Post by DHaha, no... haven't found god yet, but had a 4 week
vacation and a Nietzsche deep dive, now followed with an
Epicurus deep dive, to seek out Nietzsches sources. ;)
Post by DIn terms of this place, there is a natural ebb and flow of
the threads, so after rising to the ethereal transcendence,
all words became meaningless.
Indeed.
Amidst a whole lot of yawning on my end....
refusing to even consider alternative takes.
I mean, I was already convinced most humans were idiots.
I mean.. seriously?
Post by D# Human Un-nature
Everyone has gotten into some kinbd of argument or
disagreement about "human nature," which is supposed to
be the one true thing that makes humans actually human if
you dig deep enough through all the layers of society,
relationships, morals, etc. Or if you haven't had an
argument about it, you've at least had someone bring it up
as some kind of self evident explanation for something in
the world, usually something they take to be unfortunate
but unavvoidable. "I don't really like the police either,
but humans are naturally violent and greedy, so we need
them." "My boss is a dick too, but the sad truth is that
humans are naturally lazy, so what are you gonna do?"
Of course, this supposedly essential, core element of our
species called "human natures" has a funny way of changing
depending on the time, the place, and whoever's in charge
of something. In medieval Europe, humans were naturally
servile which is why we needed lords and ultimatyely kings
to keep everything going. In the contemporary U.S., humans
are naturally greedy, which is why we need capitalism to
turn that greed into wealth for all. And so on.
I think we ought to take a different view entirely, and
one that's actually really simple. Humans, and (so far)
*only* humans, are those animals which are precisely
*unnatural* to the core. There is absolutely nothing
natural about humans. We are that species that presisely
*does not* have a particular way to be, and in fact there
might be as many ways to be human as there are humans
themselves. There is no human nature, nothing at the core
of the species, all of our manifold histories, cultures,
societies, etc. might just be the various ways we've tried
to fill in the essential *gap* that constitutes us all,
individually and collectively.
I think starting from this point gets us a lot further than
essentializing the values of a given era and calling it
"human nature." It helps us get out of the trap (at least
conceptually) of neoliberalism, which tells us that this,
right now, the way things currently are, is the only
possible way things could be, give or take a few minor
modifications here and there. No: My thesis is that we are
only what we chose to be exactly because there is nothing
essential about us. We are only what we practice, what we
do. We are what we choose to build for oursleves. Which
means we *can* change *everything*, if we wanted to.
There is no human nature, there is only human un-nature. I
should come up with a better turn of phrase, but for now
this is what I've got.