On Human Nature
November 7, 2022 In previous newlsetters, I have mentioned our common humanity. But is that human nature?
Hello It’s Complex Readers, I hope all is well with you and that the complexities of your lives are manageable. In this newsletter, I ponder some complexities of “human nature.”
Please keep telling anyone and everyone about It’s Complex. Thank you!
A Reminder for Familar Readers and an Orientation for New Readers
Here at It’s Complex we think about and deal with the world’s many complexities—from global issues to individual experiences. The world sure is a complex place, and it is easy to get overwhelmed. We end up glossing over complexity and postpone thinking about it. But much is at stake for humanity and for individuals. Let’s stop postponing; let’s embrace complexity and deal with it. At It’s Complex, we think about and deal with complexity from a holistic systems perspective. A system is a wider whole made up multiple, connected, and dynamic parts. So, we think about and deal with any complex issue in terms of multidimensionality (M), connectedness (C), and dynamics (D). I like to abbreviate them as MCD. Think MCD, be MCD!
Multidimensionality refers to how complex phenomena are made up of multiple parts.
Connectedness refers to the varied ways in which complex phenomena are connected or linked. Systems theory emphasizes interrelatedness, which refers to mutual and reciprocal connections between and among parts and wholes.
Dynamics refers to how system processes are ongoing and can be played out in stable ways, as well as in varied, changing, and sometimes unpredictable ways.
For further details (or as a refresher), check out some of the first newsletter posts.
Newsletter: On Human Nature
In previous newsletters, I have referred to our common humanity and pointed out that human beings the world over are similar in some ways. If we all share some characteristics and if we are all similar in some ways, those characteristics and similarities could be what make us all human. They could be our human nature, but I have not referred to human nature. During a recent conversation with my sister, she said “It’s human nature to,” and then she paused briefly and said, “I know you don’t believe in human nature, but…” She went on to make some claims about human nature, which I can’t remember. I admit that I often bristle and balk when people talk about human nature, but not always. It depends on whether they are treating human nature in ways that are compatible or incompatible with a systems approach to the complexities of human functioning. From a systems perspective, I balk and bristle at unidimensional and static conceptions of human nature. I am skeptical of unidimensional and static conceptions of what it means to be human.
In general, I understand “human nature” to encompass characteristics, ways of acting, and aspects of human experience that are common to all people and make us similar. From a systems perspective, I think about human nature multidimensionally and dynamically, rather than in terms of a single and unchanging way of being human that is physically inherent in all human beings. Alas, I find that much talk about human nature is unidimensional and static.
Problems with Some Ways of Talking about Human Nature
I am troubled by appeals to a unidimensional human nature that emphasizes one characteristic or one way of acting. One reason that the notion of a single human nature is problematic is that there are too many candidates for it. Here is a non-exhaustive list of candidates that I have heard of.
It is human nature to be: rational, to be irrational; to love, to hate; to be selfish, to be altruistic; to fight, to cooperate; to be vengeful, to forgive; to be kind, to be cruel; to be tribal, to embrace others; to be greedy, to be generous.
This list of human characteristics and ways of being could get much longer but still remain incomplete, making it difficult to choose one or even a few that “really” characterize human nature. I think the list shows that all human beings are capable of many ways of being. It shows that all human beings are multidimensional, and that our multiple dimensions include inconsistencies and contradictions. Human nature may be invoked as a straightforward and tidy way of characterizing human beings in terms of one issue, but human beings are neither straightforward nor tidy. Thus, maybe it is human nature to be complex and messy. Maybe it is human nature to be multi-natured, as biologist Paul R. Ehrlich explains in a book entitled Human Natures (note the s).
At the same time that everyone may be capable of multiple ways of being human, not everyone ends up manifesting all the possibilities. Plus, varied ways of being can be played out in varied ways. Pick any candidate from the list and consider if it applies to everyone everywhere for all time. How about being cruel? Certainly, there are, always have been, and probably always will be cruel people, and maybe everyone is capable of some kind of cruelty. But not all people are cruel, and some people are cruel sometimes rather than all the time. There are varied ways to be cruel and not everyone will necessarily agree about what counts as cruelty. Maybe it is human nature to be capable of multiple ways of being, but not all potential ways of being are inevitable.
It is also difficult to pick one, or even a few, characteristics from the list to definitively characterize human nature because human nature may be defined and understood differently in different cultures. Even if people in all cultures did define human nature in terms of a particular characteristic (e.g., cruelty), the ways in which people understand and enact that characteristic may be played out in varied ways around the world.
I am also troubled by talk of an unchanging or static human nature that characterizes all people in all places for all time because such talk is incompatible with understanding the dynamic complexities of human functioning and experience. Conceptualizing human nature statically means that there is nothing you can do about human nature because it is given by nature and cannot be changed. But people can and do change. And even if some human characteristic is part of our “natural” physical or bodily endowment, it does not mean that it is static. Bodily processes are not static. They are ongoing and dynamic, and as pointed out in previous newsletters, even nature’s stones are not set in stone. Thus, maybe it is human nature to change and not to have an enduring nature.
Static conceptions of human nature also imply that human nature is set at birth, maybe even at conception, and is inevitably manifest in how people are. Ways of being are given by nature, and they will show up in how anyone acts because nature makes it so. When the adjective “natural” is used to describe how humans are, it also implies inevitability. If some way of being is “natural” to human beings, it occurs on its own through a universal process of nature that human beings are powerless over. Human nature will take its course naturally. These perspectives on nature and natural confuse me because I do not know what nature and natural refer to. What is this nature that gives us human characteristics and how does it make us do what we do? It all seems rather magical and mysterious to me.
Much talk about human nature and what is natural for human beings emphasizes physical processes, especially neurological, biological, and genetic processes. You might hear that human nature is as it is because of how our brains are “hard wired” or because “it’s in our genes.” But magic and mystery remain because more than physical processes are required for human functioning. As anthropologist Clifford Geertz puts it in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), we have to be finished by culture. He posits that without culture, a person would be an “unworkable monstrosity” (p. 68) or a “formless monster” (p. 99). I would add that we also need more than culture, taking us back to a theme of It’s Complex that human functioning is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. See the newseltter on why people do what they do for a refresher:
More than being mystified, I am troubled by claims that some way of acting occurs naturally or is physically inevitable because they bypass the complexities of development. Take social connectedness, for example. It is certainly necessary for human infants to be fed and attended to by others, and we could say that it is human nature or natural to be socially connected to others. But particular forms of human social connectedness are not inevitable and social connectedness is not static during the lifespan or across cultures. Moreover, social connectedness develops, but it does not develop “naturally,” on its own through purely physical processes. Social connectedness develops through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes as a person participates with others in cultural practices. For a refresher, see the newsletter on how development happens:
Our Common Humanity
And so, it is for these varied reasons that I balk and bristle when I hear about human nature or about what is natural to human beings. However, I do not deny that all human beings share some common characteristics and that some aspects of human functioning apply to everyone everywhere. As always, I begin with a systems perspective, and thus I view all human beings as systems made up of multiple, interrelated, and dynamic processes and characteristics.
I also think that all human beings are potentially capable of multiple ways of acting, and that all modes of human action are constituted by multiple, interrelated, and dynamic individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. With regard to dynamics, I would also say that all human beings can and do change. Also, all human beings are developmental beings because all that anyone does develops. In addition, all people develop through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes as they participate with others in cultural practices.
As already pointed out, part of the dynamics that characterize all human beings is that we all can and do change. As such, flexibility is fundamental to being human. From an evolutionary perspective, flexibility enables us to adapt to changing circumstances. If, as some would claim, human nature is in our neurological and genetic endowment, then human nature is not static. Rather than being set in stone, neurological and genetic processes are dynamic and contribute to human flexibility.
With regard to our neurological endowment, neuroscientists speak about neuroplasticity to refer to how the brain changes and develops in relation to a person’s experiences. Neural connections develop as a person develops new ways of acting through participating with others in cultural practices. Thus, a human brain is necessary for a creature to be human, but that brain does not unilaterally determine human functioning. As with any system, there are multi-directional interrelations. In this case, the brain and functioning mutually influence each other. Insofar as functioning is partly culturally constituted, the brain also develops in relation to cultural processes. Some years ago, I came upon an introductory book to the field of neuroanthropology which begins by claiming that “Our brain and nervous systems are our most cultured organs” (Downey & Lende, 2012, p. 23), meaning that a person’s brain is shaped by culture and does not unilaterally determine what they do. Moreover, a person and their brain develop through participating with others in cultural practices. From an evolutionary perspective, Ehrlich explains that having a flexible brain is part of what enables us to adapt to dynamic ever-changing environments. He points out that we often have to deal with new circumstances and environments that present “novel demands,” and thus “there is no way that the brain could be preprogrammed to deal with them…It would be incomprehensible for evolution to program such a system with a vast number of inherited rules that would reduce its flexibility, constraining it so that it could not deal with novel environments” (2000, p. 7).
Genes are also not static blueprints or set-in-stone-at-conception determinants of human nature. Although it is commonplace to speak of genes as static entities that determine who we are, genetic science shows that genetic processes are dynamic and flexible. As such, genes change in relation to their changing cellular circumstances, as well as in relation to the experiences of the people in whom they are contained. Thus, the same genes can function differently in different environments, including in different people. And similar outcomes can be related to different genes in different people. Even identical twins do not act in exactly the same ways. Developmental psychologist David S. Moore offers an accessible explanation of the dynamics of genetic processes in his award-winning 2015 book, The Developing Geneome: An Introduction to Behavioral Epigenetics. He explains: “DNA does not in fact contain a code that specifies particular outcomes. Instead, genes are used in context-dependent ways” (p. 35). None of these points are surprising from a systems perspective, with its premise of multi-directional interrelations. As parts of human beings, genetic processes occur in relation to the other processes that simultaneously constitute a person’s functioning and development, including individual, social, cultural, environmental, and other bodily processes. Thus, “human nature” is not genetically static and whatever may be “in our genes,” is flexible and inseparable from the other processes that constitute human ways of being.
So, if someone insisted that I use and define the term “human nature,” I would say that it is human nature for human beings to be flexible developing systems who are capable of multiple, connected, and dynamic ways of acting that are constituted by and develop through multiple, connected, and dynamic individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. I know that’s a mouthful, but it is also just the start because human beings are complex! I would elaborate by saying more about systems theory and I would direct the person to many of the newsletters in It’s Complex. In addition, I would point out that our fundamental common humanity includes that we are symbol-creating and symbol-using creatures, and that we are all distinct individuals as well as connected to others. These fundamental aspects of being human are all complex and can be understood systemically in terms of multidimensionality, connectedness, and dynamics.
Fortunately, no one is insisting that I have to use the term “human nature.” I try to avoid the term “human nature” for all the reasons already given, and instead prefer to refer to what is “fundamental” or “integral” to all human beings. I prefer to refer to “our common humanity” and to “what makes people similar.” I realize that people will not abandon the term “human nature” any time soon and that discussions of human nature will go on. Whatever term you use, think about any person or group systemically in terms of multiple, connected, and dynamic ways of being, and in terms of multiple, connected, and dynamic individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.