Human Nature

I got a call the other day asking if I would take over a Philosophy of Human Nature course being taught at a local university. The class had just started and the instructor could not continue. So, Tuesday morning I will go in and teach the class for the next seven weeks. I love teaching this class, and I do a good job, but to be honest, I am not sure what I really think about human nature. This may sound odd, as I said I did a good job teaching it. What I mean is that I can often get my students to examine their own beliefs, challenge some of them, and to look at issues through other perspectives. And sometimes, they walk away from the class with a better appreciation of the complexities of the world around them. Having said that, I am not sure I could or would tell them what human nature was or wasn't.
I have taught the class several times, and on each occasion, I prepare myself with the following exercise: I imagine what my concept of the world and the nature of the humans in it would be if I had never left the environment I was raised in. It isn't that my upbringing was bad per se, it's just that it was so narrow, so insulated in its own peculiar way. I then examine the discrepancies from my current views, and in the lee of an academic exercise, I try to imagine what experiences, what lessons eventually broadened and changed my perspectives. What were these experiences that shook my core, and what were the subsequent lessons that kept me from returning to the center of my imagined world? These are the questions I ask myself before I endeavor to take a group of students on a correlated journey.
For the next few posts, I will take a look at my evolution in regards to some basic questions that define human nature, and in the process, try to circumscribe what I now see as the hope and potential of our race. This renewed optimism is essential in my ongoing battle with the darkness that remains in my soul. I will begin with the most important issue, in my mind, that of human freedom.
Do humans have free will? I suppose I never believed that free will was possible. To have free will, one must have viable choices, and the consequences should be consistent and evenly applied. No such conditions existed in our household - chaos and mayhem were more familiar to me than logic and order. It never occured to me that I could change what was happening around me, that I or my mother or my siblings really had any choices at all. Nothing we would do would alter the coming events significantly. My step-father's actions dictated my universe, yet even he had no choices, no freedom. For as my mother would remind us constantly, he was a product of his illnesses, he couldn't help what he did. I learned not to plan things, not to expect anything positive. Only to cope the best I could at that moment with whatever resources were available to me. There was no sense to it, therefore no need for justice. There was only survival. Even that was no choice - I hadn't yet learned from my mother that there was an alternative to surviving.
Once on my own, I discovered a completely different reality. I found individuals, groups, institutions that honored their commitments, and demanded the same of me. I found that if committed to a course of action, I would receive support and encouragement. If I deviated, I would receive feedback and redirection. For the first time, my universe was no longer ruled by caprice, I could navigate it with some efficacy. I made a lot of mistakes, but they were clear, identifiable and I could learn from them. For if there are no rules, there are no mistakes, no correct actions, no virtue, no truth.
I should mention that these individuals, groups, and institutions were there in my childhood, but I was exempted from the dignity of their conventions: I was the child of that family, couldn't be expected to be anything other than I was. I had to reemerge, appear to be from a different context before I could be afforded the chance to be free. So if you ask me now, I would say yes there is free will, if you are lucky enough to find it.