Human beings have grand aspirations and great ideals but limited life spans. Every 100 years of so, all new people are on the planet. Each person born on Earth starts from scratch, knowing nothing of themselves or the world. More than any other species, human beings need to be taught how to be our species, or rather, how to be civilized versions of it. We invented civilization; we didn’t evolve it. But because it’s invented and not evolved, we have to teach it to our kids. Don’t eat with your fingers. Don’t hit your brother with a block. Take a bath and brush your teeth.
Even the simple stuff has to be taught. And then there’s the hard stuff – social customs, how to read, write, and speak a language, how to interact with other people, geometry, how to fill out an IRS form, and so much more.
This makes civilization an iterative process and not a linear progression. Round and around we go. Every generation, society is both renewed and reset. Social change is slow because we have to start over with each individual and teach them how to live in a society that is, at the same time, in perpetual flux. And then, not everyone teaches their kids the same things.
Our confidence in the rightness of our civilization is all well and good, but there are a still a few things we continue to carry along with us that seem frankly uncivilized. War, bullying, greed, and selfishness spring to mind. No matter how advanced our technologies, it seems we remain no better than cave men when it comes to these basic tendencies. Not only do the same deadly sins remain, unchanged, but we’ve even enshrined some of them in our constitutions!
The problem of course is human nature. We can teach our children lots of things, but with some negative traits, the best we can do is teach children not to express them, and hope that at least as far as daily life is concerned, they will refrain from being antisocial or violent.
Much of religion is aimed at reinforcing these same ideas in adults, who like children are often tempted to do “evil” – i.e., act in an uncivilized manner. One could say that the Ten Commandments was a first effort at civilizing the ancient Hebrews. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not steal, lie, or cheat. Jesus had the same idea: Love one another. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Our instincts, the ones that guide us from birth, are focused on self-preservation. A propensity toward violence, distrust of the new, greed, and selfishness, are bred into our species (and mammals in general), not taught to us after we’re born. Hence, they’re also baked into our social and economic systems, forming the core bedrock of human civilization, something we accept almost without question.
Thus, parents may teach their children not to be violent toward each other, but our society continues to teach violence on a much larger scale, through endless warring, big militaries, and beefed up police departments. Mirroring society as always, popular entertainment from movies to video games reinforces violence as well. Peaceful people do not do violent things or watch violence for pleasure, but Americans do.
As for selfishness and greed, our economic system is based on greed, competition, selfishness, and accumulation of wealth, so beyond anything you might hear in Sunday School, these are our values as a society. In addition to enjoying violence, human beings live for money.
Although this may seem a harsh assessment, it’s merely stating what has been true for thousands of years. No need to get upset about it now!
It’s possible that we could undo these basic human impulses (see Brave New World) but highly unlikely that we’d succeed. For starters, we don’t actually want to counter them, and to complicate matters further, they are part of what it is to be human. Do we want to mess with that? Whether the answer be yea or nay, the fact remains: The big problems of the world will never be solved.
