Whatever
one’s first language may be, I suspect that most folks understand (and many are
struck by the fact) that human (and other) infants are born with instincts that
powerfully serve the needy newborn’s interests. Perhaps that fact led the
ancient Psalmist to say “It is He Who has made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm
100, verse 3.)
But given
the catastrophic troubles – especially both world wars and the
soul-shocking evils of Auschwitz and the other Nazi “camps,” the
murderous eastward sweep of Marxism across much of Asia, and
the recent Putin-ordered atrocities in Ukraine — that our 20th and
21st century world has seen, it may seem doubtful indeed
that we the people are born with benevolent,
other-assisting, cooperative, “love your neighbor” instincts.
In the prologue
to his 2019 Humankind, A Hopeful History, contemporary Dutch
historian Rutger Bregman concisely surveys an array of powerful sources – both
religious and non-religious — that have led many in the western hemisphere to
believe in a very “dark” – a cynical — view of human
nature. That tendency had surfaced prominently in Niccolo Machiavelli and
Thomas Hobbes. It is evident in the writings of Sigmund Freud.
Bregman points
out that helping to prop up that bleak, dark, pessimistic outlook was Nobel
Prize-winning William Golding’s fictional Lord of
the Flies – translated into more than thirty languages – which
sold tens of millions of copies and was widely read, often in schools. It
was the basis of two movies.
Do search
Bregman’s May 2020 article in The Guardian: “The Real
Lord of the Flies – what happened when six boys were shipwrecked
for 15 months.” What actually happened when six boys
were shipwrecked was in marked contrast to Golding’s dark and pessimistic fiction.
They exhibited both what I’ve been calling self-love and care
– love — for one another. That revealing non–fiction story
in The Guardian is well worth bearing in mind.
Recent well-conceived research also
indicates that, as there are inherited rudiments of self–love in
our genetic makeup, so too there’s also good reason to believe that there
are inherited rudiments of love for
others as well.
Research
by Paul Bloom and others suggests that obviously helpful
acts depicted by puppets are commonly approved even
by infants too young to speak or walk,
and that even such infants regularly disapprove obviously
unhelpful or mean acts depicted by puppets.
“A growing body of evidence . . . suggests that humans
do have a rudimentary moral sense from
the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you
can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the
first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.”
(Emphasis added.) www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html
Although
it still seems we all come into the world lacking substantial knowledge –
and that we’re initially totally ignorant about all but the
most obvious effects on others of our individual actions,
let alone the effects of our later collective actions — it’s
clear we normally do arrive with gene-based instinctual
inclinations or pre-dispositions. We’re not “blank
slates” at birth.
And normally
we soon come to exhibit curiosity: we
pay attention and focus, and show some desire
to explore. When we speak we soon ask questions, begin to find out, and sometimes
we actually come to have well-justified and confident beliefs, and to know.
And (despite what the awesomely brilliant Aristotle probably believed) that includes girls
as well as boys!
We are all
shaped by the relatively stable “nature” we
human beings inherit – that is, by those genetic similarities and
differences that researchers have begun to understand increasingly and
in detail – a genetic heritage much of which people –
we human beings — share with other species.
It’s a genetic
heritage that can be – and is — impacted by choices people make.
And we are
shaped especially by our instinct-rooted desires to:
(1) avoid
pain and being harmed, and to experience life’s pleasures and enjoyments, and
to
(2) have companionship and
amicable relations with others, and to
(3) ask
questions (including a child’s: “Why? . . .” when that’s asked
even after we’ve given an explanation, but an
explanation that seems to invite yet another “But Why?”).
We want to
learn, explore, and find out – about all sorts of
things, from the latest neighborhood news, to our gender
differences, to information about the rise, or coming to be, of things (What
makes earthquakes happen?) and the passing away of things
(Does everybody die? What happens after we die?).
Many wonder
about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Some are adding
to humankind’s information about the galaxies most distant in time
and space, while others – like Jennifer Doudna – have concentrated on very
small (but very powerful) entities and processes in our own genetic
material (see Walter Isaacson’s book The Code Breaker).,
(4) And we
sometimes wonder about who we humans ultimately are,
when all is said and done. (Psalm 8, verse 4).
Pleasure’s
Early Power, and Fulfillment
It’s no
surprise to readers that our instincts and childhood desires lead
us to want to avoid painful experiences – like being burned,
or witnessing someone else being burned — and to repeat experiences
that are pleasant – like eating tasty food, being
gently massaged, and embracing and being embraced by a close one, going
sight-seeing or fishing with friends, or perhaps building a sand castle or snow
fort with them, etc.
Both ancient
and modern psychological theories (including egoism and hedonism) – and our own
observations — reflect the power of pleasure.
A toddler who has just had her first taste of chocolate
candy or chocolate milk leaves no doubt about the power of that
pleasure, that enjoyment. And a flame or hot stove emphatically
teaches the child who touches it.
If a genetically normal girl or boy is loved, and so benefits from a supportive
setting, then the experience-based branching out over time of our
own instincts and childhood desires often brings us as
children to want to listen to
certain stories repeatedly, to hear
and sing our favorite songs, to
learn new words, to seek and inquire, to
speak in sentences, to play, to
travel, and to make, build, and create things.
We may want
to fashion — and show to others — our own drawings and other pictures,
our own physical accomplishments (like summersaults, jumping
rope, rock-climbing, bike riding, etc.), and to listen to, and
to say or sing, and to do things that interest
or amuse others, and that produce laughter, and
those that yield to us the rewards of their praise, commendation,
and sincere expressions of their gratitude.
And in addition
to our inherited instinctual “nature,” we are shaped by the
“nurture” we receive:
Parents, teachers, and other close adults usually try to do what they can to
provide for our physical and emotional wellbeing, help us develop adequate
nutritional habits, acceptable relations with others, provide support for our
medical needs, and the like.
Met with
encouragement, helped by coaching and instruction, and by some satisfying success
along those lines, we will grow in personal and social skills and habits, in
creativity, and in mutual emotional supportiveness with some others.
And as we
acquire a language, don’t we usually take pleasure in, enjoy, and
desire repeated association, conversation – and other activities
— with close ones and childhood friends and playmates who share that
language? Other terms in English for this developing
camaraderie include “family,” “pals,” “buddies,” “companionship,”
“friendship,” “fellowship,” and “community.”
Impediments,
Neglect, and Loss
Sadly, however, the young are not always
given strong nurturing, encouragement, helpful coaching, and instruction. Apart from
such extreme practices as those of ISIS toward
youngsters, impediments and neglect often
interfere. That neglect and those impediments work
against the desirable growth sketched a couple of paragraphs
back.
An especially
poignant individual American example of such impediments
to growth, and their tragic impact on an individual, is one that
was encountered as a beginning teacher by Jonathan Kozol, and mentioned in his Savage
Inequalities, on pages 194f.
“An eight-year-old,
a little boy who is an orphan, goes to the school to which I was
assigned. He talks to himself and mumbles during class, but he is never
offered psychiatric care or counseling. When he annoys his teacher, he is
taken to the basement to be whipped. He isn’t the only child in the class
who seems to understand that he is being ruined, but he is the child who first
captures my attention. His life is so hard, and he is so small; and he is
still quite gentle. He has one gift: He draws delightful childish pictures, but
the art instructor says he “muddies his paints.” She shreds his work in
front of the class. Watching this, he stabs a pencil point into his
hand.”
Commendably,
Kozol kept track of and provided assistance to him. But eventually, as a young
man, he was incarcerated for murder.
It wasn’t
only that particular art instructor who had failed to live
out that important pair of Ancient Imperatives – and who had taken
part in the bullying of that youngster.
Do take a
few minutes to envision for yourself
and to describe briefly in general terms some of the impediments that
hamper the development of children
somewhere whose parents are enslaved, or who
are forcibly confined like the Islamic Uyghurs by the Communist
Party of China in so-called “re-education centers” in western
China.
Or envision
and describe the array of impediments faced by girls in
patriarchal societies like Afghanistan in the 2020’s that oppose, or that
severely limit, schooling for girls, or the impediments facing
young girls – for example in the Indian subcontinent — whose utterly destitute parents find
they must choose between either (1) their own starvation, or (2) selling
their young daughters; or envision and describe some
impediments imposed by persistent bullying!
Even though legalized
slavery in the US was itself eventually overcome,
its lingering effects (including conscious racial
dislikes, fears, and hatreds, and remnants of legalized racial discrimination) continue
to impede the growth of many learners
– especially those descended from enslaved persons.
This has
been evidenced often by their publicly
under-funded classrooms, their faculty members’
experience, their gyms, their air
quality, their school yards and playing fields, their labs,
libraries, and equipment, and their course offerings,
and, of course, by their school budgets.
That pair
of Ancient Imperatives directs us to ask, if you are a tax-paying
citizen in 21st century America, are those conditions
what you’d want for your loved
ones . . . for your own children and grand-children?
Worldwide,
the power of bullying, of racial-, ethnic-, and religious prejudice –
including long-standing anti-Semitism and prejudice against
Palestinians, Muslims, Asians and others — has been
evident in the harms done to people – to our
fellow human beings — stereotypically targeted
because they are members of an array of “different” groups, and
it continues at this writing. Those hatreds (and too-easy access by some
civilians to personal automatic weapons of war) have led to shocking mass
killings – especially in the US.
So there’s
more than enough challenging (yet fulfilling) reforming work for
ongoing, wisely led and organized, generously-supported, enlightened, long-term labors
of love.