Original Sin

If perceiving differences and acting against the different is the primary sin of man, then babies are all profound sinners.

In an article entitled “Babies show inherent dislike for those who are different”, it was revealed that babies as young as nine months show preference for those who bring harm to people different from themselves – in this case, the difference concerned a taste for graham crackers over green beans, and vice versa.

Psychology professor and lead author Kiley Hamlin found infants who were as  young as nine months old favoured those who brought harm to people who were  different than themselves.

She said adults, similarly, tend to like people who harm individuals who are  different.

“We wanted to see if we could tell whether infants had that same kind of  judgement,” said Hamlin in an interview.

“It was shocking how robust the results were.”

Nothing surprises me about this. Tolerance is a virtue not because it is natural, but because it is an acquired habit of civilization. By contrast, those people who call themselevs “liberals” tend to believe that the natural state of man is acceptance, and only perverse educations make us racist, sexist, nationalist, tribalist, other-ist.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, looked at two  groups of infants aged nine months and 14 months and the food they preferred — green beans or graham crackers.

The infants watched a puppet show, with two puppets demonstrating a like for  green beans or graham crackers.

More puppets then joined the production, demonstrating nice, neutral or mean  behaviour towards the original two puppets.

The study showed that the babies later preferred the puppets who harmed the  puppet with the opposite food preferences.

One baby even gave a kiss to the harmful puppet.

The study said the desire to treat badly those with differences was more  widespread in the age group of 14-month-old infants, suggesting an increase in  bias with age.

Hamlin said almost all of the babies tested acted the same, which was an  unexpected result.

“(Babies) like nice puppets really strongly. That’s in line with our  intuition. Other studies have shown they like punishers if somebody was bad  before, but that’s also in line with our intuitions.

“If someone’s bad they might deserve punishment. This one is not in line with  our intuitions.”

Lady, it is not in line with your “intuitions” because you think people are naturally good, tolerant, accepting. They are not. They are naturally racist, tribalist, differentist, nationalist. They think people from the next valley are feckless swine, unless they have cousins over there, in which case they may know that some people in the next valley are okay, or not, on the basis of real knoweldge.

Man’s innate “differentism” is not something that is going to be fixed by talking about the problem differently, or by different social arrangements, though improvements are possible. Discriminations are at the core of existence. Every cell of my body is locked in a life and death struggle to determine what belongs in that cell and what does not. They all discriminate. I can only hope they discriminate in a way suitable to my survival. Likewise, every person discriminates, and has to for the organism to survive. One can only hope that discrimination takes place on bases suitable for the survival of civilization. That is the best we can do.