about.
Yeah I'm not saying it's bad for the children, but it's unpleasant for me. It seems violence is a concept that gets deeper and uglier as you grow. For young children it's often abstract and maybe harmless. I just read a book to my child that turned out to have violent scenes that horrified me a bit but he barely thought about it and only in technical terms (like where is that artery ripped by the wolf). Same with people that had fun watching horror movies as teens, then find them unpleasant when they're older.
Maybe they did not forgot what the childhood was like. Instead, they remember their own childhood rather then yours. Moreover, they are not you, your exact copies.
It's not really that abstract. You smash the shit out of a cardboard box and candy comes out. Breaking things is not fun. I also hate youtube videos of people breaking stuff for fun.
This is just you and your peculiar hang up though. Same with the piñatas are making light of violence commenter.
Piñatas are made and designed explicitly to be smashed open to get the treats inside.
We’re not buying brand new iPhones and smashing them, or buying food and making stupid “recipes” for rage bait.
I tried reading the English Wikipedia article "Piñata" but it is a mess of cringe information, especially the 16th century background. It seems that original piñatas were clay pots, before papier-mâché came into vogue.
I was going to say, that around the American Southwest, you can find piñatas for sale that are not only abstract, but also plenty of Spongebob and Disney and MCU characters, as well as "political figures that are not particularly well-liked" by Chicanos.
However, the article also linked out to revisit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%B3_de_Nadal (Merry Christmas, Catalonia!)
And not to mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Judas (Burning Man, Easter edition!)
Breaking stuff is fun, as is throwing rocks and building snow forts.
> Breaking things is not fun.
I don't know. I broke a lot of things when I was a kid, mostly because I was excited to see how they work, but have no knowledge of their value or how to safely disassemble them. I don't do it as an adult because I now have that knowledge. So don't judge a kid as an adult.
I wouldn't say "violence", rather, an opportunity to demolish something on (good) purpose. Same reason children will be glued to the window if workers outside are going at it with jackhammers, or, better yet, an excavator is crushing and scraping off the asphalt. (Yeah, I remember exactly how awesome that was.)
Is it? Or is that just you, projecting. You could argue baseball, golf, hockey, are all violent as you smash a stick into a ball.
Maybe it's projecting but what I see is kids ganging up to break a target that is often human/animal-shaped, and that feels different to me.
Destroying things is part of human experience. Kids got to have that.
I dislike them because someone inevitably gets sacked in the groin.
But that’s half of the fun!
Those who don't lose the fun of hitting things graduate to hitting things with swords and end up in the SCA (not the coffee one).
I see the point about violence but I'm ok with it because it's based on fun and not anger. Olympic archery, javelin, or even fencing have an obvious past in warfare but today they've become sports.
I can only speak for some of the European versions of SCA-like clubs but there's a lot of pride-flag flying strictly-no-fascists fun activity with a dose of pretending to be children again.
(Buhurt is a bit more complicated.)
There is no violence, because the pinata is not alive.
There is no more violence in hitting a nail with a hammer.
is play not an indirect method of practicing the physiological mechanisms designed for violence ? baby lions are both happy to play with other animals, and to eat them ... which inevitably progresses to predation only ... and humans are the apex predator ...
Depends. Dolls' tea parties aren't violent.
I've seen dolls' tea parties that were absolutely violent when I was a kid, with the dolls ending up insulting each other and/or fighting.
As a child I did not see it as violent
> As a child I did not see it as violent
That's the problem. Hitting a tied up animal until it breaks is clearly a violent affair, similar how hanging puppets in nooses or putting a doll in a guillotine.
I'm sure that there are kids growing up in places where bullfights are common thinking that torturing and killing a bull in a party-like atmosphere is fine.
One of the incredible powers of childlike imagination is the ability to differentiate between hitting a piñata and hitting an actual animal.
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> Hitting a tied up animal until it breaks is clearly a violent affair,
I think you will find it isn't a real animal.
As a kid I don't remember, or have pictures of, an animal-looking piñata, they were just colorful boxes full of candy and things.
Do you see Pokemon as encouraging a culture of accepting dogfighting/cockfighting rings?
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Children have no concept of violence or empathy or right or wrong. Children often are extremely violent to other kids and sometimes even adults. They kick they scream they punch and they destroy objects. It's on the parents to teach them these concepts and its fun to have settings in which that behavior is allowed.
> Children have no concept of violence or empathy or right or wrong
This is not correct. I remember having a sense of shame when I was 4 when I tried to hurt another kid. Kids will also hide the things they do wrong, because they know it is wrong.
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I am an incredibly non-violent person, but have a toddler has really made me work hard to understand the difference in what associations we attach to "violence" as adults.
I try to help him understand this slowly, but a lot of "play" can look violent to my eyes, and I struggle to remember that. A 3 year old just doesn't see it that way yet, and that's fine. But it's hard to remember that in the moment.
That you see the world this way says more about you than the piñata.
Yeah, something very positive I think.