> I'm firmly in the camp that "human nature", at least a large part of it, is no help at all if we're trying to create an egalitarian and anti-authoritarian society. Ernest Becker has some very good insights on the nature of social evil and attempts to change society in "Escape from Evil". His thesis is (sort of) the psychological equivalent of Dawkins: we need to understand what really drives human activity at the most basic level if we're going to try to create a society that (probably) works in spite of those forces.
The "human nature" debate is immensely problematic as well. I have a fairly large quote file of various scientists' and philosophers' opinion on the matter.
It's hard for me not to agree with Erich Fromm here:
"These and many other strivings and fears to be found in man develop as a reaction to certain life conditions.... None of these needs is fixed and rigid as if it were an innate part of human nature which develops and has to be satisfied under all circumstances." - Erich Fromm on greed, the desire for fame, and powerlust.
As well as:
"[The] most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed and biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man."
You also have:
"Man's nature is not to have a nature." - Maurice Merleau-Ponty
"There is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust towards existence." - Jean-Paul Sartre, _Existentialism_
etc.
Brian