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I like to begin the semester asking students their ideas about human nature. More specifically, I ask them to consider whether humans are naturally more greedy or cooperative. When I pose the question, almost all students say — Greedy! To justify their response, students often point to what they see as convincing evidence: 1) Toddlers fight over toys; 2) War has always existed; 3) Gosh, at the very least, survival of the fittest!
We could tell many stories about human nature, but the one we choose to tell, that humans are naturally greedy, is not only empirically problematic, it’s also harmful.
Evidence suggests that what makes humans unique from any other species is not that we communicate or have empathy or a sense of justice. It’s that we cooperate. And we cooperate flexibly.* In other words, we enter new situations and learn how to work together easily. What allows us to work together so well is that we humans tell darn, good stories, and we collectively agree to believe those stories. For example, we all share the story that money has inherent value; as a result, we buy and sell goods using the shared myth of money.
The “greed” story is a relatively new one. In fact, in 1980, 33% of those in the US said that greed was natural and the cause of war and other conflict. In 2001, that number jumped to 80%. What happened to create such a dramatic shift in how Americans viewed human nature? Haven’t toddlers always fought over toys and war always been a huge part of the human experience? The answer to those questions is, it depends on the stories we tell.
So let’s look at some of those questions from above. Do toddlers fight over toys? Yes, in the United States, sometimes they do! We raise our kids to be individualists: we often give kids their own rooms, emphasize that they are unique and different, teach them what belongs to them and what doesn’t. So, yes, children in the United States learn quickly that they should want things and that they should own things. However, even in the US, children are much more likely to be cooperative most of the time than they are to be greedy; they learn language, they learn to live in families, they learn to go to school – in other words, they figure out our shared myths and most of the time, do their best to adapt to them.
War has always existed though, right? If you mean has conflict always existed, then the answer is yes! But war is just one way to resolve conflict and not the most common way historically or today. For example, in 2015, 400,000 people died in violent conflict. That seems like a lot, but there are over 7 billion people on the planet, and only .05% died in violent conflict. The murder rate is even lower. The United Nations estimates that .0006% of the population is murdered every year. It seems difficult to argue that greed, characterized by violence and war, is the main part of our nature when most of us do not use these tools to resolve conflict.
Well, what about survival of the fittest? Won’t we do anything to survive? Yes, we will do anything to survive, but so far, what’s helped us survive as a species is not greed, it’s cooperation. Our species could not survive without people nurturing our young, without educating others, without sharing our skills and without taking care of each other. Our human society could actually get along just fine without greed, but we could not without cooperation.
It was not until capitalism, and until neo-liberal capitalism of the 80s, that the greed story took over our collective imaginations. The greed story is justifying destructive behavior, not describing our inherent nature, and it may prove to be the downfall, not the survival, of the species.
Unfortunately, the story that we are greedy is justifying what is probably the most devastating myth of our time -- that global climate change is not real. When we deny the reality of global climate change, we support economic policies that are short-term rather long-term oriented; policies that focus on how Multinational Corporations can make more money now so that our GNP is bolstered and shareholders keep gaining. Global climate change is predicted to seriously harm our resources; however, it will also very likely lead to more oppression, more racism, more sexism, more religious inequality as people blame each other for the tragedies occurring rather than the real cause, corporate policies that encourage over-consumption, pollution and waste.
Let’s say all the research about human nature is wrong and that greed is more natural for humans than cooperation. Let’s say it’s natural for humans to develop an economic system oriented around short-term gain that harms the planet’s resources, damaging most animals (including humans). Could we really argue that such loss is an example of survival of the fittest? Humans have been around only 200,000 years. So let’s say we continue our current economic policies and live another 50,000 years. Two hundred and fifty thousand years is a short stint on this earth that’s 4.5 billion years old. Our extinction would show that greed is not actually evolutionarily useful for the human species. But do we really want to prove whether or not greed is natural at such a price?
Since we can make up any story we want about human nature, why make up one with such high stakes? Let’s tell the story supported by research, that humans are naturally cooperative. Creating social policies around that idea, even if it is a myth, will not only create a more kind society, but also one that is more likely to sustain future generations.
Linda Markowitz, PhD
Professor and Chair, Sociology
SIUE
*For a fun and easy read, check out Yulal Harari’s A Brief History of Humankind.