Tell 'em that it's the Original Human Nature

 Every once in a while , the question of primitive or original human nature pops up in discussions on the internet  of current political and economic events , on email lists , or facebook.

 The issue of HUMAN NATURE I essayed in an earlier LABOR POWER BLOG, here

Labor Power: Is Human Nature Social or Selfish ?

Must note that the alternative to selfish human nature is not selfless human nature, but love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself or sociability and kinship, culture; all for one , and one for all.

Michael Jackson - Human Nature

In googling around the internet upon debating with some Hobbesians, I came across a quote of Marshall Sahlins " my" Professor of anthropology.


The decisive battle between early culture and human nature must have been waged on the field of primate sexuality…. Among subhuman primates sex had organized society; the customs of hunters and gatherers testify eloquently that now society was to organize sex…. In selective adaptation to the perils of the Stone Age, human society overcame or subordinated such primate propensities as selfishness, indiscriminate sexuality, dominance and brute competition. It substituted kinship and co-operation for conflict, placed solidarity over sex, morality over might. In its earliest days it accomplished the greatest reform in history, the overthrow of human primate nature, and thereby secured the evolutionary future of the species.

— Sahlins, M. D. 1960 The origin of society. Scientific American 203(3): 76–87.

and this by one Christopher Boehm

Once a prehistoric hunting band institutionalized a successful and decisive rebellion, and did away with the alpha-male role permanently... it is easy to see how this institution would have spread.
— Boehm, C. 2000. Conflict and the evolution of social control. Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, 1–2 pp. 79–101; p. 97.