Chapter V Humanity and Threats


Section II The Weaknesses of Human Nature

1. Imperfection of human evolution

The reason why human beings looks like today results from the evolution of life, on the way here, the biggest distinction between the mankind and animals is the human evolution started from brain, which means the human wisdom made us adapt to the nature and finally rule the Earth.

We learnt from the further specific analysis on the differences between evolution of mankind and animals, a survey of animals’ adaptation to the nature was made in perspective of evolution, their evolution was named by “general evolution” which manifested in two aspects, development of “body” and “instinct”.

First, animals must develop their bodies that herein refer to all other organs except brain to survive the environment. In order to ward off the cold, animals grew skin and hair that thickened with the height of latitude, this is determined by the climate; many gymnosperms were extinct with the flourishing of angiosperm, which resulted in successional extinction of gymnosperms–eating animals, for their digestive system could not get with the new food; factors that threatened the existence of rats and insects were numerous, they could die at any time, in order to keep alive, they developed the original reproductive parts to be mature earlier, faster and more productive to survive through mass mortality.

But this is not enough; all kinds of animals, even with body that gets with the environment, will still sooner or later be exterminated if they are blunt and vacant like walking corpses. There is an equally important content in animal evolution as body development---instinct. All animals have instinct; it is a reaction to survive, mate and forage, etc.

In the evolution to accommodate to the environment, animals can keep alive only by the integration of instinct and corresponding physical conditions.

The essential distinction between men and animals in addressing the environment is that men can actively fit themselves in, and have the desire to create and change the environment, as well as initiatively enhance their ability of harnessing and redeveloping the nature. Exactly for this reason, the mankind experienced not only "general evolution" (evolution of body and instinct) that similar to animals, but another kind of evolution animals hadn't gone through-- the "intelligent evolution".

Apart from general evolution, intelligence evolution is also a unique part of human development comparing to any other species, which included two parts --“creativity” and “rationality”.

Creativity refers to the ability to understand and change the nature, as well as the ability to take the initiative to fit in the environment, and it embodied in human mastery of science and technology.

Animals grab and take food in the most basic and simple form, they chase the quarries, but don’t know how to get it in a creative way, and they have no particular means to flavor the food except chew them. But the mankind was able to create; the primitive people learnt the meat was more delicious after being roasted by fire with which many inedible things were made their food. The mankind had very early come off the simple collection period and grasped the domestication of wild animals and plants. Today we use high-tech means to significantly increase the yield and variety of crop, and dramatically speed up the growth and reproduction of meat animals.

Animals completely rely on their body functions, and regulate the thick and length of their hair seasonally to accommodate to the climate change. But mankind learnt to use fire very early, in the freezing ice age, the mankind didn’t grow any more hair or thicker skin to withstand the bitter cold; primitive people had a very crucial way to keep out cold wind when went hunting—simple clothes made by fell. Nowadays, all kinds of costumes are not only for resistance of cold and decoration, but also regarded as art.

Animals construct simple lairs by their light of nature. The mankind builds houses based on their creative abilities. The original mankind made bricks by mud and roof by couch grass, today we have numerous kinds of construction materials, people smelt iron into steel, burn limestone into cement, melt and pull the quartz into glass, process the rock into stone material, make paints and wall papers through chemical means, beautifully-decorated buildings sprung up straight from the ground, air-conditions and central heating make our living space as warm as spring all year round.

However, the humanity is very comfortable to apply the most advanced creativity in war, and never hesitate to kill others from human race. And they used to extort immoderately from the great nature with our creativity, and seldom considered the tolerance of the nature and the sustainable survival of our descendents. The mankind stiffly insisted on the precipitant spirit when it comes to the exploration of nature law, but gave little consideration to the deadly revenge that the science and technology would bring, and if the one-way pursue would lead to the real happiness. This is the result of low degree of rational evolution of mankind.

Animals are of no reason; feeding cubs, never eating the same kind are all behaviors by instinct. Ration is a wisdom developed only among the human race; it is a crucial human nature that fundamentally differs from animals.

When people realized the emission of greenhouse gas would cause global warming that result in catastrophic consequences, the governments gathered to have a special conference and signed multi-lateral agreement on the restriction of greenhouse gas emissions, this was rational behavior; when people were aware of the crazy expansion of nuclear weapons would destroy the mankind, and they advocated nuclear disarmament, which was also action of reason.

However, there are two imbalanced phenomena of human ration, we call it unbalanced intelligence evolution, or unbalanced evolution for short.

It reflected firstly on the internal imbalance of human species. A minority of the human group has relatively high degree of reason, but the majority has not; the imbalance also referred to fluctuation and instability of human ration.

The second imbalance is the far slower evolution of reason than the development of human creativity. There are several leaps during the evolution of human creativity; our ancestors had learnt to use primitive tools millions of years ago, especially the use of fire, which was considered as the first leap. About ten thousand years ago, human beings came into civilization from savage, and started the second leap of creativity habitually called agricultural evolution.

The third leap began in the middle of 18th century. And symbolized by the creative application of steamer, from which people saw the great advancement in productivity brought by machines, and the ease and joy free from burdensome manual labor, the irreplaceable contributions by science and technology, as well as the enormous fortune hidden in it. We seemed to suddenly see the irreplaceable intention for mankind and the great deal of potential wealth from of the science and technology. Upon that, to start with the knowledge of nature essence, and unearth all available science and technology to make fortune became our common sense. This is the inner power that pushed on with human creativity to a higher leap to the Industrial Revolution.

Since then the world has been thoroughly transformed, we got into the minimum space of inside atomic nucleus, and maximum to the far edge of universe 13 billion light-year away. We have been very familiar with the achievements made in field of literature, art, philosophy and social society, but the numerous breakthroughs were more amazing and significant to change the world.

Our minimum cognitive space has gone into inside atomic nucleus and maximum to the far edge of universe 13 billion light-years away. Through the study of inside atomic nucleus, a power named “strength” was found can release the most powerful energy in the world, the nuclear weapons manufactured with it can easily destroy a city with millions of population; the scientists revealing the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction that can realize the transmission of all kinds of information in a second to somewhere ten thousands miles away with “messengers” of invisible and impalpable electromagnetic waves; through study of nucleus, biologists finally got double-helical molecule called DNA which is exactly the carrier of biological genetic genes, the color of flowers and physical appearance of animals can be decided as they want.

According to the evolution of human creativity, the first leap took several millions of years, the second one lasted for ten thousand years, and the third taken over the world only in over 200 years, but the changes had been created were far more than all the achievements people accomplished during the past millions of years.

From the progression of human creativity, we can see that each leap and interval were shortened than the earlier one, but the energy burst out by them was much more than the earlier ones. This is consistent with the traditional line of thoughts of evolution. The more advanced the creature is, the faster they evolve.

However, creativity is just a part of human intelligence evolution; the other part is the “ration” that manipulates the creativity. What pitiful is the speed of human ration development contrasted sharply with creativity progress which seemed quite slowly.

In aspect of creativity, the animals have been not comparable to the mankind who remained many animal attributes, some even worse than animals.

A simple example, the mankind and animals both keep the typical inner-species competition, cannibalism is the most unreasonable human behavior. Before the human society taking shape, the most developed techniques were applied to weapons that were used to attack both animals and men. When the mankind was brought into civilized society by creativity, hunting for animals is not a necessary source of human food, and raids by wild beasts were no longer a main threat for the mankind. Instead, mutual massacre inside same kind became a major threat, and the mankind manufactured the best technology in production of killing implements.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the unlimited power of human creativity was highlighted like the eruption of a volcano, however, the human ration hasn’t made any progress along with the development of creativity that made the science and technology change with each passing day, the power flared up from achievements has been more and more strong, and the ration that controls the application of power has been no difference with where it were hundred or thousand years ago.

All the most advanced fruitful results of science and technology were in the first place put into the manufacture of killing tools, the fortune they brought was as much as the hurt and pain, this trend seemed to have become a fixed rule. Science and technology is growing in a rapid speed, so are the war measures which, after the Industrial Revolution, have been upgraded every year going beyond the past 100 years.

The imbalanced phenomena well reflected the imperfect human evolution that specifically manifested in the weaknesses of human nature.

2. The weaknesses of Human Nature

The weaknesses in human nature refer to a unique inherent character of human species emerged with the formation of mankind, unless there is a significant evolution occurred to mankind, the external representation of the weaknesses of human nature is not something constant but influenced by the differences of time, region, group and social environment, all kinds of factors, however, even though like this, the characteristics of the weaknesses are not going to change. 

So what are the weaknesses of human nature?  Here all features that adverse to the value of the mankind as a whole are included in the range. However, there is a lot of it, it is very complicated to expound them one by one, not necessary as well, because some of them in human nature have a small negative influence on the overall value of humanity, which worth no particularization one after another. Well, the items set forth as follows are bad factors that possibly impact the realization of human value. The subsistence and well-being of the mankind are seriously threatened and the overall existence and happiness of the mankind may be ultimately endangered by weaknesses that we can not deny.

1Interest-oriented sight

There are three major contradictions of interest in front of the mankind: immediate interest and long-term interest; surface interest and fundamental interest, partial interest and overall interest. Usually the long-term, fundamental and overall interests can not be directly perceived, some deeper thinking must carried out to get clear about them, even if they can be felt, benefits brought by them can not be appreciated right away. However, the immediate, surface and partial interests are clear at a glance, and once you get them, the profit can be obtained right away, these interest that can be felt within the filed of vision are called interest in sight, which indicate the interests we had gained and can be gained at any time, or the profit brought by these interests can be sensed straight away.

Arguably, the immediate interest is included in the long-term interest, and surface interest is contained in fundamental interest, and partial interest is covered by the overall interest. If any damage occurred to the long-term, fundamental overall interests, the immediate, surface and partial interests will definitely be affected, that proves the importance of the former must be superior to the interest in sight, once there are contradictions between the two groups, the latter must subjects to the former, which is in line with the common sense. However, the situations often go the opposite way, because of the obvious and accessible attraction of the interest insight, in most cases, people chose the immediate, surface and partial interest rather than long-term, fundamental and overall interest, and this shows the sight towards interest in the human nature.

People often trap in the habitual thoughts like this: they always think the problems they are facing are more important than that of others; and the problems they are dealing with are more crucial than what they are going to do; and the difficulties they encounters should be solved at any cost. Exactly such state of mind makes people easily lured by the interest in sight.

2Extreme selfishness

We consider that a person who harms others to benefit himself or always thinks for himself selfish, but there is a weakness that make a full play of the selfishness in human nature, someone even do things that bad for both others and themselves. Generally, the original intention of extreme selfish acts was to hurt others for self-interests, or give no consideration to other’s feelings, but with slight analysis, these behaviors will be bound to turn against or end up with no profit to those who are full of themselves. We here call this weakness as extreme selfishness in human nature.

For example, wars have been being there with human history and a catastrophe for both parties. Because the party who drives the war is slaughtered as they are killing and plundering other’s wealth at the cost of their life and blood.

We can imagine as well that a person walks across desert with a little water and food must properly portion out it. When a group of people go through desert with inadequate water and food, there always be someone eat more regard less of others’ condition, in fact, when all the provisions used up, they have no way out of the fate with the rest of the group. And the selfish ones have no idea about the consequences, but he won’t behave rationally once he lives in a group, this is led by the extreme selfishness in human nature.

3Self-deception

In order to vindicate for the unreasonable conducts, people usually made up some acceptable excuses which is not only for deceiving others, but also themselves, to felt at ease and justified about what they had done. The same thing happens when there are dangers or difficulties; we are used to believe those obvious absurd things or opinions to persuade of ourselves. Here we call this characteristic as self-deception in human nature. It is an unreasonable act to console oneself and hopefully hoodwink and deceive others.

The self-deception in human nature is generally showed in the following situations, first, when people run into thorny problems that they are not willing to pay more efforts to solve, and want to find a way to release the fear inside; second, every time when there are conflicts between the interest in sight and long-term, fundamental and overall interest, people need reasons for their choosing the interest before eyes or getting rid of the guilt; third, when people can not stay calm about and make a clean breast of what they have done to both themselves and others. People would make up a lot of seemingly reasonable but actually ridiculous principles, or likely to accept those feasible from the outside but actually unpractical ways to deceive and comfort themselves and others.

The self-deception in human nature holds people back from reflection and correction of and even continuously reinforces the weaknesses and irrational behaviors. Because any major irrational act is explained by a reason seems acceptable to ourselves, which enables us to feel no qualm to do things that deviate from the overall value of ourselves, and push us step by step to the dangerous destiny.

(4) Eternal fights

The human disposition to fight originates from the competitive mentality for which exactly inside the same kind, there comes jealousy, fight for victory, vanity and cannibalism. Human disposition to fight is showed from the baby stage when they begin to perceive the surrounding environment, and continue for their whole life, at the same time, it goes along with the human society from beginning to end. So we consider the eternal fight orientation a weakness of human nature.

The irrationality of mankind for the most part due to the combative human nature, an independent individual usually tries to handle problems according to his own rational level, but the competitive groups are totally different.

Wars arise mostly for the bellicose nature of human race which involves the competition and jealousy among countries, ethic groups and religions, as well as the vanity of being leaders. In the same way, if there is only one country around globe, the reasonable emission of greenhouse gas should have been already achieved, but when there are a lot of countries coexisting at the same time, it is hard to carry out the controlling actions. Because all parties in the multilateral negotiation worried about their over plus obligation would let others off lightly, the negotiation is protracted.

The weakness reflected on individuals makes every one carry on the burden of constant struggle. A person with no intention to compete needs only adequate clothing and food to live, while a person belongs to a group may pay attention to other’s life all the time, and anxious about falling behind others deep in heart, this is the reason why people fight throughout their life with tired body and heart till the end.

(5) Endless Desire

The human desire is unlimited, people always want more on top of more, never get satisfied, and most of them are rapacious, this inherent characteristic in human nature is their endless desire.

Someone used to think, the human desire might be fill up when an extremely rich environment was established, and every one can get whatever they want. In fact, this is only people’s assumption or hope, the world may be capable of fulfilling all the need of mankind, but content their grasping greed, the day when the mankind is contented will never come true unless a major change is made in human nature.

The infinite aspiration of mankind gave an impetus to the increase of material wealth and the development of science and technology, in addition, wars and criminals, mental anguish, social turbulence, environmental damage and so forth.