Feb 19, 2024 05:49 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 19, 2024 05:54 PM by C C.)
https://quillette.com/2024/02/18/on-biol...-politics/
EXCERPTS: . . . Broad political factors are also at play here, with both the Left and the Right largely dismissive of the application of evolutionary theory to human affairs.
On the Right, the distrust of Darwinism is strongly influenced by religious doctrine. In addition, many conservatives typically regard human nature (whether evolved or God-given) as inherently flawed, thus requiring constant constraint by custom or tradition.
The standard leftist reaction is to reject this vision of a fixed and flawed human psyche entirely in favour of a mouldable and perfectable vision of human nature. [example: antinaturalism]
And even when evolutionary theory is accepted in general, for many on the Left, its application to human society is indelibly linked to its egregious past—the cutthroat competition of Social Darwinism, say, or eugenics and Nazi racial science. Given the lingering reek of extreme right-wing ideology, it is hardly surprising that many of those most vehemently opposed to evolutionary accounts of human nature are found on the political Left.
[...] The Left ignores the fact that humans are evolved animals at its peril. This point forms the core of two similarly titled books, written a quarter of a century apart—A Darwinian Left (1999) and A ®Evolutionary Left (2023)—that can serve as a guide to where the Left has gone wrong and why this poses such a risk to its traditional aspirations for building a truly just and equitable society.
Moral philosopher Peter Singer begins A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation with what he sees as the major cause of the Left’s rejection of Darwin: the lingering influence of Darwin’s fellow 19th-century thinker, Karl Marx.
Trailblazing intellect that he was, Marx got quite a few things wrong...
[...] A Darwinian Left therefore takes particular aim at Marx’s conception of an infinitely malleable human nature, an idealistic notion that still holds sway over large sections of the Left. Briefly, this “blank slate” belief holds that human behaviour merely mirrors the prevailing social environment—that, for example, human competition stems from competitive societies not inherent competitive traits in individuals themselves.
According to this view, if social structures change, so too will people’s nature. The political appeal of this for leftists is obvious: the prospect that more egalitarian societies will foster more egalitarian human beings, those whose deep-felt selflessness would truly reflect the Marxist dictum, “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
Singer pours cold water on this utopian belief...
[...] Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Khmer Rouge Cambodia, he argues, not to mention the long, dismal history of failed “egalitarian” revolutions the world over, proves the lie of the Left’s naive blank-slate position. Unfortunately, as Singer goes on to argue, “ideological blinkers” render the idealistic Left needlessly blind to a more nuanced understanding of human nature based on modern evolutionary science.
This wilful ignorance of possible evolved influences on human behaviour leaves the Left ill-prepared to successfully address deeper undesirable emotions that may remain regardless of surface social change. Latent xenophobia is one such example; as Singer points out, writing in the decade that witnessed the Rwanda genocide and the brutal civil war in the former Yugoslavia, “racist demagogues hold their torches over highly flammable material.”
Singer is quick to stress that acknowledging evolved human nature need not mean egalitarians abandon their hopes for harmonious multicultural societies. Rather, by adopting a Darwinian perspective on human behaviour, the Left would be better able to spot potentially avoidable obstacles to its egalitarian goals... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . Broad political factors are also at play here, with both the Left and the Right largely dismissive of the application of evolutionary theory to human affairs.
On the Right, the distrust of Darwinism is strongly influenced by religious doctrine. In addition, many conservatives typically regard human nature (whether evolved or God-given) as inherently flawed, thus requiring constant constraint by custom or tradition.
The standard leftist reaction is to reject this vision of a fixed and flawed human psyche entirely in favour of a mouldable and perfectable vision of human nature. [example: antinaturalism]
And even when evolutionary theory is accepted in general, for many on the Left, its application to human society is indelibly linked to its egregious past—the cutthroat competition of Social Darwinism, say, or eugenics and Nazi racial science. Given the lingering reek of extreme right-wing ideology, it is hardly surprising that many of those most vehemently opposed to evolutionary accounts of human nature are found on the political Left.
[...] The Left ignores the fact that humans are evolved animals at its peril. This point forms the core of two similarly titled books, written a quarter of a century apart—A Darwinian Left (1999) and A ®Evolutionary Left (2023)—that can serve as a guide to where the Left has gone wrong and why this poses such a risk to its traditional aspirations for building a truly just and equitable society.
Moral philosopher Peter Singer begins A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Cooperation with what he sees as the major cause of the Left’s rejection of Darwin: the lingering influence of Darwin’s fellow 19th-century thinker, Karl Marx.
Trailblazing intellect that he was, Marx got quite a few things wrong...
[...] A Darwinian Left therefore takes particular aim at Marx’s conception of an infinitely malleable human nature, an idealistic notion that still holds sway over large sections of the Left. Briefly, this “blank slate” belief holds that human behaviour merely mirrors the prevailing social environment—that, for example, human competition stems from competitive societies not inherent competitive traits in individuals themselves.
According to this view, if social structures change, so too will people’s nature. The political appeal of this for leftists is obvious: the prospect that more egalitarian societies will foster more egalitarian human beings, those whose deep-felt selflessness would truly reflect the Marxist dictum, “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
Singer pours cold water on this utopian belief...
[...] Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Khmer Rouge Cambodia, he argues, not to mention the long, dismal history of failed “egalitarian” revolutions the world over, proves the lie of the Left’s naive blank-slate position. Unfortunately, as Singer goes on to argue, “ideological blinkers” render the idealistic Left needlessly blind to a more nuanced understanding of human nature based on modern evolutionary science.
This wilful ignorance of possible evolved influences on human behaviour leaves the Left ill-prepared to successfully address deeper undesirable emotions that may remain regardless of surface social change. Latent xenophobia is one such example; as Singer points out, writing in the decade that witnessed the Rwanda genocide and the brutal civil war in the former Yugoslavia, “racist demagogues hold their torches over highly flammable material.”
Singer is quick to stress that acknowledging evolved human nature need not mean egalitarians abandon their hopes for harmonious multicultural societies. Rather, by adopting a Darwinian perspective on human behaviour, the Left would be better able to spot potentially avoidable obstacles to its egalitarian goals... (MORE - missing details)