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The Nature of Our Nature
In recent threads, there’s been some back and forth regarding Mankind’s nature and some… speculation as to how attitudes about it correlate with political ideology. I’ve my own theories on the matter, but I think more might be gained at this point from asking than guessing (differences tend to get exagerated in debates, so it’s sometimes best to take a step back and explore each other’s first principles). So, Ricochetti, here’s this morning’s assignment:
- Do you believe Mankind to be inherently good, wicked, or neither? Explain briefly.
- Which philosophers and/or theologians do you identify with on this subject (bonus points for providing a representative quote).
- How do your answers above inform your political philosophy?
Edmund Burke: “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”
3. It is dangerous for government to have too much power, because power concentrated in the hands of fallen people is dangerous. And it is dangerous for government to have too much power because it weakens the institutions such as churches and family that foster the virtue that makes a free society possible. It is particularly dangerous for the government to take positions that weaken those institutions directly.
1.——
Either.
My impression is that we are patchwork quilts of infinitely many combinations of Genetics and Experiences. More kaleidoscopic, than painted.
2.)——
My best Guideposts are
Thomas Sowell –
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
-Conflict of Visions
Adam Smith via Russ Roberts –
“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.”
-How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life
3.———-
Thomas Sowell taught me about my libertarianism in Basic Economics and Applied Economics. He taught me about my conservatism in Conflict of Visions; as I considered the absolute imperfectability of Man. So, I generally self identify as being a Rightist. This is especially due to the Republican Party, more frequently, unspokenly being credited with authoring the definition of conservatism; even as it’s replacing Conservatism’s component parts with liberalism.
Russ Roberts taught me about some of what Adam Smith had to say on human nature: That man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to also be lovely. And, also that Leftists are also thinking, feeling human beings who are trying to make sense of the world. Also he taught me about looking in the mirror; and how much hard work it really takes to not lie to yourself about what’s really there… Don’t fool yourself, and remember, you’re the easiest one to fool.
After this – Reading the Federalist and Anti-Federalist has taught be – above all – that we are all mental midgets compared to the founders. There are no equals.
I believe most people are good and that we should be careful not to extrapolate from one sensationalized story about 1 bad person to the other 330,000,000 of us.
Humans are made in the image of God and are born with a conscience, a sense of right and wrong, but we’re also selfish creatures who need to have our consciences strengthened and nurtured. This is easy to see in children, who one minute will be comforting a sufferer and the next grabbing a toy away from a brother or sister.
Like Lucy, I gain a lot of wisdom from C.S. Lewis. I like the quotation she included, and would add this one about moral law:
“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or…ideologies…all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
In other words, there is truth and beauty and goodness. They are real, and are mostly propagated by our families and churches. That’s where moral truths are taught. Government certainly has a role to play, which is to create a space where good can flourish and where people have free will for the most part. It would be Satan’s plan to force people to be good, but at the same time we don’t want to make it too easy to be really bad either. That’s why I think laws that restrict drug use, prostitution and the like are fine. People can still do these things if they want–heaven knows sin will always be with us–but law and government don’t need to sanction them either.
The most important point is, though, that there is such a thing as good and right. We can argue about what it is, but Lewis asserts that we all agree that certain things are wrong–lying, stealing, murder–and no culture has ever existed that thought these things were good. He, of course, was a Christian, and believed that Christianity helped humans understand how to treat our fellow men and how to find redemption. Such knowledge will never come from governments. This is why it would be a grave mistake to banish religion from the public square. Religion is the conscience of the nation. Not that anyone is forced to follow any particular religion, but the religous realm is where humans grapple with moral questions.
1) Our human nature is to prefer our own desires over anything else, especially including right action that goes against our self interest. We are good when it costs us nothing. As much as I dislike using the words “wicked” or “evil” in a way that unfortunately includes all the people I admire and love, it seems like those are the correct terms. We do, however, value righteousness and we can be trained. Whenever this question comes up, I am reminded that I did not have to teach my children to lie and steal, I had to teach them to tell the truth and share.
2) I am a poor scholar and cannot unfortunately provide any discrete references other than the Bible. I am reading Augustine’s “Confessions” right now but my reading wanders into the “serious” column only once every ten years or so.
3) Given my attitude toward human nature, I think people who believe that they are inherently good can be incredibly dangerous and shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of anything. I think that belief, on top of being fantastic, destroys humility. In today’s political climate, that aligns me with the conservatives and libertarians.
But how should we punish and reward?
Laws that loom large require enforcement that looms large, and the people doing the enforcement are… just people, on average no less wicked than the ones having the laws enforced upon them.
Belief in strong state-enforced social controls just isn’t justified by a simple belief human depravity. Rather, it is justified by a belief that those doing the enforcing will be markedly less depraved than the rest of humanity. For if the enforcers aren’t markedly less depraved, then we haven’t diminished human wickedness at all, just moved it from one place to another, or – given the tendency of power to corrupt – increased it.
We do well to remember Satan’s origins as God’s prosecuting attorney – God’s enforcer. Sent to test men, he got above himself and entrapped them instead. Or that is how the story goes. There is something characteristically Satanic about corrupt prosecution.
1) Created in God’s image, yet corrupted by sin from the moment of conception.
2) Calvin is the obvious one.
3) Because we are all rational, creative beings made by God we have great potential and no one is inherently superior to another. Person A might be smarter than person B but he has no right to control person B, who– less intelligent though he may be–has equal dignity as a human and is fully responsible for his own life.
On the other hand, because we are so deeply fallen from Eden, depraved behaviour is to be expected everywhere, including within the government.
And because only God can save and transform fallen people, attempting to achieve moral perfection through government is ridiculous– I want the government to get out of the way and the church and individual families to have far more agency in society.
So I’m pretty libertarian, but with more cynical expectations for human behaviour than most libertarians have.
Amen.
The italicized portion reminds me especially of what Mollie Hemingway and DC McAllister would say.
Sounds about right. Though to be honest, I think a lot of libertarians are pretty cynical…
An interesting question… How cynical are self-identified libertarians? Do they, for some reason, get perceived as less cynical than they really are?
Do you believe Mankind to be inherently good, wicked, or neither? Explain briefly.
How about both good and evil? I reject the Rousseauian idea that men are born good, but are corrupted by the world and its institutions. At the same time, human beings have the capacity to be good—though none of us are good all the time. And men have the capacity to commit evil (and other lesser forms of badness). In other words, I believe in free will. One thing I’m absolutely sure of is that mankind, in its current state, is imperfectible.
Which philosophers and/or theologians do you identify with on this subject.
Chesterton and Lewis were far too lucid to be called philosophers, but they’re by go-to guys.
Chesterton, from Orthodoxy: “All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that?”
C.S. Lewis (from The Great Divorce): “All that are in Hell choose it.”
How do your answers above inform your political philosophy?
Utopian government schemes always fail; the bigger the scheme the worse the failure.
I believe in my church congregation, my local city government, local civic organizations, my neighborhood. The further government is from these, the less it meets my needs (with a few exceptions: national defense being the most obvious).
There’s a lot of room for good-faith disagreement among people of goodwill re how to punish and reward. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. As a general rule, I would reserve the “stick” (i.e. punishment) for wrongs with a clearly-defined victim, and use the “carrot” (i.e. enticements such as tax benefits) for more “victimless” wrongs.
Well, that made my day.
I guess libertarians are always cynical about the good that government can accomplish… I’m also rather cynical about how well/rationally individuals can run their lives.
So I’m a political Eeyore?
Same here. But marginally less cynical about the latter than the former – by a margin big enough to make a huge difference in aggregate!
Well, then perhaps you guys are right, I must be missing something. As I understand it, a Libertarian is pretty much anti authority, maximum (to some reasonable extent, of course) individual liberty. Many conservatives call it radical individualism. I’ll look that book up.
No actually it doesn’t. I’ve never heard of him and his wikipedia entry didn’t lead to any insight as to his theology or philosophy.
Edmund Burke! How could I forget Burke, the father of modern conservatism. I quoted him on my blog a few weeks ago. Here:
That is the essence of Conservative governance! It is amazing to me how far afield Libertarians are from conservatives. Except for economics we don’t share the same views.
Evening John,
Humans as hunter-gathers, early agricultural groups, herders at their earliest stages did not live in groups led by alpha males. We are not like baboons or gorillas. Success in the earliest small groups required successful child rearing. Human females have a fertility pattern different from other primates. This pattern of pairing mothers with presumed fathers imbedded in large extended families became universal because it produced unmatched survival benefits. Kings and tyrants came much later in the history of humans.
1. In the aggregate, Man is sinful, fallen, craven, and far too easy to lead around by the nose. As individuals, we’ve immeasurable potential for good.
2. The Bible, Adam Smith, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand, Machiavelli.
3. My second post here on Ricochet (predominantly covered in the section entitled “A Is A).
I’ve been saying this — well, 1 & 3, you’ve only been my favorite philosopher for a short while Frank — for years and people actually argue with me. Unbelievable.
Well I take comfort in Gen.6:5-
‘& God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, & that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.’
& then at 8:21-
‘& the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.’
Titus Techera:
Children do learn evil fast enough, but I still believe they are born innocent, no matter how miserable they become later on.
I am not sure how that could be. I’d say, if the early chapters of Genesis teach anything, it’s that evil is what we would call today natural. The acquisition of evil by born-innocent Cain seems a doubtful proposition. I wouldn’t call a newborn evil. But I sometimes think I see children do things that foretell evil.
Kay, this makes me wonder if you have kids. I have 4, and my experience is that they are inherently “wicked,” principally in being selfish and lacking empathy. They need to be taught to overcome the natural tendency to hit anyone who bothers them and take anything that they want at the moment.
Fortunately, they are small to begin with, so the amount of damage that they can do is limited.
That’s what I see in kids as well. I know unpleasant facts. I think everyone who does not might find it easy to not suspect them.
To go back to our mentioning the early chapters of Genesis–it seems like the first murder was a matter of fratricidal jealousy.
This would seem to be a fascinating admission. May I press you on it?
In these to remarks you seem to be saying “I observe only the animal nature of man and from those observations it seems pretty apparent that man only has an animal nature.”
This seems consistent with general modernity and a great source of despair for so many of us. Man seems presently obsessed with looking down and mastering all that is beneath us. In the process, man is missing all that is above us and while we profit materially we feel more alone and less happy.
Can you speak about your comments in light of mine?
It’s not necessarily a modern thing. Ancient atheists sound rather similar. I think what’s at stake is the relation between science & politics. There is something to the philosophical attitude that requires detachment & is inclined to the opinion that human powers, such as they are, are not the cause of human success or thriving–nor are they able to produce progress–nor yet to forestall or prevent catastrophe.
Maybe it would be better to say that the thoroughly modern attitude is to say that science–& all use of human reason–is not philosophical or detached, but committed to evolution or progress. Such that truth & power are impossible to separate.
All kids are different. Maybe you had wicked little devils. My 2 year old loves saying “Sorry” and “Thank you” and “You’re welcome.” There are studies that show babies understand empathy before they could learn it. Yes, they’re often selfish because it’s a survival mechanism from evolving around scarce resources, but this idea of “inherent wickedness” is either laughably absurd or so weak as to be a useless concept, i.e – not being perfect little angels does not make them inherently wicked.
Perhaps if you never taught them anything they would be pretty bad, but this does not display inherent wickedness just because they don’t come out of the womb knowing it’s bad to hit people. It’s incredibly easy to teach most kids right from wrong. And they get it because humans tend to understand and appreciate the good when they see it.
What I think is uniquely modern is how deeply these ideas have taken root among the everyman.
I think the 16yo serving you ice cream at the carnival would think of himself (such as anyone would think this way) as something closer to an animal serving a bowl of flavored atoms for the purpose of delivery sensory pleasure than to two souls engaging in meaningful interaction.
In fact, if you proposed the two to him I think he nod at the former and say “That kinda makes sense.” and LOL at the latter.
That’s deeply disturbing. That cannot be right. I think most of this is rhetoric. People are dominated by science & they cannot give an answer that seems to them plausible & convincing. But they know they’re people–that other people are people, too, although it’s not clear anymore how to act on that awareness…
I’ll tell you, though, your question reminded me–I showed my folks Rebel without a cause the other day. A scene near the beginning & then the end make this point, that kids are taught in the planetarium that humans are powerless specks of dust in a cold, indifferent universe & all life must end.
There is something to that. But of those who sort of believe this, I suspect most like to believe in a kind of happy scientific materialism–madly finding meaning in ‘we are all made of stars’ talk.
I’m not sure teenagers are people… but we can get into that another time.
For those of you who think I don’t have children, rest assured I have two daughters, 7 grandchildren, and 5 great grandchildren. I watched one of my grandsons, age 4, wiggle on his tummy across the yard to some bushes in the back. I watched him start stroking the head of a tiny baby bird who had just tried to fledge. I called to him to back away so the bird’s mom and dad would come to the baby, and my grandson did. He watched while the parents stayed with the baby until he could fly.
My 2 year old daughter, Kaylett, on her first day in day care, walked in the door with me, looked around and spotted a child crying. She walked over to the child and ask if he was new, the child said yes, and she responded, I am too, let’s go play and she walked out the back door with that child to the play yard.
I watched a great grandchild toss a little kitten across the patio, and then get his butt whacked by me. Children need to be taught right from wrong, but their basic instinct is to be good.