Daniel Finkelstein writes in The Times on the futility of trying to empower or constrain human choice when running against the grain of human nature. It is an old argument. It is a conservative argument.
It is, in a twisted sort of a way, almost amusing to watch us try to
change human nature with a government scheme or the banning of fatty
food adverts during Jackanory.
British governments are renowned, in recent years, for their ambitious attempts to change human behaviour with the crash and burn of political careers. Attempts to limit such vaulting ambition should be adopted where they rest upon a foundation of reliability.
Finkelstein references evolutionary psychology as the key discipline for supporting the rigid and defined course of human behaviour:
The idea that one wouldn’t bother if it weren’t for the women and the
booze is actually more complicated than the basic theory of
evolutionary psychology. For in evolutionary psychology the booze
doesn’t come into it. Only the women.
The notion that the origin of all human behaviour is that it helped
our ancestors to have sex is controversial. Some people even argue that
it isn’t proper science. But I have always found it pretty convincing.
Is it likely that humans are the one animal whose behaviour cannot be
explained mainly by its evolution? And if not evolution, what does
explain the universality of so many human traits?
But the most useful thing that studying evolutionary psychology has
taught me is humility about how much politics can really change us. So
much of human behaviour is innate, hard-wired, the result of adaptations
made thousands of years ago.Finkelstein relates this reading of evolutionary psychology to our political scene suggesting that gossip, scandal, deception and other political traits are part of human nature. Indeed, his claim is that we are political animals. These behaviours derive from evolved, innate characters. And sex selection curiously disappears. Kinship does not get a reading, though we have political families!
The problem with such an argument is that psychology, culture, institutions and society fall by the wayside. Alternative explanations, like perverse institutional incentives, are discounted. Complexity is traded for simplicity by an overarching appeal to the Pleistocene and sex selection.
But if you take this argument at value, should we not constrain politicians from their bad instincts. Indeed, isn't politics then a problem? If we cannot reform or change, then we are left with fear and the Prince as limitations on human behaviour.
Fortunately, evolutionary psychology is not a settled science, its explanations of modern behaviour controversial and without proof with such assertions. Columnists should avoid science and evolution, since its relationship to politics and culture is difficult at best, impossible to prove at worst.
If we want to look at such matters, Labour and the Miliband brothers provide a more interesting story to read.