From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Utopia
Date: 16 Aug 92 13:16:09 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


In article <ROBERTL.92Aug15152928@luciano.Stanford.EDU>
robertl@luciano.Stanford.EDU (Robert Lodenkamper) writes:

>In article <1992Aug14.170005.7011@riacs.edu> David
>Christopher Rogers <drogers@riacs.edu> writes:

>>Message-ID:  <ROBERTL.92Aug13201459@luciano.Stanford.EDU>
>>From:  robertl@luciano.Stanford.EDU (Robert Lodenkamper) 

>>>>The negative aspects of human nature rule out the simple
>>>>utopias,

>>Message-ID: <1992Aug14.043153.27273@macc.wisc.edu> 
>>From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) 

>>>I believe the error in this idea is to think there *is* a
>>>"human nature."  There is just nature.

I return to this theme, because I think it's too easy to get
away from the basic truth of it, in the process misleading
ourselves about the world and ourselves in it.

>>Worse error is assuming that human attributes such as
>>aggressiveness, altruism, hatred, and love can be neatly

*Are* they "human attributes," really?  I'd call 'em social
or cultural attributes.  By calling them human attributes,
it seems to me we suggest they're ineluctable, whereas I
don't think they are.  That would be the fiction "human
nature" by another name.

Rather, they're just things that exist.  And the ones on
that particular list do not all exist on the same level.
Many things in nature (most animals, for example) could be
called aggressive, but only humans (and maybe some other
primates) can be said to hate.  It's hard to say that love
exists outside the human realm, but surely something rather
like its nurture component does, in many animals.  Altruism
is probably unique to human beings, but I don't think we
gain anything (and I think we do lose something) if we
create something called human nature (by any name) to
contain the qualities we're discussing.

Withal ...

>>classified into "positive" and "negative" traits, and all we
>>need to do to utopianize ourselves is to purge the bad ones.

...  this seems an important distinction to me.  For one
thing, positive and negative are rather abstract.  Our
behaviors don't seem abstract at all; they're just there.

>I think at least a partial classification is possible.  For
>example, I can't think of anything positive about hate, so
>classifying hate as negative seems accurate.

Your later clarification of this remark, noting your
restricted use of the word "hate," does not address what I
see as a problem here.  Like anyone, I associate something
quite negative with hate, as I associate something positive
with love.

But aren't we really dealing with a continuum, for one
thing, even the end-points of which are barely definable, in
which all these abstractions are somehow merging into one
another or overlapping, simultaneously co-existing in every
conceivable sort of jumble?

My point is that in trying to come to grips with ourselves
and the world as it is, we too often avail ourselves of many
convenient but essentially misleading or confusing ideas
like love and hate.  The more I think about these things,
the more persuaded I am that rather than associate so many
lofty, idealized, abstracted, etc. categories with the
varieties of our experience, we can do more for ourselves by
cultivating a rather keen sense of paradox, of irony, in the
way things are, accept that at face value (hard to do, I
know), and go from there.

>It's the purging part that is difficult if not impossible.

The difficulty, I think, with saying it's difficult (still
more so with saying it's impossible) is that it's
self-fulfilling prophecy: it *makes* it more difficult.  I'm
not saying it's easy, but even "purging" misleads, possibly;
it may do more for us to be thinking in terms of evolving,
of rediscovering, of *letting*, rather than in terms of
purging, consciously altering, etc.

>Even if one could devise a method of altering human
>characteristics that would work, would it be right to impose
>it on everyone?  If so, how should it be implemented?  Hard
>questions to answer.

How is "human characteristics" not "human nature" by another
name?  What does "work" mean, in this context?  Is there an
imperative that makes "imposing" a relevant concept?  Are
the things we're talking about things that can be
"implemented" at all?

<> Don't talk to me about the public not being able to stomach
<> the abnormal, man -- most people get too used to lying to
<> themselves about anything uncomfortable at so early an age
<> that they themselves are not a reliable source.  
<> -- Susan Juroff (sej5g@poe.acc.virginia.edu)
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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