On the Nature of Human Nature

Theories of human nature underly theories of political and economic systems.
 
Some people attempt to justify capitalism with the Calvinist theory that says, because of Original Sin, the inherent tendency to evil, we should do our duty by working hard to absolve those sins and ensure acceptance into Heaven. This is the gist of the Protestant Ethic. 
 
Others attack capitalism by saying it assumes an inherent goodness in human beings, at which point they cry hypocrisy and list all the evil that goes on in the world.
 
Sigmund Freud’s theory of human nature is more sophisticated, albeit based on determinism. It says we have two fundamental drives, analogous to hunger or sex, that determine our behavior, namely the life or positive self-assertion drive and the death or destruction drive. The latter gives some of us a strongly aggressive personality that culture—civilization—must control. Hence, our “discontent” that results from living in civilization.
 
The theory of human nature best representing a free society holds that human beings possess free will, are self-responsible, and possess the ability, if they so choose to exert the effort, to raise themselves up from their original stations in life, that is, for example, to achieve and enjoy a higher standard of living than that of their parents.*
 
The theory does not describe human beings as inherently evil or inherently good, or as helpless victims of genes and environment—those theories deny free will.
 
Freedom of the will means that a person’s choices are the essential source of both good and evil, though culture—the environment we were reared in, especially family and education—are also important sources of our thoughts and behaviors. (See my post “On the Nature of Evil.”)
 
This free-will theory is sometimes said to be neutral, meaning we are born neither good nor evil. We have the equal potential for both. Nevertheless, we can challenge this complete neutrality by considering whether humans by nature have a stronger tendency to do good than to do evil. How so?
 
Just as the human body has a tendency to heal itself, so also does the human consciousness.
 
A minor cut on the finger or hand, for example, in most people clots and heals itself in a few days. The tendency to heal ourselves psychologically derives from the biological function of consciousness to use reason to perceive our selves and environment correctly, then choose values and take actions necessary to sustain and enhance our lives.
 
This tendency to goodness can be called, with qualifications, the will to do the right thing. We see this desire in children from their earliest years, depending on parental influence, eagerly seeking to live their lives in a healthy and happy way, and often continuing through adolescence and adulthood even after being confronted with major unpleasant environmental obstacles.
 
This will gives most people in a civilized society a benevolent intention in their lives and slants the theory of human nature more toward an inherent goodness.
 
What precisely do I mean by “the will to do the right thing”? Fundamentally, it is a psychological requirement for our consciousness to function. We have a need to feel right before taking an action. Does this mean we are always right? No. It is a theory based on free will, which means we can make mistakes or do evil things.
 
Psychologically, however, we must believe that we are right each time we select what to do; it is a perception of being right. Otherwise, we will not be able to act.
 
This perception of rightness, that I am calling the will to do the right thing, is analogous to the psychological concept of perceived risk. Just as risk perception varies from person to person, so also does “rightness” vary from person to person. **
 
“Being right” applies to everyone, both good and evil, with a continuum of “rightness” and multiple meanings of the word. Let us now look at some examples along that continuum.
 
The most common usage of the concept “right,” when talking about “doing the right thing,” means doing the morally right thing. It means especially being honest in thought, communication with others, and action. Most people, I submit, at least in American culture, do strive to be honest, so this statement probably can be applied to most Americans.
 
The “right thing,” however, within the science of ethics depends on the moral theory and standard of value one is assuming, though it usually means what we were taught as children.
 
A significant influence on American culture is the ethics of Immanuel Kant, who insists that telling the truth is an unconditional principle that is consistent with his categorical imperative of always acting in accordance with duty, never from inclination. This means it is one’s unconditional duty to tell the truth to a homicidal maniac who comes to your door looking for his or her victim. Kant says there is a difference between doing what is right versus what avoids harm to another person. Telling the truth in this situation is not wrong.
 
Ayn Rand, however, disagrees with Kant and says that both physical and moral principles can and do have qualifications. The statement that water boils at 212º Fahrenheit is not the end of the story. The qualification, varying by air pressure and purity of water, must be added.
 
Similarly, telling the truth does not mean qualifications or consequences be damned (as Kant’s theory says). Honesty means telling the truth unless confronted by direct or indirect initiated coercion, threatened with invasion of privacy, or when a blunt truth might be unnecessarily hurtful to another person.
 
Thus, doing the right thing varies by underlying moral theory, but most people today, I would add (again, in our present culture), are uncomfortable with the strict Kantian ethics of duty over inclination and to a great extent with the concept of Original Sin.
 
Hence, as I continue to say, most people try to do the right thing, however they may understand it, at least on a practical level. None probably have ever had a homicidal maniac come to their door and many likely have fibbed to avoid unduly hurting a friend or relative.
 
My father, for example, seems to have been a good Kantian in ethics, though I am certain he had never heard of Immanuel Kant. He said to me once, “You do your work because it is your duty, not because you enjoy it.” He was raised Protestant on a farm and worked most of his life as a clerk in the post office. His intentions and honesty were decidedly right—and I do think he enjoyed his work.
 
Some people with psychological problems may, to an outside observer, appear not to be honest. Usually, however, such problems are not moral failings.
 
Psychological problems—typically involving self-doubt and the emotion of anxiety—trigger the strong need in us to allay, reduce, or blot out that feeling by adopting defensive habits, such as withdrawal, hostility, or a compulsive behavior. Often, as children, we develop defensive symptoms subconsciously, not knowing how we got them. Nevertheless, the purpose of a defensive habit is to give us the feeling of doing right while also assuaging our anxiety.
 
The psychological need to feel right is the source of what I am calling the tendency to do the right thing—however one might define “right.”
 
The extreme example on the negative end of the continuum of “rightness” is the criminal personality. Rationalization—excuse-making to feel right—seems to be the primary defensive habit of criminals whose self-esteem is low. As one put it, “I am a nothing. If I thought about it, I would have to kill myself.” Thus, the rapist says, “She really wanted me” and the murderer says, “He deserved it.”
 
Rationalization also describes dictators, as they are criminal personalities who must believe (rationalize) they are right in every action they take. See Ayn Rand’s comment, 246, on Nikita Khrushchev’s need to justify his behavior by reciting the mantra of dialectical materialism, and my use of Rand’s comment in Applying Principles, 314, where I attempt to explain why facts don’t matter to many people, including, or especially, dictators.
 
Doing the “right thing” for the criminal is definitely not the objectively moral thing to do, nor is this statement a justification or exoneration of criminal or immoral behavior. It is a psychological observation that criminal behavior feels right to the criminal and explains his or her actions.
 
Surely, then, one might assert, there are people who knowingly do the wrong thing. Yes, as a double standard. This is the criminal personality who enjoys getting away with the forbidden. Yes, the criminal says, I know it is illegal, but that is who I am. The criminal’s identity is such that he or she feels right to rob banks, and worse. 
 
Or, as one criminal said incredulously to a psychologist, “You expect me to get a job to buy what I want when I can just go into the store and take it?” Paying for goods in a store is for suckers, he said. He believed or felt, as his rationalization, that he was doing the right thing.
 
Only suckers, according to the criminal, obey the law. What he does is right, according to his rationalization-infested mind. (See Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind.)
 
Most people, as I continue to maintain, exhibit a will to do the morally right thing, indicating that human nature has built into it a tendency to do good, meaning most people can and do exhibit varying degrees of good intentions.
 
According to the theory of human nature presented here, I put most people on the scale of honesty and goodness.
 
Both values are required for a lasting free society.
 
 
* Psychiatrist William Glasser (chap. 1) assumed a similar theory when treating his patients. He said, “We choose our own misery. Thus, we can choose our own happiness.” His goal as therapist was to work with patients to help them choose healthier and happier behaviors.
 
** Perceived risk, also called subjective risk, means, for example, that some people need alcoholic beverages before getting on an airplane, while others like to walk on wings for a living. Risk perception exists along a continuum, which means we can now draw an analogy between epistemology where there is a difference between what we perceive or believe to be true­—and what is true, and ethics where there is a difference between what we perceive or believe to be right—and what is right. In both cases, people vary considerably according to what they believe to be true and right—and what is true and right.

Defensive Habits as Obstacles to Exercising Our Free Will

Ayn Rand divides human volition into two stages: focus and thought. To focus means to direct and control our attention to something in particular, a landscape or a problem to be solved, or to let our minds wander. This, she has compared to throwing a switch (Peikoff, 58).
 
The second stage is the focus of our thinking to acquire knowledge without contradiction and to keep our subconscious minds well-ordered to guide our lives in moral and successful ways. Focus may be like throwing a switch—a dimmer switch more likely—but the decision to think or not, especially the quality of thinking we generate, can face obstacles.
 
Defensive habits in particular are a significant obstacle to clear thinking. Defensive symptoms of the neurotic type are a form of delusion—though not nearly as serious as the delusions of a person experiencing a psychotic episode.
 
A young man, for example, who is fired from his job and jilted by his lover on the same day may become depressed and conclude, “I’ll never find another job or lover.” * This is not true and can be called a delusion, a false belief about reality. This person, in addition, may, without help, have considerable difficulty doing much of anything for several days or weeks. His thought processes are turned off, partially or completely.
 
Much of what we think, feel, and do as adults has been influenced and shaped by the conclusions we make as children and teenagers. An influential part of our psychologies is what Edith Packer (chap. 2) calls core evaluations about our selves, other people, and the world in general. How well these premises have been formed, meaning how correct and healthy they are, determines how we will act later.
 
This gives rise to a question: how well can we focus our minds to develop a well-ordered subconscious when we experience a host of psychological problems? Not easily is the answer.
 
The formation of these premises depends greatly on our parental upbringing and teaching in school. What we believe and feel as adults is often not as simple as flipping a switch, though generally, absent drug influence or physiological damage to our brains, behavior is controllable. Which means we can refrain from pulling out a gun and shooting someone, or cheating someone through a dishonest act, but certain areas of our lives may not exhibit what an outside observer would call clear thinking.
 
The influence of defensive habits, I believe, is underemphasized in Ayn Rand’s writings, though she does call these types of failures to focus and think errors in knowledge, as opposed to willful evasions.**
 
Technically, this is true. The person with psychological problems does have free will and did in his or her younger years when initially creating the false premises, though the formation of many of these premises occur by emotional generalization and chance.
 
Many false premises become repressed and shaped into habits manifested as symptoms that cloud our perception of reality. Such a person often does not know how to correct the errors. And with the present influential view of determinism by genes and environment, many conclude, “That’s me and I can’t do anything about it.” However, free will as a controllable behavior means we can seek help, professional or personal, or continue to live our lives despite the obstacles. Dealing with our psychological problems is more difficult, especially in today’s culture, than many realize.
 
Alcoholics who want to stay sober, for example, must every day confront strong obsessive urges for a drink. Clouded thinking is often the result. The same is true of people with other psychological problems and their neurotic symptoms.
 
Let me conclude with this quotation from contemporary psychoanalyst Jonathan Shedler (432) who understands the relationship between psychological problems and free will:

Psychoanalytic therapists believe expanding our understanding of the meanings and causes of our behavior creates freedom, choice, and a freer will [my italics]. People can change, people do change, and psychoanalytic therapy helps people change, sometimes in profound ways. Every legitimate psychotherapist, deep down, believes in the human capacity to grow, change, and experience a greater sense of freedom and equanimity in the face of life’s inevitable hardships. If behavior were unavoidably determined, there would be no reason to practice psychoanalytic therapy or, for that matter, any form of therapy.

 
* I first used this example in Independent Judgment and Introspection (94).
 
** Rand seems to view our subconscious minds as equivalent to Sigmund Freud’s preconscious, the store of unrepressed knowledge that we are not now aware of but can recall at a moment’s notice. She does not make allowance for motivation by repressed premises and therefore is quick to condemn people as dishonest and immoral. Using her terms, though, non-self-defensive shooting of someone, or cheating, is clear evasion of what is right or moral for decent life. The criminal personality, as Stanton Samenow has well demonstrated, lies, cheats, and steals as a way of life and enjoys getting away with the forbidden.

Genes vs. Environment: Anyone for Free Will?

Do genes cause behavior? If they do, one would expect to see evidence of criminality, genius, schizophrenia, homosexuality, and evangelical Christianity in infants. All of these behaviors, plus many others, have been said to be inborn.

To expect an infant to exhibit these traits is absurd. To say that an infant has inherited the potential to become a criminal, or evangelical Christian, says nothing. We are all born with that potential, plus countless other potentialities.

Does environment cause behavior? The trouble with this assertion is that there are always exceptions to the good and bad things environment does to children when they are growing up.

Some children reared in crime-ridden, slum neighborhoods become criminals while others do not, even if they are siblings in the same family. The same can be said for children reared in safe, wealthy suburbs. Others raised in religious families follow their parents and become evangelical Christians, while some rebel and become atheists.

The determinism of the genes/environment axis is a self-contradiction—determinists have to acknowledge that they are determined to believe in determinism. Yet they pretend to be making a logical choice to believe in determinism.

Something other than genes or environment must be operating to cause our behavior.

Here’s a novel idea. How about thought, that processor of genetic inheritance and environment that generates our motivation and directs behavior?

Thought, or more broadly, consciousness, makes errors and has to control itself in order not to make mistakes. Free will is cognitive self-regulation, which means we may choose to focus on the facts or evade them, allowing other factors, such as emotions, presuppositions, or political doctrine, to interfere with correct perception.*

Our guide to the correct perception of reality is the 2500-year-old science of thinking called logic. As the discipline and art that regulates internal thought processes, logic is the quintessential introspective science. The genes/environment axis, however, does not want to admit that logic is introspective, because then they would have to admit that consciousness controls behavior and that introspection is a valid method of science.

Psychologically, this means our personalities are self-created. The cause of behavior is the innumerable conclusions we have drawn—the myriad thoughts, logical or not, we have had—about our genetic inheritance and the environment in which we live, from the time we were able to process words right up to the present.

These innumerable conclusions and myriad thoughts accumulate and become the mental habits by which we live. As habits (or psycho-epistemologies), many have become so automated, buried in our subconscious with their origins largely forgotten, that they feel to us as if we were born that way, or that something external is making us act the way we do.

Lack of introspection, or more specifically, introspective skill, to examine our motivating premises—thoughts, evaluations, emotions—makes it hard to appreciate how much control we in fact have over our lives.

Habits can be good or bad, the good ones leading us to live a happy life, the bad ones not so happy. The examined life, to paraphrase Socrates, is worth living; the unexamined one leads to problems in living.

Mental habits are all learned.** We were not born knowing how to drive a car, for example, but in adulthood, adults can safely drive while carrying on a conversation and listening to music on the radio. All of our actions follow this pattern.

Certain habits, generated from core evaluations and other less fundamental but nevertheless significant evaluations, are usually acquired when very young, from toddlerhood on. We retain these early conclusions about ourselves (our sense of personal identity), the world, and other people and hold them as unquestioned absolutes.***

It is in toddlerhood that we begin to speak, which means we are beginning to think in concepts and words.

Young children do not usually form these important conclusions through explicit reasoning, but through a process of emotional generalization. At the risk of oversimplification, an emotion at this stage in life, if it could be put into words, might say something like, “That made me feel good about myself. I’ll do it again.” Or, “I didn’t like that and I’m not going to feel it again.”

Repeated many times over, the former, if based on a correct perception of reality, can lead to the development of self-esteem, the latter, which most likely includes errors, to repression and subsequent psychological problems.

If taught from an early age to look inward to identify our thoughts, evaluations, and emotions, and to correct errors we have made, we would grow up with healthy psychologies. Most of us, however, have not been taught much of anything about psychology, in childhood or adulthood.

Thus, when the genes/environment axis comes along, it makes perfect sense that our behavior is caused by something we have no control over.

The irony is that genes and environment do have an influence on us, in the sense that genes give us gender and skin color and environment can make life easy or difficult, but we are the ones who develop attitudes—conclusions, evaluations—about gender, skin color, and environment.

To help us correctly perceive and evaluate what genetics has given us and what goes on in our environment, teaching is crucial. Parents and the schools need to instruct children in the skill of applying logic to their own psychologies.

The unfortunate consequence of the genes/environment debate is that the axis devalues the environmental influence of an education in sound psychology. For that is what is required to help us use our free will to assess genetic inheritance and environment and thereby make better choices to live a happier life.


* This is Ayn Rand’s theory of free will as volitional consciousness.
** All habits, at root, are mental. I use “mental” here to emphasize their psychological origin.
*** The concept of core evaluations was identified by psychologist Edith Packer and presented in her lecture “Understanding the Subconscious” in 1984. Lectures on Psychology, chapter 1.