Whose human nature?
In this interview with the Aussie journal Policy, Frank Fukuyama references human nature in his characteristically vague way. First he says:
"It was quite revealing in Afghanistan after the Taliban were defeated that the first thing the people in Kabul did was to do dig up their VCRs and television sets and watch these corny Indian soap operas. Like virtually every other human being on the planet, they like that sort of thing. You can't say that watching cheesy Indian movies is a universal characteristic of human beings, but beneath that there are certain tendencies that are given by nature, and if you try to restrict them too much you are going to run up against some real political problems."
Then he spends the rest of the time warning that augmentation through drugs, surgery, and biotech is wrong because it will subvert human nature--as if the urge toward transformation isn't as "human" as humans get.
Show Comments (1)