ABSTRACT
The first quotation opening this chapter raises a flag about how human nature is commonly interpreted in Western thought. It calls into question the power-based, game-theoretical, Machiavellian ideas underlying the Billiard Ball world view that dictates how past history is currently interpreted. It is the “history” that every schoolchild is taught and shapes the ways our culture thinks. In the last chapter, I noted how the famed ethologist, Robert Hinde, deplored the emphasis on male aggression as the explanatory principle of history; violent behavior is not biologically ingrained. Here, the Canadian judge, Rupert Ross, underscores the crucial role cultural beliefs about human nature play in social institutions. If you treat people as though they are intrinsically greedy, selfish or evil they tend to behave in greedy, selfish or evil ways. Cultures become self-fulfilling prophecies, unintentionally molding people to fit their tacit expectations.1 The second quotation, from historian/philosopher Charles Taylor, identifies as “sacred” each culture’s particular belief about what it means to be human; that is its religion.
