The TED speech “Human nature and the blank slate” by Steven Pinker is based on the ideas developed in his book “The Blank Slate” where he declines the popular idea of human mind being a blank slate at birth.
There are reasons to doubt that human mind is a blank slate. Many of them are based on common sense, as for example, it is obvious that children are born with some certain temperament and talents. Others are proved by scientific studies, such as human universals study in anthropology, that defines set of emotions, behaviors, and worldviews similar to all 6000 cultures in the world, or the study of Paul Thompson and his colleagues in genetics and neuroscience who measured using MRI that the more DNA two people share, the more correlations in different parts of their brains exist. Many studies of identical twins show that they have astonishing similarities even if they were separated at birth and tested being adult.
There are two political reasons why the blank slate idea decline is considered to be congenial. The first one is based on the idea that if all of us are blank slates at birth that means we are equal and if something is written on the slate the person can have more opportunities and that is how the discrimination and inequality are justified. On the other hand, we could perfect mankind if we were blank slates, but if we are already born with some traits they may become the reason of some negative aspects of our human nature. However, in the book it is argued that “fairness” is not “sameness” and that certain motives do not automatically lead to certain behavior as human brain consists of many parts, and each of them may inhibit others.
The book includes analysis of many hot buttons related to the topic of the blank slate, however, two of them appeared to arise the strongest response. Those are arts and parenting.
Art as mentioned before is one of human universals. The argument in the book was that criticism and elite arts have disdained clarity, beauty, style, and pleasure. There is no society in this world ever discovered that does not have any form of an art, such as decorations of body and surface, music, dance, poetry etc. that would give us pleasure. However, in the second half of the 20th century there was a common view that arts were in decline, even though, they were not as recently art is of high demand and people are ready to spend good money for art pieces. Probably the idea is only true in relation to elite art since the 1930s and criticism. And probably that is not a coincidence that the decline of elite art and criticism appeared at the same time when the denial of human nature did. In the 20th century all the norms of art beauty that were giving pleasure to people for centuries were discarded. In modernism and post-modernism almost all the forms of elite art were deprived of their main distinctive aesthetic features.
Another hot button discussed is parenting. Nowadays, we may find a lot of studies on this topic. However, most of materials and advices based on them are useless. It is because all these studies presume that the way parents behave and treat the child correlates with the future personality of the child. But this approach does not take into consideration the heritage and the fact that parents besides their attitude also pass genes to their children and those genes may mainly influence the personality of this child in adulthood. Genetics studies show that identical twins or siblings that were separated at birth have not less similarity than they would have if they had a chance to grow up together. From the other side, those adopted siblings who were brought up together in the same environment but do not share genes are not similar at all. Thus, we may see that home and the way children are brought up do not influence their personality. And what children are really shaped by is partly their genes, partly their peer culture and the culture of the country, and to a larger extent they are shaped by a chance of how their brains are formed in utero.
The conclusion is that findings of sciences of human nature in the nearest future may contradict our beliefs and common dogmas and it is up to us to decide whether these findings should be revealed and explored honestly.
I have to agree with Pinker’s point of view regarding the fact that our minds are not blank slates at birth. With this statement I would refer to outstanding psychologist and scientist Carl Jung who was developing the idea of archetypes, models that are inherited by each person from social experience of his/her ancestors and are present in the unconscious of each individual. Thus, we are born with archetypes in our minds and while growing up we absorb the information from the external environment and the notions that suit these archetypes just fulfill the missing links of the chain that already existed in or brains before we were born.
I also share the belief that in the 20th century art lost its beauty and aesthetics. Steven Pinker shows us an example of depiction of female form and I will bring as an example literature, in particular, the poem 16-bit Intel 8088 Chip by Charles Bukowski. Even though, I have to admit that the main idea of the poem is rather deep and topical, it is almost impossible for me to receive pleasure from reading this poem as it lacks elementary rhyme and rhythm to sound at least a little pleasant.
I support the idea that parenting is not the determining factor of shaping human personality. Obviously, children brought up in the same environment may totally differ in their background, talents, and achievements. If the child does not possess any musical talent parents will never succeed to bring up an outstanding musician. And if the child has artistic overview it will be rather hard to bring up successful accountant. Moreover, when the child is born he/she already possesses some basic instincts, such as need to be fed, desire to be cared about, need to be secured etc.
In the conclusion of the speech Steven Pinker expressed his point of view regarding the issue of further researches in field of human nature. For that he has chosen a great quotation by the outstanding artist Anton Chekhov that is "Man will become better when you show him what he is like." I would only like to add than Man definitely will become better when he is not afraid to be shown what he is like.
Works Cited
TED. "StevenPinker: Humannatureandtheblankslate." Onlinevideoclip.YouTube. YouTube, 7 Oct. 2008. Web. 21Nov. 2014.
