User:Techpriest/On human nature

So a recent saloon thread got me thinking about Human nature, what it means and whether or not it exists. Rather than get dragged down to the merits of an internet slapfight, I instead choose to write this as an essay to express some of my thoughts on this subject and to see what I can conclude from said thought process.

First, I would like to define what human nature exactly is. And rather than give you a direct answer, I will give you two. The reason for this is that a lot of the arguments surounding the argument of nature vs. nurture tend to try to argue about both concepts at once, even though I would say they are very different. So, I will try to reason from the following two definitions:


 * Human nature from an evolutionary perspective: The idea that certain beliefs are innate to us as a human being and that we were evolved to have those beliefs.
 * Human nature from a societal perspective: The idea that certain beliefs aren't necessarily innate to us, but practical purposes within society will demand us to have those beliefs, and that while it's possible to deviate from these, general trends across pretty much all cultures would indicate that there's something "natural" about behaving this way.

To get an illustration of the types of questions each definition splits off, the evolutionary perspective is about a single question alone, whereas questions relating to a social perspective are more like "is it natural for us to be working together". I've intentionally kept these questions fairly simple, but of course these discussions will typically derail into heavier questions, such as those pertaining to racism and so on, which is a bit more specific than I want to talk about, but... we can't like not acknowledge it, so consider this your acknowledgement.

Human nature from an evolutionary perspective
From an evolutionary perspective, "human nature" is the idea that we cannot change certain core parts of ourselves, and if we do, that we stop being "human". Personally, I would argue that this for the most part does not exist. Humans are very much malleable people, and while I do have a lot genetically in common with the rest of the world, it would be hasty to say that as a result, I am identical to the rest of humanity.

There's only a sparse few things which I would argue are truly "innate" to human beings, and all of those get traced back to the same idea: Our desire to find reason for our purpose. I would argue that if there is one thing all humans share, both atheists and theists, it's the question of "why do we live". It's the one thing that makes us special from other animals. That question in and of itself then grows into a lot of other things that make up our societal human nature.

Other sentient beings generally don't seem to think about this question. A cat does not care why it lives. It may care about finding a mate to satisfy it's sexual urges and making sure it does not die, but it does not seek to answer why it is alive. To go for a slight overlap into societal perspective; Time is a human construct. A tree doesn't care that it is 100 years old or 1000 years old. A cat doesn't care if it lives for a week or for 20 years, it just cares that it lives.

Even if you have found an answer to this question to make peace for yourself (for some people that answer is/are God(s), other people live in the uncertainity that there is no answer yet and as for me personally, I don't think there's an answer but I feel that also gives me the confidence in that there is no answer so I should just have fun with life ), you at some point have had to confront that question and decide an answer for it. Hence, it is to me the thing that separates us from animals.

Human nature from a societal perspective
This is where things start to get dicey. "Human nature" as seen from a societal perspective is everything that we commonly attribute to human nature in discussions and is where most of the things we think of when we ask what the speaker means by human nature.

I would argue that this is most certainly a thing that exists. To cut back to the question from the saloon, a fairly common question is "why do we make art". I would argue that in the question of "why are we alive", our desire to make art is an attempt to leave our mark on the world, to see if it cares about our existence and perhaps helps us find an answer to that question.

However, as one is quick to point out, even humans who think that they know the answer (whether that is a God or if it's the answer of "eh, who cares") still make art. This means that there is a second core motivation for people to do certain things. This one however seems to be not born from the evolutionary perspective of "why do we exist", but rather seems to have been born from a very different desire: That to survive.

Humans work better together than alone. This is not hard to figure out, hell, it's one thing our brain actively has evolved to need on a base level. A well functioning brain has the need to seek out peers, and will actively make you feel like shit if you don't. That being said, to be able to well, get along with people, we all have our societal rituals, most even subconsious. It's these social rituals that become the basis of what eventually results in what is often seen as "human nature", because they get so ingrained into culture that they become almost a fact of life.

That said, as the human nature fallacy quickly points out: This view of human nature is inherently flawed because of stark differences each culture can have on a similar subject. This is true.

However, at the same time, one cannot also reject that there are a few basic trends that all cultures to some extent share, which can be seen as that shared concept of human nature. Some examples of these are:


 * Time. While the way we look at time in the present day is mostly informed by a solar calendar (a calendar based on the rotation of the earth around the sun), pretty much all societies have had some form of measuring the passage of time. Whether that is by the movement of the sun at certain periods of time (sun dials) or by tracking the movement of the moon, this seems to be a fairly universal fact of human culture, and can be argued to be a part of human nature.
 * The desire to express onself. All cultures left some form of art behind. Whether those are the cave paintings from, the folk talkes sung by the Greeks that Homer would eventually transcribe into the Illiad, the Rennaisance's numerous pieces of artwork depicting reimaginations (and whitewashing) of Greek and Roman gods, our history is littered with humans expressing themselves and wanting to leave that mark.