The Perils of Denying/Rejecting Human Nature

The solutions each of us proposes for problems of the world, if we took the time to think about it, depend very much on our intellectual and moral inclinations and starting assumptions.

I very much believe that there is a human nature which is innate to every human being that, at the crux, cannot be altered by socialization or some kind of mere hope, morality or ideology. This starting belief informs my intuitive interest in subjects like evolutionary psychology, Realism and Marxism, because such subjects are inspired by how so many aspects of our behaviour do not change despite the long span of human history. The patterns just inevitably keep repeating themselves, as evidenced by the vast literature of war, societal conflicts and love throughout the ages.

Despite numerous social movements that have seen humans living through the chastity of Victorian England, the oppression of Maoist China, the enlightenment of Renaissance Europe to the decadence of the Dark Ages (an obviously inexhaustive yet clearly diverse list), fundamental aspects of aggression, attraction, status hierarchies, coalition formation, kinship and reciprocity, just to name a few, still remain. Despite the promise of Liberalism and Idealism, which are all logically sound philosophies, wars still happen and states are still concerned with security. Exploitation still happens all over the world, at both global levels (the exploitation of third world nations by advanced capitalist states) and smaller levels (the exploitation of the poor by corporations).

I don't think I'm wrong in my judgment of the reality in this sense, even if it may appear rather bleak or, worse, nativist. It is clear that, with recurring travesties of war, discrimination, exploitation etc in the world today, the power of socialization (trumpeted by behaviourists, social constructivists and environmentalists amongst others who believe entirely in nurture/culture while refusing to acknowledge nature) and the power of cooperation (because man is good and rational) requires a serious raincheck. The worst thing to do, given where my intellectual concerns come from, is to deny that human nature exists and dictates a significant chunk of our motives and actions.

This is dangerous because denying our nature and our propensity for certain behaviours is to diagnose the problem wrongly and suggest the wrong cure. It is perhaps striking how so many people are surprised when others behave in a self-interested manner, or are upset in the sense that they get caught off guard when war and conflict happens. It reflects, perhaps, a certain kind of self-delusional belief that social theories of learning and positive reinforcement can eradicate 'bad' traits in humans. John B. Watson (1930), the founder of behaviourism, famously said, "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors." Clifford Geertz, a firm believer of the culturally malleable human, also defined how many social scientists think today and therefore a large degree of the entire social sciences enterprise. Hence, to these theorists, "change society or culture and you change people... Intelligent, scientific socialization can make us whatever we want to be" (D. E. Brown, 1991).

The attempts to suppress 'bad' human nature have been huge fiascos. Suppression often results in a rebound effect, and large scale oppression of natural tendencies are bound to either fail (consider the Kibbutz movement, the Hippie movement or the feminist movement, just to name some) or will experience some 'leakage' - the secret societies that operate underneath a lawful society, the rich husband who cheats on his wife, the insecure friend who behaves competitively even though the friendship is tight. I guess with such high hopes for a better world, it should come as no surprise that many people are disappointed or jaded with the outcomes.

It should make more sense, then, to find ways to work with/around our human nature, instead of working against it. Monogamous marriage law is a great example to cite. If men are most aggressive when they have no mates, institutionalize monogamy. This solved the huge problem of a lack of females in society for men who weren't rich or powerful enough to get wives (although you get the problem of the cheating powerful husband because he is driven to seek extramarital affairs, but that's a small cost compared to the huge benefits of reduced societal violence). Realism provides the wisdom that states seek security, so find ways to induce balance of power. Zhuge Liang knew this so brilliantly when foresaw that stability will be achieved when the three kingdoms were balanced against each other. Marxism tells us that the rich elite will exploit the poor. So empower the poor - give them welfare and education - and offset the power differential between the bourgeosie and the proletariat. Stubbornly refusing to acknowledge exploitation, or perhaps worse, calling it by another name (comparative advantage and mutual gains?) to hide its dark side, will not result in betterment for society.

Betterment will come slowly, as it often does. With my basic starting assumptions outlined above, I believe the creation of institutions that work with human nature are often the solutions that succeed and result in progressive change. A good sense of creativity and level-headedness, with a healthy dose of reality, will go much further than overzealous revolution or radicalism with the refusal to acknowledge that our human nature cannot be denied and won't go away.

All At Sea

There is always a sense of beckoning when I see and am in the midst of whatever limited nature I can get around here. Be it sprinting across as my toes dig into soft sand and hurling myself into the waves with the bright blue sky sprawling overhead, or immersing into the dark of the night with the echoes of cicada and the fresh scent of nocturnally-active plants, I always feel most carefree and like I belong. Recently, there's been a Go card advertisement which depicts the holders of the card diving in the bluest of lagoons, hiking in the deepest rainforests and driving across long stretches of Savannah, and I can't help but feel a deep sense of longing for the ability to travel and experience such an adventure.

I had one of the most carefree three days of my life at Sentosa with everything I love. :]




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Then I Would Die, But At Least Then I’d Be Free

Some clues to the physiology of happiness set the stage. One author writes, "In the normal range of behavior, 30 to 50 percent of the variance (diversity in the general population) can usually be assigned to genetic factors." ... In some longitudinal studies, "genes account for 80% of the stable variance in long-term reports of well-being." But, as we shall see, the interaction between mind and body gives a little more space to volition, behavior and changing circumstance.

The nature-nurture relationship is complex. For one thing, our genes often influence our choice of environments; what is nurture is then something shaped by nature. If people choose their own environments, they make socialization a two-way process. As one group of researchers has written, "Whatever effects parents, schools, and neighbourhoods may have had, they were either quite different in different children or [were ephemeral and] did not persist until the children grew up." Given the tendency of children to differentiate themselves so as to occupy special niches in families and schools, and given the consequent lack of the same environment for children in the same family, it is not surprising that socialization effects "were quite different in different children." The bright child pleases her father, the musical child her mother: parental treatments of the two children follow from the children's respective endowments.

... but in the meantime I note that in addition to these interactive nature-nurture relationships, there are also purely environmental influences; for example, the loss of a parent during childhood is directly correlated with alcoholism of daughters, irrespective of their genes. The complexity of the nature-nurture relationship has roots in our evolutionary histories.

- Robert E. Lane, The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, P. 38



Stopping short of theological philosophy on the free-will vs fate argument and assuming we're agents endowed with free-will, if a part of being happy is to know that one is in control of one's destiny, where does this leave us?



He adds in an earlier part that:

Fixity of mood also has implications for the assessing of distributive justice. Philosophers wrestle (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) with problems of justice when the outcomes of behavior are fixed by such genetic endowments as intelligence and beauty. If happiness is at least partly given by nature, philosophers like David Ross and Nicholas Rescher, who make happiness an ultimate good only when merited, are in trouble.



What happens if you're a philosopher whose work has weight and value only because the truth to be seeked is still a shady concept, and one day your work is proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is wrong and you're not dead yet? I wonder what kind of blow one must sustain to realise that a lifetime has been dedicated to the wrong end of the truth.

Or perhaps one would rather die knowing he's wrong and knowing the truth. In a utilitarian way of looking at it, one's philosophical errors can be seen as contributing to discovering the ultimate truth and achieving the all important end.

Actually, post-Euro'08 I've also been quite fascinated in a back-of-my-head kinda way about the psychology of the underdog. What's it like to be Adrian Mutu, Petr Cech or Andrey Arshavin; brilliant footballers who should deserve more but will never have the means to glory on the international stage?

In a somewhat side but relevant note, while Cristiano Ronaldo's still keeping at his cat and mouse game with Real Madrid and Manchester United, Cesc Fabregas rejected Real Madrid outrightly and declared allegiance to Arsenal and Arsene Wenger. It does say alot about the kinds of contrasting people these two are. And then you have players like Ryan Giggs, who have dedicated a lifetime of football to Manchester United, but only because Manchester United are illustrious in their own right. What if you were brilliant and loyal but your team was mediocre, like the situation the old Denilson at Real Betis found himself in?




Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
- George Burns

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Our Evolution Halt

With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution, would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilised society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but, excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner previously indicated more tender and more widely diffused. Nor can we check our sympathy, even without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature ... We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.

- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Second edition, pp. 133-134, 1887.


I've always had the profound belief that humans will never be able to evolve. The above as stated by Charles Darwin is one agency by which humans are eradicating the means to undergo some raw basis of natural selection.

Another thought takes root from the fact that we owe our lives to technology. Compared to any other living beings, humans alter the environment so much more such that our need to evolve on the grounds of adaptation to natural conditions is compromised. While other animals evolve to suit the harsh changes of their surroundings, humans have the intellect to manipulate habitats.

Our propensity to mess nature up has reverberated in so many ways and are coming back to haunt us, most noticeably in the form of global warming - it's as if Nature herself is recoiling from the accumulated cheap shots to deliver a sucker punch. Through our minds, we bear the brainchild of technology that is so conflicting with nature that we are distancing ourselves as sentient members of a beautiful ecosystem. In cushioning the weak and, in turn, allowing the weak to propagate as mentioned elegantly by Darwin, we are further contributing to our intrinsic deterioration as creatures of nature. It's no surprise then if we are dealt with an inherent blow in the form of us permanently afflicting our very own natural means of survival as a species when we lose the ability to adapt, evolve and survive.

No matter how I look at it, when we are placed side by side with the cockroaches, cheetahs, marlins and ferns of the world, we are lagging far behind. Simply thinking of the many varieties of cat species sends a shiver of excitement down my spine because it is just like running through a catalogue of prototypes designed to maximise killer abilities for the sake of survival - lions for their strength, cheetahs for their speed. Their bone structures are detail-perfect and their senses are sharpened. And the lowly cockroach is an evolutionary genius. A cockroach can survive decapitation for a very long period (up to weeks) until it dies of hunger. Cockroaches are among the hardiest insects on the planet, some species capable of remaining active for a month without food, or being able to survive on limited resources like glue from the back of postage stamps. Some can go without air for 45 minutes or slow down their heart rate. It has been popularly suggested that cockroaches will 'inherit the earth' if humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war, and cockroaches do indeed have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with the lethal dose perhaps 6 to 15 times that for humans. Cockroaches have practically been conceived, formatted and devised purely to rough it out and survive no matter what. Stripped of the safety net of technology, we are in a relegation zone battle to avoid joining the ranks of the dodos.

If one day nature throws a trump card that our technology can't catch up with, then I suppose our extinction is quite imminent.




The Religious Right aren't, and Scientific Creationism isn't.

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Firehouse - Love Of A Lifetime