Thanks for succinctly clarifying the central issue, gek-opel. And, indeed, it could also be argued - in addition to the inescapable mediation of the world via language which John Doe has summarised - that contemporary biogenetics - ironically - desubstantialises human nature (as well as all other kinds), flittering away its impenetrable density. I recall Zizek's conclusion: "By reducing a human being to a natural object whose properties can be altered, what we lose is not (only) humanity but nature itself. In this sense, Francis Fukuyama is right in Our Posthuman Future: the notion of humanity relies on the belief that we possess an inherited 'human nature', that we are born with an unfathomable dimension of ourselves."
Coincidentally, some years ago, in a very different context, I collated some of the anthropological research to which Pinker is alluding in his work, much of which I would now consider inherently problematical:
The idea of the noble savage living in harmony with his fellows and
with nature is a persistent myth. According to this notion, modern man
is in a fallen state compared with his noble past. However, it seems
to be the case that much recent scientific investigation increasingly
suggests that the truth may lie closer to the reverse of the popular
conception.
"One of the most dangerous fallacies which has influenced a great deal
of political and philosophical thinking is that man is essentially
good, and that it is society which makes him bad," Kubrick wrote in
1972, in defence of his characterisation of the brutal Alex in A
Clockwork Orange. "Rousseau transferred original sin from man to
society, and this view has importantly contributed to what I believe
has become a crucially incorrect premise on which to base moral and
political philosophy ... The age of the alibi, in which we find
ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's Emile:
"Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's
fault." It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural
state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society. "
The poet John Dryden described man in a state of nature in 1670: "I am
as free as nature first made man, when wild in woods the noble savage
ran." It was much later, in 1755, that enlightenment philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau canonised the noble savage when he wrote:
"Among the savages, personal interest speaks as strongly as among us,
but it does not say the same things. The love of society and the care
for common protection are the only bonds which unite them.... They do
not have any discussion of interests which divide them. Nothing leads
them to deceive one another. Public esteem is the only good to which
they aspire and which they value."
Amerigo Vespucci, who explored the coast of Brazil in 1501-02,
described the natives as completely free, politically and morally,
with no religion or kings and no need of money, trade or property, and
living to be very old. Europeans found this image delightful, and for
a long time European travellers to South America saw everything
through this rose-coloured lens.
Noble savages were not confined to South America. In the 1960s
anthropologists discovered the Kung people of the Kalahari Desert. A
three-week study found them to be peaceful and egalitarian. They
enjoyed a nutritious diet and gathered all the food they needed by
foraging for two or three hours a day. It was concluded that this
lifestyle was a universal human norm until 10,000 years ago. The
lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer Kung was promoted as peaceful,
healthy and leisurely and much better adapted to nature than the
lifestyle of modem man.
It is now accepted that these ideas were erroneous. The three weeks of
the study coincided with a brief bountiful period in an otherwise
harsh life. In the 19th century the Kung were an integral part of the
local economy. They traded cattle, ivory and ostrich feathers for
manufactured and agricultural products. They used guns to hunt
elephants. A hundred years later the elephants had surrendered to the
guns and the cattle to disease - and nobody wanted ostrich feathers.
The Kung were driven into deep poverty and a foraging lifestyle. Like
other tribal societies their life is unpleasant. Infant mortality is
high, life expectancy is 30 years and they suffer great hardship when
food is scarce.
Journalists were taken to see a tribe called the Tasaday on Mindanao,
the second largest island of the Philippines, in 1972. The Tasaday
appeared to be genuine noble savages. They lived in caves, used tools
of stone and bamboo and wore clothes made of leaves. They foraged a
diet of roots, insects, fruit, frogs and crabs. They had no concept of
corporal punishment, no method of counting time and no word for "war".
They lived in harmony with one another and with their environment. In
1986 a Swiss journalist revisited the Tasaday. The tribesmen told him
they had been paid to wear leaves, to eat wild food, to leave their
thatched huts for caves and to swing from trees.
Many studies show that simple pre-industrial societies were no more
consciously ecologically friendly or peaceful than our own industrial
society. A study of almost 200 pre-industrial societies by Bobby Low
of the University of Michigan showed that low population density,
primitive technology and lack of profitable markets account for their
low environmental impact rather than conscious effort at conservation.
Other studies have shown that prehistoric wars were, taking fighting
technology and population density into account, as frequent, as bloody
and as cruel as modem war.
"Rousseau's romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man,
not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between
ourselves and reality. This view ... is solid box office but, in the
end, such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair," argued Kubrick
in 1972.
"Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage," Kubrick
thundered. "He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be
objective about anything where his own interests are involved - that
about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of
man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create
social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably
doomed to failure." Applying this view to ACO, Kubrick elaborated: "On
this level, Alex symbolizes man in his natural state, the way he would
be if society did not impose its 'civilizing' processes upon him ...
What we respond to subconsciously is Alex's guiltless sense of freedom
to kill and rape, and to be our savage natural selves, and it is in
this glimpse of the true nature of man that the power of the story
derives."
So have humans *evolved* at all since the mysterious appearance of the
ignoble savage (modern man), since Moonwatcher hurled his bone-weapon
into the air? After all, the central thesis of Kubrick - both in 2001
and ACO - is that mankind has not *evolved* whatsoever since then,
however much his technology and weaponry undoubtedly have, and however
much ignoble savage Alex might like Beethovan's Ninth Symphony ...
More recently, however, is the "good" news that, as claimed by Michael
Shermer in the September 2003 edition of *Scientific American*,
humans are evolving in a more peaceful direction. The selective
breeding of wild animals for domestication is accompanied by the
evolution of smaller skulls, jaws and teeth than their wild ancestors,
a process that is called paedomorphism, which means the retention of
juvenile features into adulthood. These include lower levels of
aggression, delayed onset of the fear response to strange stimuli and
a decrease in levels of stress-related hormones.
Humans have also become more agreeable as we have become more
domesticated. Richard Wrangham, a Harvard University anthropologist,
suggests that over the past 20,000 years, as human populations have
grown and become more sedentary, selection pressures have reduced
within-group aggression. This effect has been accompanied by features
such as smaller jaws and teeth than seen in our hominid ancestors, as
well as our continuous breeding season and pronounced sexuality.
The evolutionary hypothesis, as summarised by Sherman, suggests that
limited resources selectively led to within-group co-operation and
between-group competition in humans. This produced within-group amity
and between-group enmity. The way to make further progress, therefore,
is to continue to grow the circle of those we consider to be "members"
of our group.
As Kubrick concludes, "Finally, the question must be considered
whether Rousseau's view of man as a fallen angel is not really the
most pessimistic and hopeless of philosophies. It leaves man a monster
who has gone steadily away from his nobility. It is, I am convinced,
more optimistic to accept Ardrey's view that, '...we were born of
risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers
besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and
missiles and our irreconcilable regiments? ... For our treaties,
whatever they may be worth; our symphonies, however seldom they may be
played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted
into battlefields; our dreams, however rarely they may be
accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how
magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems,
not our corpses.' "
