just being human?

“we are better than this.” Barry Obama in a “white house email” I seem to be doomed to get in perpetuity._____ “…]this]illustrates a general truth: the ultimate aim of the communist system was the transformation of human nature, it was an idea shared by the other so-called totalitarian regimes of the inter-war period. This, after all, was an age of utopian optimism in the potential to change human life, and, paradoxically at the same time, an age of profound doubt and uncertainty about the value of human life itself in the wake of the destruction of the first world war.” Orlando figes. “a people’s tragedy: the Russian revolution 1891-1924”_____ “skinner was a staunch blank-slater and a passionate utopian. His uncommonly pure vision allows us to examine the implications of the ‘optimistic” denial of human nature. Given his premise that undesirable behavior is not in the genes, but a product of the environment, it follows that we should control that environment…why are most people repelled by this vision? Critics of skinners “beyond freedom and dignity” pointed out that no one doubts human behavior can be controlled: putting a gun to someone’s head or threatening him with torture are time honored techniques. Even skinner’s preferred method of operant conditioning required starving the organism to 80 percent of its free-feeding weight and confining it to a box where schedules of reinforcement were carefully controlled. The issue is not whether we can change human behavior, but at what cost” Steven pinker “the blank slate: the modern denial of human nature.”_____ “we are addicted to tribal conflict, which is harmless and entertaining if sublimated into team sports, but deadly when expressed as real-world ethnic, religious, and ideological struggles.” e.o. Wilson, “the meaning of human existence”_____ what if we’re not barry? What if what we are is human and what if there is a human nature ringed with violence? There have been a multiplicity of schemes to change humans from the above mentioned skinner and the bolsheviki…and it doesn’t stop there…the webbs and Frederick taylor wanted to rationalize human work…hippies and other communalists were all about changing views on the individual…partnership for a drug free America wants us all to be clean and sober ( oh how I hate “special vocabularies” they mystify the uninitiated and frame debates…they seek to limit not expand thought )…no end of religious utopianism…ghandi…mormons…the branch dravidians….the pope…all sorts of religiosity that just can’t seem to get handle on things…religion is a product of human nature…not a cure for it…gropup-think as a norm…so what if much of the violence in life actually stem from elite social manipulation in their own interests…what if policy is driving this divisiveness…the politicians from the cretinous trump to the corrupt Clinton to the insider posing as populist sanders will tell you it isn’t…a fair sign it has at least something to do with it…none of them are what the purport to be and they all lie...and, while we are being iconoclastic…how much violence in this country is committed by military and former military personnel who are sucked into police forces and militias after their term of service? They are trained to be violent...and it seems that is difficult to be unlearned…the government certainly doesn’t teach it …No one seems interested in finding out…and as a last kicker...if texas wants to go, let them…the empire can’t dissolve quickly enough….we may never live entirely at peace with one another…Wilson is correct…we are tribal by nature and no matter how politely we phrase it we always think “our” group is a little better…how we define ourselves…and the “other”