I jiust happened upon what I find to be a pretty interesting article titled:
Here are a couple of (somewhat disjointed) quotes ...
Here are a couple of (somewhat disjointed) quotes ...
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Broad political factors are also at play here, with both the Left and the Right largely dismissive of the application of evolutionary theory to human affairs. On the Right, the distrust of Darwinism is strongly influenced by religious doctrine. In addition, many conservatives typically regard human nature (whether evolved or God-given) as inherently flawed, thus requiring constant constraint by custom or tradition. The standard leftist reaction is to reject this vision of a fixed and flawed human psyche entirely in favour of a mouldable and perfectable vision of human nature. And even when evolutionary theory is accepted in general, for many on the Left, its application to human society is indelibly linked to its egregious past—the cutthroat competition of Social Darwinism, say, or eugenics and Nazi racial science. Given the lingering reek of extreme right-wing ideology, it is hardly surprising that many of those most vehemently opposed to evolutionary accounts of human nature are found on the political Left.
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A Darwinian Left therefore takes particular aim at Marx’s conception of an infinitely malleable human nature, an idealistic notion that still holds sway over large sections of the Left. Briefly, this “blank slate” belief holds that human behaviour merely mirrors the prevailing social environment—that, for example, human competition stems from competitive societies not inherent competitive traits in individuals themselves. According to this view, if social structures change, so too will people’s nature. The political appeal of this for leftists is obvious: the prospect that more egalitarian societies will foster more egalitarian human beings, those whose deep-felt selflessness would truly reflect the Marxist dictum, “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
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Take another apparent species-typical behaviour—human beings’ seemingly ubiquitous status hierarchies. Here, Singer notes how rapidly new hierarchies replaced the old aristocratic ones following the American, French, and Russian revolutions. “Getting rid of [hierarchy] is not going to be nearly as easy as revolutionaries usually imagine,” Singer cautions—a warning equally applicable to leftist policies aimed at mitigating widening inequalities between societies’ haves and have-nots, say, or the growing pay disparities between ordinary workers and CEOs. He makes a similar point about status disparities between men and women: that by focusing solely on discrimination as the root cause of sex inequality, and ignoring the possibility of different evolved preferences between men and women, egalitarians may fail to devise effective policies for achieving genuine gender equality.