Human Nature? Whoopee!

The problem with this whole area of discussion is that it is a hotly contested field (or range of fields), invoving a huge array of empirical research and complex argument.  Most people you engage don’t want to go there.   And the fact is we are not experts either.  So it is dead easy for anyone to cite a piece of evidence selectively, and equally easy for someone else just to deny it. And before you know it you have a frustrated stalemate.    I think the only way forward with most of us is to keep it simple and make a few telling points, then allow those who want to follow it up to do it in their own time.   Frankly, people will take whatever side suits the world-view they have come to acquire and deny the rest.  We may be social and co-operative but we are not really abstractly rational creatures.  I tend to skirt round the issue and go for class interest.  An interest is what most people can understand.

Hi Socialist Punk,  the problem I find when I talk to people is that for every piece of research you can  quote that seems to demonstrate a predisposition to co-operative behaviour in human beings, there is another, usually by an evolutionary psychologist of undoubted academic standing, that ‘demonstrates’ we are all violent, territorial, selfish, hierarchical or what have you.  Though I don’t have a lot of time for evolutionary psychology (its conclusions in my view are largely conjectural)  it is accepted as academically respectable these days and because the EPists have been busy writing lots of popular books, their arguments are also well known.  If you offer your piece of reserch and someone cites a piece of research back to you that claims to show that we are all greedy (and there is plenty of stuff like that – I have shelfuls of it), you are back at your standoff position since you are merely quoting authorities at one another like a couple of Christian fundamentalists with their bible aphorisms. I find this a real problem, and I tend to keep references to research down to a minimum and go for more common sense approaches these days.  The situation is not as bad as it was ten years ago because after half a century of denying group selection could exist it is coming back into academic respectability again recently and human co-operation is once again on the academic menu.  These things go in cycles though.

Hi SP
Yes, you’re right.  There is always a problem with clash of ‘authorities’ and that’s a difficulty.  In this area, where you have researchers in archaeology, anthropology, ethology, paleology, genetics, sociology, microbioloogy and god knows how many more disciplines all contributing to the debate, it’s bound to be messy, particularly as there are so many vested interests (creationists, racists, socialists, humanists) clamouring for a particualr result. I’m not convinced science is value free either, or that broader social belief structures and commercial interests don’t influence the direction of its research. 
Frankly, as a non-specialist, I just get confused reading all the new research.  And when there is such confusion (and even when there isn’t) people tend to choose the arguments that best suit their presumptions.  We all do it, socialists included.  But that is the nature of the human search for truth.  As socialists we can only do what everyone else does and make the best case we can, leaving it to others to decide what they think is true or valuable or not.
In any case, I’m far from convinced that human beings are essentially rational, and I’m not sure from a socialist perspective that it matters very much.  Some socialists put great store by the claim their arguments are scientific.  And I think the assumption behind this, that we should engage as far as possible in discussing the case at a serious level, is a true and important one.  But science is an ongoing project, not an established set of laws, and socialists, like anyone else are just participants in the game, not bearers of something called ‘truth’ – we can leave those claims to religious folk.
For me anyway, the socialist case is primarily a vehicle for getting people to see beyond the ideologies that are fed into their brains through the education system and the media and to experience what is actually going on in the world all round them and what their place is in all of it.  It’s not primarily part of the ongoing scientific/rational/empirical debate, though it is that too – or should be.  Once people can see beyond the ideological categories that fog their thinking, then they can start to reconstruct the way they understand things and assess what is in their interest and what isn’t..  As a socialist I’m not here to provide them with a fundamental truth.  The exploitative, alienating and destructive nature of Capitalism itself must do the work of making socialists.  All we can do is to speak about it openly. 
So I tend to keep stuff very simple these days when I’m discussing the socialist case with non-socialists.  And I try to just to put my own point of view (not easy for me as I have a definite didactic streak).  I don’t try to convert anyone.  If I can just get them thinking about the world in a different way, that’s as far as I can go.  Then it’s up to them.  I try not to get bogged down in detailed arguments of any kind, because that way you  lose track of the fundamental point of socialism. A few simple ideas clearly understood will do a lot more to get people thinking about the world they live in  than getting deeply into ego-fuelled arguments about the latest reasearch on genetics or ethology.
Sorry, these are just a few rambling thoughts before breakfast. But thanks for the opportunity to share them.

I suspect that these books are popular because they provide support for current prejudices — they do not disturb the present order of things. When I first became interested in this topic back in the 1960’s and 70’s my local library stocked several books by the likes of Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz but not one by Ashley Montagu or Eric Fromm.

LOL.  This often works.  I’ve only ever heard one person claim that he would not be able to co-operate with others when asked this question.  The person was Keith Joseph, Maggie Thatcher’s idiotic ‘political philosophy’ guru.  It was during a public debate with the party (Hardy leading for us) in the 1970s. The response was a torrent of laughter from the audience – much to his chagrin.  He couldn’t see why anyone should find it funny.  It unsettled him so much he went on to make a number of other blunders, claiming, for instance, that the effect of capitalism was to ‘grind the faces of the poor’.  It was a slip of the tongue but by then the audience were giving him no mercy.
People think in generalities but live in the details.  Neat quote, SS.