chomsky, noam_'on human nature,' noam chomsky interviewed by kate soper

8/2/2019 Chomsky, Noam_'on Human Nature,' Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Kate Soper

1/4

22/04/2012 On Human Nature, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Kate Soper

1/4www.chomsky.info/interviews/199808--.htm

On Human Nature

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Kate Soper

Red Pepper, August, 1998

QUESTION: You have argued that any stance one takes on political, economic, social or even personal issues is

ultimately based on some conception of human nature. Why is this?

CHOMSKY: Any stance we take is based on some conception of what is good for people. This conception will tacitly

presuppose a certain belief as to the constitution of human nature -- human needs and human potential. You might

as well bring them out as clearly as possible so that they can be discussed.

QUESTION: According to your view of human nature, all human beings possess certain biological functions endowing

them with common mental capacities. How do you defend this position against postmodernist critics who argue that

there is no such thing as human nature, and that all attempts to define it are guilty of reading other cultures in the

light of Western perceptions and values?

CHOMSKY: Not even the most extreme postmodernist can seriously argue that there is no such thing as human

nature. They may argue that the exact properties of human nature are difficult to substantiate -- this is certainly

correct. However, it is impossible to coherently argue that an intrinsic, universal human nature does not exist. This

amounts to the belief that the next human zygote conceived might just as well develop into a worm or a crab as a

human being. Postmodernists might limit their assertion to denying any effect of human nature on our mental make-

up -- our values, our knowledge, our wants, etc. This also makes no sense. The postmodernist will argue that a child

growing up in New York will develop a certain way of thinking, and if that child had grown up amongst Amazon

tribespeople she would have developed a completely different way of thinking. This is true. But we must then askhow a child could develop these different consciousnesses. In whatever environment it finds itself, the child will

mentally construct a rich and complex culture on the basis of the extremely scattered and limited phenomena it is

exposed to. That consideration tells us (in advance of any detailed knowledge) that there must be an extraordinary

directive and organisational component to the mind that is internal. We can begin to see human nature in terms of

certain capacities to develop certain mental traits. I think we can go further than this and begin to discover universal

aspects of these mental traits which are determined by human nature. I think we can find this in the area of

morality. For example, not long ago I talked to people in Amazon tribes and I took it for granted that they have the

same conception of vice and virtue as I do. It is only through sharing these values that we were able to interact --

talking about real problems such as being forced out of the jungle by the state authorities. I believe I was correct toassume this: we had no problem communicating although we were as remote as is possible culturally.

QUESTION: Are you suggesting everyone agrees about the nature of vice and virtue?

CHOMSKY: In fact I think they probably have a very high measure of agreement. One strong bit of evidence for this is

that everyone -- a Genghis Khan, Himmler, Bill Gates -- creates stories of themselves where they interpret their

actions as working for the benefit of human beings. Even at the extreme levels of depravity, the Nazis did not boast

that they wanted to kill Jews, but gave crazed justifications -- even that they were acting in 'self-defence'. It is very

rare for people to justify their actions by saying 'I'm doing this to maximise my own benefit and I don't care what

happens to anybody else'. That would be pathological.

QUESTION: Most people certainly try to offer moral justifications for what they do. But there is also enormous

diversity in what they do, and defend as right to do.


2/4



CHOMSKY: And there is a lot of variation in people's size. Take a walk through a museum where they have the armour

from medieval knights and just look at the size of them: you could barely put a child into that armour. We have the

same genes today as people did then, but we are very different because there have been radical changes in diet.

This is characteristic of every aspect of organic development. Hence we should not be in the least surprised to

discover that it is also characteristic of our social nature, our moral positions and so on. We are biological creatures.

QUESTION: But I think you would agree that not all cultures are equally viable from the standpoint of promoting

human fulfilment and wellbeing? Are you wanting to argue that your understanding of human nature can give us a

kind of objective understanding of the conditions of human flourishing?

CHOMSKY: Now we're taking an essentialist position which the relativist would contradict. I'm not willing to go that

far. We can develop a stronger conception of human nature through drawing on Enlightenment thinking on the issue.

This has support from some of the sciences, but is mainly founded on a philosophical investigation into our hopes,

intuition and experience, and an examination of history and cultural variety. There are needs for conditions which

allow the flourishing of human capacities. Insights from the Enlightenment show us that people need to exist in free

association with others -- not in isolation, and not in relations of domination. There is a need to replace social

fetters with social bonds. Therefore any social structure that involves relations of domination -- whether it's the

family, a transnational corporation, gender relations -- has a very heavy burden of proof to bear. It must demonstrate

that the benefits it provides outweigh the restrictions it imposes on human capacities. If it can't demonstrate its

legitimacy, it should be dismantled.

QUESTION: Right. Can I ask you about your position on the possibility of ecological constraints on the realisation of

human needs? Do you think -- even if there were the political will to achieve it -- that it might be impossible, for

ecological reasons, to provide the necessary conditions for continued human flourishing?

CHOMSKY: Humans may well be a nonviable organism.

QUESTION: Do you think they are?

CHOMSKY: It's very likely. From an evolutionary point of view, higher intelligence seems to be maladaptive rather than

adaptive. Biologically successful organisms have a rigid character and are well adapted to a certain environmental

niche. If higher intelligence helped adaptation you would expect it to have arisen over and over again. However, it

didn't. It arose in a single, not particularly successful organism, Homo Sapiens. And while the human population

exploded, human societies developed in a way that has caused enormous damage to the environment. The human

race could destroy itself and much organic life as a result.

QUESTION: Do you think that different social and economic circumstances either block or reinforce certain

dispositions -- that, for example, whatever there might be in the way of a natural tendency towards selfish and

aggressive behaviour is reinforced by the capitalist market society?

CHOMSKY: There's no doubt about it. Let's take Germany, for example. In the early 20th century Germany was the

most advanced area of Western culture -- in music, the arts, science. In the passage of a few years, it entered the

absolute depths of human history. Small changes in German society allowed people like Joseph Mengele to flourish

rather than people like Einstein and Freud. The market is a radical experiment which violated fundamental human

needs and capacities. You can see this in the violent struggles that were required to impose market conditions on

people. In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per

year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they

aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.

QUESTION: Granted the truth of what you say about our distinctively human capacities for freedom and co-operative

action, how come we are so open to that kind of manipulation and deceit? How come we remain both globally and


3/4



locally so caught up in oppression?

CHOMSKY: It's a serious question. Why are we born free and end up enslaved?

QUESTION: Is there a case here for viewing social factors as more determinant than biological factors?

CHOMSKY: You can't say which factor is more decisive. They interact. Take the example of puberty: small changes in

nutrition can modify the onset of puberty by a factor of two, or even terminate it altogether. Or the visual system: in

a kitten you can destroy the neural basis for vision simply by not presenting pattern stimulation in the first couple ofweeks of its life. However, does this mean that the environment is the decisive force? No. Puberty is a process which

human beings undergo at a particular stage of maturation because that's the way they've been designed. You don't

undergo puberty because of peer pressure. Likewise, human limbs will not develop into wings rather than arms or

legs. The genetic component determines strict limits within which variation is possible. I believe the same is true of

our social and mental development.

QUESTION: Your ultimate political goal is anarchistic, the erosion of state institutions and any form of authoritarian

control. But you have also recognised the need to defend some forms of state regulation as protection against a

wholly unregulated market. Can you say more on how you view this two-edged process of possible political

transformation?

CHOMSKY: I'm not in favour of people being in cages. On the other hand I think people ought to be in cages if there's

a sabre-toothed tiger wandering around outside and if they go out of the cage the sabre-toothed tiger will kill them.

So sometimes there's a justification for cages. That doesn't mean cages are good things. State power is a good

example of a necessary cage. There are sabre-toothed tigers outside; they are called transnational corporations

which are among the most tyrannical totalitarian institutions that human society has devised. And there is a cage,

namely the state, which to some extent is under popular control. The cage is protecting people from predatory

tyrannies so there is a temporary need to maintain the cage, and even to extend the cage.

QUESTION: How is the aspiration for freedom being manifested today?

CHOMSKY: The current period is incredibly encouraging. There is more popular activism in more areas than at any time

I can remember -- labour struggles, environmental issues, women's rights, children's rights, respect for other cultures.

I can't think of a time when there have been so many people who were ready and eager to undertake direct action.

There are far more than at any time in the 19th century, or in the 1960s. The feminist movement, environmental

movements and solidarity movements have only fully emerged in the last 20 years. However, it is extremely scattered

and chaotic. In the United States, people in one corner of a town don't know that there's somebody in the other

corner of the same town doing the same thing. But that does not remove the fact that there is a profound continuitybetween these different movements.

They are all struggling for human liberation. They are all trying to free people from constraints on the viability of

human life, like lack of food or decent work, and also on constraints that are imposed by social relations of

domination. They are also strongly motivated by solidarity.

Recent movements have exhibited significant broadenings of the moral sphere where people have accepted

responsibility towards wider and wider sections of people. Concern for indigenous tribal people is new. The

environmental movement exhibits solidarity that extends to future generations -- that's also new. These moral

changes are comparable to those that accompanied the abolition of slavery.

QUESTION: How do you see the relationship between work and free time in a more liberated society?

CHOMSKY: Polls in the US, Germany and elsewhere have shown that people value free time over material goods.


4/4



, .

marketing in the USA is to try to undermine our natural tendency to want free, liberated time.

QUESTION: How do you envisage the development of radical movements in the future? Do we need a uniting vision?

CHOMSKY: Movements have to be developed by the activists themselves in response to local circumstances -- the

possibilities, the willingness to take risks, the level of understanding. What needs to be done varies day by day.

Sometimes it's a meeting; sometimes it's a demonstration; sometimes it's civil disobedience; sometimes a general

strike; sometimes it may be taking over a factory. It is important not to have too restrictive a vision of a futuresociety. The situation may change to make that society impossible or undesirable. Marx's vision was extremely

skeletal. What is more important is to react to local circumstances and transform oppressive forces into forces for

liberation. Take the automation of production for an example. The same technology that is used to deskill workers

and enslave them can be used to eliminate the stupid boring work that nobody wants to do. We already know where

we could go from here in transforming capitalism without leading to centralised state control. There is a range of

opinion running from anarcho-syndicalists to left Marxists and council Communists that have a decentralised vision of

social organisation and planning. Final executive power would be held at the level of workers' councils and could be

transferred up to federal organisations. We don't know whether or even how that would work. These are things that

you can only discover by trying.

chomsky, noam_'on human nature,' noam chomsky interviewed by kate soper

Documents