The Fallacy of Human Nature
The Skeptic Research Center released a report named “Are White People Morally Deviant?” While there are a number of problematic questions and results, we will focus only on one for this article.
It was a question where the respondent either agreed or disagreed with the statement “Prior to the arrival of European Settlers, Native American/Indigenous tribes lived in peace and harmony”. About 6 out of 10 Americans agreed with the statement. Before I continue, my criticism should not be placed squarely at one group of people but with all people and all groups of people.
For man is a wretched creature made with the astonishing capability to injure one another with little regard or compassion. In the prior century alone, there was a genocide in the Caucuses that killed nearly half of Armenians in Turkey, a genocide that took the lives of six million Jews in the heart of Europe, mass murder in the tundra of Siberia and man-made famines in Ukraine that took the lives of about 10 million people, mass murder in China due to a cultural revolution that took the lives of 30 million people, half the Tutsi population were killed in the Rwanda genocide, a fifth of Cambodia died in the Khmer Rouge Genocide, and multiple genocides in Sudan that lasted for generations.
Today, there may be at least three genocides occurring which get a fraction of the attention of a war on the edge of Europe. When it comes to the State of Nature, Thomas Hobbes’s view seems more aligned with reality than either John Locke’s or Jean-Jacques Rosseau’s view. But, let us turn our attention back to the survey.
To think Native Americans were any more peaceful than those who lived in Europe, Asia, or Africa is laughable. In North America, the Aztecs were the strongest empire before the Spanish arrived. Would we consider the Aztecs a peaceful group? Considering the Aztecs are best known for being a militaristic society that engaged in human sacrifice where they ripped the heart of their still-breathing prisoner and engaged in cannibalistic practices (Rensberger 1977), I highly doubt we can consider the Aztecs a peaceful group.
Instead, such violence would lead us to question the benevolence of their gods. Such practices along with the tyranny and repression led to, with no surprise, resentment from the groups they ruled. So, when the Spaniards came to Mexico, they already had willing allies who were eager to topple the Aztec Empire. On the Southern continent, we find not a peaceful group of people, but a civilization, the Incas, that engaged in human sacrifice of children (MacQuarrie 2013).
Even after the initial contact between the two worlds, we still see the violence in the new world even where Europeans had little presence. Powhatan, Pocahontas’ father, bragged about killing another tribe that had colonists, the Iroquois decimated other Native American groups, and the Native Americans of Texas, such as the Comanche, would routinely enslave women, killed babies, and tortured men as if it was the normal business practice on these prairies (S.C. Gwynne on JRE 2019).
Again, atrocities on these continents were not limited to the Native Americans, nor should we judge the Native Americans worse than any other group of people. One can easily write about the atrocities committed by the Spanish, British, American, and most, if not all, other groups that colonized the New World. As easily as one can list the atrocities in the New World committed by both Europeans and Native Americans, one can easily list atrocities being committed in the Old World in Europe, Asia, and Africa. To list all the atrocities committed by people on one another will lead to a story that is indefinite and infinite.
But, six out of 10 Americans believe that some people escaped the Laws of Nature. While I hope I dispelled this notion by pointing out the universality of sin within mankind, there is a fundamental purpose to this article.
If 6 out of 10 Americans believe is something that is empirically untrue, this means the educational system has failed 10 out of 10 Americans. By teaching that one group of people was good and another group was evil, you are teaching biased history, a history that is not based on facts, and history not rooted in human nature. There has never been a culture of pacifists or good-natured people because that culture would have been conquered, decimated, and erased during the Stone Age.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary” (Madison 1788).
“Without government, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes 1651).
In what all past people would consider our present a paradise, we have forgotten the Laws of Nature. And in our hubris, we can believe that some men escaped our place in the Natural World. If we do not reconcile with this fact and instead go on to teach to hate one another, soon there will be nothing left but anarchy. With no answerable government installed, we will be at the mercy and under the full force of nature.
