Could people be genetically predisposed to hate?

S. T. Karnick at Karnick On Culture poses an interesting possibility concerning the controversy over retired NBA star Tim Hardaway's remarks on gays. In an ESPN interview Hardaway expressed his dislike for gays, going so far as to say he "hated" them.

Well for one thing, hate is wrong. Shame on him.

But it seems you can't even want to see someone slapped down anymore without wanting to slap the people who are slapping him down for all the wrong reasons. Not content to castigate Hardaway (legitimately) for hating other people (for any reason), the host of the show accused him of "homophopia"--a disease homosexuals claim heterosexuals who disagree with them have--merely because they disagree with them.

Karnick, however, has openly wondered if there isn't a scenario whereby homosexuals would have to take back all the bad things they've said about Hardaway:

[I]f people are going to be logically consistent (an unlikely premise, to be sure), Hardaway could stop all the controversy in a moment by simply asserting that he is genetically predisposed toward disapproving of homosexual behavior. Hence, he could argue, he cannot be held responsible for, or even criticized for, this genetically programmed behavior.

The fact that no one has identified such a gene is immaterial; nobody has looked for one yet. Surely one must exist, Hardaway could argue, given that so many people so strongly disapprove of homosexual behavior and that such attitudes have been so prevalent and persistent throughout human history. It is actually a highly plausible argument, he could say, given the evolutionary imperative for heterosexual behavior in creating children. Certainly the idea of an anti-homosexuality gene is every bit as plausible as the notion that there is a gene predisposing people toward homosexual behavior, he could argue. In fact, he could point out, it makes rather more sense in evolutionary terms.

And if it is wrong for society to seek to thwart or even disapprove of homosexual behavior because it is genetically programmed, he could observe, it must also then be wrong for society to attempt to thwart or even disapprove of people's dislike for homosexual behavior, because that, too, is genetically programmed.

Hardaway could argue that the two positions—approval or disapproval of homosexual behavior—are clearly on equal footing, as far as both genetics and political-social freedom are concerned.

The real difference between the two positions is that one is politically powerful at this point and the other is not.

Maybe we can also claim that anyone who disagrees with Karnick's theory is heterophobic.

What are humans evolving into?

Over at the SOMA Review, the weblog of the "Society of Mutual Autopsy", they are discussing recent comments by British evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry, of the London School of Economics, who says that human beings will reach their biological apex by the year 3000.

Wouldn't it be amusing if, by the year 3000, human beings all evolved into creationists?

Human Nature Makes the News

The chief obstacle encountered by the conservative cultural critic in modern times is the fact that many of his listeners are not entirely certain that they exist, or, if they have found the intellectual fortitude required to believe that they do, they are not completely convinced that this fact is very important.

People are still discussing Harvard President Larry Summers remarks several months ago at an academic conference that one of the reasons there are not more women scientists at the best universities was because of innate differences between the intellectual orientations of men and women. Most recently, he was the target of a no confidence vote of the Harvard faculty—the first in school history.

The responses to Summers remarks have generally taken two forms. The first was from outraged postmodernist liberals who asked how someone could even say such a thing. The second was from curious modernist conservatives who wanted to ponder whether Summers was, in fact, correct in his assertion.

The postmodern response is exactly what you would expect from people who have long since ceased believing in human nature. If you don’t believe in a permanent and enduring human nature, then making any statement about innate differences between men and women is simply preposterous, since nothing is innate (except homosexuality, which, if it were innate, would mean that homosexuality has moral implications, which is unacceptable to postmodernists).

The response of the modernists is also entirely consonant with their lack of interest in the topic. George Will, for example, mentions the relevance of human nature only briefly and in passing (http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/national/will/story/12135295p-13005500c.html), while the otherwise level-headed people at the New Criterion just blew by it altogether (http://www.newcriterion.com/weblog/2005_01_01_cano.html).

That all things have a nature or essence is a belief that goes back. Way back: before the postmodernists, before the modernists, and back to the premodernists, starting with Plato. Whether humans have a real nature unique to them that is shared by all men was a belief that was simply axiomatic—which is just another way of saying that it went without question. The only debate was where the essence of a thing resided: in each thing itself (Aristotle) or in some heavenly realm (Plato). The modern rejection of essences derives from William of Ockham, who questioned the reality of essences themselves. His view is called “nominalism”: the idea that words do not refer to natures, but are only convenient labels referring to groups of things with similar characteristics.

Larry Summers is not in trouble for what he said; he is in trouble for what he assumed. His remark that women may be inferior in one respect to men is not what got him in trouble. What got him into hot water was taking it for granted that men and women are different in any way at all.

Modernist thinking is almost unanimous in accepting (implicitly or explicitly) the nominalist view. Richard Weaver was right when he wrote in Ideas Have Consequences that the decline of the West began when William of Ockham questioned the existence of universals (natures or essences).