Lots of time to kill at the moment so I'm catching up on a lot of reading. One thing that I'm plowing my way through is The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. The thesis of the book is as follows:
One thing that really stood out to me as very interesting is
Donald E. Brown's List of Human Universals. This is a list of all known characteristics common to every single human culture ever discovered. Some of the entries in the list are quite interesting:
What is the truth about human nature? Are we each born a blank slate upon which experience is written? Steven Pinker argues that our usual explanations of human behaviour - stated most clearly in the human sciences of psychology, ethics and politics - tend to deny what is now undeniable: the role of an inherited human nature. Differences in personality or achievement, whether seen among races, ethnic groups, sexes or individuals, are routinely explained away as due not to differences in innate constitution but differences in experience. This work argues otherwise.One thing that really stood out to me as very interesting is
Donald E. Brown's List of Human Universals. This is a list of all known characteristics common to every single human culture ever discovered. Some of the entries in the list are quite interesting:
- snakes, wariness around - interesting to note that cultures otherwise isolated from all of snakekind are still wary around them.
- conflict - In fact every known culture has weapons exactly as sophisticated as their technology allows, no noble savages here.
- males, on average, travel longer distance over lifetime - never knew that.
- Oedipus complex - haha what the fuck?
