Readers Write In #664: Is man evil by nature?

By G Waugh

‘Man by nature, is selfish. That is precisely why socialist societies don’t get created so easily unless by force. Even if they do, they don’t last’

I have seen these lines being offered as counter-argument whenever I had tried to ‘convert’ my friends or relatives into socialism.

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When you ask me about man’s nature, I wouldn’t give you a very simplistic definition as given above. I would try to approach the territory of science by averring,

‘Man’s nature is part genes and part environment. It is a product of both. We can never really specify where genes end and where environment begins.’

When I used to visit my parents’ birthplace a few times almost a couple of decades ago, a remote village in the southern part of Tamilnadu, I have seen neighbours of my parents’ relatives inquiring into my ‘racing descent into blindness’ plainly by looking at my glasses. I had then and I still have short sight that continues to hover over -4 Dioptre. A lot of older people as well as people belonging to the newer generation, I still don’t know why had asked me multiple questions about why was I wearing glasses and for how many hours am I supposed to be wearing them per day. A lot of people living in the same street as my parents’ brothers know a lot about their neighbours including the medical condition of each one of them especially about the elders, the educational qualifications or misadventures of each teenager and where and how each girl in the neighbourhood was married to and settled in some other town or city.

During one of my visits, I had to my misfortune, taken ill and I still remember neighbours rushing out to inquire about me on a daily basis with some people offering herbal concoctions and/or valuable advice on how to fight the illness and recover quickly. If you think deeply about it, there are two ways to look at it, one – why are they so nosy and so unnecessarily interested in what we do and how we go about our daily lives? And there is another way too- in the way they barge into our supposedly private lives, why can’t we look for more than what appears to be mere curiosity or some kind of voyeuristic sadism?

The day when I departed from the village, I had to answer at least fifteen people from the street where I stayed to assure them of my complete recovery from the illness. I am sure I can vouch for the fact that at least half of those people appeared to be genuinely concerned not just about my health but also my future well-being.

The abhorrence that I had towards them in the initial days of my stay on their unnecessary overstepping into the bounds of my private life had by the time I had bid them good-bye transformed into a feeling of tenderness arising out of a genuine fascination about how kind these people are towards a boy whom they hadn’t met before or whom they wouldn’t meet at least for another half a decade or so. 

I would sometimes contrast this with how people living in the same apartment complex in a city like Chennai appear extremely indifferent towards their neighbours and perennially pre-occupied with their own supposedly strife-torn, super-turbulent personal lives.

I know a lot of people in my apartment complex in one of Chennai’s suburbs who, while not paying their monthly flat maintenance charges on time every month, approaching me with extreme audacity to complain sometimes about how poorly maintained the premises are. I know a lot of them who wouldn’t want to take up the supervision of a motor repair on extremely flimsy grounds forcing people like us to own the responsibility up even if it entails taking a day off from our work.

I am afraid I am assuming the tone of a typical yesteryear MGR movie where all village people are broad-minded and altruistic while those living in cities are human robots drilled in with red-chips programmed to act in purely selfish and condescending ways.

But my point is something completely different – if man is essentially a selfish organism as is often assumed to be, who is perpetually obsessed with the well-being of himself and himself alone, how do we meet people of a completely different calibre in small towns and villages? How does man whose nature is supposedly set in stone- unprincipled, selfish and insular always- act in a particular way in one environment and in a completely different way in another?

I will try to answer this question in the way I think I am so good at- the Marxist way. Marx says that there is no single definitive answer to the question of man’s intrinsic nature and behaviour. Man, as long as he was a savage was someone who could think of his whole tribe as one family. The murder of one person in the tribe by an opposing tribe was considered to be a loss to everyone as a whole and every single individual of the tribe was then programmed to even lay down his life in the pursuit of avenging it.

When man entered the era of feudalism, even the supposedly cruel, all-usurping landlord had a definite obligation to take care of the family of his workman on account of his death or injury.

Only after human societies entered the era of capitalism, which placed a premium on self-centredness and individual achievement, did man learn to worry about only himself at the expense of others.

Even today villages many of which still seem to be predominantly agricultural (feudal in socio-economic terms) and relying on small businesses, artisans and other workshops for their day-to-day needs preserve values that belong to the feudal era which include concern for relatives, neighbours and of course people belonging to the same caste and community. Tamil novels that narrate stories belonging to the pre-independence era or the second half of the 19^th century have protagonists and characters who are brought up by their maternal uncles and distant relatives right from their childhood almost till their bachelor days. These scenarios are totally unimaginable in today’s cities of India which are fast getting sucked into the global capitalist maelstrom where anything or anyone outside one’s immediate family is considered to be alien or at least totally expendable.

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The most crucial aspect of Marxist theory is its emphasis on the centrality of prevailing socio-economic systems (savagery, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism) in determining the values, preferences and cultural attributes of a particular era.

Simply by knowing the prevalent socio-economic system of a particular era, Marxism helps you to broadly define the most important cultural parameters of the time- the status of women in the society, equations between people in a family, relations between a consumer and a producer in a market, status of a citizen vis-à-vis the government, etc.

When man began his journey into civilization as a savage, the status of women was at an all-time high (as a leader of the tribe especially in matrilineal societies). Every individual was subordinated to a tribe or a local community. The idea of a family was yet to be conceived. Whatever was found or acquired belonged to and was consumed by the community itself and there was no place for individual usurpation. The community head held a higher position when compared to others but he too had numerous obligations to fulfil.

Man’s entry into slavery and the subsequent era of feudalism changed things a lot. The idea of family was conceived and taken to the next level in these years. Man began to care for his wife, children and blood relatives. This was the first time in history when man began to produce food in surplus by himself and women were expected to produce more and more children not only on account of better health conditions but also to serve as sources of additional income through farm labour. The position of the male in the family rose to unprecedented levels on account of the family’s dependence on him for their survival and well-being. The position of the slave/workman to his master also plunged dramatically as the survival of him and his family was heavily dependent on the whim of the latter. The same kind of relationship existed between the citizen and the government and kings were assumed to be human incarnations of the Supreme.

Man passed into the era of capitalism at a much later stage(even if the transition to it hasn’t completed in many parts of the world fully, including villages and towns in India). This was the first time something called modern education took its place and schools for learning basic skills were setup all over the world. The introduction of industrial machinery reduced the dependence of the processes of production of commodities on man and allowed even women into the workplace. This was the first time in several thousand years when women were given the opportunity to taste something called financial and subsequently social independence. The breaking down of dependencies on each other within the family found parallels outside as well. There was no overwhelming dependence of a worker on his employer at least on paper (and vice-versa) and he was free for the first time to choose his workplace and profession. This sudden unfettering of an individual from his social as well as economic bonds took a toll on his relationship with his community and neighbourhood as well. After centuries of interdependence on or the other like his family, community or society for survival, man for the first time tasted at least a smidgen of (though largely illusory) freedom. The system of capitalism also pitted one worker against another, one employer against another and of course one country against another in the race towards economic well-being and prosperity, all of which emphasized the importance of individual self-aggrandizement.

Citizens for the first time in centuries, were entrusted with the authority to select their ruler and modern democracy started the trend of demystifying hitherto ‘Divine’ rulers and officials and placed them on a relatively equal pedestal with that of the citizen.

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Each era associated with a particular socio-economic system (relations of production in Marxist terms) brings a set of pre-requisites along with it. Man is expected to adhere to them for his well-being and those pre-requisites naturally set the rules for the formation of relationships and societies. Man was taught to value his tribe above himself and this kind of conditioning made him a faithful, altruistic member of his community in the era of savagery.

Similarly, feudalism (era of agriculture) demanded unprecedented levels of manual labour from humanity and the males in the society were bound by rules to scale up to them.However, the remnants of the savage era such as caring for a larger number of people belonging to the same bloodline remained in the feudal era too. The availability of a large network of family members came in handy in case of sudden deaths due to epidemics or droughts or wars which were in abundance in those times. Man was conditioned accordingly to the changed circumstances in the feudal era nurturing some kind of a devoted link not only to his family but also to his master and the king as well.

The arrival of capitalism brought the benefits of modern education and medicine as well. The number of epidemics was reduced while the creation of large, modern nation states brought an unprecedented level of political stability across the world reducing conflicts and wars. This meant not only an increase in the average life expectancy of human beings but also the elimination of the need to maintain a large network of relatives and friends.The advent of competition not only in the commodity market but also in that of labour demanded man to look at his peer purely as a competitor who aims for the same set of limited resources under capitalism. These new found rules forced man to rethink his ties not only with his family but also with those of his community and even nationality.

To conclude, there is only one thing to say – man’s nature is not something that can be easily defined. And the socio-economic system under which he is brought up though not fixed or one-dimensional always, plays a disproportionately larger role in determining his nature, behaviour and values.

India’s cities and its labour markets are getting rapidly integrated with global capitalism and every individual is expected to play by its rules to keep surviving. Prolonged exposure to living under a particular socio-economic system tends to alter the nature of those exposed to it. If individualism is the name of the game, man has demonstrated his ability to shed his feudal instincts (for good or bad) and give it a shot.

Similarly, India’s villages and small towns have still not completely given themselves up to global capitalism that has started engulfing the country’s urban landscape. People born and brought up for a longer time under India’s feudal society continue to bear its relics. I have seen a lot of people from the villages who even if they are non-individualistic and genuinely concerned about others, tending to give undue importance to their caste and community links even to the extent of alienating ‘others’.

However, let me conclude this essay with a Vaathyaar song,

‘Endha kuzhandhayum nalla kuzhandhai than mannil pirakkaiyile, avan nallavanaavadhum theeyavanaavadhum annai (political economy) valarpathile!’

‘Any child is a good child by birth. Whether he or she turns out to be good or bad depends upon the mother’s (political economy) nurture!’