Got into a discussion with a friend who is a biologist about the “human nature” argument against communism. My best shot was saying that we used to live in a sort of proto communism so the evidence of it working are there. He didn’t accept that argument and basicly said that due to natural selection, competition etc. and that all social structures eventually disolve.
I didn’t have good ideas on how to respond after that.
EDIT: Forgot the question, how could I have defended this argument more?
EDIT2: I read each and every comment anyone posts, I just can’t respond to all of you, thanks so much for the explanations it really goes to show how awesome this community is.
What they describe as “hoooman nature” is societal conditioning. Ask them if it makes a difference if people grow up in a poor household or a rich, have a childhood without education or with elite schools and coaching, have grown up in Nazi Germany or the USA (the last one might fire back).
In our capitalistic society we are trained for competition from early on. Our schools and our jobs are build for competing instead of cooperation. That is a choice that benefits out owners.
We all agree that we are very much shaped by our surroundings until our world view needs us to ignore that.
I think they answered this by saying that there were always natural selections which killed off the weak and only the strong survived.
And yet humans formed cooperative tribal configurations precisely because this was better at securing human survival.
True, I should’ve lead with this tbh.
Retrospect is always clearer!
Do they think that’s how modern society still operates? Do they think that’s how modern society ought to operate? If you make them spell it out you can probably already see where it leads.
The competitions we have aren’t natural and often just a sham anyway. And in the international competitions we see (both sports and economical) socialist countries regularly wipe up the floor with capitalist countries.
Another thing about competition is that it doesn’t bring out a general ideal, it brings narrow specialisation that you can’t really expect to be generally suitable under changing conditions.
Maybe he should stick to his science or read some more because that is not how society works or worked at all. What is humanity’s biggest strength but working (and thinking) together? Can in this regard a “old sick cripple” not be just as valuable as a healthy young person? Indeed they can and have been countless times. Pretty much nothing we have could be had without thousands of people working hand in hand, even if they never meet.
Natural selection is not very much a thing for us. I would rather call it societal selection, as we decide what is valuable and what is not. Who gets to live and who gets to die. And these decisions are shaped in most parts by our very much chosen modes of economy.
Hasn’t this version of the evolutionary theory been debunked by modern-day science multiple times and haven’t Darwin’s actual theories been updated? They even updated this shit in freshman year college classes!
https://ncse.ngo/misconception-monday-survival-fittest-part-1
https://ncse.ngo/misconception-monday-survival-fittest-part-2
How does one become a ‘biologist’ by believing in such outdated dogmas?
Ask him if he really thinks the rich who have accumulated and inherited capital over multiple generations, and who trample on actual hardworking, intelligent workers- are the ‘fittest’.
I will the next time I see him, I said I wanted to continue this discussion when I have more knowledge.
Even if this were true from a biological point of view, and even if we claim humans have been beholden to Darwinian natural selection after the dawn of civilization, we have to define what “strong” means in this context. Put simply, it means an organism survived long enough to reach sexual maturity. For humans, let’s be generous and say that’s 20 years old. Everything that happens after that is irrelevant. Humans have a 50% lifetime chance of developing cancer. Pretty shitty odds if you ask me, maybe evolution should have sorted that out. But it can’t, because most cancers develop well after our reproductive years.
That’s an extremely simplistic view of what natural selection is. I would further add that they probably don’t understand it.
deleted by creator
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: