Playing Houses - The Basis of Ethics

Piaget said the basis of ethics is to figure out how to formulate a game that unites everyone's motivations and emotions, everyone's purpose. Successful children are really good at conjuring up games that everyone, everybody wants to keep playing. And so this is what kids are doing when they're playing houses. Well they look at the father and they abstract out the spirit of the father and then they embody it. Then they do the same with the mother and they embody that as well. They come together and they assign each other rules but you have to play each of those rules in a way that makes both of us want to keep playing the game so that it's fun.