Conservativism and Human Nature, By James Reed

Bo Winegard, over at Aporia magazine.com, has a fine argument that conservativism, not Leftism, is best consistent with human nature. And Christianity, with its conception of human sin, and the need for redemption through Christ, rather than through socialism, fits well with what is known about human nature from the sciences, such as anthropology, when freed from Leftist presuppositions. For one thing, human beings were in premodern tribal people and their small groups were often in conflict with other groups, so tribal inclinations evolved. There is much evidence for this, and very little for the globalist socialist view that a John Lennon "one world" without God can work:

"The fundamental premise of conservatism is original sin. Humans are flawed, fallible, limited creatures. For thinkers in the Christian tradition, original sin was a separation from God and an almost inexplicable drive to disobey his divine orders. For the secular, original sin can be understood as the inevitable gap between ideal and real.

Being ethical animals, humans are compelled to imagine and create a moral order that they cannot wholly obey. We can imagine paradise, but we are condemned to dwell in the purgatory of earthly reality, bound inevitably by our biological natures. We can, for example, envisage a world of perfect cooperation, a world free from the strife of conflict and competition. But we can never realize it. Thus, original sin in this sense is a separation of humans from their moral ideal.

The limitations of humans also lead conservatism to praise localism. Families, communities, and nations are what provide meaning to people; they guide them through a difficult and often disappointing life with a sense of connection to something greater than their own material existence. Many progressives appear to view such bonds as parochial and ruinous to a more cosmopolitan ideal of humanity. And therefore, they often attack nationalism as barbaric, myopic, and inherently divisive, a factitious identity that merely divides humans from each other. But conservatism views nationalism as a praiseworthy force that both constrains and expands natural tribal tendencies, creating a broadly shared identity that promotes sympathy and cooperation.

Perhaps most importantly, conservatism is skeptical of humankind's most lauded, most celebrated, most unique power: Reason. It is not that reason is bad, evil, never-to-be-trusted, but that reason has the power to abstract from the world and to concoct entirely fantastical realities that disconcerts the conservative. Reason can posit red grass or a purple sun. It can create elaborate counterfactuals and speculate about the consequences. What if Franklin Roosevelt had lost the 1932 election? What if Plato had never existed? What if humans could be taught to be endlessly altruistic?

Of course, this is great in one sense, because it gives reason its remarkable power to deduce, induce, abduce, and ferret out causes and effects. But it also means reason can ignore important realities. It can invent social systems that sound beautiful but that ignore the constraints of nature.

The more idyllic these social systems, the more alluring they become. And the more alluring, the more pain they justify inflicting. Ephemeral suffering is worth it, after all, if it leads to endless bliss. And thus reason can promote a hankering for a social world that we can never obtain, justifying many atrocities in the futile quest to create it. That flowers must be trampled below the wheel of progress is tragic, of course, but justifiable when the new world, the new man, the new social order will shine so brightly compared to the dreariness of the old.

Conservatism does not necessarily stand athwart history yelling "stop," but it does yell "slow down!" And it contends that reason should be tempered by the wisdom of tradition and prejudice.

One can think of culture as an evolved organism. It is not the result of one genius, not a fully formed Athena springing from one brilliant Zeus's head. Rather, like an organism, it is the result of many thousands of years of evolution. Today's practices and norms have subtly changed—mutated—and spread from generation to generation. Bad practices and norms have been culled. And good ones have survived. Thus when reason says, "This tradition is preposterous. Let's get rid of it," conservatism urges caution. Perhaps the real wisdom of the tradition is simply lost to reason. The exquisite wisdom of a bird's circulatory system, for example, is not obvious to the human mind.

Suppose that you want to cross a river. You are familiar with canoes, but you look at them and think, "I don't want to be inside a shell. That is confining and uncomfortable. I want something flat." Reason can imagine a flat floating device that takes you swiftly across the river without hiccup. Perhaps radical progressivism advises you to follow this suggestion. Iconoclasm. Rebellion. Innovation.

Conservatism however councils caution and prudence. All canoes have a shell. And people have been making canoes for a long time. It might be wise to assume that their shape is a response to a long period of experimentation with the water. Perhaps many people who tried flat canoes failed and some died. As the saying goes, there's often no need to reinvent the wheel.

Consider another example: Christianity. The educated and the intellectually adventurous may find Christianity's metaphysics absurd and may mock them, arguing that they promote irrationality and extremism. What is church but a waste of time on a Sunday!? And what is religion but a superannuated superstition? But conservatism urges reflection. Perhaps religion is a culturally evolved technology that promotes cooperate and self-control, among other things. And perhaps it is not the religious who are blinkered but the rationalists who rely too much on the fallible tool of reason.

… Conservatism thus is ultimately an understanding that the past, the present, and the future are not entirely different but are somehow preserved in each other like the notes of a melody, each with an irreplaceable obligation to the whole."

https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/conservatism-and-human-nature