The NY Times yesterday had an interesting article about where various conservatives stood on Darwin's ideas of natural selection and evolution.

Religious conservatives generally hold the acceptance of evolution responsible for many of what they call society's evils or ills: abortion, rampant promiscuity, etc., and point to the "eugenics" of the Nazis as an example of Darwinism.

Conservatives more nuanced than the "social Darwinists" make some good points though; points that satirists like Swift or Voltaire might have gone along with. Human nature--is it good or bad? If it's merely the product of random evolution, why trust it without strong government safeguards?

Well, I've argued before that human nature is multifarious, and it's obvious, I think, that our species evolved along with its cultures. The same humans in different environments act differently--and human societies can be benign or malignant made up of the same people--not so much because of what those societies clamp down on in human nature, but what they promote...

Not just human nature: elephant nature. The NY Times also reported the disruptions in modern elephant society, thanks to human poaching and encroachment: wild young male elephants roam the countryside, raping rhinos. In traditional elephant society, there's a matriarch, a giant grandmother elephant, who keeps everyone in check, who educates the elephant tribe in civilized elephant ways.

I suppose I'm arguing more for a societal superego instead of ego--that it's not so much that people need to be watched out for as certain patterns need to be brought out. kytty has written about bonobos, pygmy chimpanzees, similarly to these elephant stories: that bonobo society can be very egalitarian.

So nature is not just "nature, red in tooth and claw", but there are alternate successful patterns for survival waiting to be drawn out.