Author: Londoner » Sun Oct 07, 2012 8:49 am
I am going to complete my comment on the video.
What my grand daughter demonstrated is a billion year old trait, which started to evolve when we and all other living beings were as small as microscopic sizes. This sibling rivalry is a competition between two opposing entities for best choices of survival. It is nature driven and it doesn't depend on blood relationship. My grand daughter would have done the same thing with any other child.
This behaviour my need some thing very unique to trigger it. My granddaughter used to be the centre of all attentions from us and my video camera was always following her. But now she has a brother taking our attention from her to himself. So it is not surprising a billion year old instinctive drive triggered her to act against competition.
Sibling rivalry in Middle East culturally neutralised and encouraged. But generally in most cases it is neutralised because of age and gender. Within a family the eldest sibling male rules and he can not be questioned. He rules on his younger brothers, all his sisters and his mother. A younger brother submits to the authority of his older brothers obediently and rules on all his younger brothers, sisters and his mother. A younger sister submits to the authority of her older sisters and all her brothers.
This culturally enforced sibling authority works all right if all brothers and sisters have the same mother. But if they are half brothers and sisters, like from the same father and two mothers, the order collapses and the sibling rivalry starts to act. This is mainly because the father discriminates between his wives. Usually the last wife and her children becomes his favourite. We all have heard the story of Joseph and his eldest half brothers. His half brothers sold him and told their father that he was killed and eaten by a pack of wolves. This is all because their father was discriminating against them in favour of Joseph, whose mother was the youngest wife of his of dad.