Rhetorical Analysis Of Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker has a voice all his own- engaging and amiable, but also informative and scientific. His light style provides an interesting contradiction to the heaviness of the topic he presents to us. It’s a tough question: where does morality stem from? Is it genetic? Does it come from the structure of our brains? We don’t get an answer, per se, allowing us to come to our own conclusions and wrestle with the evidence for ourselves. However, as we the audience read the essay, it doesn’t take a particularly close eye to spot that Pinker is definitely opinionated or biased in certain spots, making our journey to a conclusion a little bit… interesting, especially if you don’t necessarily agree with the points he is arguing.
Pinker does bring
forward a good point about politics when he’s talking about balancing the spheres of morality. He says that very liberal people place more importance with the concepts of harm and fairness, and far less on authority, purity, and group loyalty; on the other hand, extreme conservatives find all five to be important. When I read this, I thought about my own belief systems, and found that this is pretty true for me- I am definitely the type of person to want everyone to have the same opportunities and safety, and I don’t really believe that purity is either important or, well, real. As for authority and group loyalty, it’s a bit of a different situation. I think it depends on the situation for either sphere, but as a whole, I’m not very concerned with them. I can’t say whether conservatives think the same of themselves, but from my own perception, I think they place far more importance on group loyalty, purity, and authority than liberals. There was a moment, though, where I really had to step back and look in at myself.
That moment was where he gives us the example situations; I had an immediate reaction to each one, but the one that my reaction made me step back and go “whoa there” was the example about the siblings. I’m an intense feminist- women being confident in their sexuality is something we want! I advocate for safe, consensual sex between grown people, so why did I have such a violent reaction? Other than “EW!” The common arguments about this situation fall flat; “But children born of incest often have birth defects!” Well, there isn’t really a chance of that, since the sister was on birth control, and they used a condom. “They’ll be shunned by everyone they know!” No, they won’t, because no one knows. “It harms their relationship!” The situation explicitly states that they feel closer. So the situation really doesn’t have anything wrong with it, right? A sexually confident woman is having safe, consensual sex with someone she trusts. Sounds good to me. Except… it doesn’t. They’re siblings, and even the concept of incest is enough to horrify me. Though that analysis begs the question of how much does culture impact morality? In certain states and countries, a pretty diluted version of incest is legal. There, it wouldn’t be viewed as immoral, but in other places, it would be
unthinkable. All in all, Pinker’s essay is thought-provoking and engaging, though extremely wordy in places. This essay could have been half as long and he still would have made his points. His style makes the concept stand out in stark contrast, along with pulling the audience in. The way he utilizes evidence is wonderful, in my opinion. It makes the science more personal, which morality is part science, part human, and entirely a mystery. Maybe the answer to morality is like the answer to death, being that we won’t know the true answer until we are long gone and our bodies are nothing but bone and ash.