On human nature - Part 2
04/09/08 17:48 Filed in: Human Nature | Philosophy
There’s been a healthy debate raging down in the comments section of my earlier posts that has been getting fiery and passionate. All sorts of things have been rearing their heads down there from behavioural genetics to biopsychology, philosophical dualism, moral dichotomies, nihilism, post-modernism and debates about the nature of the question itself.
We’ve been going all over the place!
One argument went that the manifestation, complexity and multiplicity of human differences suggests that there can be no basis for suggesting any universal, underlying trait of goodness within human nature.
The word “goodness” has been a very emotive term! The word did not have to be “goodness”. It could have been several words like a “desire for a better life”. I preferred those words, since it’s easier to describe what underlying traits might represent “a better life” (for us all) than it is to say what goodness is.
The problem I had with this idea was that if I accepted it, I would slide into some black hole of moral nihilism, and I don’t want to go there, nor does anyone else I have ever known.
What is even more frightening to me is that it’s exactly this nihilistic view of humankind that supports religions everywhere…that we are all "sinners" who need to be "saved" from ourselves.
I strongly identify with the view of life that Chomsky expounds: one where I might feel autonomy, freedom, and work with others in voluntary association and without oppression, which means without economic repression too.
How do you feel? Do you not want that? Would anyone who understood what it meant not want it too?
On the point of religions, I believe that humans at a certain stage of their development took parables of wisdom and turned them into religions. Why? Because they didn’t have TV and stories by word-of-mouth were the way they communicated wisdom. Why? Because they desired and craved the goodness or the better life these stories talked about. The stories are totally unbelievable, yet men and women wanted what they promised so badly they reified them as objects of worship. They still do.
Religions of one sort or another have covered our entire planet, even in the most primitive societies, where they have worshipped totems or the elements. I don’t want to get into religious debate here. But the underlying attraction of religion, I would argue, is humankind’s overwhelming desire for a better life. Thus, I believe that desire to be an innate trait of human nature common to many throughout the world, and not simply part of western culture.
More soon...
We’ve been going all over the place!
One argument went that the manifestation, complexity and multiplicity of human differences suggests that there can be no basis for suggesting any universal, underlying trait of goodness within human nature.
The word “goodness” has been a very emotive term! The word did not have to be “goodness”. It could have been several words like a “desire for a better life”. I preferred those words, since it’s easier to describe what underlying traits might represent “a better life” (for us all) than it is to say what goodness is.
The problem I had with this idea was that if I accepted it, I would slide into some black hole of moral nihilism, and I don’t want to go there, nor does anyone else I have ever known.
What is even more frightening to me is that it’s exactly this nihilistic view of humankind that supports religions everywhere…that we are all "sinners" who need to be "saved" from ourselves.
I strongly identify with the view of life that Chomsky expounds: one where I might feel autonomy, freedom, and work with others in voluntary association and without oppression, which means without economic repression too.
How do you feel? Do you not want that? Would anyone who understood what it meant not want it too?
On the point of religions, I believe that humans at a certain stage of their development took parables of wisdom and turned them into religions. Why? Because they didn’t have TV and stories by word-of-mouth were the way they communicated wisdom. Why? Because they desired and craved the goodness or the better life these stories talked about. The stories are totally unbelievable, yet men and women wanted what they promised so badly they reified them as objects of worship. They still do.
Religions of one sort or another have covered our entire planet, even in the most primitive societies, where they have worshipped totems or the elements. I don’t want to get into religious debate here. But the underlying attraction of religion, I would argue, is humankind’s overwhelming desire for a better life. Thus, I believe that desire to be an innate trait of human nature common to many throughout the world, and not simply part of western culture.
More soon...
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