Chapter 1: Human nature and system change
Terry Leahy 2024
The first three or four chapters in this handbook are going to be on human nature and debates about human nature.
I will look at the topic of aggression. Is an aggressive drive central to our natures? What drives toxic competitive masculinity? How does all this relate to the class systems we see in society and to other systems of domination and exploitation?
To begin I will consider human nature. Now it may seem odd that as a sociologist I am writing about human nature. A lot of sociologists believe that there's no such thing as human nature. That human nature as we find it is totally socially constructed. A large part of the left also believes that only right-wing conservatives who talk about human nature. As you probably know, the argument of right-wing conservatives is that an egalitarian cooperative society could never happen because human nature makes it impossible.
Conservatives use the idea of human nature to explain and justify domination and exploitation. For example, they’ll say that the capitalist system is the best system we can hope for. That it’s a system that is adapted to human nature and given human nature, we can't expect anything better than that. And, they say, the hope for an egalitarian and democratic society is based on the myth that humans are ‘perfectible’. That we can be made perfect given the right social conditions.
To a degree we would have to say that these right-wing pessimists have got a point. Systems of exploitation and domination are common in our historical record. We may have even wiped out the Neanderthals. At the least we would want to understand how systems of inequality fit with our human nature. And I certainly intend to do that. And thereby to understand why these evil systems are so hard to change.
What I'm going to argue is that we can explain systems of domination and exploitation by talking about human nature. But we can also develop an idea of what would be a better society by looking at the potentials of human nature.
Explaining the concept of human nature
What do we mean by human nature? The concept implies that most people are much the same. In other words, we all share a human nature. Obviously, there are vast differences between people, but there's an underlying similarity. Like there's an underlying similarity between one dog and another dog or one platypus and another platypus. So human nature is what's common to people.
But it doesn't mean everything that's common to people. When we say, oh, what's human nature? We don't start talking about the fact that everybody has ears, or breathes in and out, which are also common. What we're in fact talking about is the basic motivations, which cause people to behave in particular ways. The basic root causes of people's conduct and behaviour.
One idea typical of views of human nature has been that humans are radically different from other species. That we have a totally different nature from other species. Contemporary animal studies do not back up that view, a view that has been called ‘human exceptionalism’. There's a lot of similarity between human beings and closely related species. Even to rats and mice. Certainly, gorillas and chimpanzees. Most of human nature is not all that different from the nature of other living beings. For the purposes of this account, when I am talking about human nature, I’m not only talking about the things that are unique to humans as a species — but everything that is human nature.
For me, what is human nature is an empirical, factual question. Not a matter of personal ethics or values. To answer it, we draw on our understanding of a variety of other societies throughout history. We also look at ourselves, our own motives, and those of the people we know well. What common basic motives could explain the behaviours we observe?
Terry’s list of basic motives
The following list is based on my own experience and reading in history, sociology and anthropology. I have not entirely ignored evolutionary psychology or psychological studies more generally. But at the end of the day, if a theory cannot fit with the cross-cultural evidence, it is not a lot of use. This list is a hypothesis, if you like, about what basic motives can explain people’s behaviour — and the more detailed and different motives that have been socially constructed in particular contexts. As such, it can be challenged by questions that say, how can you explain this behaviour? How does this relate to the basic motives you are setting up?
My list makes no claims to originality. In some ways what I am saying comes as no surprise. My list does not completely contradict ideas like those of Marx, Maslow, Max Neef or others. But I find it a simple list and I include some obvious things that other writers just tend to assume.
1. Hunger and appetite. Clearly, we share this with other animals.
2. A desire for health and physical comfort. To stay alive and to be comfortable. Not to be in pain.
3. Sociability, the desire for social connection. That takes a variety of forms. The enjoyment of affection. You're respected for what you do. I am taking it that the desire for prestige and status is just one way of thinking about this more overarching desire. Also, the pleasure of giving affection to people. Having friends, enjoying a social occasion.
4. Creativity. I include in this the desire to make and invent things. Also, aesthetic appreciation. Curiosity. The joy of symbolic play and imagination. Excitement, the sense of being engaged.
5. Sexuality. Obviously, a basic motive of humans, along with other animals. What might be debatable is whether there is a sexual drive, a yearning for sex in everyone that can be repressed by social conditioning. Or if instead it is more like a capacity for pleasure that can be socially triggered. As with Freud, I believe that sexuality as an innate drive or capacity is polymorphous perverse and gets channelled socially into particular kinds of expressions.
6. The desire for autonomy. Most accounts of human nature do not mention this sixth motive. Perhaps because it's too obvious. People have a basic desire to get whatever it is that they want on any particular occasion. Of course, this desire may be joined to the others already mentioned. We have a basic desire for food, but it can be expressed as a desire for ravioli. To get what we want and to satisfy our hunger as well, nothing but ravioli will do.
Basic desires and particular expressions
What I want to say about all these basic motivations is that they have particular social expressions. For example, you don't experience a basic desire for food and then go out and you get any food, which is biologically suitable for satisfying hunger and making your body work. No. Quite the opposite. What you actually experience is at least in part, the socially constructed desire. To have a sandwich or a cup of tea or a croissant.
Because of this, the distinction that is sometimes made between basic motivations and non-essential wants is a bit of a problem. In a way, there is nothing essential about a croissant, but then again, hunger is a basic drive and wanting a croissant is one way of expressing that drive. For me, when people talk about non-essential wants, what they really mean is that we could satisfy these basic desires in another way. That this other way would be less damaging to the environment or less damaging to other people. That may well be true, but the idea that these non-essential wants are totally socially constructed and could be simply abandoned would be a mistake. For example, maybe I really want to have a huge black four-wheel drive ute. With a vast engine. And drive around the suburbs, scaring every cyclist on the road. You might say, well now that’s a non-essential want if ever I heard of one. Get over it and take a tram. You have been duped by capitalism to see this as a necessity. But what I would say is that that desire for the ute is also an expression of basic motivations. The basic motivation to be respected. The desire for autonomy. It is related to competitive masculinity, which in turn is socially constructed by working on more basic motives, as I'll explain in later chapters.
Common capacities as tools
This list does not include various things that are often regarded as part of human nature. For example, greed, ethnocentrism, jealousy, competitive aggression. This is not because I am ignoring the social reality and pervasiveness of these behaviours. To an extent, my response is to talk about how these behaviours get constructed out of the six basic desires I have listed. But as well, I want to say that some of these common behaviours are common capacities of the human species, rather than desires. We may regard them as tools with which we are endowed to pursue our more basic desires. Just like an arm or leg. I will consider these issues in later chapters. So, to give a hint for later discussion, we may regard aggressive behaviour as a tool that enables us to get what we want (autonomy), to achieve status in a particular situation (social pleasure) and so on. We are biologically fitted to use aggression and to want to use it to achieve these more basic aims — in contexts where it may be useful.
Is human nature socially constructed?
Well no. The basic desires of human nature are innate and fundamental to human behaviour and motivation. They're not socially constructed. In my experience, people who think human nature is totally socially constructed contradict themselves constantly. Making assumptions about human nature as they explain any social fact. At the same time, any take on human nature comes out of a social context. I did not dream up the list above out of nothing, it comes out of my social context. A Viking would have had a very different idea of what human nature might be.
There is equally no doubt that aspects of our desires are socially constructed. How these basic motivations are defined in detail is socially constructed. What is a good meal. What is an enjoyable social occasion. What is a prestigious performance. What, in any given situation is autonomy. Which of course depends upon what you want in a particular situation. Related to your own personal history. To what's going on in society.
The next chapter will be about aggression. I will be looking at the sociobiological argument that aggression must be a part of human nature. Why I disagree with that and what my account is. The following chapter will be considering aggressive, competitive masculinity, how that very common feature of human societies comes about.
