The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
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While in the refugee camps, Herman had fallen in love with Masha, whom he meets again in New York and with whom he carries on a consuming affair (later in the book he will marry her, too). Yadwiga and Masha are, in part, male fantasies: the first pure but simple, the second ravishing but histrionic. Herman’s conscience prevents him from leaving Yadwiga; his passion prevents him from leaving Masha. This brings much misery all around, but Singer does not let us hate Herman too much because we see how the capricious horror of the Holocaust has left him a fatalist with no confidence that his decisions can affect the course of his life. Moreover, Herman is amply punished for his duplicity by a life of high anxiety, which Singer portrays with comic, at times sadistic, relish.
The cruel joke continues when Herman learns that he has even more of too much of a good thing. It turns out that his first wife survived the Nazi bullet and escaped to Russia; she has moved to New York and is staying with her pious elderly uncle and aunt. Every Jew in the postwar period knows of emotional reunions of the survivors of Holocaust-ravaged families, but the reunion of a husband and a wife whom he had given up for dead is a scene of almost unimaginable poignancy. Herman enters the apartment of Reb Abraham:
ABRAHAM: A miracle from heaven, Broder, a miracle… Your wife has returned.
[Abraham leaves. Tamara enters.]
TAMARA: Hello, Herman.
HERMAN: I didn’t know that you were alive.
TAMARA: That’s something you never knew.
HERMAN: It’s as if you’ve risen from the dead.
TAMARA: We were dumped in an open pit. They thought we were all dead. But I crawled over some corpses and escaped at night. How is it my uncle didn’t know where you were—we had to put an advertisement in the paper?
HERMAN: I don’t have my own apartment. I live with someone else.
TAMARA: What do you do? Where do you live?
HERMAN: I didn’t know you were alive and—
TAMARA[smiles]: Who is the lucky woman who has taken my place?
HERMAN [stunned; then replies]: She was our servant. You knew her… Yadwiga.
TAMARA [about to laugh]: You married her? Forgive me, but wasn’t she simple-minded? She didn’t even know how to put on a pair of shoes. I remember your mother telling me how she tried to put the left shoe on the right foot. If she was given money to buy something, she would lose it.
HERMAN: She saved my life.
TAMARA: Was there no other way to repay her? Well, I’d better not ask. Do you have any children by her? HERMAN: No.
TAMARA: It wouldn’t shock me if you did. I assumed you crawled into bed with her even when you were with me.
HERMAN: That’s nonsense. I never crawled into bed with her—
TAMARA: Oh, really. Well we never really did have a marriage. All we ever did was argue. You never had any respect for me, for my ideas—
HERMAN: That’s not true. You know that—
ABRAHAM [enters the room, addresses Herman]: You may stay with us until you find an apartment. Hospitality is an act of charity, and besides, you are relatives. As the Holy Book says, “And thou shalt not hide thyself from thine own flesh.”
TAMARA [interrupting]: Uncle, he has another wife.16
Yes, within seconds of the miraculous reunion they are bickering, picking up from where they left off when they were separated a decade before. What a wealth of psychology is folded into that scene! Men’s inclination to polygamy and the frustrations it inevitably brings. Women’s keener social intelligence and their preference for verbal over physical aggression against romantic rivals. The stability of personality over the lifespan. The way that social behavior is elicited by the specifics of a situation, especially the specifics of other people, so that two people play out the same dynamic whenever they are together.
Though it is a scene of considerable sadness, it has a streak of sly humor, as we watch these pathetic souls forgo their chance to savor a moment of rare good fortune and slip instead into petty quarreling. And Singer’s biggest joke is on us. Dramatic conventions, and a belief in cosmic justice, lead us to expect that suffering has ennobled these characters and that we are about to witness a scene of great drama and pathos. Instead we are shown what we ought to have expected all along: real human beings with all their follies. Nor is the episode a display of cynicism or misanthropy: we are not surprised when later in the story Herman and Tamara share moments of tenderness, or that a wise Tamara will offer him his only chance at redemption. It is a scene that has the voice of the species in it: that infuriating, endearing, mysterious, predictable, and eternally fascinating thing we call human nature.
APPENDIX
Donald E. Brown’s List of Human Universals
THIS LIST, COMPILED in 1989 and published in 1991, consists primarily of “surface” universals of behavior and overt language noted by ethnographers. It does not list deeper universals of mental structure that are revealed by theory and experiments. It also omits near-universals (traits that most, but not all, cultures show) and conditional universals (“If a culture has trait A, it always has trait B”). A list of items added since 1989 is provided at the end. For discussion and references, see Brown’s Human Universals (1991) and his entry for “Human Universals” in The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (Wilson & Keil, 1999).
abstraction in speech and thought
actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control
aesthetics
affection expressed and felt
age grades
age statuses
age terms
ambivalence
anthropomorphization
antonyms
baby talk
belief in supernatural/religion
beliefs, false
beliefs about death
beliefs about disease
beliefs about fortune and misfortune
binary cognitive distinctions
biological mother and social mother normally the same person
black (color term)
body adornment
childbirth customs
childcare
childhood fears
childhood fear of loud noises
childhood fear of strangers
choice making (choosing alternatives)
classification
classification of age
classification of behavioral propensities
classification of body parts
classification of colors
classification of fauna
classification of flora
classification of inner states
classification of kin
classification of sex
classification of space
classification of tools
classification of weather conditions
coalitions
collective identities
conflict
conflict, consultation to deal with
conflict, means of dealing with
conflict, mediation of
conjectural reasoning
containers
continua (ordering as cognitive pattern)
contrasting marked and nonmarked sememes (meaningful elements in language)
cooking
cooperation
cooperative labor
copulation normally conducted in privacy
corporate (perpetual) statuses
coyness display
crying
cultural variability
culture
culture/nature distinction
customary greetings
daily routines
dance
death rituals
decision making
decision making, collective
directions, giving of
discrepancies between speech, thought, and action
dispersed groups
distinguishing right and wrong
diurnality
divination
division of labor by age
division of labor by sex
dreams
dream interpretation
economic inequalities
economic inequalities, consciousness of
emotions
empathy
entification (treating patterns and relations as things)
environment, adjustments to
envy
envy, symbolic means of coping with
ethnocentrism
etiquette
explanation
face (word for)
facial communication
facial expression of anger
facial expression of contempt
facial expression of disgust
facial expression of fear
facial expression of happiness
facial expression of sadness
facial expression of surprise
facial expressions, masking/modifying of
family (or household)
father and mother, separate kin terms for
fears
fears, ability to overcome some
feasting
females do more direct childcare
figurative speech
fire
folklore
food preferences
food sharing
future, attempts to predict
generosity admired
gestures
gift giving
good and bad distinguished
gossip
government
grammar
group living
groups that are not based on family
hairstyles
hand (word for)
healing the sick (or attempting to)
hospitality
hygienic care
identity, collective
incest between mother and son unthinkable or tabooed
incest, prevention or avoidance
in-group distinguished from out-group(s)
in-group, biases in favor of
inheritance rules
insulting
intention
interest in bioforms (living things or things that resemble them)
interpreting behavior
intertwining (e.g., weaving)
jokes
kin, close distinguished from distant
kin groups
kin terms translatable by basic relations of procreation
kinship statuses
language
language employed to manipulate others
language employed to misinform or mislead
language is translatable
language not a simple reflection of reality
language, prestige from proficient use of
law (rights and obligations)
law (rules of membership)
leaders
lever
linguistic redundancy
logical notions
logical notion of “and”
logical notion of “equivalent”
logical notion of “general/particular”
logical notion of “not”
logical notion of “opposite”
logical notion of “part/whole”
logical notion of “same”
magic
magic to increase life
magic to sustain life
magic to win love
male and female and adult and child seen as having different natures
males dominate public/political realm
males more aggressive
males more prone to lethal violence
males more prone to theft
manipulate social relations
marking at phonemic, syntactic, and lexical levels
marriage
materialism
meal times
meaning, most units of are non-universal
measuring
medicine
melody
memory
metaphor
metonym
mood- or consciousness-altering techniques and/or substances
morphemes
mother normally has consort during child-rearing years
mourning
murder proscribed
music
music, children’s
music related in part to dance
music related in part to religious activity
music seen as art (a creation)
music, vocal
music, vocal, includes speech forms
musical redundancy
musical repetition
musical variation
myths
narrative
nomenclature (perhaps the same as classification)
nonbodily decorative art
normal distinguished from abnormal states
nouns
numerals (counting)
Oedipus complex
oligarchy (de facto)
one (numeral)
onomatopoeia
overestimating objectivity of thought
pain
past/present/future
person, concept of
personal names
phonemes
phonemes defined by sets of minimally contrasting features
phonemes, merging of
phonemes, range from 10 to 70 in number
phonemic change, inevitability of
phonemic change, rules of
phonemic system
planning
planning for future
play
play to perfect skills
poetry/rhetoric
poetic line, uniform length range
poetic lines characterized by repetition and variation
poetic lines demarcated by pauses
polysemy (one word has several related meanings)
possessive, intimate
possessive, loose
practice to improve skills
preference for own children and close kin (nepotism)
prestige inequalities
private inner life
promise
pronouns
pronouns, minimum two numbers
pronouns, minimum three persons
proper names
property
psychological defense mechanisms
rape
rape proscribed
reciprocal exchanges (of labor, goods, or services)
reciprocity, negative (revenge, retaliation)
reciprocity, positive
recognition of individuals by face
redress of wrongs
rhythm
right-handedness as population norm
rites of passage
rituals
role and personality seen in dynamic interrelationship (i.e., departures from role can be explained in terms of individual personality)
sanctions
sanctions for crimes against the collectivity
sanctions include removal from the social unit
self distinguished from other
self as neither wholly passive nor wholly autonomous
self as subject and object
self is responsible
semantics
semantic category of affecting things and people
semantic category of dimension
semantic category of giving
semantic category of location
semantic category of motion
semantic category of speed
semantic category of other physical properties
semantic components
semantic components, generation
semantic components, sex
sememes, commonly used ones are short, infrequently used ones are longer
senses unified
sex (gender) terminology is fundamentally binary
sex statuses
sexual attraction
sexual att
ractiveness
sexual jealousy
sexual modesty
sexual regulation
sexual regulation includes incest prevention
sexuality as focus of interest
shelter
sickness and death seen as related
snakes, wariness around
social structure
socialization
socialization expected from senior kin
socialization includes toilet training
spear
special speech for special occasions
statuses and roles
statuses, ascribed and achieved
statuses distinguished from individuals
statuses on other than sex, age, or kinship bases
stop/nonstop contrasts (in speech sounds)
succession
sweets preferred
symbolism
symbolic speech
synonyms
taboos
tabooed foods
tabooed utterances
taxonomy
territoriality
time
time, cyclicity of
tools
tool dependency
tool making
tools for cutting
tools to make tools
tools patterned culturally
tools, permanent
tools for pounding
trade
triangular awareness (assessing relationships among the self and two other people)
true and false distinguished
turn-taking
two (numeral)
tying material (i.e., something like string)
units of time
verbs
violence, some forms of proscribed
visiting
vocalic/nonvocalic contrasts in phonemes
vowel contrasts
weaning
weapons
weather control (attempts to)
white (color term)
world view
Additions Since 1989
Anticipation
attachment
critical learning periods
differential valuations
dominance/submission
fairness (equity), concept of
fear of death
habituation
hope
husband older than wife on average
imagery
institutions (organized co-activities)
intention
interpolation
judging others
likes and dislikes
making comparisons
males, on average, travel greater distances over lifetime
males engage in more coalitional violence
mental maps
mentalese
moral sentiments
moral sentiments, limited effective range of