> Actually, I think both Huxley and Kropotkin drew inferences from
> Darwin's work that Robin believes to be reasonable. That is, contrary
> to your conclusion, I think that Robin thinks that Huxley and
> Kropotkin are both "compatible" with Darwin, and that it is still an
> open question. To quote Robin again:
>
> Human nature was not forged in the anvil of known human history
> but rather under the neolithic conditions of prehistory about
> which we know far less. Were these conditions more likely to
> "select" individually aggressive traits or traits that enhanced
> effective cooperative behavior?
>
> If the answer to this question is not obvious, and if particular
> social institutions developed during recorded history would have
> elicited antisocial behavior even from people with sociable
> genetic dispositions, there is no more a priori reason to suppose
> that the "laws of evolution" have doomed us to be Hobbesian
> combatants than altruistic saints.
>
> Does that clear things up any?
>
> Bill
To add a further twist, consider Barbara Ehrenreich's argument in _Blood Rites_, which distinguishes between an evolutionary past which leaves us as vulnerable prey, and a more recent prehistoric past in which we learned how to turn the tables on the predators who threatened us.
Thus, instead of a unified genetic inheritance as grist for the mill, Ehrenreich presents us with picture of a conflicted dynamic inheritance. While her thesis doesn't bear immediately on human nature vis-a-vis economic cooperation vs. competition, it does inspire us to think more complexely about the nature of our prehistoric inheritance, and the mutability and flexibility of "human nature."
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
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