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.

Comments

[Sean]

Efforts to use biotech to manipulate others without their consent can be dismissed on centuries old grounds, so we're left arguing over the cases where people do icky things to *themselves*. Politically, this is a sideshow. The world, including the U.S. of A., is full of people doing icky things to others, without their consent. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the quality of people's voluntary choices was our biggest worry?

But about that sideshow: I don't know if this is Fukayama's point, but there *are* cases of voluntary subversion of one's own nature, like drugging oneself into compacent acceptance of a live badly lived, that creep me out. And there are even creepy social dynamics that can pressure one into such self-subversion; if enough other people are willing to take a performance-enhancing (tho possibly harmful, or diminishing, in other ways) drug, then it is hard to compete if you don't take it. In this case, it might not be that people are intervening on themselves in the pursuit of their own nature, but rather to make themselves smoother-functioning parts. The `urge towards transformation' sounds like LSD, but mostly, we take Zoloft.

Now that I think about it, these considerations aren't limited to fancy new technology. Religeon, entertainment, military training, and growing up itself, can have the same creepy combination of empowering and diminishing effects.

I'm not in favor of freedom because I think free people always make good choices for themselves. When possible, we ought to try to persuade each other not to make really bad ones. Arguing that something is wrong is a fine thing to do--as long as you don't start passing laws.