and, just to address the old "human nature" canard, if i haven't; and, i'm sure i have.

i was not raised in a judaic or christian household, and i do not frame my worldview within a messianic context. so, i have little interest in what the various semitic religions state about the topic of human nature. but, this is perhaps the oldest political debate in our culture, that is the culture of the west that re-established itself during the renaissance. in a very real sense, it defines what the terms liberal and conservative mean, in the first place.

the conservative conception of human nature may be judaic in ultimate origin, but largely comes from hobbes in the modern usage. what conservatism means in this context is that our nature is fixed, unchanging, and rather brutal - that we are a horrible, depraved species because we are created this way, and can't do anything to change this. the modern interpretation of this manifests itself in a poor understanding of genetics that argues our assholery is in our genes, and is transcendable only by evolutionary processes, which the conservative may or may not accept.

the liberal concept of human nature, on the other hand hand, while greek in ultimate origin, mostly comes from rousseau, which argued in favour of a blank slate, a tabula rasa. to rousseau, we are born blind and helpless, natureless, and are able to be shaped entirely be social convention as we age. the modern interpretation is largely gramscian: our nature is pushed down to us from above, determined by an elite or a vanguard, and mostly outside of our control. this is, in truth, not much of an argument for free will at all.

today, this should be an empirical question, although this is only recently true. the science at this point remains speculative, but mostly leans towards rousseau. stated tersely: we understand today that genes don't code for behaviour, although conservatives have yet to concede the point.

my perspective is fundamentally that of rousseau's - i do not think our nature is fixed, i think we are able to change. free will is complicated, and needs to be understood relativistically. so, why are we such assholes then? because we're taught to be assholes.

so, i do think there is a solution in unlearning our assholery and then stopping the perpetuation of it to future generations. but, i recognize the difficulty underlying this, as there is no real obvious starting point.

and, chances are, i don't or wouldn't like you very much.