R.K.: Do you think that psychopathy is a trait that is evolutionarily supported?
J.B.: Well, I think self interest is, but I also think that what evolutionary" what evolution reveals is that we need to be enlightened in our self interest and what that means is that we need to actually be capable of transcending our self interest and understanding where our individual interests end and where we need to start thinking about collective institutions that enable us to be the individuals we want to be and that enable us to be fuller and more fulfilled and ultimately happier individuals.
So I don't think you can reduce love for a child to self interest, or romantic love to self interest. We're very complicated beings and there's no question that part of what we are is self interested, and there's no question that we love to consume. I like a good bottle of wine and a nice fitting jacket as well as anybody else. I mean it's not a crime to want to be a consumer, or to be self interested, but it gets back to the point about fundamentalism.
If we see that as our primary characteristic, one that we are to the exclusion of everything else, then we build a society that is fundamentalist because it's based on that notion of who we as human beings, that we're just one thing. Whereas I like to believe both from an evolutionary perspective, or from a spiritual perspective- whichever you choose to take- we are very complicated mixes of self interest, of altruism, of the capacity to love and to sacrifice ourselves for others.
We're all those things. And some of us are genetically predisposed to be a bit more of this and a bit less of that. We're all those things and so the challenge for us as human beings is to create societies that enable us, encourage us, to live those different dimensions of ourselves which are not in any way contradictory but actually reinforcing.
What history shows is that we get into trouble every time we start to think we're just one way whether it's one religious way, or one economic way, or one cultural way, or one racial way, or whatever. But what we see are horrific societies, usually being based on that idea that we're only one thing and that this is prior to that.
And we see functional societies, and I consider the United States with all the difficulties and everything, but the sort of post-war period and I'm not saying it was a panacea, but the United States in general, going back to the constitution, going back to the revolutionary ideals, this was an attempt to create a society that would enable people to be fuller and more multidimensional.
Now the history is checkered for sure and it's not perfect, but this was an attempt, Democracy was an attempt, and a better one than the authoritarian regimes that preceded it, to create a society where people can really engage in this kind of fluidity about what society should be, about the multiplicity and plurality of values that society should embrace, about how that reflects who we are as individuals.
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