Natural Law and Human Nature

http://thefrontierlab.org/occupy-wall-street

Phrenology was, in part, based upon the notion that the shape of a person's skull was indicative of their character.  As one might gather, there were quite a few character traits associated with the most minute cranial features.  Phrenology has, of course, been discredited (to say the least) and is now considered a pseudoscience.  I'm willing to guess that few people haven even heard of it before this post.

However, the superficial assumptions of phrenology are alive today in the fields of psychology, sociology, and so-called political science.  I tend to bristle when something that is not in fact science nonetheless demands that it be recognized as such.  There is a tremendous danger in conferring the legitimacy of science onto a field that attempts to explain human behavior.  It has the double effect of discrediting science while providing justification for arbitrary decisions as though those decisions were derived from natural law.

We have sociologists from all political teams attempting to correlate different mental illnesses with different ideologies.  Liberal-leaning sociologists and psychologists have long since exited the realm of diagnosing illness -- real, crippling illness -- and instead have become the Old Guard of secular moralism in America.  They single out the people that find the most effective ways of accumulating capital and invariably deem them as narcissists, sociopaths, and myriad other mythical designations.  Yet it seems as though the vast majority of Americans that do not reach such social heights has been overlooked entirely.  Most of the time, such persons are written off as victims of one social force or another.  Empathy is normally reserved for the under-served, and is withheld from what they deem the over-served.

Those that call themselves liberals rail against greed as though it were an element on the periodic table poisoning their water supply.  What is greed? What is self-interest? And, better yet, how can there be such a thing as zero self-interest? Absent some form of mind-altering substance (e.g. ecstasy), almost everyone senses their own existence and is conscious of their interests.  This is true of most humans, and it is a quintessential human trait.  Are we to understand greed only in retrospect? When an act of self-interest results in some form of destruction, is that when we point our fingers and invoke the greed curse?

The vitriol with which the liberal left attacks the highly affluent is matched only by that with which the Republican right attacks the statistical majority of Americans.  During the Gilded Era, the new philosophy of Social Darwinism was invented as an explanation for the distribution of haves and have-nots.  It was regularly stated (and accepted as scientific fact) that providing some form of welfare to the under-served was against natural law and promoted inferiority in society.

The party of "Greed is good," has little problem with personal greed when it is exercised on the grandest and most lopsided of scales (that is, in business), yet shrieks when those with less profess their wants (and, in some cases, needs).  At best, benefits to society from such massive greed are byproducts.  It is not as though most people who become entrepreneurs do so with the motivating knowledge that their actions will be justified by one freshwater economist or another.  They do it for the money, obviously.

Therefore, there is a kind of morality to the libertarian business model.  Their faith in property rights taking precedence in all legal disputes (indeed, possession is 3/4ths of the law) contains the assumption that there will be virtuous businessmen that practice some form of ethics.  I'm sure there are many such examples, but business is ultimately about competition, about cutting off your opponents at the knees and being at least slightly more ruthless than the next man.  It's a jungle, and I maintain that, regardless of the positive social byproducts of big business, it is disingenuous to idealize every man at the helm of a large corporation.  As much as I find libertarian and laissez-faire positions appealing, positive notions of that philosophy are grounded in assumptions about human nature that are as utopian as the communist chimera with which they do battle.  Libertarians seem to believe that society ought to be run by Hank Hill, from the late great King of the Hill.

Yet some seem to believe that Hank runs the business world already.

This brings us to The Frontier Lab's insipid analysis of the Occupiers.  What distinguishes the Occupier who desires a middle-class lifestyle from the tycoon who desires to run the world? Why is wanting more preferred over wanting less? How is one type of "greed" morally justifiable while the other is not? Could it be that it is because the Occupiers do not think as big as the tycoon? Is that why The Frontier Lab is convinced that they "win" when America "loses?"  Evidently, greed and self-interest are not the only dimension through which today's conservatives view the world.  For if greed were categorically good, there ought to be a philosophical problem with attacking Occupiers for wanting things or being covetous in general.

Most maddening to me about this piece is how its conclusions are touted as "scientific."  Social science is not science.  I'll say it again.  Social science is NOT science.  This designation is abused by both the right and the left to support their ideology as one that somehow derives from natural law.  But human nature and natural law are incompatible.  You cannot quantify greed, you can't test it, and you cannot study human nature when your views will be strongly influenced by the fact that you're a human yourself.  There is no rhyme or reason for why human beings behave the way that they do.  Sure, there are "theories," but most of them boil down to assumptions steeped in ideology.  And do you know why that is? I'm not sure, but it seems it's just in our nature.

Diederik Stapel, the world's most honest social psychologist.