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Human Un-nature

Everyone has gotten into some kinbd of argument or disagreement about "human nature," which is supposed to be the one true thing that makes humans actually human if you dig deep enough through all the layers of society, relationships, morals, etc. Or if you haven't had an argument about it, you've at least had someone bring it up as some kind of self evident explanation for something in the world, usually something they take to be unfortunate but unavvoidable. "I don't really like the police either, but humans are naturally violent and greedy, so we need them." "My boss is a dick too, but the sad truth is that humans are naturally lazy, so what are you gonna do?"

Of course, this supposedly essential, core element of our species called "human natures" has a funny way of changing depending on the time, the place, and whoever's in charge of something. In medieval Europe, humans were naturally servile which is why we needed lords and ultimatyely kings to keep everything going. In the contemporary U.S., humans are naturally greedy, which is why we need capitalism to turn that greed into wealth for all. And so on.

I think we ought to take a different view entirely, and one that's actually really simple. Humans, and (so far) *only* humans, are those animals which are precisely *unnatural* to the core. There is absolutely nothing natural about humans. We are that species that presisely *does not* have a particular way to be, and in fact there might be as many ways to be human as there are humans themselves. There is no human nature, nothing at the core of the species, all of our manifold histories, cultures, societies, etc. might just be the various ways we've tried to fill in the essential *gap* that constitutes us all, individually and collectively.

I think starting from this point gets us a lot further than essentializing the values of a given era and calling it "human nature." It helps us get out of the trap (at least conceptually) of neoliberalism, which tells us that this, right now, the way things currently are, is the only possible way things could be, give or take a few minor modifications here and there. No: My thesis is that we are only what we chose to be exactly because there is nothing essential about us. We are only what we practice, what we do. We are what we choose to build for oursleves. Which means we *can* change *everything*, if we wanted to.

There is no human nature, there is only human un-nature. I should come up with a better turn of phrase, but for now this is what I've got.