This morning I am reflecting on our human tendency to form groups and interact in a spirit of comradery and goodwill. As mentioned earlier, we humans tend to create an “Us vs Them” mentality but when we interact with the “Us” group we act in more socially productive and healthy ways. We know it is…

Today we started our discussion by addressing the topic of Philosophy and Human Nature. First, I am defining philosophy as a “mind set” or way of looking at our existence that we form in our mind. When I say “our existence” I mean that to encompass all of our issues including what makes us “human”…

Our genetically determined traits are working on us all of the time giving us a predisposition toward certain behaviors.  This predisposition can be very strong or very weak. Most of us fall in the middle range where our genetic predispositions may not be determining factors because other influences from our environment exercise a stronger force…

Our conversation today revolved around human behavior as the most obvious pathway to understanding human nature. “What we do and don’t do is the bottom line on our human nature.”  This makes me think of Behavioral Psychology as pivotal in understanding our basic nature. We are looking for a subject matter expert in that area…

One of the key ideas that comes up in our conversations is that mankind is flawed on a basic level, a genetic level, and that this is where the cause lies for many or even most of our problems on the level of the wider society. What do you think about that idea?

Is this a simple and good way to recognize socially constructive vs socially destructive behaviors and tendencies that we have?  

Is it accurate to say that we are largely controlled by our basic underlying instincts and tendencies? What are some of our most common tendencies, observed across cultures and across human history? Which of the following do you relate to the most? Here are a few that we have identified: -Following a strong leader -Desire…

Here are some questions we are thinking about. What are your thoughts on these questions? What is human nature? How did we acquire our human nature? Can our human nature be altered? Is our human nature more likely skewed toward evil or  goodness? Can science adequately explain human nature? Is human nature responsible for much…

One of the most destructive tendencies we have as human beings is the tendency to be selfish. Acting in our own individual self interest seems like a given in our lives but if we don’t think of how our actions affect others it can be very destructive for the wider society as a whole. Selfishness…

Today David brought up the category of morality of human nature. What about morality as compared in different religions?  Morality and religion seem to act as a control on our basic human nature. Morality and religion are learned. We are not born with it. Whereas, we are born with our human nature. David’s point is…