In capitalism there is every incentive to be cruel to other people. Most people probably feel horrible when seeing a homeless person on the street. We want to help them but we are told that helping them is bad, because they want to be homeless and if we give money they’ll just ‘waste it’. That’s not a normal human reaction, that’s learned behaviour.
Those specific cases are learned behaviour, but general purpose cruelty and theft is something that’s been around longer than capitalism has, and has to be unlearned as kids, not learned.
It’s true that cruelty has been around for longer than capitalism; it’s untrue, though, that it has to be “unlearned”. Every experiment (that I’ve learned about) demonstrated that even toddlers care about fairness, which (I would argue) is inherently opposed to cruelty
Anyone attempting to claim that humans are inherently humane has not met many humans.
In capitalism there is every incentive to be cruel to other people. Most people probably feel horrible when seeing a homeless person on the street. We want to help them but we are told that helping them is bad, because they want to be homeless and if we give money they’ll just ‘waste it’. That’s not a normal human reaction, that’s learned behaviour.
Those specific cases are learned behaviour, but general purpose cruelty and theft is something that’s been around longer than capitalism has, and has to be unlearned as kids, not learned.
“But What About Human Nature!?” is the Dumbest Conservative Argument
It’s true that cruelty has been around for longer than capitalism; it’s untrue, though, that it has to be “unlearned”. Every experiment (that I’ve learned about) demonstrated that even toddlers care about fairness, which (I would argue) is inherently opposed to cruelty
There is a difference between being Homo Sapiens and being human. We add standards to human.