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Evolution = Conservative Values

David Brooks posits the passing of the notion of innate human goodness, supplanted by recognition of natural tendencies to competitiveness and strife.  

This belief (in human goodness) had gigantic ramifications over the years. It led, first of all, to the belief that bourgeois social conventions are repressive and soul-destroying. It contributed to romantic revolts against tradition and etiquette. Whether it was 19th-century Parisian bohemians or 20th-century beatniks and hippies, Western culture has seen a string of anti-establishment rebellions led by people who wanted to shuck off convention and reawaken more natural modes of awareness.

… Over the past 30 years or so, however, this belief in natural goodness has been discarded. It began to lose favor because of the failure of just about every social program that was inspired by it, from the communes to progressive education on up. But the big blow came at the hands of science.

From the content of our genes, the nature of our neurons and the lessons of evolutionary biology, it has become clear that nature is filled with competition and conflicts of interest. Humanity did not come before status contests. Status contests came before humanity, and are embedded deep in human relations. People in hunter-gatherer societies were deadly warriors, not sexually liberated pacifists. As Steven Pinker has put it, Hobbes was more right than Rousseau.

Moreover, human beings are not as pliable as the social engineers imagined…

This darker if more realistic view of human nature has led to a rediscovery of different moral codes and different political assumptions. Most people today share what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision, what Pinker calls the Tragic Vision and what E.O. Wilson calls Existential Conservatism. This is based on the idea that there is a universal human nature; that it has nasty, competitive elements; that we don’t understand much about it; and that the conventions and institutions that have evolved to keep us from slitting each other’s throats are valuable and are altered at great peril.

Today, parents don’t seek to liberate their children; they supervise, coach and instruct every element of their lives. Today, there really is no antinomian counterculture — even the artists and rock stars are bourgeois strivers. Today, communes and utopian schemes are out of favor. People are mostly skeptical of social engineering efforts and jaundiced about revolutionaries who promise to herald a new dawn. Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong order-imposing state.

This is a big pivot in intellectual history. The thinkers most associated with the Tragic Vision are Isaiah Berlin, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Friedrich Hayek and Hobbes. Many of them are conservative.

And here’s another perversity of human nature. Many conservatives resist the theory of evolution even though it confirms many of conservatism’s deepest truths.

I like the last bit, but Brooks is may be a little premature in declaring the passing of the “human goodness”-based social engineering projects and overbroad in describing what “most people” think. Especially when he says parents today don’t seek to liberate their children, but structure them. I’d suggest the drive to occupy every moment of their time and turn them into little over-achieving geniuses is more social engineering. I know too many kids who could stand a little structure.  In the form of discipline, manners.  There is also no shortage of people out there who want to jam people’s heads into all kinds of engineering projects.  In New York City, for example, men who present themselves as women may now use the ladies room in subway stations, regardless of the status of their plumbing, let alone their DNA. 

Linguist blogger Babel’s Dawn picks up on Brook and gets all scientific. Likes some, but considers his argument a half-truth, half-baked.  

If you’re interest in this kind of thing, Babel also has an interesting essay here about the Great Human Bottleneck of 75,000 Before Present.  You know, when large numbers of us and our rival hominids died off.

Topics: anthronerdism

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:32 am on Wednesday, February 28, 2007

7 Responses to “Evolution = Conservative Values”

1. Bill's Bites Says:
   February 28th, 2007 at 2:42 am

   Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.02.28

   Just read ‘em. Maybe I’ll find time to do more with ‘em later. (And some things that are too short to excerpt and too good to not mention.) Please feel free to use this post for comments and trackbacks not

2. Old War Dogs Says:
   February 28th, 2007 at 2:42 am

   Bill’s Nibbles // Open Post — 2007.02.28

   Some Bill’s Bites posts, some things I excerpted and linked but I’m sending you to the original post. I may rearrange the order of the items within this post as I add new things that I think belong above the

3. alphie Says:
   February 28th, 2007 at 3:12 am

   “Many conservatives resist the theory of evolution even though it confirms many of conservatism’s deepest truths.”

   Wow, whoda thunk Brooks would stoop to dipping into the Nazi’s favorite social Darwinism shtick just to get another mediocre column out on time?

   What’s up with all the genocidal Canadians these days?

   Is it something in the maple syrup?

4. bird dog Says:
   February 28th, 2007 at 7:00 am

   If this is a revelation to Brooks, then I don’t know where he has been all his life. His op-ed reads like a high school essay.

5. The Thunder Run Says:
   February 28th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

   Web Reconnaissance for 02/28/2007

   A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.

6. RebeccaH Says:
   February 28th, 2007 at 7:21 pm

   I think they’ve missed the point: conservatives believe people should be given help but that they are ultimately responsible for their own lives. Liberals believe people should be given help and protected from living their lives.

7. ast Says:
   March 1st, 2007 at 1:49 pm

   I agree with his point about parents pressuring their kids to be overachievers. They should teach good work habits and love them, but there’s no reason why everybody has to go to an Ivy League college or feel a failure in life. There’s really no reason why everybody has to go to college, for crying out loud.

   All my grandson’s toys are covered with alphabet, numbers and some play Mozart in tinny little electronic voices. He’s not even 6 months! Children need childhood not government funded preschools. The reason humans don’t have litters is because they’re not intended to be raised in herds.

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