The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

 The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

A sensational, overwhelming classic

Steven Pinker is one of those authors who have become classics while they are still alive and I think he is still rather young.

To my surprise, I found his name in a masterpiece on history- War, What Is It Good For- and then in interviews with The Economist, where he was also mentioned last week by a reader who wrote to the newspaper.

The Blank Slate is outstanding for various reasons, one of which is that it has an extraordinary range of quotes, themes and issues taken from Dostoyevsky, George Orwell- 1984, Mark Twain – Huckleberry Finn and much more.

The author has a brave stance in many problems and is right when he argues that we have become so mild and like in a trance on so many issues, we tolerate outrageous behavior in the name of acceptance of cultural diversity.

People shy away even from condemning Nazism or mutilation- in a poignant and repelling example the authors refers to the practice of holding a crying girl and cutting her genitals and sawing them back on.

This would involve prosecution if someone would just do this in society, but when it is done in the name a different “culture”.

There are some other disturbing examples and tests which were used to see what and why we get so disgusted when someone has- for instance- sex with a chicken before eating it- that animal is going to die anyway and then what is worse killing or the abuse of it- we seem to be ok with the death but not with the sex part.

Steven Pinker deals with and refutes some crazy theories, including one which would sound somewhat humorous, if in a humorless extremely dry way, and that pertains that rape is in fact a kind of a male conspiracy, which involves all of us men.

I have been astonished by the multitude of subjects that are treated in this fabulous book which touches psychology questions, but deals with art in such a way that I was surprised – I have even learned about new currents.

There are some modern artists who try to return to the classic beauty and refuse to have the arrogant attitude of – I would say the huge majority- of contemporary creators; there are new trends that include derriere- art, as opposed to Avant- garde and others like it.

                “Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast male conspiracy is not.”

There is so much science blended with good sense and common sense- if they are not one and the same- that the reader feels a great joy to learn that common held assumptions are really true and tested by researchers.

                “Hobbes's analysis of the causes of violence, borne out by modern data on crime and war, shows that violence is not a primitive, irrational urge, nor is it a "pathology" except in the metaphorical sense of a condition that everyone would like to eliminate. Instead, it is a near-inevitable outcome of the dynamics of self-interested, rational social organisms.”

The incredible Steven Pinker makes not only forays into philosophy, but also makes a point in favor of theories that I share – after the explained them to me.

We cannot ignore some figures and facts- such as the statistics that show that young men are way more violent and responsible for the huge majority of murders and violent crime, especially when compared with women.

                “So men are not from Mars, nor are women from Venus. Men and women are from Africa, the cradle of our evolution, where they evolved together as a single species.”

The issue of homosexuality and the influence of childhood versus genetic inheritance is explained and an example is given of a boy born without a penis and raised as a girl, only to be reverted to his “true sex” later on in his life.

Some points of view will surely alienate many readers, especially conservative ones, but also those with strong Christian beliefs- I guess

                “The doctrine of a soul that outlives the body is anything but righteous, because it necessarily devalues the lives we live on this earth.”

And this following quote is a proof that we do not come with a tabula rasa, on the contrary, we have so much genetic material that determines what we do and become as is evident in the studied cases of identical twins-

“Imagine that you are agonizing over a choice—which career to pursue, whether to get married, how to vote, what to wear that day. You have finally staggered to a decision when the phone rings. It is the identical twin you never knew you had. During the joyous conversation it comes out that she has just chosen a similar career, has decided to get married at around the same time, plans to cast her vote for the same presidential candidate, and is wearing a shirt of the same color—just as the behavioral geneticists who tracked you down would have bet. How much discretion did the “you” making the choices actually have if the outcome could have been predicted in advance, at least probabilistically, based on events that took place in your mother’s Fallopian tubes decades ago?”

A sensational book