The Left is said to be progressive....

The Left vs. Human Nature

by James Kalb 

The Left does not like the idea of human nature. It tells them they are not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective, it tells them people do not change much, so the way things were in the past is mostly how they will be in the future. From a moral perspective, it suggests a standard for what is good other than satisfying desire, since it tells people to act in a way that fulfills their nature, or at least is suited to it.

The Left does not like any of that and they have been very successful turning their dislike into accepted dogma. The result is that if you talk about human nature today you are not going to get anywhere. People will say you are stereotyping, you are denying Hope and Change, and you are presenting existing power relations as natural and unchangeable. You will have to prove every detail of every claim and the standard of proof will be infinitely high. Also, none of your arguments will stick—next time the matter comes up, you will have to go through every issue all over again at the same level of detail.

All of which seems odd. On the face of it every living thing has a nature of some kind. It has characteristic ways of acting, conditions it tries to bring about, and conditions that help it thrive. Why would that not be true of human beings? Is accepting human nature not basic to good sense in dealing with people? If the point looks obvious, why is it not generally accepted, or at least generally acceptable as something to consider?

As it is, people dismiss it without discussion. The result is that claims like “gender is a social construction” get taken seriously and, in fact, are basically treated as true. There are Midwestern public schools that tell teachers they should not use expressions like “boy” and “girl” because they are gendered. That is the new normal.

General acceptance of insane views can cause problems, so it is worth asking how we have ended up in this situation. The cause, I believe, is a tendency in modern ways of thinking to try to do too much with too little. The result is that people end up becoming irrational in the name of reason.

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