It's Human Nature, Stupid

It’s Human Nature, Stupid is meant that many players didn’t e Origins of Political Order: get to play more than once, and some From Prehuman Times to the didn’t get to play at all. Several of us, French Revolution graduate students and faculty mem- by Francis Fukuyama bers every one, sat on the sidelines Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, and considered what might be done. We arrived at an obvious solution: In- 608 pages. stead of playing only on the center— Reviewed by Marshall Poe read: premier—court, we would play on both the center and the smaller ome two decades ago, I conduct- side court, thus allowing more people S ed an experiment in institutional to take part. We presented our plan to mechanics at Harvard University. the regulars. ey grudgingly agreed Now, I didn’t know that’s what I was to try it. After only a run or two, doing at the time. I thought I was just however, there was mass defection. trying to get some “good run”—slang Almost everyone preferred to play on for a competitive game of pick-up bas- the center court, even if it meant he ketball—at Malkin Athletic Center, might not get to play at all. known as “the MAC.” But now that Why had our plan, despite its I’ve read Francis Fukuyama’s ambi- obvious rationality, failed so utterly? tious e Origins of Political Order: At the time, I thought it was due to From Prehuman Times to the French the pigheadedness and idiocy of the Revolution, I see that I was in fact test- other players. I was wrong: People at ing a theory—or rather, his ttheory—heory— Harvard are many things, some of of institutional change. And thanks to them distinctly unsavory, but they are that theory, I now understand what generally not pigheaded idiots (with a happened, which was the following. few possible exceptions who shall go One spring—I can’t remember the unnamed). In the light of Fukuyama’s year exactly—there were too many new book, I now see why our reform players for the MAC’s noon game. not only collapsed, but was doomed / • from the very start. e reason has Put all this together, and you have to do with two things: human nature a good explanation for why our re- and tradition. ally good idea came to nothing. Most First, let us examine human na- players didn’t want to lose face by ture, or rather four elements thereof. playing on the side court. ey want- Element number 1: People naturally ed to be seen as “having game,” and favor their friends. If players see their that required playing on the center buddies playing on the center court, court. ose who didn’t care about they will want to play there as well. status just wanted to play with their Element number 2: People naturally friends, many of whom were, again, get intellectually invested in tradi- on the center court. And nearly every- tions. If players have played at the one thought and felt it was somehow MAC for any length of time, they “wrong” to violate the MAC’s ancient will have many arguments “proving” pick-up conventions. Of course, that the status quo is “right.” Ele- sticking with the old conventions in ment number 3: People naturally get this case made no sense. But—and emotionally invinvestedested in traditions. IIff here’s the lesson I learned, thanks to players have played for any length of Fukuyama—institutions are not only time at the MAC, they will feel—and about rationality. ey are also, and I mean feel—attached to its convconven-en- even predominately, about the inter- tions, whether they make sense or not. play between human nature and the Element number 4: People naturally historical accidents that give birth to seek the approbation of their peers, traditions. or what we call “status.” Most players is, I think, is the primary mes- will want to play with the best players sage of Francis Fukuyama’s new book. on the best court so as to demonstrate In it, he is trying to figure out why that they, too, are the best. is some states “get to Denmark”—that brings us to traditions, or rather two is, become stable, prosperous, liberal of them. From the perspective of the republics—while others do not. “For players, the noon game has “always” people in developed countries,” he been played on the center court, and writes, “‘Denmark’ is a mythical place only the center court. Similarly, from that is known to have good political the perspective of the players, the and economic institutions: It is sta- center court has “always” been the ble, democratic, peaceful, prosperous, one on which the best players play, inclusive and has extremely low levels while the side courts are reserved for of political corruption.” I personally people “without game.” have never had any fantasies about • A Denmark, though I’m told it now has less than swimmingly. True, in Japan the best restaurant in the world. Truth and Germany, the seeds took. But in be told, I haven’t thought much about painful instances such as Afghanistan Denmark at all. I’m not sure that, as and Iraq, the crop has failed com- Fukuyama puts it, “Everyone would pletely. Indeed, these cases call into like to figure out how to transform question the idea, beloved not only by Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria, Iraq, or Af- neocons, but by much of the Western ghanistan into ‘Denmark.’” Everyone policy establishment, that liberal de- he talks to, maybe. Nonetheless I see mocracy can be planted at all. his point: Most of us would like to So what is Fukuyama’s answer to know why there are so few winners the Denmark riddle? Basically, it’s that and so many losers in the game of human institutions—be they pick-up political development. e issue has basketball games or entire nations— personal significance for Fukuyama. get stuck in ruts for reasons having In his most famous (and widely mis- to do with (you guessed it) human understood) book, e End of History nature and historical accidents. And and the Last Man, Fukuyama argued once we sort these obstacles out, the that with the fall of communism, road to Denmark will be, if not wide the last great alternative to universal open, then at least not impassible. liberal democracy had collapsed. In the future, he said, we would ukuyama opens e Origins of all live in someplace like Denmark. F Political Order byby proposing,proposing, e rub is that much of the world quite sensibly, that it is impossible is Denmarkizing very slowly, and to understand political institutions still other parts are experiencing de- without some grasp of human evolu- Denmarkization (which may even be tion and the distinctive human nature true of Denmark, given the current it produced. I was so happy to read fiscal crisis in the European Union). this that I nearly jumped out of my If you’ve bet the farm that liberal chair. For too long, scholars have democracy is in all our futures, as either denied that human nature ex- Fukuyama has, these facts are cer- ists or contrived parodies of it, useful tainly irksome. Fukuyama wants to for axe-grinding and little else. To my find out what’s holding things up. mind, historians are the worst deniers e American political elite should (human nature is “historically con- want to know as well, as recent at- structed,” you know), while classical tempts to plant liberal democratic economists are the worst parodists institutions in virgin soil have gone (human nature is “utility maximizing,” / • except when it isn’t). Fukuyama, It’s refreshing that by “evolu- however, prefers to lambaste political tion” Fukuyama really means evolu-evolu- theorists on this score. Hobbes said tion—that is, Darwin’s “descent people are all scared to death of with modification.” “Darwinian death, and therefore created political evolution” he writes, “is built around institutions to protect them from the two principles of variance and one another. “Wrong!” says Fuku- selection: Organisms experience yama. Rousseau said that people are random genetic mutation, and those naturally innocent, and that political best adapted to their environments institutions are imposed upon them survive and multiply. So too in politi- by bad people who apparently aren’t cal development: ere is variation in innocent. “Wrong!” says Fukuyama. political institutions, and those best As it concerns political institutions, suited to the physical and social en- Fukuyama explains, human nature vironment survive and proliferate.” consists of four traits: 1) an ingrained Biological evolution created human bias toward kith and kin; 2) a search- nature; political evolution created the ing mind that, not finding a satisfac- variety of polities we see around the tory answer, spontaneously invents globe today. It follows that the only the idea of God; 3) a set of emotions way to comprehend political evolu- that are pre-programmed to make tion is to investigate how, within the us follow rules, even bad ones; and firm constraints of human nature, 4) a thoroughly non-utility-maximiz- institutions were born, selected for ing desire for respect, both for your (or against), and passed on (or not) person and for the things you like. to subsequent eras. at means, says For Fukuyama (and, one should Fukuyama, that you have to study his- add, nearly the entire scientific com- tory. Once again, I was so pleased to munity), these traits evolved, and are read this that I nearly jumped out of therefore hard-wired.

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