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What Makes Men Good?
Nothing. If history has taught us anything, it is that mankind excels at doing bad while pretending to be noble and otherwise.
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but the last century has proved beyond doubt that human beings are not getting better. In fact, the opposite has occurred: we’ve regressed. The myth of progress be damned and forgotten evermore. Sure the last century saw many positive examples of growth – technology and applied science come to mind. And, yes, this growth has been at an unprecedented level too – since 1915 we have had the invention or upgrading of planes, automobiles, vaccines, indoor plumbing, freezers, dishwashers, modern medical advances such as the heart transplant and chemotherapy, television, radio, mobile phones, satellites, and the computer. I could go on and on, but I shall stop where I am. Human technology and its use has been a definite benefit.
But the story of the last century encompasses much more then the good uses of technology. it also saw the rise of three totalitarian threats (the legacies of which are still with us), which nearly wiped out all life on earth; two unbelievably destructive great world wars; genocides (I use the plural because even in our “enlightened age” they occur still); mass torture; starvation; a Cold War (that included multiple actual wars); the unleashing of political tyrannies never seen before, whose great claim was making many of their subjects never to be seen again; the rise of police states to a level Orwell could not envision; biological warfare; chemical warfare; poison gas; gulags; concentration camps; the emergence of religious violence and the deaths of 200 million people. More people died in the 20th century from secular regimes than all the wars in history up until that point.
So why do people seem to think we are improving, that our better angels are calling us home? Many of our secular liberal/libertarian friends seem to think it: Stephen Pinker and Michael Shermer both have written books on the subject. Of course, they are wrong – and the reason can be seen or stated very simply by reference to human history and, more particularly, human nature. Jews and Christians both acknowledge the profound corruption of human nature. Many pagans, who realized the harsh fact that human beings are not good, historically did the same. The very idea that people are good, which is believed by many on the left, is an Enlightenment fantasy dreamed up in 18th century France. It is a very young and wrong idea.
There is a great Russian story about human nature (which Thomas Sowell mentions in his great Dismantling America book):
There is an old Russian fable, with different versions in other countries, about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was that Boris had a goat and Ivan didn’t. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.
Ivan said, “I want Boris’ goat to die.”
There are variations of that story in many other cultures across time and space. What it lacks in narrative it gains in telling us something profound about human nature. That we have in us something very bad, despite the fact that we’re capable of goodness.
The really odd thing is that the myth of progress – the idea that human beings are getting better and more humane and kind— is beginning to come back with force in liberal mind. No matter the evidence to the contrary, people still return to it. This could be very dangerous. Those who fail to learn lessons from history are doomed to repeat it. And none of us want to see the 20th century repeated. I don’t, anyway. God willing and hopefully…
Published in Culture, History, Religion & Philosophy
Biology makes men good:
This site is not perfect for terms of the people killed in the 20th century but its not bad either: think it minimises/ lowers some of the deaths due to some of the regimes but nonetheless it is near 200 million. (The second world war total is closer to 70 million not 50 and some of the commie regimes had higher death figures, as did USSR which was responsible for much more deaths than here) http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html deaths
I’d also throw in Black Book of Communism too just cause I like it for beating up left wingers (I know your not one Tom) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism#Estimated_number_of_victims
I accept again that progress has been made in many fields – the treatment of poor in the West, single mothers, minorities etc – yet cannot accept that we are getting better overall. We abort thousands/ millions of human beings in the womb, we practice slavery in modern sense by outsourcing it to China and India, we have witnessed the collapse of the family and traditions in our lifetime, the rise in divorce, STIs, sex without love, family breakdown, single parent families has been horrifically damaging. We congratulate ourselves on our tolerance towards gays and lesbians and minorities while demonising white males and allowing our elderly to be dumped in homes to be left alone or pressured into euthanasia as happens in some European countries is not something that I would call echos moral progress of our time.
Our culture promotes libertinism, nihilism and materialism (do what you feel like is best mantra I’ve heard) as a way of life – seen in attitudes to drugs, lifestyle choices and sex – which has a devastating effect on all ages – and is probably responsible not just for some of the ails mentioned above – but the horrific depression and suicides rate by young males, and in addition by my continent Europe which prefers la dolce vita lives than to breed, leading to literally collapsing birth rates and a dying culture.
We’ve allowed also a society and a culture to develop which denies objective truth leading to what Pope Benedict rightly and prophetically called a dictatorship of relativism. We sacrifice truth to moral relativism and multiculturalism – and many conservatives privately bitch about but say nothing publicly. We import hundreds of thousands of people – many of whom hate our freedoms and will use them against us – but no – their values are equal. We desecrate our school system with liberal education methods and leave the very poorest to put up with it. We allow liberals to demonise our culture and tradition, and then take over it and we dont even put up a fight – allowing their poison to warp impressionable minds -not to mention letting them bastardise history. We dont even have the courage anymore to use these words – its a sin or its wrong.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Both Pinker and Shermer give detailed reasons and statistics to prove their thesis. Where is yours?
Depression is normal after a friend commits suicide. Perhaps you are merely grieving.
If you want to believe that the world is a terrible place, you have the liberty to do so – for god gave you the gift of choice. My faith is in the goodness of man and the perfection of creation. That is what I choose.
Barkha, part of this essay was inspired by Shermer’s ideas -they are standard rationalist dream. There is quite a good rebutal written on http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/danusha-v-goska/michael-shermers-unmoral-arc/
As for Pinker many liberal and conservatives of both faiths and none saw through the holes on that – John Gray who is a liberal atheist wrote a brilliant rebuttal in Prospect to it – as did Ross Douthat in NYT. Craig Lerner too got him so annoyed he responded with an attack. You can find links to both on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature#Negative.
David Berlinski (whose daughter Claire writes for Ricochet) nailed him gently in the Devils Delusion and is writing a book on similiar topic to what I wrote. I believe the world is both terrible and beautiful place – to quote an Irishman “A terrible beauty”.
I have no faith in the goodness of man – I’m sorry. While I acknowledge most people are capable of living their lives in a moral way – many of us are rarely if ever tested. The difference between an optimist and a pessimist is the optimist hopes for the best – but the pessimist is always right. To quote a great Irish American “There’s no sense to being Irish unless you know the world’s going to break my heart.
As long as we’re sharing TED talks that succinctly summarize our position. Please, everyone should watch this.
I can’t speak for Paddy, but my take is that human nature is as flawed and fallen as it ever was, but that technologic advances in transportation, communication, and weaponry have allowed us to express that fallen nature on a much larger scale than ever before.
Of course, the confusing truth is that man is simultaneously made in the image of God, meaning capable of immense greatness and wonder, and fallen, meaning capable of immense evil.
@Paddy –
I read through your links. Most of the criticism is not that Pinker / Shermer is wrong, (no proof of that, at least, found by me)
That’s similar to the leftist argument that the “number” of jobs are up, even though the percentages are down….
(this is from your link)
This criticism looks to me like the glorification of the good old days, it there was any…
All I can say is, my heart goes out to you. May you find peace, love and joy, and perhaps faith. I hear Irishmen are supposed to have more of it than heathens like me.
The Apostle Paul gets this one right… (Romans 3:10-18)
As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside;They have together become unprofitable;There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
I’m still waiting for answer to my question. If, as the OP states:
What age/place was morally superior to our own? What did we regress from?
In the interests of fairness, let us assume that your time machine contains modern medical supplies sufficient for the life of you and your loved ones: where/when would you like to go?
The difference between modern peoples and ancient peoples is the difference between an adult and a child. The adult has so much more, both to enjoy and to struggle with. The adult has so many more opportunities and powers. But is the adult happier? Is the adult more worthy of praise than the child?
There is certainly a progression from childhood to adulthood, as there is from campfires and clubs to cities and passenger jets. But the adult’s life is more complicated, not better or worse. The adult’s life is a cathedral rather than a finger painting, a civilization rather than a neighborhood.
It’s like a tree. Its limbs are harvested for wood. That wood is refined and shaped into something beautiful or useful, like an ornate chair. Is the chair an improvement of the tree? Or is each beautiful, the refined and the unrefined, in its own way?
There’s no need to choose between the ancient and the modern. Civilization actualizes human nature in a different way — an advanced way. But “progress” needn’t imply an objective improvement of quality.
The concept of original sin, which underlies Western thought on this issue, does not assert that humanity is essentially evil. It asserts only that humanity is flawed — a good and beautiful nature tainted by evil — and in need of redemption. It asserts that even the best of us is tempted to be selfish and unkind.
Christianity then takes this a step further and says that Satan has been afforded the opportunity to spoil this world’s inhabitants until Christ comes again to judge who has been faithful to Him — who truly desires Him. Thus, in addition to the inherent moral fragility of our beautiful but earthly nature, our environment (both natural and emergent) is frequently hostile and we are plagued by spiritual tempters who wish us to become evil.
In other words, we begin with an inclination to temptation and then we are actively tempted by beings who wish us harm. Thankfully, we are also guarded and encouraged by messengers of God.
Obviously, human nature is witnessed only through the filters of its environments. Our influences, restrictions, opportunities, and whatnot are constantly in flux. The results of this change are always both for the better and for the worse, though one may be inclined to focus on one or the other.
Despite frequent setbacks and occasionally severe ones (civilizational collapse and wanton destruction), humanity’s situation is indeed progressing in a variety of ways. We are able to build upon an ever greater foundation of knowledge and technology. We are ever more connected to each other through technology, commerce, family bonds, and history. And our technologies make us ever more powerful, opening opportunities hardly dreamed of before.
The catch is that all of this amounts only to opportunity. The development of laws and systems can free or enslave us. Our technological powers can be used to create or to destroy. Our knowledge, our alliances, our commerce — everything can be used for good or for evil.
I don’t think society as a whole has changed much. There will always be bad people in the world. That is the primary reason that Liberal dreams of Utopian societies run by all-knowing Governments is an impossible dream. Governments are made of people and people are flawed and in some cases seriously flawed. One of the great things about Capitalism is that it assumes people will make decisions based on greed rather than go against their selfish nature.
Christians (and possibly other faiths that I am less familiar with) have recognized the existence of sin in this world for centuries. Christians have been fighting human nature to be more like Jesus since the day He began His ministry, and recognize that it will be an ongoing struggle until the end of time.
I believe in the duel nature of man, that we are both fallen, and also contain a spark of divinity. That spark allows us to have a conscience. And that the impulse to do good or bad becomes stronger which ever way we choose. The more good choices the stronger our conscience becomes.
Through observing the current state of our society I think it is possible to fully believe you are morally correct when you are at polar opposite of moral.
Our conscience alone is often not enough, we need a conscience informed by religion. Because our mind is limited in it’s understanding. And our focus is only on the years spent on Earth, not on the much longer time that is Eternity. Or as Paul would say we see through a glass darkly.
That actually supposes that most people want to be good in their heart of hearts. Which is my default. I try to assume that people’s deepest motive is a desire to be good that went astray.
The longer I live, the more I think there really are people who want to be bad instead. And I really don’t understand those people at all.
Thank you for sharing that.
Evening Tom,
It is true that much of life from the recent reduction in poverty as Arthur Brooks has noted and the reduction in the cost of electricity, the increase in world wide protien consumption and life expectancy as Matt Ridley noted to the increase in more consensual government points in a hopeful direction. There are other facts which are not so clearly hopeful. From 2008 “How to buy a child in 10 hours”, abc Nightline showed how easy it would be to fly from New York to Haiti and buy a child with no advance preparation. It may be true that no country has legal slavery but slavery is still wide spread from Africa through Islamic countries to India. The idea that the awareness of the injustice of slavery caused its demise is not convincingly argued. Also the eugenic movements of the 20th century, and current sex based abortions indicate that men act in ways that show that all life is not thought to have value, let alone have a sacred character. Now we are heading into the moral realm where only life which is clearly aware of itself has value, if you are old and become demented watch out. In the modern world, we have destroyed the concept of sacred. Our idolatry of our individual freedom and our infallible intellect inpire us to determine the value everything, indepentent of habit, traditon, or nature. We don’t reproduce, if life is so good, wouldn’t birth rates increase as they do in the rest of the animal kingdom. Individuals are less connected to family, community, clubs. There are many trends concerning the breakdown of the family which occurs more readily in Western societies, which are not positive.
I suppose it matters who has brought you up and who you’re hanging around; I don’t seem to feel your angst.
Spending money to save a child from life in Haiti seems pretty clearly awesome charity to me. If only we could finance the adults as well and save them all from that hellhole.
Or we could just let them immigrate, but I realize that’s too much to ask.
“Demise” isn’t necessary. Are you suggesting the reduction in legality hasn’t convincingly correlated with a reduction in the act?
Happily there’s indication that birthrates are starting to rise. They have in Japan.
This has nothing to do with the fundamental nature of man or his moral change over time, but is remarkable in terms of highlighting other forms of progress.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/
“Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats – BBC Four”
and here’s another one
http://ricochet.com/can-read-youre-rich/#comment-2724424
via Herbert E. Meyer
This actually hits it on the head. If people aren’t accountable to God for both the good and bad they do, they are accountable to only themselves, and this is a crapshoot.
The number of people acting with greater morality goes up and down with the times, and I am basing this claim on instinct. I thought I read a book about this some time ago, and I wonder if someone did research on it. While it is impossible for us to write a “Book of Life” in which everyone’s acts have been recorded, it would be fascinating for someone to pull in the warp and woof of many particular times and places and give each subject’s moral gist. The comparisons could yield actual answers to your question above.
Nonetheless, let us turn the tables and ask where would not want to have lived: would you want to have lived in Moscow in 1921? Germany in 1938? China in 1955? Cambodia in 1976? And of course, that is just the last century.
Jim, I don’t deny that our age has serious problems, nor do I believe that we’ve transcended to some higher plane of existence. With the exception of mechanized genocide, however, I’m still not seeing anything here that other ages couldn’t easily match.
I confess that, in defending our age, I feel a lot like I’m defending the United States to a liberal: no matter how many specific positive things I cite in our favor, all I hear back are lists of our enduring flaws, most of which apply to humanity writ large.
No, no, no, and no. Though I refer you to the video Mike H. cited, particular the violent death stats that compare the 20th century (very favorably) to others.
Now, will you answer my question?
Afternoon Tom,
As a conservative, I am genetically disposed to gloominess. I am not challenging the improvements in the basics of material life that have been mentioned; from public health to private choice almost everything is unimaginably better. Also the things that are better are the essentials of life, food (cheaper and more hygienic), clothing (cheaper and more durable), housing (better and bigger), and cheaper energy. All of those improvements are true in spades, yet there are other essential to human life which are disrupted by our modern Western life.
We can imagine that the black community might be representative of the society at large. Jason Riley in his book “Please Stop Helping Us” has many stats comparing life in the black community from 1940 – 1960 to since and now. In 1960 3 in 4 black children lived with two parents, now 70% live with unwed mothers, from 1940 to 1950 black unemployment was the same as white unemployment now it is double at least, black 17 year old students read at the level of white 13 year old students, in science it is worse, the gap in black home ownership is the widest since 1960. The material benefits that modern life has created have benefitted blacks as well as whites, yet the Great Society with AFDC has been a disaster to the black family. These destructive government programs are beginning to ripple out in the rest of our society, and other countries as well. Concerning birth rates in Japan, I have heard that adult diapers out sell children’s.
Modern society has atomized family and community. One hundred years ago charity created bonds between people who knew each other by name, often living in the same community. Now charity is a government check erasing personal connections, also people often are tempted to live on the dole (why work if I can get by on welfare?). Tocqueville noticed that Americans would form a voluntary committee to solve the problems, now government crowds out those voluntary groups. Modern life has confounded dating, courtship, marriage, parenting. Are we to be optimistic that life will be better for the younger people? Also in monetary terms we have lived hog on the hog and given the next generation crippling debt to go along with a crippling government.
Those of us who have actually read The Better Angels of our Nature keep telling ya but y’all aren’t listening: Stephen Pinker did not argue that human nature has changed or that we —you and I—are biologically different from people who lived fifty, five hundred or five thousand years ago.
Rather we are—inarguably—technologically and culturally different, different not just in how we manipulate materials, but in terms of what we know about the world and ourselves, different in terms of how we store and exchange information and ideas and that difference includes a measurable improvement when it comes to the most basic measure of moral behavior: fewer murders per 100,000.
And, while we’re on the subject, fewer tortures, rapes, enslavements, lynchings, infanticides, abandonments and, yes, abortions too.
Pinker doesn’t argue that this progress from more-murders-per-100,000 to fewer murders-per-100,ooo is permanent or inevitable, just that it is—and has been— happening. He has a lot of theories as to why it might be happening, none of which include alterations in the basic neurological wiring in our heads or the soteriological worth of our mortal souls.
The increase in our ability to create, store and exchange information is one of the major drivers of progress: Ricochet itself is an example. Why are you all on here, day after day, arguing, telling stories, posting links to this or that website, factoid, news story and outrageous YouTube video and paying for the privilege , if you don’t believe that by doing so, you can reinforce the convictions of those who believe as you do, and persuade those who don’t to a better, more moral way?
And look at what we’re arguing about: Ferguson, not Selma. Iraq, not Vietnam ( and certainly not Hiroshima). Campus speech codes, not Jim Crow segregation. Same Sex Marriage, not Miscegenation. Knowing just what you know about human history, human nature and human biology, does it not strike you as an astonishing, unprecedented moral luxury that we have a real, passionate debate about whether a zygote the size of the period on the end of a sentence is a human being with rights that must be protected?
Tom keeps asking the question and nobody will answer: My wild surmise is that even the most nostalgic among you are uninterested in returning to a time when children worked fourteen hour days in factories, when women couldn’t vote, or when the household was riven not by reckless divorce but by the prolonged (and sometimes permanent) separations of war. I would bet that you’d prefer to retain the moral progress that permitted someone as talented as Condoleeza Rice not only to share a drinking fountain with GWB, but to become his Secretary of State.And frankly I doubt that even the SoCons really long for the days when a son’s homosexuality could create a chasm in a family unbridgeable by love.
For that matter, even if you prefer not to include progress on the environment in your “moral” inventory of the nation, I doubt any of us want to return to a time when farmer’s abuse of the dry prairie ecosystem created dust storms that choked children in their sleep (1930s) or American rivers were so polluted they caught fire (1970s).
“The myth of progress – the idea that human beings are getting better and more humane and kind— is beginning to come back with force in liberal mind.”
Progress may be a myth, but I prefer it to the myth of regress. Our laments about the decline of America or the West are no more objective, rational or evidence-based than those of my environmentalist sister who has taken to telling her children that global warming has gone too far, we’re all doomed and it would be wiser for them not to bear young. Indeed conservative apocalypticism smacks of the same, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, prophet-of-doom condescension, as if we’ve decided we’re competent to be Jesus, weeping as he predicts the destruction of Jerusalem.
Want people to be more responsible, dutiful, courageous, creative, rational, kind and virtuous than we are right now? Great! Terrific! Let’s work on moving toward that time and place, but lets be clear: we’re going to have to move forward. If the better world exists at all, it is not in the past but in the future.
Evening Tom and Kate,
The area of crime presents mixed progress. From Jason Riley, “Crime rates rose by 139 percent during the 1960’s, and the murder rate doubled.” In my parents generation families in Indiana did not lock their doors on their daily outings. My parents families only locked their doors when they left town on a trips. From Spencer to Anderson Indiana folks felt no threat from break-ins. This confidence was also until recently common in Northern England, see Bill Bryson “Notes from a Small Island.” Bill noted that when he moved there it was not uncommon for neighbors to even enter each others homes if they had to borrow a cup of sugar and no one was home, of course this was unheard of to Bill, as an American. I know no one who walks out of the house without locking the doors. Also in Northern England, where my isiter-n-law lives, all of the houses have motion detector lightings, and they lock thier doors now.
The crime rates in London in 1900 were so low that people were arrested for riding bicycles on the sidewalk, assault and murder were almost nil. At this time in London, then the largest city in the world, crime was almost zero, illegitimacy was 4%, civil responsibility saturated the society from top to bottom. Charles Booth organized a private census of the East end of London, some 250,000 familes. Via this catalogue and through Gertrude Himmelfarb, we see life in a large modern city which would be as far as can be imagined a safer and happier society and maybe prefered to our times.
I am suggesting that the success of the modern western governments have ripened into beaucratic paternalistic care takers which tempt people to live in a fashion more isolated and selfish than in past times. The cultural drive for a sense of entitled freedom, indifferent to civic responsibility, has weakened and Balkanized our social fabic and reduced our social capital.
Um…I don’t lock my doors…but never mind.
With a time machine, Jim Beck would like to go back to the Indiana of his parents’ generation OR 1910 London. (I gather you’d prefer to be white and male though, right?)
Really? Did we need to see this?
Nowadays in our moral progress we dont hang minorities no we just stop them from being born and then say ah sure its a black/ brown fetus, group of cells etc and dump abortion clinics in black areas.
Then we deny many of them a chance to get a good education, or speak out at their families disintegration due to moral cowardice at offending certain groups or the idea of talking down to them. Soft bigotry of low expectations.
Moral progress indeed. Its laughable. For the last time no age is perfect but people should stop pretending this one is a cut above the rest.
We hide our evil nowadays. We’re much better at it. Libertinism, moral relativism, abortion, drug usage, and all other moral ills are still there. We just dont even use the word sin anymore. Its too harsh.
FIRST___I’m sorry, ET, you’re quite right—I was moving too fast and not thinking. My apologies to everyone. (And I am very hyper-sensitive to these things when other people spring them on me, so I definitely should’ve known better.) I don’t know how to edit it out of your comment?