Exploring link between Lego and philosophy
MINNEAPOLIS— All in all, it’s not just another brick in the toy chest.
At least that’s the conclusion you might reach after reading a new book co-edited by University of Minnesota philosophy professor Roy T. Cook titled LEGO and Philosophy: Constructing Reality Brick by Brick.
Cook and co-editor Sondra Bacharach, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, recruited a bunch of other deep thinkers to write about issues raised by the venerable plastic building blocks.
Nearly 100 people responded to the call for essays, 21of which are in the book. The essayists, many of whom are fellow philosophy professors, dove into issues about Lego and gender stereotypes, Lego and ethics, Lego and the nature of impermanence, Lego and German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Lego and autonomy and the human individual (Lego my ego?).
Cook said “it took a good bit of convincing” to get publisher John Wiley & Sons to accept the idea of a book about Lego in its Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series.
But he and Bacharach argue that, strictly speaking, Lego isn’t a toy. It’s a physical and storytelling medium.
Yes, the pieces can be used to build a toy. But people also have used the bricks to assemble desks, make full-sized houses, even create a prosthetic leg.
The plastic bricks are “a medium through which ideas can be expressed,” according to one essay in the book.
The Lego world is an idealistic place where everything seems awesome, “a fundamentally optimistic medium,” where the name of the company comes from the Danish words meaning “play well,” according to Cook and his fellow philosophers.
The company doesn’t shy away from politics. It was one of the first toymakers to promote gender equality, according to an essay co-authored by Bacharach.
Yet, some Lego sets have been criticized for promoting gender stereotypes of girls and women. And the company was bashed in a viral Greenpeace video for links to the Shell oil company.
“We really seem to hold Lego to a higher standard,” Cook said.
In his essay for the book, Cook takes on the thorny issue of race.
Lego created a “racially idealized” world when it issued its “minifigures” in 1978, where every figure had a smiley face and bright yellow skin.
According to Cook, there are now more than two dozen shades of skin tones used in Lego minifigures in addition to figures with “racially and ethnically stereotyped” facial features.