Abstract
What exactly is human nature? Can there even be an answer to this
question? I am fairly certain that, as
humans, we are not as unique as we are told we are. Considering the norm, as this is the group
that thrives under natural selection, I suspect that the capabilities and,
therefore, the goal-oriented behavior of humans, are fairly common. As a result, I believe that what one member
of the species can do, all are capable.
Not inclined, but capable,
from a species component.
Humans are by nature (pun intended) narcissistic,
capable of doing what they need to do to achieve their goals.
What is Human Nature?
Human Nature is defined as, “…the
psychological and social qualities that characterize humankind, especially in
contrast with other living things,” with a specific sociological
clarification stating that it is, “…the character of
human conduct, generally regarded as produced by living in primary groups.”[1]
My experiences as an educator,
teaching at the high school and the college levels, have been enormous
revelations about the qualities of human nature, both from a student’s
perspective and from an educator’s perspective.
One of the things that make human
nature unique, especially in comparison with the nature and actions of other
animals, is the motivation behind the things that humans do. When broken down to the most basic of levels,
human behavior is not as different from animal behavior as some would like to
believe.
Maslow and Motivation
According to psychologytoday.com, motivation is defined as, simply, “…the desire
to do things."[2] Of course, that’s looking at the word in the function
of a noun. If we look at the word as a
verb, it means to incite, or to impel, one to do something. Accordingly, to motivate someone would be to incite
someone into doing something; and the motivation behind an action is the underlying reason something is done.
In 1943, psychology professor Abraham
Maslow, the founder of humanistic psychology, published a paper called “A Theory of Human Motivation,” which
extolled the virtues of a new theory of the hierarchical needs of human beings.
Maslow basically said the there were five hierarchical levels of human needs
that served as motivation for human actions and interactions. These levels,
from the basic to the sophisticated, include: physiological, safety, love and
belonging, esteem, and self-actualization:
Maslow
said that the base levels of the hierarchy (pictured above as the bottom layer
(orange) of the pyramid) were the "primary" levels of need that must
be met before any of the layers
above on the table could be achieved.
It's pretty obvious to draw several
conclusions here, and while this is not a sociological essay per se, one cannot
help but to come to a sociological conclusion or two: people who have basic
needs met can focus on higher level needs; and generally, this means that the
poor draw the short straw, as they are in an almost incessant scramble to meet
the needs of the basic physiological level that includes needs such as food,
shelter, freedom from pain, etc.
Teaching in an urban school district, I
see this first hand as I often watch my students struggling with the physiological
levels of motivation, which acts as an effective barrier from them being able
to see the future fruits of their educational labors. It is hard for a child who is hungry, sick,
or tired as a result of working six hours every day after school to help support
his family to maintain the foresight to see how doing well in school can help
him. Specifically, he might be able to
understand the concept, but it’s a brass ring that he’s not likely to reach, at
least not as readily as his better-off suburban counter part might reach it.
In addition, Maslow can be used quite
effectively as a diagnostic tool. For example, if Johnny is having problems
getting along with others at school (level three), one generally need look no
further than level two, where one might identify (i.e.) the fact that the
father is out of work, which in turn makes resources at Johnny's house scarce,
which in turn reflects to the first layer, where Johnny might not be sleeping
or eating well. You must have stability on the lower levels to be able to
pursue the upper levels.
From a language arts point of view,
Maslow is critical in understanding character motivation, a perception that is
essential in gaining a perspective on human nature.
Maslow works on many levels, no pun
intended. For the counselor trying to understand why Johnny gets into trouble
every day at school, for the English student trying to comprehend literature,
for the creative writer trying to accurately pen a three dimensional character,
and for the everyday person just trying to understand life.
Karl Marx, Communism, and
Human Nature
Karl Marx was concerned with the
question of human nature, feeling strongly that human nature could only flourish
under the nurturing hands of the state through the vehicles of socialism and
communism. He recognized that capitalism, the free enterprise economic system
of the west whereby production and distribution are privately controlled,
actually distorted human nature. Marx believed
that capitalism, by practicing what he called "estranged labor," had
the ultimate effect of making us estranged from our own nature. “Estranged labor,
therefore, turns man’s species— being both nature and his intellectual
species-power—into a being alien to
him and a means of his individual existence. It alienates [sic] man from his
own body, from nature as it exists outside him, from his spiritual essence, his
human existence."[4]
Marx felt that it was necessary to know
and understand the capacities and the limits of human nature so that he could
gauge specifically what a revolution might and might not accomplish. He also felt it necessary to grasp these
capacities and limitations so that the propaganda arguments involving human
nature that were spun to justify the oppression of one class by another could
be seen in advance, and ideally, avoided.[5]
In the “Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844,” Marx theorized that human nature was analogous to the labor
of a species. “…Animals…produce. They
build nests and dwellings, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they
produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce
only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces
even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from
such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of
nature; their products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man
freely confronts his own product."[6]
Marx is alacritous, at least from a
general perspective, to make the broad comparison between humans/human nature
and animals. The distinction he draws is that while men have certain aspects of
their nature can be compared to animals, such as from a production point of
view, Marx contends that both humans and animals tend to satisfy their natures
of the physiological level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but man takes this
one step further and produces beyond his need. According to Marx, it is only in
this production that man produces in “freedom.” This seems to be somewhat logical,
in that as I pointed out before, when a person is struggling to meet his
physiological needs, he is not free to pursue higher-level action, such as
found in Maslow at the safety, belonging, esteem, and actualization levels.
It is no coincidence then that Marx’s
philosophies with regard to Communism and Socialism tie in quite nicely with
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As
illustrated above, social class and Maslow are inexorably linked.
Human Nature: Alive and
Well
How does this all translate in the real
world? The media in the immediate aftermath
of the 9/11 tragedy shows us the way.
My friend Michael, an area high school
teacher who teaches a variety of age groups, told me an interesting but sad
story that while alarming, was typical in today’s world, and serves up an
interesting if disturbing example of human nature. One afternoon in the week after the attacks,
several of his students approached him in alarm, obviously upset by something
beyond the day’s news. The students
asked if they could talk to him, to which after seeing the looks on their faces
he replied yes, they could talk in the beginning of class.
After the bell rang, Michael said that
the students told him as one voice that they were very alarmed at something
that they had heard on the radio that morning.
Apparently, one of the radio personalities on a Philadelphia morning
radio show—a “shock” format—had read a “prediction” from the infamous
Nostradamus, the sixteenth century physician-turned-prophet, that foretold of
the World Trade Center disaster, stating something to the effect that “…the two
iron birds would bring down the twins, wreaking havoc at forty-five degrees.”
What’s more, the concerned students had
said that the radio personality went on to say that Nostradamus further predicted
that this would be the “beginning of the end,” the “start of World War III,”
which would of course signify the “beginning of the end” of the world.
Michael conveyed to me his horror that
such information would have been said on arguably one of the area’s most
popular “young listener” radio station.
During a week in which the media was being unusually and appropriately
cautious with the information it was talking about, here was this station
filling airspace by stirring the mixture more than it had already been stirred
with the stuff of fantasy, as if the reality of the week wasn’t fantastic
enough for their ratings.
Most adults I knew at the time were
still having a tough time processing what happened to our country. We barely knew how to explain such unfettered
malice to ourselves, let alone to our kids.
As a parent and a teacher, I know that kids are for the most part a
resilient bunch—they will hear something, even something as dramatic as the
terrorist attacks, deal with it, and bounce back pretty quickly. Adults are a little slower, as adults have
more processing and relating of experiences to do, thinking about things at
greater length and depth (for the most part) than our children.
The 9/11 situation differed, however,
in that the kids saw something atypical in the faces of the adults—they saw the
adults struggling to deal with something that was beyond the relative scope of
the “conventional tragedy.”
Michael said that he tried to allay the
student’s concerns by telling them that the media tries to sensationalize news
events, for the purpose of attention. That
it was “human nature” for them to want to make something big even bigger: it
made money. The more you listen to them,
the more you hear their commercials, the more you patronize their
sponsors. Capitalism at its finest, and
its worst.
Understanding the nature of that
particular beast, but empathizing with the response from the kids more,
compounded with the fact that they weren’t able to do the standard blasé
response and move on, my response to Michael’s story was uncharacteristically not capitalist.
I remember writing an editorial where I
essentially said that if they needed programming for that bleak week, instead
of provoking their audience, just play music.
I suggested they not sensationalize news that was already sensational. Particularly
when the largest demographic of their listeners are children on their way to
school—children with impressionable minds—children who will absorb the
information but might not be mature enough to process it and put it in the
mental trash can that it belongs. Children
to whom the sponsors directly target for maximum profit.
To finish the story, the “Nostradamus”
prediction that the announcer spoke of was completely false. Nostradamus’ reputation for being correct is
intimidating enough without having to propagate an Internet rumor about it to
make it any more shocking.
The translation that Michael’s kids
said that they heard was "edited" to specifically point it to the
incidents on Terror Tuesday. This is what he told his students to calm their
fears—that it is very easy to pick a headline out of current events and tailor
any prediction to fit it. He also
mentioned that Nostradamus passed away in the year 1566, and that consequently
it would have been quite amazing indeed for a man to have written the
prediction being falsely attributed to him 88 years later in 1654.
The two quatrains pushed out by the radio
station translated from the original French roughly into: 1) “Five and forty degrees the sky will burn;
Fire approaching the large new city; An instant of large flame will jump; When
we would want some Normans to be tested/prove something;” and 2) “The large
ocean-side city; Circled with crystal ponds; In the prime winter solstice; Will
be tried by a horrible wind.”
The story had started in cyberspace,
when a student at Brock University in Canada back in the 1990’s wrote a false
account of Nostradamus’s real
prediction as an example of how easily a prophecy can be crafted through the
use of abstract imagery to fit anything you wanted it to fit. He purposely used
vague wording to show how they could be interpreted to fit any number of
current events. Somewhere along the
line, some clever whit added a part about “The third big war will begin when
the big city is burning,” causing further furor over the article.
When this concoction was propagated
across the Internet— with its original objective removed— the story took off
like only a sensational story on the Internet could, propelled by a side of
human nature that seems to crave a “darker” edge to life.
Perhaps this whole stunt is backed by
our first amendment rights of free speech.
After all, the first amendment is one of the things that make our
country great. It’s one of the reasons
why we all felt so moved at the tragedies in New York, Washington, and
Pennsylvania last week. It’s one of the
things that pulled us together as a nation, and will keep us united together
like the best of families to fight anyone who would attack us as a nation.
But doing what that radio station did,
which was tantamount to yelling fire!
in a crowded movie theater, is not acceptable.
They should have been fined by the FCC for their recklessness, as well
as made to apologize to the listeners, the students and their parents, and the teachers
who had to clean up the carelessly sewn emotional turmoil.
Accordingly we can see several examples
of the interactions of human nature, how each example feeds and is fed upon by
other examples. It is essentially interactive,
and cannot exist without interaction.
Or can it? Can we connect human nature directly to
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, as stated above?
For instance, can we say that the students, in expressing their concerns
to my teacher friend Michael, were struggling to make advances in the second
level, the safety section of the hierarchy?
And perhaps the terrorists themselves were working in the fourth or
fifth levels, esteem or actualization?
It is likely that human nature cannot
exist in a vacuum; it requires one human to exhibit it, and one human to
witness it. Does a tree falling alone in
a forest make any sound? This koan ties
in quite well with the question of human nature and its requirements. Can human nature be illustrated
satisfactorily with only one human? Or does a cause automatically produce an
effect, and does an effect require a cause.
I suspect the latter to be true; human nature is all-but
instinctual. It can be said with a
degree of certainty that people are people, and one of the things that make
them that way is in fact human nature.
Objective Human Nature
We are all a part of the human race
because we have a shared ancestor: the first human. This does not mean that,
while we have a shared physical nature, we share a transcendent nature that
goes beyond the bounds of the physical. The basis of evolution is natural selection
over natural variation, so that evolution is successful because members of a
species are not homogenous.
At any given time there is a diffusion
of attributes throughout a population. This
distribution changes over time, changing the attributes of the archetypal
member. In essence, there is no common core of attributes or traits that ties
us together other than our shared heredity and resulting genetic similarity.
Consequently, there is no right way to live according to nature,
as there is no deep nature. There is a dispersal of attributes that you could
call "typical" from a statistical perspective, but this is no more significant
with regard to the common core (of natural) than would be a fact that said 73%
of the population liked vanilla ice cream over chocolate, and then inferring
that as a result we ought to prefer vanilla as the norm. Those who deviate from the norm are, by
definition, not normal, but this does not make them any less natural than the
people who do not deviate from the norm.
To base morality on human nature is to confuse
how people are with how we ought to be. This is known as the is-ought gap.[7] Human nature from a purely biological sense
has little to say about ethics.
Defining human nature as a “foundation
of morality” is either erroneous or superfluous. One could define fundamental human nature in
terms of what is morally most important about us; but it would be illogical to
then try to explain morality in terms of this “metaphysical” nature.
There is no objective human nature. Yours, mine, or someone else’s tend to tie
closely with a Maslow-like idea of need.
Generally, we do not commit acts against society for the purpose of
respecting/disrespecting another’s nature.
Rather, we refrain from such acts because they throw off the balance of
the community, and this gets in the way of our long-term pursuit of the good
life, or, as Jefferson put it, our “pursuit of happiness.” Commit a crime, go to jail, pursuit
postponed. Refrain from crime, remain
free, pursuit active. It is doubtless a
pessimistic outlook, but ultimately the end result is unaltered: no matter the
reason, the crime doesn’t get committed.
There is, however, no direct
correlation between that which makes us human and that which makes us
moral. Humans as a species have
opposable thumbs, but a person who loses their thumbs still retains their
humanity. A person’s humanity is retained as long as he is capable of engaging
in goal-oriented behavior. Subsequently, morality is the code by which sentient
beings interact with one another and with their environment.
The “good” in a person might consist of
engaging in rational, goal-oriented behavior. Of course, like the previous
example of committing a crime, it is also demonstrated in the refraining from
interference with the goal-oriented behavior of others.
Human nature dictates that we create
new things, using our innate ability to plan for the future. Morality exists to
protect this nature, to prevent us from sinking back to the level of the
animals.
Values then are derived from goals and
motivations. As we consider Maslow, we
can see how our goals align with our needs, and, subsequently, set an early
path upon which our values become entrenched.
Our definition of human nature is a
dynamic agent, as we try to adapt it to the many variables that go into
defining humans, but fail to encompass the extremes. For example, the members of society who are
considered developmentally challenged; perhaps autistic, stroke patients,
Alzheimer's disease, or infants, do not exhibit signs of human nature
considered to be in the normal range. Therefore,
either they are not human or they do not possess moral agents considered in the
“normal” range.
Biology doesn't produce stable,
universal natures, particularly in light of the natural selection process as it
tries to “weed out the weakest” members of a species in order to insure its
survival and propagation. Through variation, differential reproduction, and
heredity, you will have evolution by natural selection as an outcome. [8] When genes determine behaviors, there is no
subjectivity; it is an objective process. The process is fixed in that nature
goes with whichever traits will enable a species to be the most successful. It produces behavioral tendencies that enable
the species to act in such a way that long-term goals (particularly those
associated with survival, such as the first stage of Maslow’s hierarchy) are
met.
The defining of human nature, natural
law, or morals, then, is at least partially a social process, in which the
goals of the species become foremost.
This is one of the most important
implications of the "Is-Ought" gap: our values determine which parts
of the "Is" that we select as important. To reiterate, the violation
of another person's independence is bad, not because it violates their nature,
but because it interferes with their pursuit of happiness. What allows us to
embrace this philosophy is the concept that it is a product of socialization,
and of course, reasoning.
Thus is becomes a
false logic to argue that, “this is how we are, therefore this is how we ought
to be.” Values are grounded in fact, not
opinion. That being said, the “oughts”
come from how we want to be, not how we are.
The factual aspects come from the former association of values being derived from goals and
motivations. It is a fact, for example,
that without food and water, we die.
If an essential characteristic of human nature then
is the ability to have goals and make plans, there are probably very few people
are incapable of making plans. Those plans may be good or bad, but they are plans
and, consequently, the people making those plans are subject to morality. These plans themselves exist in the world of
actuality, not in the world of desire, although the plans may aspire to a
desired goal, a goal that has not yet been made manifest.
The students that I see on a daily
basis, different as they might be ethically, racially, culturally—all share at
least one thing in common: they all have plans, or goals. Some of those plans might be unconscious, in
that the students are moving towards them on a daily basis without necessarily
acting in a conscious way towards making those plans a reality. Nevertheless,
they are moving towards
fulfillment. While cultures and
ethnicities may define larger, more broad goals, thus supporting the premise
that society takes precedence over the individual, the shorter-term goals are
indeed set by individuals: to stay out of trouble, to pass a test, to get a
date for a dance, to graduate, to get a job.
Important to the individual, but also to the society at large. The individual exists for the society; the
society exists for the individual.
Conclusion
What exactly is human nature? Can there even be an answer to this
question? I am fairly certain that, as
humans, we are not as unique as we are told we are. Considering the norm, as this is the group
that thrives under natural selection, I suspect that the capabilities and,
therefore, the goal-oriented behavior of humans, are fairly common. As a result, I believe that what one member
of the species can do, all are capable.
Not inclined, but capable,
from a species component.
There are four ways of viewing humans
in general and human nature in specific:
The first among these is the negative
view. This is the view that states that
human nature is violent, deceitful, aggressive, venal, cold, self-serving, and conceited. The main problem with this view is that it
does not account for the times when human beings are passive, compassionate,
generous, warm, communal, and humble.
The second view of humans is that human
beings are basically good. This is the
view that holds that human nature is passive, compassionate, generous, warm,
communal, and humble. Like the negative
view, the issue with the positive view is that it does not account for the
times when humans are violent, deceitful, aggressive, venal, cold,
self-serving, and conceited.
The third view has been called
hybridization. This view states that human
nature is negative and positive. Human beings have the capacity to express
violence, deceit, aggressiveness, venality, coldness, self-serving, and conceit,
as well as passivity, compassion, generosity, warmth, communality, and humbleness. The hybridization view shows us the changeability
of human nature, the way it can swing from one end of the pendulum to the other
in the same people.
The forth view is that of the negationists;
those who say that human nature is neither good nor bad (unlike the
hybridization view that says that it is both).
They state that human nature is, no more and no less, self-serving. People can and will do what is necessary,
seeking their own advantage to achieve their goals. Sometimes it may be in the interest of the
individual to be cooperative, sharing, generous, and so forth. But then
sometimes it may serve the very same individual's interest to be greedy,
aggressive, and generally anti-social. This
is perhaps the most cynical variant of the four.[9]
Humans are by nature (pun intended) narcissistic,
capable of doing what they need to do to achieve their goals.
[1] Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com
[2] Retrieved from
http://www.psychologytoday.com
[3] Retrieved
from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/
[4] Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
[5] Retrieved from
http://sfr-21.org/human-nature.html
[6] Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
[7] Retrieved from
http://www.philosophyetc.net
[8] Retrieved from
http://evolution.berkeley.edu
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