The Dangers of Tabula Rasa: It’s Like Carbon Monoxide Robert Weissberg
A little essay about the evils of Tabula Rosa–the idea that all people are born alike and can be easily molded by government. This is a truly toxic idea that is behind the current refugee crisis in Europe. Germany will not be able to digest Muslim immigrants no matter how hard they try and the evidence is everywhere. Just consider blacks in the US and gypsies in Europe. Lots of other examples, too. R.W.
Ideas have consequences but these can be deadly. Think the millions killed in seemingly endless religious strife and the carnage fueled by Marxism and Nazism. But less obvious is the damage inflicted by barely acknowledged bad ideas. The parallel might be death by carbon monoxide—scarcely noticed and almost painless but in the long run no less destructive than terrorism.
In today’s political landscape, the doctrine of human nature as a blank slate illustrates this carbon monoxide-like harm. Indeed, this culprit is so imperceptible that it barely makes any list of threats and those who embrace it often are actually celebrated for their hopeful views.
The blank slate view, frequently called by its Latin name Tabula Rasa basically holds that all humans are born without any mental content so, for better or worse, they are creatures of the environment. The opposite is that many human traits are hard-wired genetically and thus impervious to environmental manipulation. Going one step further, as a result of evolutionary divergence people sharing similar physical traits, for example, members of various racial or ethnic groups, differ at birth in terms of propensity for violence, intellectual ability, and multiple other readily measureable (and often obvious) dispositions. Current unspeakable popular stereotypes reflect this reality—the hard-working orderly German or the loquacious Irish. Note well—no psychologist who studies this subject claims that innate group differences are totally determinative. There will always be some lazy Germans or tongue-tied Irishmen.
Though the scientific evidence, notably identical twins separated at birth increasingly confirms the power of nature versus environmental factors, the public orthodoxy in both the US and Europe almost uniformly favors environmentalism. Woe to any American politician who publicly admitted, for example, that many criminals are incorrigible—they are born bad–and it is pointless to try and rehabilitate them into useful peaceful members of society.
So, how does this scientifically mistaken embrace of Tabula Rasa do its damage? Consider today’s most obvious contemporary example: Europe’s generous welcoming of Middle Eastern refugees. Leaders like German Chancellor Merkel happily assume that over time immigrants from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan will evolve into “good Germans” or elsewhere, good Frenchmen and good Swedes. Yes, there may be some bumps along the road, but in a decade or two, all vestiges of Syrian culture will be replaced by the values of the new homeland.
This up-beat assumption flies in the face of plain-to-see contrary evidence. Yes, it may be true that some immigrants to Europe have totally assimilated, but millions have not and this indigestion has existed for decades. Residents of Paris, London, Berlin and dozens of other major cities are acquainted with long established immigrant districts frequently off-limits to natives, especially women. What about Gypsies impervious to efforts to assimilate them? Similarly, a dozen or more American cities have nearly identical crime-ridden black ghettos that survive despite billions in anti-poverty programs. It is fantasy to insist that immigrant absorption is the default human option.
Most important is the reason why assimilation fails. Assimilation requires learning, and all learning reflects cognitive ability, and significant differences exist across groups. Hardly surprising that high-IQ German Jews arriving in 19th century US quickly adapted and prospered economically; by contrast, African Americans who’ve resided here for centuries and tend to have much lower IQ’s continue to struggle with absorbing American values, including speaking unaccented English.
Given that IQ’s from the Arab Middle East average around 85, it does not require a rocket scientist to predict generations of imperfectly absorbed Middle Eastern immigrants. To be blunt, tenacious habits that have proven invaluable in rural Iraq will persist in Germany and elsewhere.
Given formidable hard-wired barriers to cultural assimilation, how can Europe educate millions of these new arrivals? Years back it might have been sink or swim but, thanks to political pressure and multi- culturalism, it will now be far easier to dumb everything down to create the façade of progress. And along with undermining quality education, there will be American style affirmative action lest the children of Middle Eastern immigrants feel alienated from their nation’s mainstream. And to guarantee that this social engineering continues smoothly, Political Correctness will grow stronger. If Hans openly complains of Abdul’s lousy work habits, ship “hateful” Hans off to sensitivity training so he can appreciate the value of diversity. Perhaps the once dreaded Stasi will be reconstituted to monitor social media, e-mails and anything that might portend resistance (“Islamophobia”) to a re-manufactured Germany.
Beyond the financial costs will be expanded state power to construct this blank slate driven Utopia. As one intervention after the next fails, the bureaucracy will only push harder since, after all, people are interchangeable and just a little extra pressure will transform Abdul into a good German.
European skeptics need only examine the destructive US experience with the failed effort to close race-related gaps in academic achievement. What began as the Supreme Court permitting one child ( Linda Brown) to enroll in a neighborhood school, this effort gradually evolved into massive expensive bussing schemes, racial balancing of teachers, re-furbishing textbooks to highlight diversity, Department of Justice edicts for racial quotas in school punishment and countless other educationally harmful interventions to square a circle. None worked, many schools have been virtually destroyed, and billions have been wasted while local school boards have long been eclipsed by Washington bureaucrats.
Worst of all this Tabular Rasa mentality will undermine a nation’s social fabric. Managing a heterogeneous population is perhaps the most arduous task faced by a state. Just observe the strife now plaguing the Middle East and Africa. This is human nature—we are not genetically designed to be one big happy family, particularly when there are sharp religious differences.
Harvard scholar Robert Putnam catalogues these diversity-imposed costs. He began his analyses as a fan of diversity but, what he found was not what he expected. In particular, those who lived in heavily racially and ethnically mixed communities displayed disproportionate low levels of social trust, less confidence in local government, community leaders and the mass media. They were less likely to vote and more inclined to join protects marches, had fewer close confidents and friends and, tellingly, were less happy and more dissatisfied with the quality of their lives (surrounded by diversity, many just retreated to watching more TV).
Those who don’t quite appreciate the huge costs of reduced social trust should read Francis Fukuyama’s Trust. To condense a long story, a modern prosperous economy cannot survive absent social trust among its members. It is no accident, according to Fukuyama, that two of the nations with exceptional levels of social trust—Germany and Japan—excel at manufacturing automobiles, an industry that requires extraordinary levels of faith in others. Compare commerce in these two nations (and others with similar levels of trust) with the more primitive commerce of Syria, Afghanistan and the like. In other words, Germany as Germany (and France as France, etc.) depends on high social trust and the Middle East is notorious for the opposite. Imagine building cars in Syria?
Europe may well survive the tidal wave of indigestible newcomers. But, the future would be far better if Frau Merkel had not absorbed the Marxist lessons of her youth that people are just clay to be molded by an all-knowing, benevolent government. Bad ideas have consequences.
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