Human Nature is Creative, Not Destructive
People are social creatures, and our primary drive is to create things.
I am a pacifist by nature. I don’t care for violence or aggression, and I have vowed to not resort to physical violence unless my life or the life of someone I love is on the line. I would much rather spend my energy creating things than picking fights.
That’s why it really confuses me when people, generally the prototypical “alpha males,” refer to human nature as one of aggression and dominance. According to them, people (usually men) are naturally designed to dominate their surroundings and exert their will upon those around them through force. This, according to them, is the primal human instinct.
We often hear about “primal human instincts” with regards to violent things: the urge to conquer or dominate something. Getting into a fistfight over something, whether an insult or defending someone’s honor (whether they asked for it or not) is often glorified as one of man’s basest human instincts.
This is often used by rape apologists to place the blame on the victim, such as the idea that “wearing something that slutty is asking for it,” as though men are ruled by their sex drives and not their brains. Another common comparison is the idea that you don’t put a steak in front of a hungry dog and expect it to not eat the steak, as though every man is a hungry animal and women are but mere food for them.
I find this insulting to dogs, as I’ve known many dogs who are trained to not eat until a command is given who would simply stare at a steak without approaching, no matter how hungry. I also find it insulting to me as a man and as a human, as it insinuates that every man is a potential rapist just waiting to happen and all it takes is a certain temptation to make me forget all of human decency.
All this is to say, I find the idea that the primal human instinct is violence to be utterly wrong. People are not, by nature, violent, destructive, and domineering. Rather, we as humans are creative and social, taking novel approaches to problem-solving and working together for the common good.
This can be seen as far back as our early ancestors. Part of what built humanity into the dominant species on Earth was our ability to work together early on. People worked together for the good of the group, building tribes and villages. Together, humans built structures and created agriculture and so many other ingenious technologies that, combined over thousands of years, have made life increasingly better for everyone.
We also worked together to care for each other. One of the first signs of civilization is fossils of human skeletons with bones that were broken and mended. This shows that, when the person was injured, rather than leave them to die, the group felt that it was better to help them heal. Rather than give in to their “primal instinct” to let the weakest die, these early humans used their actual human instincts to help each other.
Early humans also created art. We know about things like cave paintings and carvings, which show early images of ice-age animals and other creatures and things. However, these early art pieces were often much more complex than originally thought: scientists have recently gained new insight into these paintings and carvings simply by using light sources that early humans would’ve used.
Our true primal human instinct is connection. We connect to each other, we connect to our pets, we connect to robots, hell, we connect to strange-looking limes. And the ways we connect are numerous — all of the art and creativity and innovation that humans have put out into the world is an amazing testimony to the human instinct to connect with each other and the world around us.
Yes, humans have had violence and conflict since the dawn of humanity, but these are not the driving human instincts that some make them out to be. War has been a constant throughout history, but so have art, music, dance, storytelling, invention, investigation, and so many other things. Yes, there is and will likely always be conflict, but there will also be empathy and compassion and the sharing of knowledge. Conflict happens, but humans will always be hard-wired to connect and create more than to destroy.
So, the next time someone tells you about their “primal human instinct” to hunt and kill and dominate, just ignore them. They have likely been wrapped up in a toxic culture of individualism and masculinity that has altered the way they perceive the world. No person is an island, and none of us is as strong as all of us.
We got to where we are as a species by working together and trusting each other, and along the way, we built impressive things and created awe-inspiring art and music. These days, we find ourselves in crisis after crisis — of democracy, of civility, of health, and of the planet’s survival. And yet, with all the divisiveness out there, people are still creating things, connecting, and innovating new ways to do so.
We as a species are working each day to come up with new ways to address our problems and help each other. Yes, there is a lot to be angry about in the world, but we have learned how to focus that anger into change. We are a creative bunch, and by working together through our primal instincts of connection and creation, I am confident that we can solve our problems and improve as a species. We’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years; why stop now?
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