Our Human Nature

Submitted by David Korten

By David Korten

As part of the New Economy 2.0 series

The successful function of mature democracies, caring communities and living economies requires caring, mature and responsible citizens who care not only for their own well being, but for that of their neighbor, as well. Given the experience of human history, many will ask with good reason whether this might be contrary to human nature.

We humans are complex beings with many possibilities. Empire has demonstrated our capacity for extremes of individualistic greed, hubris, deceit, ruthless competition and material excess. Yet most people daily demonstrate our human capacity for caring, sharing, peacemaking and service.

The former are the possibilities of our lower nature; the latter, the possibilities of our higher nature. Contrary to what morally challenged market fundamentalists would have us believe, both are within our means. What in fact makes us distinctively human is our capacity to choose which of our many possibilities will define us as individuals and societies.

We humans have a complex three-part brain. At the base is our “reptilian” brain. It coordinates basic functions, such as breathing, hunting and eating, reproducing, protecting territory and engaging the fight-or-flight response. These functions are essential to survival and they are part of our nature. They are not, however, characteristic of our human nature, but rather of our reptilian nature – defined by the most primitive and least-evolved part of our brain.

Layered on top of the reptilian brain is the limbic or “mammalian” brain, the center of the emotional intelligence that gives mammals their distinctive capacity to experience emotion, read the emotional state of other mammals, bond socially, care for their young and form cooperative communities.

The third and, in adult humans, largest layer is the neocortical brain, the center of our capacity for cognitive reasoning, symbolic thought, awareness and highly developed self-aware volition. The neocortical brain is the source of our capacity for choice, including our capacity for moral choice, and ability to decide whether to create an economy that celebrates and rewards our reptilian nature or our distinctively human nature.

Most of the development of the limbic and neocortical brains essential to actualizing the capacities that make us most distinctively human occurs after birth and depends on lifelong learning acquired through our interactions with family, community and nature. Developmental psychologists describe the healthy pathway to a fully formed human consciousness as a progression from the self-centered, undifferentiated magical consciousness of the newborn to the fully mature, inclusive and multidimensional spiritual consciousness of the wise elder.

Scientists who use advanced imaging technology to study brain function confirm the mature human brain is wired for caring, cooperation and service. Their studies reveal merely thinking about another person experiencing harm triggers the same reaction in a mentally healthy adult brain as that of a mother who sees distress on her baby’s face.

Conversely, engaging in an act of cooperation and generosity triggers the brain’s pleasure center to release the same hormone that’s released when we eat chocolate or engage in good sex. In addition to producing a sense of bliss, this hormone benefits our health by boosting our immune system, reducing our heart rate and preparing us to approach and soothe.

Positive emotions like compassion produce similar benefits. Negative emotions, by contrast, suppress our immune system, increase our heart rate and shift us into reptilian mode prepared to fight or flee.

These findings are further confirmed by the pleasure that most of us experience being a member of an effective team or extending an uncompensated helping hand to another being.

It is entirely logical we humans have an instinctual desire to cooperate and protect the group. We are helpless as infants and even as adults are individually weak. As a group, however, we are the strongest of Earth’s living creatures. This in turn creates a moral obligation to use this power responsibly for the good of the whole.

Behaviors driven by our lower, more narcissistic, orders of consciousness are perfectly normal for young children, but they become sociopathic in adults and are easily manipulated by advertisers, propagandists and political demagogues. Tragically, persons who have been thwarted on the path to maturity are those most likely to engage in the ruthless competition for positions of unaccountable power—and to abuse that power when they succeed.

Just as we have chosen to create economies that reward and celebrate the sociopathic greed and ruthless competition of our reptilian nature, we can and must now create economies that nurture and reward the caring, sharing, peacemaking and service of our distinctively human nature.

About David Korten

David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group and a founding member of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

About New Economy 2.0 

Visionary economist David Korten introduces a national conversation series, New Economy 2.0, on CSRwire Talkback based on his acclaimed book, Agenda for a New Economy, 2^nd edition. For the next several weeks, Korten will summarize the main points and key lessons of each chapter of his book, leading from a dissection of what went wrong in the “phantom wealth Wall Street economy” to the presentation of a vision of a world of real wealth Main Street economies that support strong middle class societies, honor real market principles and work in partnership with Earth’s biosphere.

New Economy 2.0 envisions an economy in which life is the defining value and power that resides in people and communities. It contrasts with the popular New Economy 1.0 fantasy of a magical high-tech economy liberated from environmental reality and devoted to the growth of phantom wealth financial assets.

This exciting, new series is co-published by CSRwire and YES! Magazine.

The arguments presented here are developed in greater detail in Agenda for a New Economy available from the YES! Magazine Web store.

Readers: Is human nature basically greedy or cooperative? Share your opinion on Talkback!