In Reply to: Is it human nature to be greedy, egocentric, competitive, power-hungry, dominant etc posted by Ashley Lavelle on July 01, 1996 at 14:53:41:
"My opinion is that humans are eventually products of the system in which they exist."
Far be it from me to dispute that social conditioning has a large part to play. I made reference to this when talking about the upbringing of children ("sharing": remember?). I believe that it is very possible (and it has already been achieved at least on a small scale (check out Acts 2: 42-47 sometime - oops, now I've done it - JESUS FREAK ON THE LOOOSE!)) to have a society where there is a minimum of competitiveness, selfishness, etc.However, my dear Ashley, you never addressed my main point (which you so adequately identified). And that is that, from birth we are egocentric; that is, before any social conditioning gets a hold on us (unless there are some mothers who read their unborn children economics essays). You will find, I think, that if you look into the success rates of various types of communism/socialism/communalism that it is often the religious communities who have done it best. Why?
I imagine that it could have something to do with shared values - can you imagine a society based on postmodernism for example? The whole thing would fall apart with the absence of any concept of Truth or Morality. Marx may have been right to identify institutionalised religion as a mechanism for subduing the masses, but did he suggest any reason why everyone should suddenly decide to be nice to one another and share? When Lenin tried to operationalise Marx's grand vision of The Revolution, he had trouble convincing the masses of the wisdom of abolishing privately owned land - you can't just expect people to be that unselfish without them being able to grab onto some ideology that they can trust in?
People aren't going to want to share with each other unless they have a decent reason - Communism wasn't that reason. I believe that Love can be however. Capitalism is just a way of pandering to the lowest common denominator; people can't trust one another because they know that everyone doesn't have the good of the collective at heart. People can love alright... but only when they're sure that their position is secure. Well, now I've done it: the nature/nurture debate, politics and religion. May the fires of cyberspace fall on my head! (This "cyber" thing is still a bit of a novelty so you'll have to humour me).