We talk a lot about human nature. It’s one of our favorite explanations for people’s behavior.
Why do right-wingers hate immigrants? Because it’s human nature to “fear the other.” What explains cancel culture? The human instinct to “support the tribe” and punish heresy. How could anyone believe the earth is flat? “Confirmation bias” is a part of human nature.
But when we say these things, we neglect to mention that we are humans. That’s a pretty important data point. If we’re trying to explain some weird thing we don’t do, and our explanation is “it’s human nature,” then we need to say something about why human nature doesn’t apply to us. Are we mutants? Are we aliens?
We usually don’t think this way. Instead, we appeal to human nature to imply that we’re superior to some “less evolved” group of humans. Belief in the dark side of humanity, or at least the rest of humanity, is a humblebrag. It feels good to think that we’re higher beings—that we’ve transcended our atavistic urges and become civilized.
But if that idea were true, if we really were overcoming something primal within us, it would be hard. It would be hard in the same way that it's hard to resist gorging on tortilla chips or compulsively checking our phones. It would be so hard that we’d regularly slip up, and we’d forgive others for their slip-ups.
I don't know about you, but it's not hard for me to, say, support immigration. There's nothing inside me I have to resist, no urges I need to suppress. I’m not transcending human nature when I express my political views, and I shouldn’t give myself credit for doing so.
Here’s a useful test. When you’re trying to explain something weird about a group of humans, and you want to blame human nature, ask yourself: has it been hard for you to resist that nature within yourself?
If the answer is “no,” then maybe you’re moved by the same instincts as the people who disagree with you, but in ways you cannot see. Maybe that “fear of the other” is inside you as well, but merely directed at different others. Maybe you’re just as vulnerable to “confirmation bias”, and you’re just biased to confirm different beliefs.
Sure, you have "good reasons" for why you believe the things you do, and why you dislike the people you do. But so do the humans who disagree with you—at least from their perspective. "Good reasons" for one’s prejudice and dogma are never in short supply. If anything is a part of human nature, it’s the tendency to rationalize our prejudice and dogma, to make it seem like it’s not prejudice or dogma at all, but basic decency and common sense. To transcend that part of ourselves is, and ought to be, hard.
If it's not hard, you're not doing it right.
I Am Not Human
A few years ago, amid peak progressive panic, I had social media friends of mine explain to me that the "deep red" folks were not good people because of the way they stereotype, dehumanize, and exhibit intolerance in general. Fair enough, legit criticism.. those are bad things. Except that some of those same friends went further. I asked questions about my friends' attitudes and beliefs. They did not hesitate to explain to me that that group of people were not merely misguided or incorrect on facts, but that their core motivations were abjectly malicious and selfish. They lacked humanity, lacked empathy. Some even suggested the whole self-identified group of them did not necessarily deserve basic rights like speech or voting, that pre-emptive use of force and violence against them was justified because they were, by virtue of their group membership alone, incorrigibly harmful.
My friends sensed my questions must be leading somewhere, but they never grasped the irony that was right in front of them, articulated with their own mouths.
Very Interesting. I think that when I try to understand human behavior by invoking human nature, I typically include my own behavior in the puzzle. But perhaps I do what you say too without realizing it. I’ll pay more attention to this from now on.
No doubt what you describe is quite prevalent, but I wonder whether in some cases it may be valid to attribute to human nature some common behavior that we’re not particularly prone to, simply because all aspects of human nature are not equally prevalent in all individuals, and perhaps not even in all populations. The risk of uncritically adopting that view, though, might be that we’d be tempted to say something like “those people’s nature makes them subject to such and such failings”, which could well be nothing but self-deluded presumptuousness, and we’d be back to essentially what you described…