[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Human beings have a definitive nature. Communists, for example, thought that you could treat humans as if they were ants. Pack 'em all on collective farms and have at it. These ideas don’t work because collectivism is not a natural system for humans.[/quote]
Actually, you are right on this part – we have been learning more and more about human nature, and we do indeed have a nature; furthermore, you are also right in saying we cannot rearrange society like furniture, since there are proven rules of what you can get away with.
What you ARE forgetting is that what we have indeed discovered is that our nature is brutal, cruel and destructive. We are discovering is that our nature is of essentially ultra-aggressive wild monkeys who developed an unusually sophisticated ability to communicate and use tools – and, when left unchecked, we have used those abilities to, essentially, attack, kill and destroy.
We are full of contradictions – we are, generally, extremely selfish, but that selfishness doesn’t really come to our advantage because we rarely use only reason to make decisions – we mix reason, instinct and cognitive bias and end up constantly shooting ourselves in the foot through botched choices that end up being very much against our own interest.
Humanity has been saved again and again by an extremely small number of people – people who somehow overcome this nature while still believing in humanity and its need to be saved from destruction. People who provided humanity with a structured society, and tweak it. People who are intelligent enough to understand that our nature is of wild predators, and as wild predators we need to be allowed free choice (or we will implode anyway), but we also need to have a structure around us to guide us and regulate our destructive behavior.
You are also a parent, so you actually know what I?m talking about; if you had left your children to do what they please, and provided them with no structure, what would have happened? Think about it.
The tragedy, and what you don’t realize is that, even with great parents, we never really grow out of that need for structure – we might learn how to not kill ourselves or others instantly, but we will, over the course of our life, continue to need structure, especially to deal with other people – because being rational – making the best choices for us and society as a whole ? is something most of us never truly learn. We might learn to not stab somebody (because our parents taught is it’s wrong), but we will induce harm in many other ways ? by exploiting their weaknesses, and then telling ourselves they deserve what they get for being weak or stupid. It’s just our predatory nature… The problem is, we are preying upon other humans, who are capable of and will eventually respond with escalating violence (another “great” feature of our nature) – leading to self-destruction.
Communism failed not because we do not need or accept a structured society, but because it indeed ignored our wild animal nature. Laissez-faire capitalism, on the other hand, also fails because it ignores our predatory, destructive nature. It assumes we are rational beings who know what’s best for us. We don’t.
Both are equally and completely wrong. Much like with children ? as any child psychologist will tell you, controlling every aspect of the life of your child is a terrible idea, but so is letting him/her do whatever they please without any structure.
The balance is in the middle – giving us enough freedom to allow everyone to make their own choices, but also guiding society in order to prevent them from making catastrophic ones – or, better yet, reducing the consequences of the inevitably constant bad choices everybody makes.
OK, I stand corrected!