# Would it be justified to remove the negative aspects of human nature entirely through fantastical means? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 6, 2024, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273 "2024-12-06T20:58:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2025, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/61 "2025-01-19T12:00:38Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Japan went virtually overnight from an authoritarian state with a quasi-religious standing of their Emperor, whose newspapers gleefully reported on mass murders of civilians abroad, to a liberal democracy and hello kitty. > Cultures can change, fast. Political systems can change rapidly (see also the fall of communism) but I don’t think there really was a fast cultural change in Japan after the war. It already had a strong centralised authority, which had chosen decades earlier to adopt practices and technology from the West - that’s why Japan was one of very few countries to resist European colonisation, and was in a position to colonise neighbouring countries and start WWII by invading China. And as I said, it’s still pretty different from Western countries, and not particularly liberal as we would define it. AFAIK, unlike Germany with its extensive education on the Holocaust, most Japanese deny war crimes to this day. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2025, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/62 "2025-01-19T13:46:23Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Political systems can change rapidly […] Like implementing democracy then? If you’re saying that the culture doesn’t matter and even a culture that praised violence, and was happy to have a divine ruler and lack of freedom is irrelevant to whether a country can completely change political systems…what’s happened to your original point? Your point about Afghanistan was that the culture \*is\* the signficant factor. > [@DemonTree](#): > > […] but I don’t think there really was a fast cultural change in Japan after the war. This is just wrong. It was widely believed (and part of Shinto teaching) that the Emperor was a divine incarnation. And violence was enough a part of the culture that, like I say, newspapers covered stories like a beheading competition between Japanese soldiers. Barbatic images (too graphic for me to even to state here what they depict, but if you insist I’ll put it in a spoiler box) were celebrated in Japanese media. The culture absolutely did change, hugely and rapidly. I’m not sure you could have picked a worse example for this point that you are clinging to. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2025, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/63 "2025-01-19T21:27:59Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > And religion is created when people try rationalize these rituals. No; religion is about denial of reality (faith) and extreme dominance/submission (worship). Only if the rituals in question deny reality or are intended to create irrational submission & obedience in the participants would they be religious. Pushing superstition & bigotry or a tyranny attempting to psychologically reinforce their position. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2025, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/64 "2025-01-20T16:15:57Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Like implementing democracy then? > If you’re saying that the culture doesn’t matter and even a culture that praised violence, and was happy to have a divine ruler and lack of freedom is irrelevant to whether a country can completely change political systems…what’s happened to your original point? Your point about Afghanistan was that the culture _is_ the signficant factor. Are you actually arguing that culture doesn’t matter for development? Isn’t it obvious that cultural attitudes have a massive influence on eg levels of corruption, and on political stability - both crucial for a wealthy society? Laws and constitutions are only as good as the people charged with upholding them, and democracy is only as good as the electorate; the last few years in America have confirmed that. And it’s a whole hell of a lot easier to wreck a good political culture than to build one. Getting people to cooperate is a lot harder than getting them to defect. That’s _why_ it’s so bad that Trump was elected again. Or are you claiming that an adult who was raised as a subsistence farmer is equally prepared to live in and contribute to a highly technological society as someone who was raised in that society? Or that someone raised in a society where corruption is seen as normal or in some causes laudable isn’t going to bring that attitude with them? Why else do you think some countries are orders of magnitude more productive, wealthy, and innovative than others? Obviously factors like natural resources make a difference to wealth, but we aren’t seeing a whole lot of scientific progress come out of Saudi Arabia. The only other possibility is genes, and I doubt that’s what you meant to imply. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2025, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/65 "2025-01-21T12:49:12Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Are you actually arguing that culture doesn’t matter for development? Of course not. If your opening post had been that it is harder to institute and maintain democracy in Afghanistan for multiple cultural, historic and economic reasons, then sure. But your point seemed to be that culture is the key block and contrasted with post-war germany and japan. The problem is that those countries’ cultures changed hugely; Japan might be the quickest cultural about turn in modern times. Now, I think I get the distinction that you are trying to make: that even if Japan was a place that glorified violence and was virtually a theocracy, the culture was nonetheless democracy-ready in important ways like having a sense of duty to the nation state. And I would agree with that…but I would argue that if we are saying that cultures can change hugely, why would that kind of change be off the table? ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2025, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/66 "2025-01-21T13:57:22Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Now, I think I get the distinction that you are trying to make: that even if Japan was a place that glorified violence and was virtually a theocracy, the culture was nonetheless democracy-ready in important ways like having a sense of duty to the nation state. Yes, exactly. I don’t think I expressed it very well, but I believe some cultural traits are more compatible with democracy and/or capitalism than others. And my impression is that Japanese culture is more different from European cultures, and the country less democratic to this day than most people realise, but I’m just going off second-hand accounts. Basically, there are a whole bunch of ideas and attitudes and methods of social organisation that underpin institutions in Western countries, and most people living in those countries don’t really realise it. Everyone thinks their own culture is normal. Depending how different they are and in what ways, it may be impossible to transplant Western institutions to other countries/cultures without radically changing those other cultures first. It’s from this book: > **[The WEIRDest People in the World](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World)** > > The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous is a 2020 book by Harvard professor Joseph Henrich that aims to explain history and psychological variation using approaches from cultural evolution and evolutionary psychology. In the book, Henrich explores how institutions and psychology jointly influence each other over time. More specifically, he argues that a series of Catholic Church edicts on marriage that began in the 4th century u... ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2025, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/67 "2025-01-21T20:47:10Z")
All right, I’ll cool my jets at this point. I thought your original point was trying to talk about what certain cultures are _capable_ of achieving and was a jumping off point for bigoted rhetoric; as we now live in an environment where that has become commonplace. But as you’re just saying democracy may be harder to institute successfully in current afghanistan than some other cultures, sure, I agree. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2025, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/68 "2025-01-21T21:06:11Z")
Conversely, I don’t thing anyone would argue against the fact that the Japanese are a fundamentally law-abiding culture, so when the Americans wrote them a new Constitution that said they were a democracy, the Japanese public basically went, “Well, the law says we’re a democracy now, so we guess we’re going to be a democracy.” It was a top-down process, but Japan is a top-down culture, so it worked. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/69 "2025-01-22T16:14:38Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Conversely, I don’t thing anyone would argue against the fact that the Japanese are a fundamentally law-abiding culture, so when the Americans wrote them a new Constitution that said they were a democracy, the Japanese public basically went, “Well, the law says we’re a democracy now, so we guess we’re going to be a democracy.” It was a top-down process, but Japan is a top-down culture, so it worked Yes. The ability to do that is also a cultural attribute. I don’t think it would work so well in America, let alone Afghanistan. > [@Mijin](#): > > But as you’re just saying democracy may be harder to institute successfully in current afghanistan than some other cultures, sure, I agree. It was seeing how badly US efforts were going there and in Iraq that made me realise there are more differences between countries than wealth or poverty. Afghans may want the wealth and freedom that comes with living in a developed society, but that doesn’t mean they are willing or able to give up important aspects of their own culture to get there. The book I linked to theorises about exactly what cultural attributes are necessary, and one of the most important is the ability to cooperate with and trust strangers. But you can’t snap your fingers and get people to do that; it’s something that has to evolve gradually as you see people keep their promises, and that the state is willing and able to punish those who break the social contract. But this has given me a funny thought. We often say communism is impossible because it conflicts with human nature, but Japanese or our own society could seem just as implausible from the view of outsiders - people regularly trust others not to cheat them, and the police and courts to back them up if someone does. They hand in lost wallets to the police, many literally donate their own blood to total strangers for no reward. Maybe communism could work, it’s just that no country has developed the necessary technological and cultural underpinnings yet? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/70 "2025-01-22T17:27:02Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > one of the most important is the ability to cooperate with and trust strangers. But you can’t snap your fingers and get people to do that; it’s something that has to evolve gradually as you see people keep their promises Which the USA has been pretty terrible about doing. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/71 "2025-01-22T19:32:10Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Afghans may want the wealth and freedom that comes with living in a developed society, but that doesn’t mean they are willing or able to give up important aspects of their own culture to get there Again, it might seem like splitting hairs but I am not comfortable with phrasing of “able” to institute democracy. Let alone wealth, which is what you seem to be alluding to here. Pretty much every culture has tribal underpinnings, these things change. And economies can rise within a generation. Of course you do go on to say that it can “evolve gradually”, I just think we should strip out the part about “able” because it still feels like looking down on another culture, or treating them as another species. I also disagree about all of this needing to be bottom-up; for example many countries have made massive progress on combating corruption from the top-down. There didn’t need to be a wholesale social revolution first. > [@DemonTree](#): > > We often say communism is impossible because it conflicts with human nature I would certainly disagree with anyone saying that. Not because I’m a fan of Communism, but almost everything we do conflicts with human nature. Personal hygiene is not something which comes naturally to us. We have an incredible capacity to learn and function within the rules of a society. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/72 "2025-01-22T20:05:07Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Personal hygiene is not something which comes naturally to us. That’s not true. All great apes constantly groom themselves and others. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/73 "2025-01-22T20:13:11Z")
Of course it is. There’s a big difference between picking off itchy insects and showering daily, washing hands etc. Hence why even surgeons were initially reluctant to bother to clean themselves between surgeries; none of that came naturally to us. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/74 "2025-01-22T21:29:57Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Which the USA has been pretty terrible about doing. I’d say it’s been extremely successful considering it’s a nation of immigrants. It’s a much bigger challenge to get people from different origins to cooperate and see themselves as one polity than in a comparatively very homogeneous nation like Japan. > [@Mijin](#): > > Of course you do go on to say that it can “evolve gradually”, I just think we should strip out the part about “able” because it still feels like looking down on another culture, or treating them as another species. Dude. Don’t tell me not to look down on people who support a government that’s so absurdly misogynistic it banned women from talking or showing their faces in public, let alone working or getting an education. If some subculture in the UK did that, I doubt you’d have a problem criticising it. Let me try and explain my point again. Sometimes acting a certain way is advantageous, but only if everyone, or a critical mass of people, is doing it. If most other people are following different rules, it’s a disadvantage. So it’s hard to switch from one to the other - just wanting to isn’t enough. And governments have the problem that they must rely on people to implement their orders, people who are subject to these same incentives. > [@Mijin](#): > > for example many countries have made massive progress on combating corruption from the top-down Do you have some examples? > [@Mijin](#): > > Of course it is. There’s a big difference between picking off itchy insects and showering daily, washing hands etc. Hence why even surgeons were initially reluctant to bother to clean themselves between surgeries; none of that came naturally to us. The vast majority of cultures have some sort of personal hygiene practices, don’t they? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/75 "2025-01-22T22:02:29Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > Which the USA has been pretty terrible about doing. > > I’d say it’s been extremely successful considering it’s a nation of immigrants. I said the USA has been pretty terrible about keeping its promises. I said it in particular reference to Afghanistan, but right at the moment we’re going back on a shitload of other promises, and we’ve done it before. People in Afghanistan had plenty of reason to think that we’d do it again. If they’d had reason to trust us, maybe things would have come out differently. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/76 "2025-01-22T22:20:29Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I said the USA has been pretty terrible about keeping its promises. Ah, I misunderstood you. Never mind. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/77 "2025-01-22T23:25:34Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Dude. Don’t tell me not to look down on people who support a government that’s so absurdly misogynistic it banned women from talking or showing their faces in public, let alone working or getting an education. That isn’t what I was saying at all. What I was clearly talking about was whether a culture / population is _able to change_. I highlighted the word “able”, twice, suggesting that saying a culture is unable to change is looking down on that population. That’s a very different thing from saying you cannot criticize where that culture is today. > [@DemonTree](#): > > The vast majority of cultures have some sort of personal hygiene practices, don’t they? Also irrelevant to the point being put to you. Is this deliberate? ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2025, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273/78 "2025-01-22T23:46:55Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > That isn’t what I was saying at all. > What I was clearly talking about was whether a culture / population is _able to change_. I highlighted the word “able”, twice, suggesting that saying a culture is unable to change is looking down on that population. That’s a very different thing from saying you cannot criticize where that culture is today. Well that wasn’t clear to me. I thought you were just being pedantic about which words I used. Obviously any culture or population is able to change. My point was that the cultural change would need to come first (I realise you disagree about this), and may be difficult and slow, and potentially resisted by the people concerned if it’s something they don’t want. > [@Mijin](#): > > Also irrelevant to the point being put to you. Is this deliberate? Is _what_ deliberate? It’s hardly irrelevant to question your premise. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-justified-to-remove-the-negative-aspects-of-human-nature-entirely-through-fantastical-means/1011273.md?page=3)