The Denial of
Human Nature
Pak C. Sham, Psychiatry, HKU
CCST9025: Genetics and Human Nature
Updated September 2020
Outline of lecture
• What is human nature?
• What is our nature?
• Denial of human nature.
WHAT IS HUMAN NATURE?
A dictionary definition
Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary definition:
• The ways of thinking, feeling and acting that are common to most people
– You can’t change human nature
– It’s only human nature (= it is normal) to want a better life
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/human%20nature
Common human traits
• Name some traits (ways of thinking, feeling or acting) that you
share with most other people
• How much control do you have on these traits?
Common human traits
• Name some traits (ways of thinking, feeling or
acting) that you share with most other people
• How much control do you have on these traits?
Love Ambition Greed Resentment
Kindness Pride Jealousy Hatred
Generosity Honour Lust Anger
Humour Courage Selfishness Contempt
Rational Imagination Fear Cruelty
Empathy Trust Suspicion Betrayal
Our nature is how we are
Rivers and mountains may change; human nature,
never.
~ Chinese Proverb
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his
spots ~ Old Testament (Jeremiah, 13:23)
https://redeemedmarine.wordpress.com/2015/08/12/the-scorpion-and-the-frog/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/5840674491892130/
Our nature has limitations
Pigs might fly !
Certain capabilities are outside of a species’ inherent nature
WHAT IS OUR NATURE?
A fundamental belief
Do you believe that
• we are inherently good ?
• we are inherently evil ?
Are we inherently good?
Mencius (c 371-289 BC)
When man sees suffering of
others (e.g. child falling down
a well), his first impulse is
compassion. Thus the
inherent nature of man is
good, and it is only through
adverse learning and
experiences that he deviates
from his true nature and
commits evil acts
Three Word Classic
Men at their birth
Are naturally good
Their nature are much the same
Their habits become widely different
If foolishly there is no teaching
The nature will deteriorate
San Tzu Ching, by Wang Yinglin (1223-1296)
Translated by Herbert Allen Giles
If man’s nature is inherently good, why must it be reinforced by
teaching?
Must goodness be taught?
• If our nature is fundamentally good,
“Why does one hurt others knowing then perhaps children should be left
what it is to be hurt” Valluvar, Ancient
alone to develop freely, rather than
India
subjected to “moral education”
“What you do not want to happen to • Too much moral education has been
you, do not do it yourself either” criticized as “indoctrination”, and could
Thales, Ancient Greece lead to children becoming dogmatic,
overly judgmental, and prone to
“What you do not wish for yourself, excessive self guilt
do not do to others” Confucius,
Ancient China • Even the Golden Rule, which arose
independently in diverse cultures, has
been criticized.
Is violence in our nature?
From ancient times to the middle ages,
violence, torture, slavery and massacres
have frequently occurred
• Conquering armies massacred surviving
civilians, or took them as slaves
• Guilt was often determined by torturing
the accused until they confessed
• Executions were conducted in the
cruelest way imaginable, often watched
by large crowds
The burning of Giordano Bruno
Brain aggression circuitry
• Some patients with temporal lobe epilepsy
exhibit aggressive behaviour and are treated
with surgical destruction of the amygdala
under local anaesthesia. Electrical stimulation
of the amygdala during the operation elicited
aggressive behaviour.
• “The most significant (and the most dramatic)
effect of stimulation has been the eliciting of a
range of aggressive responses from coherent,
appropriately directed verbal responses
(speaking to surgeon, ‘I feel I could get up and
bite you’) to uncontrolled swearing and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system#/ physically destructive behaviour”
media/File:Blausen_0614_LimbicSystem.png
Hichcock E, Cairns V (1973) Amygdalotomy. Postgraduate
Medical Journal, 49, 894-904
Archeological evidence
Skeletal remains of two adult men were buried
together in a shallow grave approximately
13,000 years ago in a small cemetery at Jebel
Sahaba, Sudan.
Both died of inflicted wounds, and the remains
of the actual weapons that killed them are
displayed in their original location.
Overall, at least 45% of the 61 people in this
cemetery appear to have met a violent end,
including women and children.
https://britishmuseum.withgoogle.com/object/the-jebel-sahaba-cemetery-victims-of-violence
Prehistoric violence
Violence starts young
• Developmental psychologist Richard
Tremblay found that the most
violent stage of life is the “terrible
twos”.
• Violence peaks at 24 months and
then declines steadily through
childhood and adolescence, and
plunges in early adulthood.
• According to Tremblay, violent adults
are simply children who did not
learn to be more civilized.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/terrible-twos-who-stay-terrible/
School bullying
School violence and bullying: global status report. UNESCO
• School bullying is a major problem worldwide
• Repeated physical violence, emotional abuse or social exclusion, against
specific victims, perceived to be easy targets.
• Bullies with narcissistic / psychopathic tendencies may become criminals or
murderers in later life
• Victims may develop emotional problems and self-harm behaviours
Murders
• Murder is significant problem in many countries
• Serial killers are thankfully uncommon
Lynching
This painting in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
shows the corpses of the de Witte brothers after
they were brutally murdered by a mob at the Hague
in 1672.
Johan de Witte was elected political leader of the
Netherlands at the age of 28, during the “Dutch
Golden Age”. He resigned from power after the
Dutch Republic lost a war with France.
“Every one of the miscreants, emboldened by his
[Johan’s] fall, wanted to fire his gun at him, or strike
him with blows of the sledge-hammer, or stab him with
a knife or swords, every one wanted to draw a drop of
blood from the fallen hero, and tear off a shred from
his garments” In the Black Tulip, by Alexandre Dumas
Johan and Cornelius de Witte
Genocide
• During the Second World War, Nazi Germany and its collaborators
systematically murdered some 6 million Jewish people, around 2/3 of
the Jewish population in Europe.
• People find it easier to commit atrocities when they are in large groups
with a common identity and shared beliefs.
Psychology of the mob
“by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd,
a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation.
Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is
a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by instinct. He
possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and
also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom
he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he
allows himself to be impressed by words and images —
which would be entirely without action on each of the
isolated individuals composing the crowd — and to be
induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious
interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd
is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind
stirs up at will.”
Is evil the cause of violence?
• A popular explanation why some people do
terrible things to others is that they are simply evil.
This popular conception of pure evil includes the
following components:
– Intentional harm to another person
– Enjoyment of the inflicted harm
– Goodness and innocence of the victim
– Being different from “us” (e.g. foreign)
– Being bad from the beginning
– Causing chaos and disharmony
• This popular conception may help us to condemn
violence, but Baumeister suggests that it is a myth
that may prevent us from understanding the true
causes of violence.
The causes of violence
• Baumeister identified 4 root causes of violence
– Instrumentality – to achieve reasonable goals (e.g.
obtain food or defend your home).
– Threatened egotism – to maintain status and
dominance over others
– Idealism – to destroy others who are perceived to be
dangerous, evil, disgusting, or worthless.
– Sadism – to entertain oneself
– (Revenge – added by Steven Pinker)
Roy Baumeister
• Baumeister also identified a proximal cause - the
breakdown of our normal restraints, for example, by
alcohol or other psycho-active substances, intense
emotions, or external influences such as peer group or
social media
Decline of violence
• Despite our violent tendencies, Steven Pinker has
pointed out that the level of violence in human
societies has declined in the last few centuries.
Emergence of states
• Pinker attributes part of the decline to the
emergence of states
• The state has the authority over a large
community, to defend against external
aggressors, and maintain internal peace and
stability (through punishment)
• People living in a state enjoy a greater level
of protection and stability than those in less
well organized groups.
Rising wealth and enlightenment
• The industrial revolution produced great
wealth for European countries
• With increasing wealth people became
more educated and had more time to
pursue intellectual and other interests
• Thus the “age of reason, or
“enlightenment”, was born.
“Have the courage to use your own
understanding” is therefore the motto
of the enlightenment… Maddison’s estimates of GDP per capita at
purchasing power parity in 1990
Immanuel Kant (1784)
international dollars for selected European
What is enlightenment?
and Asian nations between 1500 and 1950,
showing the explosive growth of some
European nations from the early 19th
century.
Increasing civility
• Intellectuals started to see the
pointlessness, cruelty and immorality of
violence (e.g. slavery, tortures and
executions)
– William Wilberforce fought to abolish
the slave trade
– Charles Dickens drew attention to
poverty in his novels
– Capital punishment became rarely used
William Wilberforce, by John Rising
and was eventually abolished in many
countries “If to be feelingly alive to the
sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to
be a fanatic, I am one of the most
incurable fanatics ever permitted to be
at large.”
Our better angels
• These social changes bring out the better side of the human psyche – “the better
angels of our nature”.
– Rational thought – so we are less prone to be influenced by unfounded beliefs
and fears, prejudices, superstitions, or being manipulated
– Empathy – so we care more about the well-being of others, including even
strangers, foreigners, and other species
– Self control – so we do not act out on primitive impulses which harm others
and ultimately ourselves.
Duality of human nature
• Jekyll, a Victorian doctor, who was normally
well-mannered and kind, recognized that he also
had a meaner, more primitive side to his
character. In an attempt to “purify” himself, he
developed a potion which changed him
transiently to another character, Hyde, who was
purely evil. At first, he found this new identity
liberating. However, the transformation became
more frequent, even without the potion. He
confessed and committed suicide.
“Strange case of Dr Jekyll • If we ignore our better angels and give free rein
and Mr Hyde” By Robert to our inner demons, the latter may become
Louis Stevenson, 1886
uncontrollable and eventually destroy us.
DENIAL OF HUMAN NATURE
Impact of human nature
Do you think the idea of human nature
• promotes social progress ?
• hinders social progress ?
Human nature and elitism
It is a common belief that success in many spheres (e.g.
educational, professional and economic) is linked to
personal ability.
If ability is innate, and passed down from parent to
offspring, then the continued success of a family over
many generations may be explained, or JUSTIFIED.
Many educated people in 19th century Europe and
America were concerned with the deterioration of the
average ability of human populations because the “elites”
of society were having fewer children than the rest of the
population (Eugenics).
Liberty and equality
During the enlightenment, people began to criticize elitism and to
promote individual liberty and equality.
all mankind, …., being all equal and independent, no
one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions
John Locke (1689) Two Treatises of Government
Liberty requires that people do not harm or coerce others
All people should be treated with equal respect
The rise of the blank slate
The blank slate is a key idea of the
enlightenment.
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we
say, white paper, void of all characters,
without any ideas: -- How comes it to be
furnished? … To this I answer, in one word,
from EXPERIENCE.
John Locke (1690) An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
Thus, according to John Locke, there is no
human nature - it is ALL nurture.
The noble savage
The romantic and idealized notion that, before human
societies became “civilized”, our ancestors lived at
peace with each other
… nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive
state, … The example of savages, almost all of
whom have been found in this state, seems to
confirm that the human race had been made to
remain in it always
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1754) Discourse on the
origin of inequality, part 2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Noble_savage
The ghost in the machine
The concept that the mind is fundamentally
distinct from, and independent of, the body.
…. there is a great difference between the
mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is
by its very nature always divisible, while the
mind is utterly indivisible.
Rene Descartes (1641) Meditation VI
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog
/the-imprinted-brain/201407/come-bac
k-homunculus-all-is-forgiven
“The Holy Trinity”
• The blank slate, the noble savage and the ghost in the machine are ideas
of the enlightenment that complemented each other
– The original nature of man is similarly simple for everyone
– The “evils” of man are products of learning and socialization
– Not being a physical entity, the “mind” is free to be shaped by
experiences
• These are powerful ideas for political activists who want to change
society to return to a lost “golden age”
The “Golden Age”
“What a happy time and a happy age were those
that the ancients called Golden! .... In that holy
age all things were commonly owned. To find
their daily sustenance, they had only to raise their
hands and take it from the robust oaks, which
liberally offered their sweet and ripe fruit to
them. ... Fraud, deceit, and wickedness had not as
yet contaminated truth and sincerity. Justice was
administered on its own terms and was not
tainted by favor and self-interest.” In Don
Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes.
Jules David: Don Quixote and Sancho, 1887
Denial of human nature
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my
own specified world to bring them up in and I'll
guarantee to take any one at random and train him to
become any type of specialist
James B Watson (1930) Behaviorism
The blank slate holds that people are equal and infinitely malleable, so that it
is possible to mold them to fit into a perfect (utopian) society
The rise of sociology
Individual natures are merely the indeterminate
material that the social factor molds and transforms.
Their contribution consists exclusively in very general
attitudes, in vague and consequently plastic
predispositions…. The determining cause of a social
fact should always be sought among the social facts
preceding it and not among the states of individual
consciousness.
Emile Durkheim (1895) The Rules of the Sociological Method.
According to the sociological viewpoint, human nature is not important
because the properties of a complex system (society) are largely
determined by the structure of the system as a whole, not the properties
of the individuals that make up the system.
Levels of explanation
• There is a hierarchy of levels of explanations,
from molecules to society.
Society • Reductionists explain phenomena at one
level by properties of entities at lower levels,
e.g. the behavior of cells by the properties of
molecules, the problems of society by the
Person nature of people.
• However, phenomena at the same level may
also influence each other, e.g. neurons
transmit information to each other,
Cells government policy affects the business
environment (and vice versa).
• Classical sociology maintains that human
nature is irrelevant to social problems –
Molecules social problems have social causes.
Collectivism
If people start off as blank slates, then they can learn to be
unselfish and live in a utopian society where everyone works for
the good of the whole community.
From each according to his ability, to each according
to his needs.
Karl Marx (1875) Critique of the Gotha Program.
The theory of Communism may be summed up in
the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
Karl Marx (1848) The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Attack on human nature
Political activists trying to reduce elitism and promote
greater equality regard the idea of human nature as a
barrier for social progress.
They argue that the elite in society are successful not
because of their superior innate ability, but because of
advantages in their upbringing – advantages that should
be abolished.
Thus “there is a need not only to respond to specific
ideological challenges but to stay on the offensive and
produce better socialist scholarship which serve the
struggle for human liberation” Hilary Rose and Steven
Rose: Radical Science and Its Enemies, 1979.
Attack on science
Criticism: traditional science is done by a small number of experts (the
“elite”), and their agenda is set by the economically dominant class (the
“bourgeoisie”)
“In the struggle to make science for the people, we may thus expect the
science itself to be transformed…. This transformation carries with it the
breaking down of the barrier between expert and non-expert ” Hilary Rose
and Steven Rose: The Radicalisation of Science, 1972
Restrictions on science
• Politically correct view – people are poor
because of injustice and exploitation in
society, rather than their own personal
failings.
• Studies that show biological differences
between the better-off and the worse-off in
society can be construed as “blaming the
victim”.
• The objective truth of the findings is not
regarded as a valid defense against
criticisms, because the need to help victims
outweigh the pursuit of truth.
Ideology-inspired science
• Trofim Lysenko proposed a new “socialist biology”
in the former Soviet Union which insists that
characteristics are not inherited, but acquired, and
that members of the same species do not
compete, but cooperate.
• Agricultural policy was formulated based on this
theory, for example, planting seeds in close-packed
clusters; the results were disastrous.
• Ignoring human nature on ideological grounds is
also dangerous (the main thesis of Steven Pinker’s
The Blank Slate)
LAST WORDS
Key points
• People share many psychological traits (human nature), which
are rooted in biology, genetics and evolution, and are not easy
to change
• Our nature includes both better angels and inner demons. The
recent decline in the level of violence on human societies
reflects social changes which strengthened our better angels
• The blank slate theory was born of the Enlightenment, which
emphasized mankind’s capacity for rational thought and
positive change
• The blank slate, the noble savage and the ghost in the
machine were taken up by socialists in their attacks on human
nature, and on science itself
To feel much for others and little for
ourselves; to restrain our selfishness
and exercise our benevolent
affections, constitute the perfection of
human nature
Adam Smith
