| To
the right are my reasons for supporting what is known as the "Darwinian
left," a new political philosophy of the left based off of an
understanding of human nature. |
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In
the book Writings on
an Ethical Life, Peter Singer states that the "left needs a new
paradigm" (273). In Steven Pinker's book, The Blank Slate, Pinker
covers the right and left sides of the political spectrum in his
chapter on politics. Pinker describes the right side of the political
spectrum as the the Tragic Vision, where:
humans are inherently limited in knowledge,
wisdom,
and virtue, and all social arrangements must acknowledge those limits.
'Mortal things suit mortals best,' wrote Pindar; 'from the crooked
timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made,' wrote Kant.
The Tragic Vision is associated with Hobbes, Burke, Smith, Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison, the jurist Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr., the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman,
the
philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Karly Popper, and the legal scholar
Richard Posner (287).
In contrast, the left side of the political spectrum falls into what
Pinker describes as the Utopian Vision. In the Utopian vision:
psychological limitations are artifacts that come
from our social arrangements, and we should not allow them to
restrict our gaze from what is possible in a better world. Its creed
might be 'Some people see
things as they are and ask 'why?'; I dream things that never were and
as
'why not?'' The quotation is often attributed to the icon of 1960's
liberalism, Robert F. Kennedy, but it was originally penned by the
Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw (who also wrote, 'there is nothing
that can be changed more completely
than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough'). The
Utopian
Vision is also associated with Rousseau, Godwin, Condorcet, Thomas
Paine,
the jurist Earl Warren, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a
lesser
extent the political philosopher Ronald Dworkin (287).
In Pinker's book, Pinker explains in detail some of the breakthroughs
of modern neurology. Pinker explains the history of the mind described
as a "Blank
Slate," the theory that humans are natural peaceful beings, and the
idea
that there is some sort of "ghost in the machine" (analogous to a
soul). All
of these have come up empty in modern science. We see that the mind is
indeed
quite shaped for specific purposes, that humans are not naturally
pacifistic,
and that all of the decision making and comprehension of the human mind
can
be explained without any sort of ghost. The left must acknowledge the
fact
that we are, in fact, evolved beings with a definite human nature, and
abandon
hope of a perfect society. As Peter Singer said, "it is time to develop
a
Darwinian left" (Singer 273).
Singer goes on to state that "[i]f we shrug our shoulders at the
avoidable suffering of the weak and the poor, of those who are getting
exploited and ripped off, we are not of the left. The left wants to
change this situation" (Singer 237). When we examine human nature and
evolutionary theory, we can help make those changes by being able to
"assess the price we will have to pay for achieving our social and
political goals" (Singer 275). The Darwinian left will understand the
"prerequisites for mutual cooperation and its benefits would strive to
avoid economic conditions that create outcasts" (Singer 281). Singer
states some ideas that would distinguish the Darwinian left from other
philosophies of the left:
- A Darwinian left would not deny the existence of a
human
nature or insist that human nature is inherently good or infinitely
malleable.
- A Darwinian left would not expect to end all conflict
and
strife between human beings.
- A Darwinian left would not assume that all
inequalities are
due to discrimination, prejudice, oppression, or social conditioning.
Some
will be, but not all
Singer also states some of
the things that a Darwinian left would
support:
- A Darwinian left would recognize that there is such a
thing
as human nature. It would seek to find out more about it so that it can
be
grounded on the best available evidence of what human beings are.
- A Darwinian left would expect that, under many
different
social and economic systems, many people will act competitively in
order to enhance their own status, gain power, and advance their
interests and those of their kin.
- A Darwinian left would expect that irrespective of
the
social and economic system in which they live, most people will respond
positively to invitations to enter into mutually beneficial forms of
cooperation, as long as the invitations are genuine.
- A Darwinian left would promote structures that foster
cooperation rather than competition, and it would attempt to channel
competition into socially desirable ends.
- A Darwinian left would recognize that the way in
which we
exploit nonhuman animals is a legacy of a pre-Darwinian past which
exaggerated the gulf between humans and other animals, and therefore
work toward a higher moral status for nonhuman animals.
- A Darwinian left would stand by the traditional
values of
the left by being on the side of the weak, poor, and oppressed, but
think very carefully about what will really work to benefit them.
I have to give my support to Singer's movement here, for I can not
adopt a philosophy that seems to claim that anyone who tries their
hardest could become anyone they want to be. The idea that if the
homeless man on the street could have been Bill Gates had he worked
hard enough is bullshit. Some people are born with talent and money,
and others are born into poverty with few, if any, abilities. The
fairest political system would be a system that we would conceive just
before entering society; before knowing if we would be born into wealth
or poverty, before finding out if we are intelligent or idiotic.
I can not, also, submit to a political philosophy that ignores the
truths of science; we have a definite human nature shaped by billions
of years of evolution.
The best political philosophy I can think of would be a philosophy set
on a factual basis, that maximizes the total happiness of the people
(while naturally
respecting our environment and its resources), and no one (or as few as
possible)
gets screwed because they were dealt a bad genetic hand, or were born
into
poverty.
I am, of course, still skeptical of my own ideas, and those of others,
but from what I can tell, the Darwinian left seems like the best
political philosophy to support. |
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