The Dangers of Human Nature

Humans are wonderful. We can also be completely horrible. The latter, separate from psychopathy and sociopathy, is generally true when we fail to know our human nature. 

Human nature includes some troubling tendencies. 

Rather than wishing them away or (worse) pretending they aren’t there. It’s best to know them. Bringing objectivity to that which we are subject to is a massive topic around DEUCE culture and this article is another attempt at bringing power and agency to natural human forces that all-to-often are acting upon us unwittingly 24/7/365. 

A strong but not comprehensive place to start is with the long studied fallacies that misguide our perception. Here are some examples:

1.     False Authority: using an expert of dubious credentials or using only one opinion to promote a product or idea.
2.     Ludic Fallacy: failing to take into account that non-regulated random occurrences unknown unknowns can affect the probability of an event taking place.

1. Mind projection fallacy – assuming that a statement about an object describes an inherent property of the object, rather than a personal perception.

4.     Retrospective determinism – believing that, because an event has occurred under some circumstance, the circumstance must have made the event inevitable.
5.     Slippery slope – asserting that a proposed, relatively small, first action will inevitably lead to a chain of related events resulting in a significant and negative event and, therefore, should not be permitted.
6.     False dilemma (false dichotomy, fallacy of bifurcation, black-or-white fallacy) – two alternative statements are given as the only possible options when, in reality, there are more.

The list goes on and on! Thank goodness we have names for these habits, because human behavior tends to repeat itself so strongly that these tendencies maintain their relevance today.  

This article and you knowing about these parts of human nature doesn’t make them going away, but with awareness comes agency. Keep your eye out so you aren’t subject to these well traveled human mistakes.