As humans are social animals, we wanted to use stop-motion filmmaking to teach children the philosophical principles of economy during the MOSHI camp in Long Island City, NY. The philosophical question of the last day was: what is community? The debate took place while participants wrote the screenplay about bunnies and bears fighting for the same territory.
Bunny Burrow
A screenplay written by Children
The Bunnies and the bears had a quarrel. The bears said:
– We have more power than your small community of rabbits. So why don’t we own Bunny Burrow and call it Bear Burrow?
– Why do you think we would give up our Bunny Burrow? We discovered the land first, we cleaned it and we claimed it. Why do you think you wouldn’t agree?
– Because we are bigger and we can lift almost anything.
– Smaller is better because you can fit almost under anything.
The bunnies and the bears decided to split the land in half. The bunnies’ cut was the snakes and the pond. The bears’ cut was the squirrels and the plants. But the bunnies were always crossing on the bears side, and the bears were always crossing over the bunnies side.
At one point the bunnies missed the plants, and the bears missed the pond. And instead they agreed they should become a whole big community and respect each other. Indeed everything in this world has its place for a special reason.
The children were clearly inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s fable the Mountain and the Squirrel, which they were introduced to at the start of Moshi Camp.
The final artwork was a collective one, meaning they had to share the same limited resources in order to build the setting and make the characters of their stop-motion film. The limited resources were 10 boxes of playdoh, each containing a specific color. The Moshi educator was the central bank, distributing pieces of playdoh to children under the condition that they say please and thanks. They were asked to share their pieces of playdoh between them, in that sense they could visualize what barter means and what is economy.
The essay was originally published in the collective book “Growing Up With Philosophy Camps. How Learning to Think Develops Friendship, Community, and a Sense of Self” (ed. Claire Katz), Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.