Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
His point is that liberal institutions are one way to overcome those things that are innate. Tribalism is also innate, for example. Take another cultural artifact - the scientific method - which is designed to overcome the innate human characteristic of motivated reasoning.
The issue might be that you're taking the meaning of "overcome" in this case to mean "eliminate". I believe he's saying that you can "overcome" those tendencies in the sense that while they're still a part of you, they don't your dictate behaviour (or dictate it as little as possible). Clearly that sort of "overcoming" is possible, as demonstrated by the fact that you're not killing your neighbour for his stuff... presumably.
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Murder isn’t human nature, that’s behaviour. Behaviour is changeable, nature is not.
The same nature that put us in staunch political groups is no different than the one that makes us a fan of a sports team, or protect our friends.
The same nature that causes one to kill is the one that causes you to want to win, at anything.
How we express our nature, and in what venues, is fluid. But our nature itself is not. To overcome human nature is to live in some messed up Brave New World fiction. It’s pie in the sky stuff, and not something anyone, anywhere, who is a human being, should actually want.