Re: Three views of human nature (was: Intertwined (was Name Dropping)

[G. Stewart]

Hello Selma,   I would like to move towards the implications that may lie in the assumptions you have set out for our consideration: e.g. humans are (probably) born with a basic tendency toward goodness and that arranging things so that their basic needs are met will produce loving self-directed individuals. (Sounds a bit like gardening.)   So, when a baby is born, we tell ourselves a story that this is a good baby, love and care for it and learn how to enrich its environment (i.e. apply the latest findings in brain research -- which is what the Conservative government of Ontario is now encouraging through opening 100+  "early years" centres throughout the province). And so on, through life although, as we become adults, it becomes a matter of nurturing ourselves and each other and our own children, and developing a nurturative built environment.   That, I take it, is where you are going: a intensive care path but with the effort that is involved gradually becoming reduced because "synergy" cuts in as the cared-for child grows and becomes adult -- it becomes less effort to nurture oneself or others if we and they have been nurtured to become nurturative persons, as well as less effort to improve a built environment that is already supportive -- a sort of virtuous circle of self-actualization.   There are many instances of such an approach entering now into the policies of Western societies, although not always for the purpose you seem have in mind. (Some are inadvertent consequences of budget paring.) Parenting classes, distress centres, john schools, community sentencing, early retirement allowing for increased voluntary caring for others, a growing solidarity against inhumane results of trade practices, progressive taxation, etc. Where there has been charity we are now seeing investment for development, and, through interaction with human rights, we are now seeing development not merely as economic development but as human development, and so on. Like almost anything else, little is new: it is a mattering of re-mapping our consciousness to perceive a new pattern in the events around us. From economic growth for its own sake we are shifting to economic growth for the sake of human "growth," i.e. growth in education, health, longevity, civility, ... and finally...consciousness.   So what would you have us do: tell ourselves a different story (Brad's "narrative") and thus perceive a different pattern in events, place our bet firmly on the assumption that infants are born good and water and fertilize them and each other to the best of our ability toward a loving world in which work is done voluntarily and, presumably with high innovation and productivity?   I'm pressing your Rogers, Maslow, Benedict theorizing a bit, (no, more than a bit) but is this basically where you would take us? In short, do some kinds of suggestions -- for parents, for schools, for governments, for ourselves -- lurk in your theorizing?   The line of thought you are pursuing is interesting, and I don't recall seeing it often on this list, so please say more. When you link it to the possibility of willing work, as you do, it goes even further, but I'd like to get the dynamics of your systemic analysis clear first, and the suggestions that it might give rise to.  Seeing goodness in babies, and nurturing them, a society that practices nurture can become what it beholds, a loving nurturative hard-working society?    Regards,   Gail     Selma wrote (quoted by Keith):   "This is perhaps an oversimplification, but I would suggest that there are three basic views of human nature that can be characterized as positive, negative and neutral. The positive view, best described by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow sees humans as born with a basic tendency toward goodness (other things being equal which is a huge IF); the neutral  view can be seen in the work of people like the behaviorists such as Watson and BF Skinner and the negative view in the work of those who subscribe to Freud's idea that humans are basically 'beastly'. If one subscribes to the positive view and accepts Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guide, then humans who have had their basic needs for support and nurturance of all kinds-physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, aesthetic, intellectual, etc. etc,. will ultimately desire to love and to work above everything else."         Gail Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]