Illiberal Progressive vs. Classical Liberal: Human Nature

Since my blog on Charlie Kirk's Liberal Legacy went viral (relative to my other posts), I committed myself to writing a series of blogs unpacking the comparative worldview matrix it sketched out. The table contrasting different philosophical beliefs of Illiberal Progressives and Classical Liberals seemed to strike a collective nerve, so I thought a deeper look would be a worthy project.

I am reminded of my first attempt at tackling a philosophical question as a sophomore in high school English class. Our teacher asked us to write an impromptu essay on whether human nature is essentially good or evil. Having never thought about the question before and with no access to or awareness of the civilization-long debates on the matter, I naturally defaulted to the kind of sentimental platitudes I had marinated in at the left-leaning church I long attended. My riveting thesis: Human nature is essentially good because of our universal capacity for love.

I thought it was pretty darn compelling stuff, myself. Visions of my enraptured and enlightened teacher writing "A+++++" on the chalk board ala Ralphie's theme on "What I Want for Christmas" (hint: A Christmas Story movie) is pretty close to how I felt about it. Isn't it all about love?

What I didn't realize is that my quasi-Christian sounding argument was essentially the base case for an illiberal progressive view of human nature. By making the argument that humans are wired for selfless altruism given proper nurture and edification, I was dabbling in some very well-intentioned, yet dangerous ideas. How can believing in the essential goodness and loving nature of humans be dangerous?

The Nature of the Question

But first - an important philosophical caveat. Instead of debating whether human nature is good or evil, which assumes moral absolutes, I’ll frame it as: What drives human behavior? What’s our natural engine and what fuels it? This sidesteps theological debates for now... We'll come back to them in another blog, I promise.

Illiberal Progressive Conception

Thomas Sowell wisely observed that Illiberal Progressives have an optimistic view of human nature that is "unconstrained." We all know that optimism means expecting desirable outcomes, but what does Sowell mean by unconstrained? In part, what it means that the obstacles to fruitful human behaviors are not built-in / internal to human nature. What is standing in our way is extrinsic to our human nature. The threats to our formation are primarily from the outside, not from the inside.

You may recall the philosophical debate during the Enlightenment era about whether human beings were born as a "tabula rasa" - or blank slate. Are humans internally pre-loaded and pre-coded with certain kinds of knowledge and behavior or are each of us a blank canvass waiting to be painted on by external experience and society/culture?

The Illiberal Progressive view tends to embrace something closer to a "blank slate" position (unless it is about sexual orientation). They think humans have a kind of benign internal hardware system that operates on whatever software that is uploaded to it. So if you take a human and load it up with a code of love and nurture, that is the kind of human you are likely to get. And if you take a human and load it up with a code of trauma and hate, that is the kind of human you are likely to get. In either case, what forms, motivates, and activates human nature is not internally constrained by pre-existing code, but is more determined by external programming, nurture, and environment.

Unconstrained Consequences

So consider: If this understanding is true, it means that if humans are given proper care and training, we can generally expect a fruitful human outcome. And if a human or group of humans is not behaving in a positive and productive way, what they probably need is to be remediated by proper care and reprogramming. There is no pre-loaded set of natural-internal constraints governing the outcome. Human nature is a generally pliable internal platform that responds to the environmental code it receives. Garbage in, garbage out. Goodness in, goodness out.

The implications are quite vast. Children don't require discipline as much as they require opportunities for personal safety, discovery, and development. Criminals and would-be criminals don't need punishment or deterrence as much as they need personal support and educational enlightenment. High crime areas need more social workers, better schools, and more free housing and health-care. Society can achieve quasi-utopian conditions a macro level if humans are given proper care by a collectively enlightened culture.

This is why Illiberal Progressives tend to view free market meritocracy as inherently destructive because it pits people against one another in competition instead of encouraging cooperation - reinforcing a malicious operating code. If we all want to live in a world of peace and fruitfulness, we need to create the macro conditions for maximum provision, education, and therapeutic nurture as possible. Any individualistic systems that undermine this pursuit are a threat to our common utopian future.

The Classically Liberal Conception

Constrained Realism obviously takes a starkly different view of human nature. Let's flip things for a moment and begin with the realism. The Classically Liberal view is not formed by an abstract aspirational hope for how we would like to view ourselves or others. Rather, it looks at the data of human history and our individual realities and recognizes that Unconstrained Optimism is not confirmed by our common experience.

Yes, humans have the capacity for great acts of beauty, love, and selflessness. But that capacity is easily matched by our capacity to engage in acts of self-destruction and communal malice. It doesn't take long to do a collective or personal inventory to see how often and how far we deviate from utopian principles and ideals.

An Illiberal Progressive might object - isn't this because society has never consistently put all the proper nurturing systems in place to provide different results? Aren't we just stuck in a broken feedback loop driven by misguided systems of oppression? John Lennon's lyrics for the song, "Imagine," poignantly express this point-of-view.

To Classical Liberal ears, this objection sounds exactly like Marxists who say that communism hasn't been proven a failure because it has never "really" been tried before... Maybe it has never "really" been tried before because it doesn't cut with the grain of our human nature. Communist ideals require something from individuals within a collective that the individuals cannot consistently give.

Classical Liberals believe that an unconstrained "blank slate" understanding of human nature is too simplistic and idealistic. Humans do receive inputs from their environment that are very influential over their development. But we do not arrive on the scene devoid of any internal pre-programming. Indeed, there is a basic level of operating code that every human is born with.

Our Fundamental Operating System

One of the most fundamental operating scripts humans have is the code of committed self-interest. This is not the same as an animalistic survival instinct. It also doesn't mean we can never act outside of our self-interests. What it means is that while we are biologically social beings, our basic inclinations are pointed toward pursuits that are self-serving and self-preserving. Even to the degree that a human is well-nurtured and taught to consider others in an altruistic way, the primary drive to pursue one's self interests is not erased or entirely supplanted.

This is not to say that self-interest is realized in purely economic terms, immediate gratification, or by a well-informed rational process. The variety of ways in which self-interest expresses itself are innumerable. We may seek rewards of social acceptance within the collective, comfort, safety, riches, fame, laughter, adrenaline rushes, numbing-out, etc. We generally also want to avoid social rejection, physical suffering, verbal abuse, poverty, ignorance, and disease. The pursuit of self-interest is a complex beast.

But beyond the constraint of being generally self-interested, humans are are also constrained by imperfect knowledge and real world trade-offs in decision-making. We often operate out of ignorance and even when we think we know something, cost-benefit analysis involves sacrificing one good for another. Life is not simple. Can you imagine the hubris of government central planners trying to account for all the details necessary to create a context for human flourishing? Neither can I. Ask Bernie Sanders, I guess.

The Classically Liberal view understands that human nature is more predictably responsive to systems of reward and deterrence. Again, not everyone will find all incentives and deterrences to be equally compelling. But I don't think many would argue that economic rewards are a powerful way to encourage positive performance. People don't aspire to be in the NBA just because basketball is fun. Human nature is complex, but it is not complicated to understand how self-interest navigates a world of imperfect trade-offs.

Two Illustrations

Story 1 - A politician in Europe was opining about the need to reduce carbon emissions by eliminating cars on the road. As a solution, she offered a new paradigm of everyone sharing cars they won't own - coordinated by a technology app on phones. If we could just all share cars instead of owning our own cars, we could do our part to save the planet. Mind you, important bureaucrats will not use that app or share program, but never mind. What on earth could stand in the way of such a plan? Answer: A Constrained Realist understanding of Human Nature.

Story 2 - There was a region in India that had a snake infestation, so authorities paid villagers a fee to bring decapitated snake heads to control the snake population. The government was shocked as the number of snake heads redeemed for bounty continued to rise. What was going on? Answer: People responded to the economic incentive by starting snake farms. The Constrained Realist understanding of Human Nature wins again.

In Conclusion

From understanding self to society - we cannot avoid the implications of our beliefs about human nature. I look back on my impromptu essay about human nature and smile. I still believe love lies at the heart of the human journey, but I hadn't connected all the worldview dots yet. Stick with me in this blog series and let's see if we can connect them all up.

Love, Brett.