Human Nature, or Just a Bad Habit?
“The greatest healing that needs to be done is the healing of this European idea of the separation of people from nature, and it’s modern counterpart, which is that humans are bad, and our children now are depressed about being a human.” (OI, Nelson, 108)
The good news though is that it is not our nature to be ignorant, after all – only a bad habit that comes of bad education, which is to say, that which habituates us to ignoring what we don’t want to see, which we tend to learn early on in some modern cultures. But the good thing about habits is that they can be broken! We can unlearn early errors in our learning!
Indeed, as John Stuart Mill put it, "The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and to expound to him, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others . . . being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers--knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter--he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.”[p.25, "On Liberty"]
We are too fond of focusing on what’s wrong with humans, though most of what we take as evidence that our nature is selfish is just learned habits. And the good news is, habits can be broken!
Here's what Plato says about the human soul: “Our description of the soul is true of her present appearance; but we have seen her afflicted by countless evils, like the [statue of the] sea-god Glaucus, whose original form can hardly be discerned, because parts of his body have been broken off or crushed and altogether marred by the waves [in which he is submerged], and the clinging overgrowth of weed and rock and shell has made him more like some monster than his natural self. But we must rather fix our eyes, Glaucon, on her love of wisdom and note how she seeks to apprehend and hold converse with the divine, immortal, and everlasting world to which she is akin, and what she would become if her affections were entirely set on following the impulse that would lift her out of the sea in which she is now sunken, and disencumber her of all that wild profusion of rock and shell, whose earthly substance has encrusted her, because she seeks what men call happiness by making earth her food. Then one might see her true nature, whatever it may be..." Plato, The Republic of Plato, pp.345-346. [C10.611] "[T]o understand her real nature, we must look at her, not as we see her now, marred by association with the body and other evils, but when she has regained that pure condition which the eye of reason can discern; you will then find her to be a far lovelier thing and will distinguish more clearly justice and injustice and all the qualities we have discussed.”Plato, The Republic of Plato, pp.345-346. [C10.611]
This is still true, and that's the good thing about the truth is that it stays true, and can be discovered, again and again - just as the goodness of the human soul.
Because the world makes sense, we can figure it out, understand how it works, and even make things right that have gone wrong - though we’d scarcely are aware we have this power, without the insights that come with ancient dialectic and complementary thinking.
The vast array of human excellence that makes our lives easier and enjoyable, this is part of human nature too. Our lives are continually enhanced by the creative excellence of those who have gone other ways (e.g. scientists, artists, engineers, musicians, etc.). And there is a full spectrum of human creativity we take for granted, and neglect in our appraisal of what we call human nature. (*human creativity) We must recognize both higher and lower potentials and learn to choose well between them, because “it’s never too late,” as George Elliot said, “to become the person you might have been.”
As Manitonquat said, “Since all adults have been heavily conditioned by their culture, we can only see what we may call our natural humanness in very young children before the ways of the world have begun to twist and distort their responses to life.”(Manitonquat, OI, p.21) As the I Ching emphasizes, “The ancients believed that every infant possesses sincerity and trustworthiness. These virtues are part of human nature. All evils derive from negative social influences.”(I Ching, 474) So if we wish to understand who we might have been, or still become, “We must observe little babies and tiny infants as they arrive newborn and fresh from creation.”(Manitonquat, OI, p.21) “The natural state of the individual” is “truthful, honest, and sincere, without any fabrication.”(I Ching, p.220) (*connect my daughter/myself)
Those “negative qualities” we tend to call ‘human nature,’ “such as greed, envy, laziness, gluttony, dissembling, violence, destructiveness, hatred, and so on,” these “begin to develop [only] after the child has…experienced hurts from which they have no loving assistance to recover. Children with a resource of caring people to help them through the inevitable traumas do not carry these negative emotions further in life.”(OI, p. 22)
In any case, “that many people may exhibit bad qualities and do bad things” is to be expected, for it is in the nature of learning to err. But this should not lead us to conclude it is their nature, but rather to ask, why they do not learn from their errors? It “should make us wonder what happened to them?” Because “they were born good,” and “they did not just suddenly decide to do bad things.” They learned that this is not only acceptable, but encouraged, and may even have come to think of this selfishness as necessary to their survival and well being…among so many others who do the same. What choice do we leave our young when we teach them that this is their nature, and others, to be selfish and greedy? (*connect action/reaction, offense/defense)
“The greatest healing that needs to be done is the healing of this European idea of the separation of people from nature, and it’s modern counterpart, which is that humans are bad, and our children now are depressed about being a human.” (OI, Nelson, 108)
“The ancients believed that every infant possesses sincerity and trustworthiness. These virtues are part of human nature. All evils derive from negative social influences.”(I Ching, 474) We would do well to remember when and why “Education emphasized cultivating one’s inner sincerity. Inner sincerity reveals one’s true nature.”(I Ching, p.204) Failing in this duty, we are each and all left to revive and “preserve one’s own beautiful nature” for ourselves and others. (I Ching, p.205)
Socrates thinks there are only those who are misled about what is good. This is why this kind of dialogue, about high ideals and human potentials, is so important. "We shall not tell a child that, if he commits the foulest crimes or goes to any length in punishing his father's misdeeds, he will be doing nothing out of the way, but only what the first and greatest of the gods have done before him."[C2.377] In fact, "If by any means we can make them believe that no one has ever had a quarrel with a fellow citizen and it is a sin to have one, that is the sort of thing our old men and women should tell from the first."[C2.377] (*connect Confucius and Indigenous stories)
If we put these ancients into dialogue with more contemporary theorists, we begin to see the butterfly effects of our actions, especially or selfishness. First, let’s explore what feedback is, for if this were as clear to us as it was to ancient and primal peoples, we would not be as inclined as we are to neglect the consequences of our actions and life strategies.
Because the ancients took nature to be their teacher, they tended to see the nonlinear cyclical effects that our linear conception of causality tends to ignore. For instance, looking at the parts as separate from the whole, we tend to treat problems or symptoms as isolated from the system they are inside of. So, for instance, a prolific pest that is antagonistic to a crop seems to call for a pesticide to eradicate that organism, and likewise, a microorganism that interferes with health. A linear way of thinking sees the treatment, a pesticide or antibiotic, as one cause targeting a single effect. We generally pay some attention to what we call side-effects, but seldom notice, until it’s too late, the cyclical backlash effect that occurs because the antibiotic or pesticide kills only the weakest in the target population, leaving the strongest to reproduce, thereby increasing the strength and resistance of the population they aimed to prevent, requiring even more antibiotics or pesticides, and so on and so forth.
In his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, Al Gore builds on what the ancients taught us about how nature works, and offers us a brief overview of how these feedback dynamics work in diverse phenomena more familiar to us these days than nature tends to be.
One example of feedback dynamics occurs when a microphone hears its own amplified sound through a loudspeaker, and quickly grows louder and louder until it squeals. Audio feedback is not easy, or even possible, to ignore, but unfortunately, other such phenomenon tend to be more subtle, making the lessons they teach less obvious.
The law of compound interest and its effect on personal finance is another familiar example of these feedback effects.(p.51)[1] Every young person is taught when opening their first savings account that if one saves $10 each month, it will collect interest such that the next month their interest will gather, not only on the principle investment, but also on the interest that was added to it the month before. In this way, whether it be growth of wealth or debt - “the cycle is reinforced and magnified.” With the growth of debt; if one borrows money on a credit card, and the next month borrows the same amount, plus the amount he needs to pay the interest from the month before, one’s debt will grow at an increasing rate, and it won’t be long before a small loan grows into a large debt that could spiral into bankruptcy.(p.51) This can becomes what we commonly call a viscous cycle. And in this way, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and seeming small changes compound earlier changes in a way that ultimately “feeds on itself.”(p.54)[2]
In the realm of chemical reactions, a chain-reaction explosion, such as an atom bomb produces, is the classic example of a positive feedback effect. The ice albedo effect intensifies global warming in just this way – as warming diminishes the ice that would have reflected heat back to space, a positive feedback loop takes hold as dark water absorbs ever more heat.
These appear to be more slow moving than the explosion of a bomb – but apparently they are no less destructive. Perhaps more like a car crash in slow motion, Gore says – which makes them easier to ignore, until it’s too late.
We can see from these examples that positive, in this sense, refers to the direction of change, rather than the desirability of that change. (We may think increasing our wealth to be a good thing, but no one likes increasing debt. Likewise, whether nuclear weapons are good or bad depends largely on the point of view from which one views them.) For this reason, it might be better to use the term self-reinforcing feedback, meaning that the process is intensifying and growth can quickly become unstable.[3] By contrast, a negative feedback loop, despite the connotations of the term negative, may actualize the more desirable outcome, because it is self-correcting That is, it tends to stabilize an otherwise accelerating process.
Negative feedbacks work to inhibit what might otherwise be runaway effects. In biology, this stabilizing process is referred to as homeostasis; in ecology, it is called equilibrium.
An economic example of the use of negative feedback would be government programs (such as taxes and welfare) that aim to mitigate the disparities between wealth and poverty that result from the positive feedback effects of interest. Boom and bust economic cycles are also a result of such positive feedback loops, such that government is sometimes required to step in to provide stabilizing measures that behave as negative feedback to wild fluctuations in economic activity.
A sociological perspective shows how positive feedback loops can result by way of self-fulfilling prophesy, such as when belief and behavior interact in such a way as to increase one another. This occurs when enough people believe in the possibility of a given outcome to actually bring about that outcome. We have shown how a belief in ‘original sin’ can have this self-fulfilling prophesy effect – when individuals reason that, since they already have the name, they might as well play the game.
The stock market is another good example of this effect, in large part, a confidence game that depends upon the faith of those who believe in its value to them. A Ponzi scheme is an example of positive-feedback system that involves self-fulfilling prophesy, [4] but while the market (in theory) brings about a real effect in the growth of profit, a ponzi scheme functions on only the appearance of that effect, creating not actual wealth, but profit only for those who scrape it off the top.
The growth of social networks, such as Facebook, is also a form of positive feedback that is in part self-fulfilling-prophesy, because the more people who belong to a given network, the more people want to join, and so the network grows, increasing the likelihood that even more will want belong, and so on and so forth. A video that ‘goes viral’ is also an example of this network feedback effect.
Such feedback loops are found “almost everywhere you look throughout the ecological system, natural mechanisms [that] tend to accelerate the pace of change once it is set into motion.”(p.50)[5] Women experience the physiology of feedback on a regular basis. For instance, estrogen functions during menstruation to create positive feedback effects.[6] Contractions during childbirth release oxytocin, which in turn increase contractions, which in turn increase oxytocin, and so on.[7] Likewise, milk supply during lactation is increased by the demand of a baby’s suckling, which is itself augmented by the increase of milk supply, inviting an increase in suckling.
A child is weaned by negative feedback when the decrease in demand decreases the supply of milk until there is no more being produced.[8] (It was in active ignorance of this effect that Nestles marketed infant formula to women in African nations in the sixties and seventies, planting the seeds of a feedback dynamic from which thousands of babies starved to death. For not only did this concoction prove too expensive and require safety measures (such as clean water) that could not be met in those conditions, but the introduction of artificial formula broke the demand and supply cycle between child and mother, such that when they needed it, there was no maternal milk supply for babies to return to.)
In this way, “problems [that] start out as regional questions…are then magnified by feedback loops into serious global threats.”(p.54)[9] What is today manifest as full scale climate change, began as what seems to be very small feeds of CO2 into the atmosphere, that may well end up to have a butterfly effect on the earth’s climate, and to devastate the ability for future generations to inhabit this planet any longer.
As you can see, the basic principles of feedback loops are quite familiar to most and easy to understand, making it all the more disturbing that we act so often without regard for the predictable and avoidable consequences of our actions. This is “one of the reasons our assault on the environment is so reckless.”(p.50) Again, because our business as usual mentality is “running the world as if it is a business in liquidation.” And our only real hope is in a better understanding of feedback dynamics – in ALL our relationships, with one another, and with the environment we are provoking to defend itself against us. For not only do feedback loops explain what is happening in nature, but they also explain what has gone wrong in so many human relationships -- as well as the power we still have to intervene.
“It is the human factor in all of these feedback loops that is critical to saving the global environment.”(p.55)[10] For just as positive feedback can accelerate the rate of change in such a way that the so-called butterfly effect can result, likewise negative feedback can diminish this effect to slow that rate of change.
*
Ecologists have long understood this phenomena of ecological backlash – one we must come to understand better – as and ancient wisdom could help us– if we ever hope to mitigate the effects of our past ignorance of the workings of nature and human nature. For only do feedback loops explain what is happening when nature backlashes, but they also explain relationships dynamics that we often don’t recognize as being in our control.
Seeing this dynamic for what it is, self-interest might rightly become our first motivation for treating the planet and everyone on it with the more care an respect – just as we ourselves would be treated. And to this end, Gore argues, “we need a positive feedback loop that feeds on itself in a good way and accelerates the pace of the positive changes now so urgently needed.”(p.55)[11]
So you can see why the ancients made clear that it would be in our higher interest to listen to that inner voice that would prevent us from acting in error...thus setting into motion effects that cannot easily, if ever, be halted. For every action not only has an equal and opposite reaction, but may well have widespread accelerating effects as well. And if we are foolish enough to ignore them when we set them into motion, we cannot miss them when they comes back around to haunt us.
***
Consider, for instance, the butterfly effects that our errors in assumption and faulty processes of reasoning can give rise to. Ideas can have such self-reinforcing effects in both directions, of course, and I suppose every writer, or at least every philosopher, hopes to proliferate those that have the potential to serve human self-improvement. But there are many that have missed that mark, and perhaps the most destructive among them has been the demonstrably poisonous idea of a sinful human nature.
There is, and perhaps always has been, a general tendency to measure human potential by what we see to be most prevent around us. So if we are raised in a family that is basically fair and gentle, we might at first assume this means that people in general are that way. But as we grow and learn more about the world around us, we are likely to discern that the ‘good’ family into which we were born nested is not the rule, but rather the exception, and that most people are generally ‘bad’. Further, if our family has taught us to follow a particular religion or set of ethical rules, we might attribute their goodness to those rules being good rules, which further establishes the assumption that human nature is not itself good, but only good by way of following good rules. To those who have been raised in this way, it seems clear that those who do not play by such rules are moved by selfish, greedy, or lustful motives, and very often these assumptions are reinforced by faith traditions that attribute this tendency to what is called our fallen nature. From which it seems to follow that what is needed as remedy is stricter rules and harsher punishments against ‘bad’ habit and people.
By contrast, if the family into which we were born nested was not fair and gentle, chances are the rules by which we were raised were not quite fair either, and it was probably not long before we realized that resisting bad rules feels pretty good, which only serves to reinforce the idea that our basic nature must be bad. The possibility that we resist bad rules because we are good people hardly occurs to us, especially when we are young. And given enough harsh punishments, even good people will become angry enough to forget they were good to begin with.
Either way, when we generalize from what is ‘normal’ in our culture or environment to the very nature of human beings, it hardly occurs to most of us that these assumptions are based on faulty evidence (whether too little or of the wrong kind). And what’s worse, we scarcely notice that such assumptions can have especially destructive, indeed, self-fulfilling effects – which is to say, the assumptions themselves can actually bring about the effect they assume, that is, the very worst in human behavior – giving generalizations about the our nature powerful efficacy.
We tend to have a glancing understanding of what is called the labeling effect – by which children who are consistently called ‘naughty’ or ‘dumb’ tend to internalize that label, as if to say, “I’ve got the name, might as well play the game.” We are also aware that such assumptions can have real effects on learning when, for instance, teachers attribute lack of intelligence or goodness to children on the basis of socio-economic status, race, and even looks. But we don’t seem to recognize how such assumptions take root, not only as effects played out in other’s behavior, but also as corrupting forces in our own lives, planting the seeds of alienation in our relationships and even in our hearts.
But in order to illustrate how this effect is a result, not of our nature, but of our thinking, it seems important to show how our idea of human nature differs from other times and other places. This is important because, if this effect that we call normal was actually our nature, then it would not differ across cultures, or from one time and place to the next, or for that matter, from person to person. If this were our inevitable nature, then we would not see the myriad exceptions that we do, throughout history, and even among us and around the world today.
But we do see such exceptions, not only among individuals, but entire cultures that have managed to bring out the good in their young. And so it behooves us to ask – what do they know that we have forgotten? Because if what we call our nature is really only a bad habit, then this is very good news, because habits can be broken!!!
…*
It's true that it can seem to be almost 'human nature' when you grow up surrounded by so many who seem to be capitalistic at heart, but – like the statue of Glaucus Plato refers to – this appearance is more accumulated crust and callous than our inevitable nature. Our egoism may be a familiar characteristic of human beings, especially these days and in our ‘western’ part of the world, but far from the so-called 'human nature' we like to call it, this tendency to capitalize on the vulnerability of others is only a very bad habit, and a relatively new and still fairly localized tendency, at that – not as universal as it seems, and not much older than the idea of capitalism that has evolved (or been corrupted) into what we know it as today. Closer to the whole truth of the matter, not as many live as we capitalists do as might seem through our narrow window on the world.
…
In fact, we are all raised to be somewhat selfish in this culture, and nowhere does this take a greater toll than on the quality of our relationships. We often learn to think of relationships as means to other ends (whether that be our own pleasure, or social utility, or self-esteem, or what have you), rather than as ends in themselves. Too often we ‘love’ others, not for their sake, but as a means to our own. And with this comes a generalized awareness of being used for others purposes, rather than loved for ourselves, inclining most of us to concern ourselves with getting more than with giving.
So while relationships often start off with great potential, because and when both are giving it their best, if only in order to win over the other, they sometimes quickly turn into something much less than they at first seemed, as one or both begin taking from the other, which comes to seem the only way to get. And as that potential that seemed so wonderful at first fades, so does any hope of genuine love, until what is left becomes more like a battle ground where both are trying to get back what they lost to the other’s taking.
Finding ourselves in such circumstances, most of us don’t really know what happened, or even notice that or when we ourselves planted the seeds that changed a relationship from it’s original promise and potential into just another power struggle, perhaps one with great heat, but little light. We may continue to say we ‘love’ a person with whom we have such a relationship, but compared to the truer form of love that was potential in the beginning, what is left is so much less, and seeing this, one or both partners may very well pack up their emotional goods and move on.
This state of affairs, that is, relationships in which one or both are neither getting or giving what was potential in the beginning, is so much the norm in our culture that, until a relationship is gone and we are left wondering what we could have done differently, it usually doesn’t even occur to us that and how our own small selfish actions can have butterfly effects that have the power to destroy love altogether. In fact, selfishness is not only contagious, but actually poisonous to love. And there is an easy way to explain this…when we turn to small-p philosophy.
*** (repeat from earlier*)
And so perhaps we should begin by understanding our own nature better. We like to call it ‘human nature’ that we tend to be this way, but it’s really only a bad habit - and the good thing about bad habits is that they can be broken. What’s more, they need to be learned in the first place, so we might simply stop teaching our young the same bad habits we find so difficult to change in ourselves.
Because the sad fact is (as Peter S. Beagle observed in his introduction for J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit), "We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers -- thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last [learn to] praise the colonizers of dreams."
Human Nature? Or Just a Bad Habit? There is the temptation to blame fallen humanity, for it certainly seems there is no hope for a species that refuses to be bothered to stop indulging its every desire. But the idea that this is our nature ignores all the conditioning processes that go into making sure we are this way, which amounts to blaming the victim – since we first teach our young to be selfish, and then call them ‘natural sinners’ for learning what we’ve taught them so well.
It's too easy to look around and think of what is normal in our culture is the same as in every other culture, much less human nature, as if that's the way it's always been. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves. While many of us have been persuaded by traditions and institutions (some of which have ulterior motives of their own) that no such thing as goodness exists in human potential, this is more illusion than actual. We’re fond of looking at the surface of things, and on the surface it seems that most people are ‘naturally’ scoundrels…or so we tend to think if we don’t look beyond the obvious. But one thing the ancients understood is that living beings are bound to have both higher and lower potentials, and choosing which to actualize is what it is at least human nature to do.
In fact, if it was our nature to be selfish and greedy, we would have been this in all times and all places, and we would not see so many exceptions to the rule. Instead, an honest study of history shows us that the good has thrived and flourished in many times and places, and in countless individuals. Yes, there have always been scoundrels...but they've only ever become the dominant force when their influence has poisoned so many so young. Modeling our behavior on the worst of humanity is a very potent error with consequences so far reaching that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could teach their young this view of human nature…except those who simply don’t understand nature to begin with. Unfortunately, this includes most of us who grew up in the more developed parts of the world. But again, the ancients would remind us that we are born with both potentials, and it is up to us to actualize them. Which of our potentials we develop is our choice. We choose whether we will follow those that tend toward the divine, or those that tend toward the diabolical. And for this reason, what we find when we look inward has less to do with our natural inclinations, and more to do with our choices. What we find when we look inside ourselves depends largely on what we put there.
In fact, far from the so-called 'human nature' we tend to think it to be, this tendency to capitalize on vulnerable others is (arguably) only a bad habit, and a relatively new and still fairly localized one, at that -- not as universal as it seems, and not much older than the religious and economic traditions from which it has evolved. It's true that egoism can seem to be almost universal when we grow up surrounded by so many who seem to be capitalistic at heart, but (like the statue of Glaucus that Plato tells us fell to the bottom of the ocean) the human soul, as we know it, is crusted over by too much unhealthy experience and calloused by the myriad hurts, none of which are born with us, but all happen to us after birth. In fact, if this were our inevitable nature, then we would not see the myriad exceptions that we do, throughout history, and even among and around us everyday. We need only learn to emulate those worth honoring, those whose character express the higher human potentials that are still and always potential in every human life. The realization of human excellence is all around us, and the potential for it is in all of us. As Plato tried to help us see - our real hope is in the fact that each generation is born fresh.
The challenge for each of us is this -- which will we listen to? Who will we respect -- those who would teach us to get what we want, or those who would teach us to want what is actually good for us? For it is the great teachers of human history who have shown us that ideas too produce feedback loops, for better or worse (just as the idea that human nature is ‘bad’ can actually bring out the worst in us). Seeing this, we can also see how to plant the seeds of healthier butterfly effects in our young than those we currently teach them. But this requires we stop teaching our young the same bad habits that we find so hard to change in ourselves.
Closer to the whole truth of the matter, not as many live as we western capitalists do as might seem through our window on the world. In fact, just beyond the notice of too many of us, most of the rest of the world lives in or near what we might think of as poverty. They consume only what they need, and make the most of what they have. And what’s more, and would be surprising to many of us, they are also fairly content, and even happier, by most measures, than even the most affluent among us. Because once they and theirs are fed, warm, and safe, they can enjoy all the intrinsic goods of life – talk and laughter, music and dance, friendship and love --which are all, as the cliché says – free. Goods that too many of us have learned to ignore.
In Thorton Wilder’s play, Our Town, a young woman who had died in childbirth is given a chance by her spiritual guide to go back to revisit just one day of her life. Her first impulse is to choose a very memorial day, her sixteenth birthday perhaps, or maybe her wedding day. But her wise guide cautions her that it would be best to choose a perfectly ordinary day - for even that will seem so truly miraculous as to be overwhelming to step back into. If only we could see our blessings for what they are…while we still have them.
A similar experience is offered us when someone we love dies – what we wouldn’t give for just one more day? As the old saying goes, we hardly know what we’ve got until it’s gone. If we could only see what we have through the eyes we would have when those blessings are gone, then we would truly love every day of our lives more deeply, and we would be able to recognize our challenges as the blessings they truly are.
This beautiful earth we have enjoyed, taken for granted, and lately abused…we will one day recognize to be the truest paradise, when the time comes we are no longer welcome.
We are all born uncorrupted, innocent, and capable of living harmoniously…if only we are helped to learn how to…shown the way by those around us. And with it comes the conflated idea that all such times are past, that such idealized conceptions are mere memories, at best, like dreams of lost childhoods that were simply too good to last, and thus no longer potential for ‘fallen’ humanity. But the ancients would have us remember that life is indeed what we make it. The assumption that human nature is invariably corrupted is a seed we should never plant in the heart of our young. We give them little choice, Socrates argues, when we teach them so poorly.
Poor Plato is widely ridiculed for suggesting that such utopian potentials are actually realistic, indeed, born again fresh with each new life, potential for every generation that learns well in its youth. But if we want our young to be good, we must help them learn its benefits from the start. Teach your young the golden rule, they say, and living up to their highest potentials will take care of itself.
But we’ve neglected this golden rule, and almost forgotten this too, and instead have drawn broad conclusions with far reaching implications about fallen human nature and what is and is not possible, either for individuals, or for human kind. Passing on a belief in our inevitable sinfullness, humans have abdicated their responsibility for teaching the young right reason and choice of virtue, and instead raised generation after generation to replicate the very worse of human potentials – leaving them no choice, says Socrates, but to play along.
And so, as if by self-fulfilling prophesy, selfishness, greed, and the incapacity to do the right thing for the right reason become habits that set in from a very young age, seeming to be our nature, when it fact, this is the rather a fatal misunderstanding about our nature, indeed, nature itself – setting each new generation up for their own fall in the process.
This paradise we still enjoy could be only a sad and longing memory for our young one day all too soon – if we don’t awaken to our higher potentials in time to realize the kind of humble wisdom that is still and always our potential. But the pretense that it is already too late, inevitable, and even God’s will that the end is near – only helps obscure what we don’t want to see – our responsibility for doing what we still could to prevent the fall we’ve set our young up for, indeed, what we would have our parents do, if we were in our children’s shoes.
What those in the Christian tradition think of as a fall from grace, might better be understood as karma in eastern wisdom traditions. For the latter is not a hand dealt by God, as we are encouraged to think, but one that we deal ourselves, and so might do well to rethink what we think we knew about our nature and the causal forces at work. For it may not be too late to change our course, and learn from our mistakes, while there’s still time to save this paradise that is our home – which may not be a place at all, as much as a state of mind.
[1] (Gore n.d.)
[2] (Gore n.d.)
[3] (424. 1990)
[4] (Arthur 1990)
[5] (Gore n.d.)
[6] (Guyton, Textbook of Medical Physiology. (8th ed) 1991)
[7] (Guyton, Textbook of Medical Physiology. (8th ed) 1991)
[8] (Guyton, Textbook of Medical Physiology. (8th ed) 1991)
[9] (Gore n.d.)
[10] (Gore n.d.)
[11] (Gore n.d.)