It's human nature to make jerk-off motions when someone claims something is human nature.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2022
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"I thunk it so I dunk it." - Descartes
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I've seen chimps do it. I'm pretty sure even dolphins do it.
Great example of the base informing the superstructure, IMO. "Original sin" was always a concept in Christianity, but with the Protestant Reformation developing alongside capitalism - and the development of a "bourgeois religion" - you get ideologies like "total depravity" and the idea that humans are by nature corrupted by sin and can only do bad thing other than by the grace of God.
And guess what?! Seeing humanity as completely fallen and "sinful" means that any hope of a better future on earth will ultimately be futile. So don't even try... because "muh human nature".
Whenever someone says, "It's human nature to be [selfish/greedy/violent]," I hear, "I won't blame myself in the slightest for being [selfish/greedy/violent]"
Whenever someone says "it's human nature to be [selfish/greedy/violent]", I immediately concede the point and promptly mug them out of good sportsmanship
Whenever someone says, “It’s human nature to be [selfish/greedy/violent],” I hear the whirring of a projector
It's so unfortunate that this view is drilled into us continuously throughout school, at least in the United States. I remember reading Lord of the Flies in high school and the class's main takeaway was that most humans, especially children, are just terrible in some fundamental way.
Meanwhile the actual Lord of the Flies kids did just fine until they were rescued.
Cooperation for mutual benefit is human nature 😈
See I'm not even 100% sure on this, cause there a plenty of people who (in our current society) are selfish and uncooperative. I'm sure under a better system those same people could be better but the fact that they aren't now indicates to me that even cooperation for mutual benefit has to be encouraged by the environment to manifest.
Consider that their environment, I'm assuming you're from :amerikkka: or at least the west, has drilled into them since childhood that rugged individualism is what's morally correct. The concept of the superstructure and the base, that the superstructure is the combination of education/media/culture that drives into people repeatedly the message that competition is good and on a subtler level might makes right. The culture which valorizes success as material wealth and demonizes poverty is what leads people to be selfish and uncooperative. It is the sense of compassion and cooperation which has been killed by society and the elite have worked very hard to make it this way.
I always put it this way: If we weren't innately social creatures then why the fuck does everyone admit Solitary Confinement is a kind of "extra prison."
:parenti: has a lot to say about human nature.
The clip is cut short but after his first question he stops to go back and add that humans also have the capacity for tremendous kindness and greatness, but that we need to think coherently about both and what we can do to encourage some aspects of our nature and discourage others.
His main point is that it's not constructive to engage in the leftist response to the right-wing human nature arguments by arguing that humans have no inherent nature.
:kropotkin-shining: Human nature is cooperative and collaborative. One could even say it's a factor of evolution
99.99% of the human nature argument is shitty people trying to absolve themselves for shitty behavior by imagining anyone else would have done the same in their circumstances.
Everything about our existence from the cohabitation of gut flora, or the fossilized remains of ancestors with mended bone fractures, to the way our brain processes "Truth" points to a cooperative & collaberative "nature"; but sure go off about how being a selfish dickhead is "natural" behavior to you I guess.
E: This is aside from the fact that it betrays a certain cowardice. Like, even if the Human nature-ist is correct they are not enslaved to this behavior. To the contrary, working to transcend this "natural instinct" would be seen as honorable; rising above the rabble or whatever. But they're too cowardly, stupid, or lazy to even see things on these terms; content instead to shrug and say "Anyone would have sold out their family for some paper."
There may well be a fundamental human nature, but no way to test it. But even past that, the amount of times I can find a counter example to what capitalists call human nature is like I'm an anthropologist dunking on Freud.