The Kingdom of Heaven . . .

There has been on ongoing debate in the social sciences for quite some time as to what extent we humans are hardwired from pre-history with instincts and emotions. Are such things predominantly the result of genetic inheritance, passed down over thousands of years practically unchanged—so that if we were able to travel back by time machine, we would have no trouble relating to or understanding the basic human types we would find there? Or are the instincts and emotions the product predominantly of environmental and cultural influences, and hence amenable to ongoing change—a change that is increasingly putting distance between ourselves and our more primitive ancestors?

The answer to this question—to the extent that it is a real question—has implications for the whole modern project of social and political reform? If we are programmed by the genes to automatically act and react in certain ways, then what hope does that offer to any prospect of changing human nature and behavior?

Of course, the argument isn’t as black and white as this—sensible people accept that we are products of both heredity and environment, and that the question at issue—again to the extent that there is a real question—is exactly what mix of the two is needed in order to produce the best cocktail.

Personally, I believe that there are elements buried deep in human nature that are almost impossible to alter. Almost impossible . . . for if it was impossible to alter them it would make redundant the whole social message of, say, Christianity: turn the other cheek, love your enemies, humble rather than exalt yourself, lay down your life for your friend etc. etc.

The question is: which specific traits of human nature constitute those least susceptible to eradication or transformation? Unfortunately we can’t go back by time machine to examine the mores of our most distant ancestors. Nor can it be really done by sociological experiment—because such experiments are, I think, intrinsically flawed (and as potentially skewing of the end result as contaminated test-tubes in a laboratory environment) by the very fact that they are not real life situations, are ultimately artificial, no matter how cleverly they may be devised.

All that is left is the possibility of taking advantage of situations within our own historical period—situations well-attested to and documented—where people found themselves in circumstances where the veneer of civilization and culture was stripped away down to the bedrock of whatever it was that was left.

The best such example is the fate of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the camps, writes that ‘by allowing this [the Holocaust] to happen, God was telling humanity something, and we don’t know what it was’. We can, however, perhaps guess at, at least, some aspects of it. And one, I would suggest, is a demonstration of the consequences of the average human nature left to its own devices, a human nature untrammeled by any considerations other than purely terrestrial ones.

A film came out last year—I think it is on Sky now at the moment—Defiance, a film about the Jewish Bielski otriad or partisan group, which operated in the forests of Belorussia during the war. The movie itself is more or less par for the course—but it is based on a book of the same name, written by Nechama Tec, and first published in 1993. While it covers the usual ground of such books, what is important about Tec’s contribution is that it can be read also as an almost forensic study of human nature under circumstances of terrible hardship and the threat of extinction.

So what does it tell us about human nature—or rather, what does it confirm? For really what I am talking about here is the result of years of reading, thinking and life experience; and I introduce Tec’s evidence only to the extent that it reinforces my own conclusions—which almost universally it does.

The first thing it tells us is that the human tendency (indeed, the social animal tendency) to organize ourselves in castes and classes and all different sorts of social gradations is part of our deepest evolutionary programming. In the forests of Belorussia, the Jews—mainly escapees from the ghettoes, and survivors of all sorts of horrors—fell, arguably by reflex, into recreating anew the classical structure of a social system; and with it (in exacerbated, and arguably pure, form, unabated by the restraint of social niceties) all the other old familiar elements of social life: pursuit of status, different standards of living according to status, snobbery, contempt for the lower orders, envy of the higher orders, jealousy, mutual enmity, treachery etc. etc.

The interesting thing was that while a social structure (created, if you like, under pressure of the instincts) immediately established itself, the nature of that structure (arguably under influence of environmental factors) was totally different from what it had been in peacetime life. The new ‘aristocracy’ consisted in the main of ordinary men, of little or no education, but whose life and background had trained them for the hard task of practical survival in the hostile forest environment; the old upper-class and intellectual elements, by contrast, found themselves reduced to the status (or lack of status) of what were called malbushim or ‘clothes’—rather along the lines, one imagines, of the way the ‘sixties counterculture used to talk of ‘uniforms’ and ‘suits’ as a way of disparaging and dehumanizing those they disliked.

To be a malbush was, in the context of the Bielski camp, to be a dead weight, another useless mouth to feed, and beneath the social notice of the new upper orders. To quote a typical instance:

‘A young girl, a teenager, describes her father who used to have a high position in the brewery in Lida. “In the otriad he became a malbush, he did nothing . . . he was intelligent, educated, but not resourceful at all. He was dirty, neglected. He was not counted as a human. No one would have recognized him. There were many disappointed people like him”’

And this, it seems, is a typical picture. Up to 50% of the partisan camp inhabitants, who in total numbered over twelve hundred by the end of the war, came within the category of malbushim, including displaced women and children and the elderly. At any stage, it seems clear, had a plebiscite been taken amongst the upper 50% of the camp, the decision would have been to jettison these additional mouths and let them take their chance.

What stopped this happening, and what allowed the camp to become a place of refuge for all Jews, irrespective of age or status, was the authority and influence of a handful of people—mainly the Bielski brothers, or at least some of them, who had founded the otriad in the first place. Especially Tuvia Bielski, the eldest and the leader, who, in the context of the times, appeared to represent a different and superior human type to the general run of his followers.

How does one account for this difference in human types? And for the disparity in numbers between them? For the fact that the individual charisma, natural authority and conscience of one or two was more than sufficient counterweight to the ruthless individualism of hundreds? Can evolution account for this? I don’t know.

One is reminded of the passage of the gospels, where: ‘He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened”’ (Matthew 13:33). According to one commentary, ‘The Kingdom of God is compared to a bit of leaven—something small and simple, but with the power to transform the entire environment into which it is introduced.’

It is a topic that in a general sense I hope to return to . . .