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humani[s88,jmc]		Human instincts and human values

	The human animal evolved from some kind of ape in the last
few million years.  Our motivations evolved to optimize the
survival of the genes controlling these motivations.  Most likely
humanoid culture was evolving fast enough so that during the
most recent genetic evolution, it cannot be said that our motivations
were optimized for any specific culture.

	After a certain time, say 30,000 years ago or possibly
earlier, human culture began to evolve so much faster than
our genotypes that it may be reasonable to study cultural
evolution under the assumption that it occurs relative to
a fixed genotype.  There can't have been very much recent
genetic evolution of behavior, because the various races
of mankind all seem to adapt similarly to modern society.
In this essay we shall use the phrase ``human nature'' to
refer to the relatively common genetically determined aspects
of our motivation and behavior.
  The reason for adopting it is that
we have more sympathy with the concepts covered by informal
usage than with any of the prevailing theories.
  We thereby accept the risk
of unintentional (or deliberate) misunderstanding of the way
we will use the term.  The reader is warned to pay attention
to how the term is used.

	In the course of cultural evolution, various ideas about
what kind of society is desirable have developed.  These ideas
involve beliefs about what human nature is, what it ought to be,
and how it can be changed.  Some of these beliefs are unrealistic,
of course.

	Before discussing the problems that human nature poses
for us who want a better society, let me give short shrift to
the idea that some more primitive society was ``more in accordance
with human nature''.  Maybe so, but it isn't any kind of society
we would want.  Anthropological investigation of present primitive
societies and also archaeology and paleontology all tend to confirm
Hobbes's view that life in primitive societies was ``solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short.''  There wasn't any golden age, and
the improvement of human society must start from where we are now.

	Let's begin with the fact that present society is considerably
better than that of most of human history.  We will discuss how it
might be improved, but ill-considered changes are more likely to make
it worse than to improve it.  The point is worth dwelling upon, because
a common and often successful way of seeking political power, is to
claim that society is bad and rapidly getting worse will collapse
totally unless a certain group gets the power to make drastic
changes.  Wars and other disasters are often a consequence of this.

	Perhaps it is worthwhile at this point to enumerate a few of
the relatively recent improvements in society that have occurred in
industrial democracies.

	1. Exploitation has been greatly reduced.  There are poor,
but these are now mostly people who don't fit into present society
rather than people on whose labor society depends.

	2. Substantial equality of opportunity now exists.  The
fraction of the middle and even upper classes whose positions
are a direct consequence of inheritance is enormously lower than
it was a century ago.

	3. Devoting part of society's resources to making advances
in science and technology (the source of almost all of the improvements)
is now routine.

	4. Most of the major sources of war seem to have been eliminated
from the industrial democracies.  They don't make war with each other.
Royal families can't make war as a means of enlarging their domains.
The concept of {\it Lebensraum} is not currently in evidence, because
some of the most prosperous countries have insignificant natural
resources.

	5. Local politics operates reasonably rationally.  The
garbage is collected, the roads are repaired and extended and
the schools function.

	Everyone of the above areas has deficiencies that almost everyone
regards as important, and some of the deficiencies will eventually lead to
disaster if not corrected.  However, let me warn you, dear reader, that if
you just continue to sit your chair and read my book, you will probably
die in less than a month and certainly in less than three.  This warning
was superfluous, because you are guaranteed to get hungry and get up
before many hours.  Most, though not all, of the fears of disaster for
humanity are exaggerated for similar reasons.

	We will probably avoid nuclear war, even though many of the
efforts ostensibly aimed at that goal are more aimed at winning power
struggles within the industrial democracies and may even make nuclear war
somewhat more likely.


Human Nature and Human Society

	Some of what I am going to say about human nature may
have been discussed previously under the heading of ``original
sin''.  I'm not familiar enough with the literature about sin.

	Here are some observations.

	1. Our social goals are often intended to promote human
happiness, but this concept is biologically mysterious.  There
is no explanation of how the phenomenon evolved, and there is
not much reason to suppose that it is applicable to animals or
to early human society in any systematic way.  Perhaps it's some
kind of residual goal that humans pursue when their other needs
are met --- or at least when there is nothing immediate to do
about them.

	Pascal said that the trouble with humans was that we
can't bring ourselves to just sit still in a room.

	It is best understood as it applies to short time intervals.
When my two year old son is being tossed in the air and caught,
his laughter and his request to do it again leads us to say that
he is happy.  This seems much more certain than an assertion that
he is a happy baby, although this also seems to be true.  The assertion
that any individual had or will have ``a happy life'' seems much
more problematical.

	2.  Since universal prosperity is surely one of our social
goals, it is worthwhile to study how prosperous people behave.
To this end, we want people without much contact with much
poorer people for two reasons.  First, we can't offer everyone
the psychic satisfaction, if any, to be derived from being at
the top of the heap.  Second, in a uniformly prosperous society,
there wouldn't be the dissatisfaction arising from compassion
for the unfortunate or the satisfaction of doing something to
express the compassion.

	We also don't want people at the very top of the heap
or those with great influence on how society develops.  I don't
know much about how such moderately rich people behave, but
they seem to live moderately stably.  To be sure, one would have
to know about both men and women, about whether they have enough
children to reproduce themselves and whether their children are
motivated to reproduce the society.  One suspects that not all
these conditions are met, because only a small fraction of
presently prosperous people are the product of several
generations of prosperity.

	A big part of the problem with prosperous society has
to do with the next generation.  The generations seem to get
along best in time of war.  Here's a rather gloomy theory.

Theory 1 --- Human nature involves motivational stages.  These
stages are triggered by a combination of internal development
and influences from the environment.  One common stage in adolescence
is the development of hostility to other tribes.  If there is
a war or other external conflict, the adolescent is readily
socialized to take his place in the ranks.  If not, the hostility
is readily triggered by other stimuli.  See theory 2.

Theory 2 --- Prosperity generates a desire for emigration among
teenagers and young adults.  This instinct may be far older than
humanity, because it promotes the spread of any species.  It is
observed in mice and maybe frogs.  Some years ago and article in
 {\it Scientific American} reported that when a mouse proof fence
was put around a field containing mice, the mouse population reached
and sustained a level several times higher than was sustained
without the fence.  The interpretation offered was that a
level of crowding far below what the field could contain induced
young pregnant females to emigrate.

Similarly, in a parking lot a few hundred yards from a frog pond
one observes squashed frogs at certain seasons of the year.  The
hypothesis suggests itself that a prosperous frog pond generates
emigration.  Usually the emigrants all die, but if a new frog pond
opens up within hopping distance, it will be colonized promptly.

Returning to humans, there seems to be a similar instinct promoting
emigration from the immediate community.  However, the cues that triggered
emigration at the time cultural evolution sped up were probably different
than those that exist today.  It seems likely that the tribal hostility
instincts and the emigration instincts interact in important ways.
Certainly hostility to one's own culture and//or parents often develops.

The communities to which a person belongs and those which are seen as
different and//or inimical are often occupational, cultural, political or
intellectual rather than territorial.  Moreover, the sources of
informational stimuli are so varied today that an individual can see
himself as belonging to different communities in different aspects of his
life, and people living together can see themselves as belonging to
different communities.

A further consequence of the media is that ideas can spread worldwide in a
few months or years.  Victor Hugo said that there is nothing some powerful
as an idea whose time has come.  This is true even if it's a bad idea.  A
world government today would have a high probability of locking itself
into some intellectual fad.  For example, I could see the United States
suffering a drastic decline in living standards, while remaining fearful
of nuclear energy if it were alone in the world.  Similarly the static
Brezhnev society might have lasted as long as Confucianism in China if it
weren't for outside influence.  The U.N. General Assembly and
UNESCO are all subject to fads.  The best chance of progress without
disaster is a world of sovereign countries and worldwide communications.