According to Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate, some people believe in a thing called human nature, and some people don’t. Very broadly speaking, the left doesn’t like human nature while the right does. And of those who do believe in human nature, there are gradations in how much you believe it can be changed — or at least resisted.
For example, someone might believe it’s human nature for men to want a variety of sexual partners, but still believe it’s in everyone’s best interests for men to be taught and expected to resist that urge and be faithful to one woman.
A few months ago I heard a podcast interview of a man who has an “open relationship” with his wife, and how he constantly has to fight between his “rational” decisions and his natural jealousies.
Most of us fight this sort of thing on a regular basis with our diets. Nature programs us to load up on something sweet when we have the chance, but we know that’s not good for us in the modern world, where sweet stuff is far from rare.
In other words, “human nature” is no excuse for anything. We’re constantly fighting it in one way or another, but we don’t have any clear rules on when we should fight it and when we should accept it as either good or inevitable.
Those contrasts came to mind as, in close succession, I heard Sherlock Holmes say “It is part of the settled order of Nature that such a girl [i.e., a very attractive one] should have followers” (The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist) and I read that people are offended that a woman voted most beautiful in the world is dating an older billionaire.
The article is chock full of the “we should rise above this” sort of attitude. I find the article absurd. Of course a beautiful woman is going to be dating a rich, older man. She’d be an idiot not to, and I find nothing “problematic” about any of it.
Still, I have to agree that there are situations where the greater good is served by resisting nature rather than following it. Maybe all the beautiful women in the world should be encouraged to marry poor, ugly men, just to make the world fair.
One more note on that “most beautiful” woman — I notice an Israeli woman is conveniently “white” when someone wants to complain about a “white” woman being hailed as most beautiful. I’ll bet there are other times when she doesn’t qualify as “white” because it suits a different purpose for her not to.
That doesn’t really have anything to do with your post but it’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed before with Jewish women.
Along those lines, the first answer by Diana Dubrawsky was interesting, although I don’t think she has the right meaning of mizrachi.
I don’t know if you were thinking of Gal Gadot as an example, but she came to mind immediately.
Which I have to admit is likely to have happened regardless of what we were talking about, on general principles..
🙂
I wasn’t thinking of her in particular though she certainly fits the pattern. I was thinking more broadly of how Jews are white when that’s to their disadvantage, and non-white when that’s to their disadvantage.
Diana Dubrawsky’s answer warmed my heart, because the whole early 20th century caucasian/negroid/mongoloid paradigm was useless and based on nothing, but now makes a convenient weapon for racists from all tribes.