Over the ages, the human mind has pondered many great mysteries of life, like "why am I here?", "What is my purpose in life", "Who is God?", or even "Is there a God?". The answers that have been proposed have been nearly as numerous as the minds that have been pondering these issues. Along with these high level questions are those which try to explain our current condition. For instance, why is there evil and suffering anyway? Or, is there even such a thing as good and evil?
One of the great subjects pondered by the human mind over the span of recorded history is the question of the human condition. Why do people do such terrible things, especially to each other? Or, for that matter, why do human beings aspire to be good in spite of this? It is the answer to these why questions which perplexes many but is so very important to answer, because in the answer to the question is its solution, and the solutions that have been proposed through history vary widely in their outcomes. While none have been successful at wiping out evil, I would submit that it is obvious that some have done demonstrably better than others at achieving relative peace and freedom.
Internal or External?
The fundamental question about evil-doing in people is whether the evil is built-in or whether it is due to external sources. In other words, do people do bad things because they are broken or because external conditions force them to? You can easily see that the way we respond to evil will depend completely upon which view we have. Take the story of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas as a whimsical example. The Grinch's evil "[he] hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season" is treated as a mystery, on which the narrator speculates "it could be perhaps that his shoes were too tight, or perhaps that his head wasn't screwed on just right; but I think that the most likely reason of all is that his heart was two sizes too small." Indeed, if the Grinch's problem was his shoes, the whole story would find a happy ending when the Grinch got new shoes. If the problem was the Grinch's heart, then the solution to the problem becomes much more complicated!
In Thomas Sowell's book "A Conflict of Visions" these two viewpoints correspond closely with what he calls the "Constrained" and "Unconstrained" visions. The former would correspond to the view that the problems with the human race are internal, a part of our make-up. The latter would correspond to the idea that our problems are from external sources. In his discussions, the constrained vision has humans that are inherently flawed and imperfect, while the unconstrained vision has people who are ultimately perfectible. Again, you can easily see how this might work itself out in real life. In the case of the Grinch, if the people who believe in human imperfection are right, the solution is probably a good police force and a long stay in prison for the Grinch for everyone else's well being (after he is sued in civil court for damages). If the problem is external (tight shoes) then the solution would be to have the Whoville council mandate correctly sized shoes for everybody. (Paid for by taxes, fines or jail time for wearing small shoes?)
Those philosophies of governance based on the external evil model are usually Utopian in scope. I used to have similar views, due to a steady diet of humanistic school teaching and science fiction in my youth. By the time I was in junior high my thoughts were like this: As the sciences of sociology and psychology advance, eventually scientists would discover the perfect way to raise children, eliminating all of the mistakes that fallible (and non-professional) parents made which caused kids to go wrong. At that point it was inevitable that, for the good of society, all children would have to be taken from parents and raised "scientifically" so that the human race could enter a time with no crime, bullying (a constant problem in jr high) and other ugliness in the social fabric. I used to expound on these theories to a Catholic friend of mine, who was (quite appropriately) horrified at my ideas. Even in my example (and the Grinch one above) you can see the problem - utopian visions require restricting freedoms of everybody to achieve their goals.
My thesis in these posts will be that that the philosophies that have the highest view of human nature will ironically lead to the most destructive and repressive regimes in the world, in which finally the individual is lost and destroyed. Conversely, I will try to show that a lower view of human nature have produced more freedom, liberty and happiness, and have led to a higher status for individual humans. (Note that I have separated the concepts of human nature and human worth, which I believe have to be kept separate.) The seeming contradiction of this should make sense by the time I finish.
(Stay tuned for part 2...)
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