Human nature is the beginning of all knowledge

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak speaks a message of hope for the people of the Middle East and the people of the world in his glass-half-full address at the Mideast Summit.

"Before formal word came of what could be a historic cease-fire deal," reports FOXNews, "Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the first steps have been taken to resume the Middle East peace process and called Tuesday's summit in Egypt a "positive moment" that has been long awaited."

It IS men, not just metaforces of history that determine the fates of nations. It was individual men -- the Saddam Husseins and Yasser Arafats of this world -- who prevented well-intentioned peoples from both sides from talking to each other for years and years.  Now that both sociopathic egomaniacs have been dispatched -- one by the coalition forces and the other by grace of Mother Nature -- we can talk.  It was also men and women like GW, Tony Blair and now Condoleezza Rice who are turning the tide the other way. Hallelujah.

'Reminds us big time of the well-intentioned, clueless high school history instructors, schooled in the PC teachers' schools of the day, who told us back in the fifties and sixties that 1. It was metaforces, not men who made history and 2. There was no such thing as human nature.  We always knew that was wrong, especially #2.  Human nature is the beginning of all knowledge.  Darwin tells us that.  But Marx, standing on the shoulders of Rousseau with his fabled "noble savage" and such, intervened with a utopian fantasy that infected at least a century of human history with a Big Lie and untold sorrow.

Comments

[goomp]

Abe Lincoln, a man who knew how to turn a phrase, said you can't fool all the people all the time. The self-centered "Intellectual Morons" who think that the "Blank Slate" idea of the human condition is valid should read your article. Over time all silly ideas such as Communism or Rule by Clergy or rule by "those who know what is best for the masses" suppress freedom and lead the people rise up to kill their oppressors in the stuggle for freedom that is the basic Human Nature. Your article should be required reading for our schools

[Sissy Willis]

Wow. Thanks, Goomp! :)

[Kenneth]

Goomp, why on Earth would you associate "the Blank Slate idea of the human condition" with Rousseau? They stand on opposite poles on the question of human nature. The "Blank Slate" proposed by Locke did not deny humans had a nature, Locke acknowledges instincts and a human sensibility. Why he denies in the phrase "Blank Slate" is that humans come with pre-formed ideas already in our minds. Indeed, Locke begins his argument with a long description of the "state of nature" and derives useful principles from it, such as consentual government and the labor theory of propery (I own it because I worked for it). Locke then goes on to argue that because I can sense the world, I can write upon my slate these observations of how the world works, reflect upon these ideas, and learn in a reasonable way. Therefore, I am not subject to a Leviathan to rule me (Hobbes), because I can self-govern. And secondly, I do this by observation of the world, not by innate ideas (Decartes).