Tell me, dear reader, have you ever heard the term, “On Aggression” before? As it happens, that was actually the title of a book by Konrad Lorenz published in 1966, at the height of the Blank Slate debacle. In it Lorenz suggested that the origins of both animal and human aggression could be traced to evolved behavioral predispositions, or, in the vernacular, human nature. He was duly denounced at the time by the Blank Slate priesthood as a fascist and a racist, with dark allusions to possible connections to the John Birch Society itself! See, for example, “Man and Aggression,” edited by Ashley Montagu, or “Not in Our Genes,” by Richard Lewontin. In those days the Blank Slaters had the popular media in their hip pocket. In fact, they continued to have it in their hip pocket pretty much until the end of the 20th century. For example, no less a celebrity than Jane Goodall was furiously vilified, in the Sunday Times, no less, for daring to suggest that chimpanzees could occasionally be aggressive.
Times have changed! Fast forward to 2015. Adaeze Uyanwah, a 24-year-old from California, just won the “Guest of Honor” contest from VisitLondon.com. The prize package included a tour of London’s Science Museum with celebrity physicist Stephen Hawking. During the tour, Uyanwah asked Hawking which human shortcoming he would most like to change. He replied as follows:
The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.
Hello!! Hawking just matter-of-factly referred to aggression as an innate human trait! Were there shrieks of rage from the august practitioners of the behavioral sciences? No. Did it occur to anyone to denounce Hawking as a fascist? No. Did so much as a single journalistic crusader for social justice swallow his gum? No! See for yourself! You can check the response in the reliably liberal Huffington Post, Washington Post, or even the British Independent, and you won’t find so much as a mildly raised eyebrow. By all means, read on and check the comments! No one noticed a thing! If you’re still not sufficiently stunned, check out this interview of famous physicist Mishio Kaku apropos Hawking’s comment on MSNBC’s Ed Show. As anyone who hasn’t been asleep for the last 20 years is aware, MSNBC’s political line is rather to the left of Foxnews. Nothing that either (Ed) Schultz nor Kaku says suggest that they find anything the least bit controversial about Hawking’s statement. Indeed, they accept it as obvious, and continue with a discussion of whether it would behoove us to protect ourselves from this unfortunate aspect of our “human nature” by escaping to outer space!
In a word, while the Blank Slate may simmer on in the more obscurantist corners of academia, I think we can safely conclude that it has lost the popular media. Is hubris in order? Having watched all the old Christopher Lee movies, I rather doubt it. Vampires have a way of rising from the grave.
