Chapter 1. The Nature-Nurture Issue

Short Description

Steven Pinker argues that, to explain human, nature one must understand how humans evolved. The principle of natural selection determines our deepest strivings, including why we love our children, enjoy sex, and seek to survive.

Long Description

Such strong inclinations are the product of Darwinian evolution. Pinker rejects the notion that at birth our minds are blank slates and that culture shapes our character. The notion of the blank slate assumes that the mind has no inherent structure and that personality is a product of environment that our parents and the larger culture shape us through socialization. Richard Dawkins notes that the idea of the blank slate has been influential in the social sciences and has led to the neglect of the role of genes in understanding human behavior. The notion that we are products of nurture rather than nature has been popular for political and moral reasons. If we are born as blank slates, that means we are equal. Pinker explains that the opposite view, that we have innate traits, was horrendously perverted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, perhaps most notably in Nazism, which assumed some races were superior. Inferior races were to be eliminated. However, Pinker notes that the blank slate was a driving force in other twentieth century atrocities including the Marxist regimes of Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot. China's cultural revolution killed millions in an effort to remold its people. Chairman Mao, who led the revolution, stated that the most beautiful words could be written on a blank sheet of paper. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge captured the spirit of the blank slate in its slogan that only the newborn baby is spotless. The notion that the mind is totally malleable, suggests Pinker, opens the door to the practice of totalitarian social engineering. Ironically, Nazism and Marxism share the idea that human nature can be reshaped. Nazism assumes it can be reshaped through biological means, Marxism through social means.

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