Human Nature, Selfishness, War, Empathy, and Changing yourself

When I was asked whether I thought humans were naturally good or bad, or what human nature was, I was confused because such a concept had never occurred to me.

To say that there humans all share a common nature, and to claim to know what that nature is seems quite presumptuous to me. I have never thought that many meaningful conclusions can be made about every human that has and will ever live, since their thoughts, beliefs, goals and actions vary so much.

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Many people claim that humans are naturally selfish. This, as far as I can tell, is a generalization made based on bad experiences. Of the seven billion people on this planet, very few if any can say that they know enough people to have a sample size large enough to be representative of all humans. This fallacy occurs because of several reasons.

One reason is that people assume that the people they know are representative of everyone else. If everyone someone knows is selfish, then that person’s view on life is biased as they have only seen selfishness. Another related reason is that most people do not know how large a sample size has to be to represent the whole.

Regardless of how many people you know though, and even if you know enough people to have a large enough sample size, it is illogical to then claim that everyone else is the same. While this might be statistically probable, it mistakes correlation with causation. To take this one step further, imagine if everyone on earth right now were selfish. While it would be true that all currently livings humans have this in common, to say that this is human nature is a fairly large leap. If everyone on earth were selfish, it could be as a result of the way they have been brought up, as opposed to the way they are born. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that humans are born that way.

On the contrary, kindness, and often self detrimental kindness, is not only common but scientifically proven to be a part of the way humans have evolved. Another excuse that cynics use to justify the assumption that humans are selfish is that kind actions are only done out of selfish reasons. At the most basic level, they claim that even if for no other reason, the pleasure that someone gets for doing something nice is the main motivation for doing good things. This is not only a huge assumption, but has no evidence. For this to be proven, every single human being that it applies to (which is incidentally every human that has and will ever live) made the decision to do all the good things they did because it made them feel good.

A counter example is any action that was done which had little if any pleasureable effect. Selfless actions are not hard to find, especially when they hurt the person more than any satisfaction can make up for. Any morally good act which goes against survival instincts, and causes pain, is such an action. Buddhist monks self immolating themselves, people sacrificing themselves or their belongings to others, and other such actions prove that, assuming these actions are done of their own free will and logically, people are capable of being selfless.

Whether it be by incorrect assumptions, generalisations, or projecting their own beliefs onto others, one cannot say that human nature is bad without thorough evidence. Similarly one cannot say that human nature is good without thorough evidence. If one were to make an assumption either way, it would only make sense to assume that human nature is bad to avoid being tricked by others, and to assume that human nature is good when dealing with people that are not a threat, but instead should be treated well. Either way, what matters more are individual’s nature and actions.

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War is another example people use to say that human nature is bad. While there are plenty of wars throughout history that could say that humans have been constantly fighting, this is a giant fallacy. Wars are generally started by a few people and fought by many. Those that fight are often tricked or forced into doing so, whether it be by propaganda, patriotism, lies, or out of self defence. Those with power often value the lives of their people so little that they will start wars to further their own goals by gaining fame, glory, resources, pride, or other things through conquest. Wars can be fought for justified reasons, but this is always the result of unreasonable people not willing to negotiate.

The fact still remains that most people do not fight in a war. If you take any one country, they have wars on average much less frequently than there are wars in the world. If you claim that there is always a war going on, it is worth considering that that is partly because there are so many different groups in the world. There are parts of the world that haven’t seen a war in decades if not centuries. If fighting was a part of human nature, then it would not make any sense for whole generations of people to have never fought. That is why fighting is not a part of human nature. I do not want to fight others, and I never have. The idea of doing so has never made any sense to me. Fighting only makes sense when done in self defense, and even then it should be about stopping the other person from fighting and hurting others, not about hurting them.

What is part of human nature is empathy. We are built to understand and help others. This is clear with babies and infants who know when someone else is sad and consequentially feel sad as well, and try to console them. People have different levels of empathy for different reasons, but it is a trait that everyone has unless they have a defect that makes them not capable of understanding other’s feelings.

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Speaking and thinking in terms of human nature often makes people think that humans cannot change. This again is another concept that people believe out of assumptions, generalisations, and projection. On the contrary, people can, and have changed. Too often though this is a change for the worse, as a result of a traumatic experience. There are times though, as I can attest to myself without it being bragging, that you can decide what you want to be.

I don’t like to say that I have changed. What I am is what I decide to be, but my upbringing made me for the most part a good person. I have and have had many issues, but everyone should be constantly identifying and fixing issues with the way they are. Arrogance, cynicism, hatred, anger, cruelty, and other negative features and emotions should be fixed. By “fixed”, I do not mean repressed, or simply rejected, but the root of these things must be eliminated. By realizing that these things are illogical, not necessary, and harmful, one can start to eliminate the causes of them. This is not always easy, and will often seem impossible, but without rigourous evidence, one cannot say that it is impossible. Being a better person requires that you be strong, dedicated, open minded, and good.

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Human nature does not seem like a very relevant topic to me, not because it is not important, but because there is little we know about it for sure. What is more important is that we make ourselves better people.

Reasoning and Fighting

People have different ideas, so when people interact with each other there will naturally be times when their ideas are not the same as the people they are interacting with.

If these ideas do not affect other people then generally this should not cause issues. When irrelevant ideas are the cause of issues, these issues are likely unjustified.

If the ideas instead are relevant to other people, then there is an issue that the parties need to resolve. There are various ways to resolve issues, which can be categorized into levels of escalation.

Reasoning

The first level is the most logical, reasonable, and effective method for resolution. This method is discussion, in which the parties explain why they have the ideas and beliefs they have and attempt to justify them. This method can often be long, tedious, and difficult, but is most always worth it. Most people are able to understand each other if explained to in the way they think. A reasonable person will doubt their beliefs if they are presented with counter evidence. This is the purpose of discussions, not to prove that you are correct, but to determine what is correct. Discussions therefore are not competitions and cannot be won, they do not use strategies to win, trick, confuse, or mislead others. Discussions should never use fallacies, as this leads people away from the truth instead of towards it. The purpose of a discussion is for all parties to explain their own reasoning to see if they were misinformed or made a mistake, and if so to then correct it to determine what is true.

Often people think that because it is difficult to explain something to someone else that it is impossible. The only way that I can see for it to be possible for someone to understand something is if they refuse any new ideas, or are cognitively or mentally incapable of understanding. If someone has the faculties and reasoning required to know something, then the person explaining must try their best to explain it in a way the person listening can understand, and the listener must try their best to understand the person explaining it.
Another issue is when a person A believes themselves to be correct while another person B disagrees, they might think that the other person is close minded for disagreeing, even if they disagree despite being shown evidence. In this situation there are two possibilities:

1. Person A is close minded for not doubting their idea as being possibly incorrect, and judges person B as being close minded for not accepting a supposedly correct idea.
Person B might in fact be close minded in this case, but person A has not correctly determined this and instead assumed it.

2. Person A is impatient or rushes to judgement by assuming that person B refuses to or is incapable of understanding their reasoning.
Alternatively, person A might correctly determine through rigourous testing that person B is incapable or processing or understanding the information.

At the same time, two parties in a discussion can be both person A and person B at the same time if they both think these things about the other.

Both parties in a discussion should be able to explain their points of view and question the other’s points of view and provide counter arguments without being labelled as close minded. However this also requires that both parties doubt their own arguments are open to the other’s explanations and ideas, and to themselves being wrong.

A second method of discussion could use external experiences, information, or activities to indirectly explain an idea to someone. When the party agrees to do this, it is a justified way of indirectly discussion and resolving issues.

Fighting

When people are not open minded or do not discuss for whatever reason, the alternatives are to avoid resolution or force their opinion on the other party.
Forcing one’s opinion on someone else generally is done by forcing the other person to see, experience, or do something which will prove their point. This is a viable method if the person will not understand otherwise, however this must only be done if the party is certain that no other alternative is preferable and that leaving the issue unresolved is worse. The reason this alternative should be avoided is because without certainty that the person needs to be forced to learn something, this method could arrogantly assume that their idea is correct, and certainly infringes on the rights of the party being forced by limiting their freedom for something they do not want.

When you force others to learn something that you believe they should know, or worse, to believe what you believe, you are denying them and disrespecting their freedom, and forcefully making them comply with what you believe. If you’re not certain that what you believe is correct, and that the person will for sure be better off by being forced to learn or believe this, then you are being arrogant and disrespectful.

This same logic applies to an even worse form of resolution, when someone physically forces someone else to comply, learn, or believe something. While physical force may sometimes be necessary, as before it should only be done either when you are sure the person will benefit from it, or when it will have a better outcome for a group of people. This relates to a person being dangerous, perhaps out of a lack of information or having a different moral code than yours, or not having one at all. If such a person cannot be reasoned with, then for the safety of others and for their own sake, it might be necessary to force them to reconsider what they are doing, especially if there is a risk for others or themselves by not doing so. As before, certainty is needed before doing this, or risk assessment if certainty is not possible or viable.

Fighting and Unresolved Problems

When two people who disagree do not attempt to resolve the disagreement, they might instead try to suppress the other, allowing their own view or idea to be the only option and remain unchallenged. Fighting does not resolve issues, at least not entirely. While fighting may resolve a practical issue such as stopping someone from hurting people, it does not resolve the root cause of the problem. That person would still believe that he should hurt people even if you prevent him from doing so until he can be reasoned with or realises he is wrong. The cause of the problem, the disagreement between the two parties is not resolved by fighting.

Fighting merely suppresses the problem from being seen, and creates a new problem: the two parties are now a threat to each other. Instead of resolving the root problem, fighting creates a new problem for the parties to focus on: there is now a fight that has to be won. When one party starts to fight to suppress the other party’s ideas, it forces the other party to fight back or be suppressed. Suppression or force cause a new problem, fighting, which by it’s nature solves itself and diverts attention away from the original problem. In this way, fighting is something of a straw man self fulfilling argument. This is why fighting is irrational, it’s simply a way to forget about the original problem by creating a new problem which will solve itself.

There are however certain discussions that cannot, at least with our current knowledge, be resolved. In these cases, the parties may fight not to avoid the problem or force their ideas on the other party, but because they see no other viable option. An example is when an animal tries to kill another animal to eat. While both parties want to survive, one party’s survival depends on the other to not survive, and there is no known resolution to this problem as one side will always lose. These are perhaps the worst kinds of problems, but simply because a resolution is not known does not mean that it does not exist, everyone should strive to solve all the problems we have, for their own and for other’s sakes, in order to build a self sustaining future with as few problems as possible