The question of 'natural inclination' in human beings is a murky and controversial one, given our ancestry and our own inclination to think of ourselves as motivated largely by intellectual independence and rationality. Granted, I speak as one trained as an anthropologist with a specialty in human origins. What exactly we brought with us…
The question of 'natural inclination' in human beings is a murky and controversial one, given our ancestry and our own inclination to think of ourselves as motivated largely by intellectual independence and rationality. Granted, I speak as one trained as an anthropologist with a specialty in human origins. What exactly we brought with us in terms of genetic inclinations as we crossed the boundaries from mammal to primate to Homo is fraught with complexity. Having said that, I do think that one of the most powerful of those inclinations is territoriality. In animals, of course, this is necessary survival mechanism, but we have taken it to an intellectual and imaginative level far above that, and it has greatly helped to create in us all those 'us and them' tendencies which so bedevil us. Do we have a natural inclination to act out of love toward others? Within whatever groups with which we identify ourselves, perhaps. But we are also, as were all of our ancestral groups, an intensely parochial species. I'd suggest that what MacBeth heard upon his stage was the sound of that of which we are truly made, the animal, the poet, the builder, and the would-be god. It is the sounds and the effects of our fears, our dreams, our tools, and our hubris that has filled the world since the Agricultural Revolution began to fill the earth with enough of us to make us heard well above the sounds of other life forms.
As to the moral education of adolescents, speaking as one who taught boys on the verge of adolescence for over 40 years, I'd ask whose moral code you would prioritize, for there are many, and the boys brought them in from home, from their peers, and from all the myriad and conflicting sources with which we live in these days of far too early a universal access.
The question of 'natural inclination' in human beings is a murky and controversial one, given our ancestry and our own inclination to think of ourselves as motivated largely by intellectual independence and rationality. Granted, I speak as one trained as an anthropologist with a specialty in human origins. What exactly we brought with us in terms of genetic inclinations as we crossed the boundaries from mammal to primate to Homo is fraught with complexity. Having said that, I do think that one of the most powerful of those inclinations is territoriality. In animals, of course, this is necessary survival mechanism, but we have taken it to an intellectual and imaginative level far above that, and it has greatly helped to create in us all those 'us and them' tendencies which so bedevil us. Do we have a natural inclination to act out of love toward others? Within whatever groups with which we identify ourselves, perhaps. But we are also, as were all of our ancestral groups, an intensely parochial species. I'd suggest that what MacBeth heard upon his stage was the sound of that of which we are truly made, the animal, the poet, the builder, and the would-be god. It is the sounds and the effects of our fears, our dreams, our tools, and our hubris that has filled the world since the Agricultural Revolution began to fill the earth with enough of us to make us heard well above the sounds of other life forms.
As to the moral education of adolescents, speaking as one who taught boys on the verge of adolescence for over 40 years, I'd ask whose moral code you would prioritize, for there are many, and the boys brought them in from home, from their peers, and from all the myriad and conflicting sources with which we live in these days of far too early a universal access.