January 20, 2005

Is conservatism no more than belief in a fixed human nature?

Mark Richardson is an Australian conservative who has a definition of conservatism that excludes most people who would normally be called conservatives. He has a blog here. There has always been a tendency on the extreme Right to see almost the whole world as against them and even I seem to be an extreme Leftist to such people! Mark is however not part of the fruitcake brigade. He has a well-articulated position which amounts to saying that all advocacy of freedom is Leftist (or "liberal" as he calls it) and what makes a conservative is belief in certain hereditary givens -- such as belief in the selfishness of human nature, the tribalism of man and the instinctive and ineluctible rightness of the traditional family. As a rough summary, we might say that Mark believes conservatism to consist of a belief in strong genetic limits on what we can do and become.

Most conservatives would of course agree with Mark about his three conservative themes that I have just mentioned. I myself agree fully only with the first point -- about human nature. I have set out reasons here why I believe that, although it does exist, the tribalism of man is surprisingly weak. And I also see many perfectly healthy, decent and well-functioning people emerging from a variety of family arrangements. I think that there is now overwhelming evidence from the geneticists that what we become is almost entirely a function of our genes rather than of our family environment. Even our political ideology is substantially inherited through our genes. (See e.g. here and here and here). So actual genetic research in fact undermines Mark's belief in the central importance of a given type of family environment.

What I think has happened is that Mark has gone overboard. He is the opposite swing of the pendulum to the Left. The Left believe in NO inborn limits on what human arrangements will work whereas Mark sees limits on every hand. The truth, I think, is to be found in treating what inborn limits we have as an emprical question. Their constant policy failures from the French revolution onwards show that the Leftists are wrong but what is right can only be discovered by trial and error. And that is why conservatives believe that tradition and history are important and useful. They are the laboratory in which we see what works and what doesn't.

And one thing we find in that laboratory is that we do have liberties as well as limitations and the liberties are in fact highly transformative. Giving people liberties of certain sorts -- such as economic liberty -- can be enormously beneficial. And the high value conservatives have always placed on liberty also springs from their belief in the selfishness and untrustworthiness of their fellow man: If you cannot trust your fellow-man to do you good, it is important to be as free of his control over you as possible. So Mark has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He is right that we do work under some genetic constraints and are hence not totally free but we still can have and do have SOME liberties, and those are enormously beneficial. So it is no wonder that conservatives have long made efforts to conserve and extend liberties -- such as political liberty -- of various sorts, while also rejecting other liberties -- particularly in the moral sphere. Real-life conservatives believe in striking a balance -- which neither Leftists nor Mark do.

UPDATE: There is a fuller account of human nature here



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