The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture.

Saunders is arguing for a set of cross-cultural “constants” in human experience: basic needs and appetites, attachment and love, fear and pain, and occasional surges of joy or elevation. In his view, these forces are dependable enough that a writer (or reader) can count on them as the deep structure beneath any story. What changes from place to place is not the underlying emotional physics but the surface “ornament”—customs, idioms, social codes, and local particulars. The claim has ethical weight as well: when hunger, fear, and pain recede, a baseline human kindness can emerge, suggesting that cruelty is often situational rather than essential.