On The "Laws" of Human Nature
Gamaliel stands with the wheat
A friend and I were discussing about false movements, noting especially their longevity. To that end, we referenced what we may call ‘Gamaliel’s law,’ wondering how a specific movement —which I shall not name— we both believe to be false could last for as long as forty years. It seemed clear to us that if Gamaliel's law1 was true, —and we believe it to be; we believed that these false movements, would have failed at some point instead of of lasting for a sturdy forty years. This bothered us.
But somehow, with a trail of thought I cannot follow; whether it happened discursively or as a sudden strike of inspiration, I remembered the parable of the wheat and tares2. Which, I think, explains, from a different perspective, why Gamaliel's law seemed to have failed. Or maybe not failed; it just didn't apply. Holding that thought, it became less despairing and rather comforting that sometimes, the master allows the wheat and tares to grow together until harvest time. Maybe all false movements will not collapse quickly like Theudas’ and Judas’ who Gamaliel cited. Maybe some of these false movements will in fact, live long; long enough to sweep ‘even the elect.’ Maybe.
However, this reflection is not about true and false movements. It is about what we call the Laws of Human Nature.
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You can't miss what makes laws attractive: their ability to smoothen, to call order out of chaos, to make life tractable, to make life predictable. Especially to make things predictable: the itch in our minds for the predictable is occasionally good to have. But then the laws of human nature are not really laws . They are not laws in the fashion of laws which describe matter such as in gravity and thermodynamics. Such as with gases and chemicals.
A friend told me a story once. About a guy who was “versed” in these laws of human nature. Who, narrating what he would do to someone, via something called priming, predicted what their response would be. For instance, if he touched their ear, they would suddenly fall in love with him—you know, the kind of thing you see on television like in The Mentalist or Sherlock Holmes. Where a semi-omnipotent human being plays the normies and other dimwits as players in his own game; preempting their every step and deploys countermeasures to neutralize them. But my friend only told me a story. I never met this guy. I wish I did. I would have loved to see for myself if I would have responded the way he wanted me to; if his priming would have produced the response he wanted from me. Maybe he would have touched my shoulder and I would have fallen in love with him. We will never know.
But there are more realistic versions of this attempt to demonstrate the Laws of Human Nature. Like those who, when conversing with you, call your name a million times to either establish dominance or “win friends and influence people.” Still yet on a larger scale, you have behavioural economics and its boastful use of nudges to move consumers in a desired direction. The kind of thing you will find with Richard Thaler.
However, I don't think these things are real. At least not in the mechanical way that those who think about human nature like physicists do. They are ‘real' in the sense that they are more accurately, tendencies, rather than laws. You can observe them everywhere. And they lend themselves to guesses and conjectures but not to tractable certainty. They are perennial—that is, they show up everywhere human beings are; notwithstanding whether they have made contact with other cultures and civilisations.
The better name for them are mental models: ways of mapping human behaviour that may or may not apply in particular contexts and instances. Thus, ambiguity is key to using them. In this way, Gamaliel's law is a mental model. A way of framing and interpreting human events along a trajectory. And the parable of the wheat and tares is another mental model. You look for which better fits an instance and apply it. This suggests, against the ire of those who want something so rigid, specific and unchanging; who want that X stimulus should always produce Y response, that human nature is fluid, flowing between different tendencies rather than being set in stone. As I have explained in Human Nature Nature Human, our nature flows summarily between the angelic and the animalistic. ‘Summarily’ being key. Because the angelic and animalistic are themselves broad categories of varying tendencies, instincts and abilities.
Among those who wish human nature really operated as solid and unchanging are those who take Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power to be laws in the mechanical sense. However, my observation shows me that those who take this book as gospel (or as Physics) are often the cynical, contemptuous kind who seek an expert to solidly furnish their presupposition that human nature is open to manipulation—that is, to get response B from others, perform action A on them. Some others take these ‘laws’ as a way to protect themselves in a dog-eat-dog world.
Many have often presumed that the book makes people cynical to the world. But I posit that it is the cynical who treat this book as divine edict. Those who hold a milder, kinder, more sophisticated view of the world and fellow human beings tend to either comment that it is a well-written, sometimes nice, and definitely illuminating book. Others still come out lashing at the book recommending that you find yourself some Nora Roberts to read. But none of these two categories insist that salvation is sequestered in this book like others would. Therefore, we can take our gaze away from the book and look at the people who read it. Which alone allows us to see human nature wearing different faces and reactions to the same object.
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Ancient books of wisdom; that is books of aphorisms, maxims, fables, and moral sayings—the book of Proverbs being chief among them—capture what the merely intelligent but not wise (read as IQ punters) failed to understand. They capture the mess and chaos inherent in human nature. They embodied, in Conan Doyle's words, that “the individual man is an insoluble puzzle…you can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do.”3
The writers of maxims understood human nature as a group and human nature with individual faces. Thus, they prescribed that you answer a fool according to his folly. And immediately prescribed that you do not answer a fool according to his folly. With such ambiguity thrust upon the reader, his agency is called to work. He must decide which fool to answer and which fool to remain silent in his face. That way, ancient wisdom never asks you to relinquish your personhood for decision-making: you remain in control of your choices and the praise and blame that they may bring. They feed you with a range of reactions; never prescribing the sharp step-by-step actions which we originally yearn for. Good advice always must always be adaptable.
Call these wise words law if you wish. One thing it does is that it leaves the interpretation of the law with every individual. Requires little expertise and only asks that you be human enough. Like that guy said, homo sum humani a me nil alienum puto.
Myself, Goodhart's law which is simply expressed as “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure,” is the law of human nature. Known by other names as the law of unintended consequences or the Cobra effect, it allows me to map and predict that human beings possess the genius of making a measure into a target. That there has never been a measure set that humans have not tried to find and exploit its weakness. Therefore, my firm stance against policies like hate crime and affirmative action stems from this law. I believe that these programs allow for making a measure into a target.
Nonetheless, my inclination doesn't erase the fact that good things have come out of these programs. Yet, I oppose them on what I am confident are more enduring terms: that over time, we will find a way to convert good things into items for our shallowest desires; like those who seek refuge behind victimhood even when it doesn't apply. This consistently features in my thinking; and which makes me a proponent of occasional reforms. But the mistake I once made which I have refused to continue making is to take Goodhart’s Law as the law of laws of human nature. That is a seduction; one that allows you to fling a theory outside its context. It loses its power and stains your thinking. What I do instead is to acknowledge when something defies this law and find another law or model that explains it. I also refuse to be cynical.
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If you ever hold it in your mental vault that humans are defined primarily by their agency, your use of these “laws” will cool down quickly and you will find yourself applying some temperance in practicing them; you will avoid putting all your eggs in a basket. The alternative frame of mind to this; the mind which treats these laws similarly to physical laws would disregard the human agent on the other side and look for “causes” outside the agent—be it economic, political, ideological, or climate change. The serious man of law exalts the mechanical over the agentic. They ignore that human relations are primarily “I–You” instead of “I–It.” But even men of physics know that atoms would pose bigger problems if they could think.
Since holding to the side tents of human agency like a dying Joab, I have looked with suspicion on theories which attempt to describe human persons but removes the human persons within them. You find a gaping human-shaped hole in these theories. Humans are referred to on the basis of their group for instance. Young boys become “members of the patriarchy.” And a hardworking farmer becomes a kulak. Even traits like punctuality become symptoms of “whiteness.” These are just some real examples. Theories of human nature minus human persons are devious. “For the human subject” Roger Scruton writes, “is the starting point of enquiry, and to refine him out of our science is to lose sight of the very thing that science endeavours to explain.”
This is also true of subjects taught in schools. A depersonalized—that is with persons excised from the subject matter—teaching of History is often dry and boring. History using human beings as landmarks is lively; we see ourselves in them. This is how we function.
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It is artists who speak best to this human shaped hole. Who have played well the numerous strings of the human organ. Who have shown his many different faces. Same as men of wisdom and literary skill. The parables, idioms, adages, maxims, epigrams, and aphorisms have done well to help us keep man's nature as a handful. It is when reading them that you can go from the parable of the wheat and tares to Gamaliel's law. And you don't feel the contradiction: you get the sense that man is powered by paradoxes.
On man surviving on paradox, Chesterton conveys via a commentary on the Book of Job that “in the prologue we see Job tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best. It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes.”
Job’s case rightly comforts us as Chesterton asserted because it violates our axioms of fairness. Job suffering for being the best of men comforts us in our situations of suffering because it gives us a model to acknowledge at certain times that our afflictions are consequences of our actions. Sometimes it is random. Imagine the weight you would always bear if you thought everything going wrong in your life is somehow your fault. Indeed, you are just a victim of circumstances. Knowing this, you can be at peace when the case is true. But those who think that both their successes and sufferings are consequences of their deeds and misdeeds would pierce themselves with paranoia; paralyzed by endless analysing. Eyes riddled with dark circles for want of sleep. Lacking rest. It is the paradox of human agency that to exercise true agency, you must admit some loss of agency—that there are things you cannot control.
The liberating feeling in Job's paradox is what informs the notion that you may do your best and leave the rest. It is what inspires what the kids say these days: “the wound is not your fault; but the healing is your responsibility.” Or as Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it the way I like it: “the only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior.” Which are all various ways of restating the Stoic ideal of exercising control over the only things you can control. It is fruitless trying to control what you can't in the name of agency. Thus, the paradox.
For man to bud and blossom, he must bear this conflict within him. The conflict of all his tendencies. He must be a walking paradox. We ought to recoil at and resist those who insist on removing all paradoxes from our persons. It is a good fight. We should fight it. Vale
“So my advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God!” Acts 5:34-39
By Jesus in Matthew 13:24-43
While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but the percentages remain constant”