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Anna Melker's picture

human nature as a cultural container

I see human nature as a concept used by cultures, often to block progress of consciousness (it's human nature to make war!) and to explain animalistic/unconscious behavior. Looking from a scientific point of view, I know that organisms are constantly changing, and from a sociological point of view, I know that peoples' moral codes are challenged and re-established in essentially every generation. Therefore, I do not think that our capacity to take on new identities and roles in nature and society belies our 'human nature'. One could say that human nature is an oxymoron, since we are so removed from nature--to a certain extent we rely on predator-prey relations, but we have thought up so many ways to control growing times and weather (irrigation in arid environments) that our web of reliance on nature is quite different than even 200 years ago...
For this reason, I think our 'instinctual' feelings are often mistaken as human nature (although they are natural) and then forgiven by society by being labelled human nature. Examples of these instinctual feelings are jealously and anger. Though they naturally occur in our bodies and minds, it does not mean that we, as superior beings (read: followers of moral codes), can't control them.
Human nature is a cop-out.

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