In Steven Pinker's article "The Blank Slate" he attacks Rousseau's idea of the Noble Savage and instead clearly favors Hobbes' view that man is inherently cruel. To support this claim he cites evidence of behavioral genetics showing a biological basis for aggression and antagonistic personalities to conclude that man has always been born with these traits. I do not refute that people possess negative qualities, such as a tendency toward crime or hate, but these qualities have not driven our species. If man was inherently violent with no sense of natural good, how could the societies of today have come about? For civilization to have been started, people had to have communicated with each other in nonviolent ways that benefited more than just themselves. It would have not been possible to produce societies like Mesopotamia, with all of their art, culture, and language, if man were inherently violent, as we never would have had any motivation to advance beyond any form higher than barbaric tribalism.
Pinker then continues to back up his claims with a survey stating that a certain percentage of people think about killing another person on occasion, and he even was so bold to claim that those who denied every having these thoughts were lying. To this my response is, who cares? The majority of people that have these thoughts do not act on them and the same goes for the persons that started the ancient societies previously mentioned. Pinker argues that this is because the actual act of killing another has been beaten out of us by social pressure and other consequences, but that it still remains a part of our nature. Now I cannot speak for others, but when I have a violent thought that I don't act upon, I do so not to avoid consequence, but rather after a moment of reflection I don't actually want to be a violent person. I would like to think that this would hold true in some lawless post-apocalyptic world where there would truly be no consequences, but I guess I'm just going to have to wait to test that.
In conclusion man cannot be inherently evil as Pinker states because if it was our nature we could not have built the societies of today. In fact using evidence of evolutionary biology, which Pinker seems fond of using to support his arguments, one could claim, genetically, that these violent predispositions are being removed from our species as they are not favorable characteristics for reproduction, and in theory will eventually die out, potentially leading to the Utopian society envisioned by Rousseau and many other writers/philosophers before him.
I totally agree with this. I also do not believe man to be inherently evil as you supported with your evidence that our complex societies, and not barbaric tribes, is sufficient proof that we are not inherently bad. If we follow the idea of a blank slate, then similarly to humans having no concept of good as babies, they also have no concept of bad. It is also irresponsible to say that everyone has once in their life have thought about killing someone. An excellent way to refute this is again with the blank slate. If someone was born in a society or town where murder was never committed, then they can not possibly have thought about committing murder. For every man and woman to fight the urge of killing other people due to social pressures, seems highly unreasonable too. If this were true, we would see the elderly commit higher rates or murder since they have fewer years left on Earth and would not worry about the consequences. I disagree with Pinker's and Hobbes' views that man in inherently evil.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you said about the Nobel Savage argument that Pinker brings up; I, like you, do not understand how a species, inherently driven by negative qualities, could have possibly produced such beautiful civilizations with art, music, and philosophy. For example, I do not see how humanity could have built such grand belief systems, embraced by various constitution, that, at least theoretically, emphasize justice and equality for all people if, according to Pinker, humans are inherently cruel.
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