Human nature is an individual driver. Legislation is a group driver imposed by self or by others to exert some control, ostensibly for a common good in any kind of relationship. Belief that legislation can transform human nature is not new. The question every generation might ask is whether or not a transformation can be imposed.
One might think that after thousands of years of civilization, all our problems would be solved. We don’t have a shortage of well-intentioned people who work individually and in concert to find solutions. Goodness! Aren’t local diners and coffee shops filled with debaters? There’s a Roman Forum and Acropolis in every town. We even elect or appoint people to solve problems in big public buildings constructed and maintained at common expense. Yet, regardless of individual and group efforts, we seem to have the same problems the ancients voiced. Isn’t there some way to eliminate the ills of mankind?
It’s not that we haven’t discussed perfect worlds. And it’s not that we haven’t tried all kinds of cooperative ventures ranging from family through commune to country. It’s just that we can’t figure a way to alter human nature in general, and we can’t impose solutions regardless of the good intentions from which they arise.
We still reproduce people who grow to think imposition is the path to Utopia. We have many examples, but one that pervades city-dwellers is the repurposing of rundown neighborhoods. Revitalization comes with a cost to those whose lived the rundown. Build a new stadium; eliminate a neighborhood. Build a new office complex; eliminate a neighborhood. Build a new mall; eliminate the local barbershop. “Those who know what’s best,” often external motivators, plan the repurposing. A similar set of motivators imposes regulations and laws. Almost endless in their complexity, regulations are the product of burgeoning bureaucracies. Gordian.
According to translator Moses Hadas, a primary theme in Aristophanes' play Ecclesiazusae is that “human nature…cannot be transformed by legislation....”* But here we are about 2,500 years after the Greek playwright entertained his Athenian audiences with his insight, and we are still adding threads to the Gordian Knot of civilization, still operating under the belief that we can legislate changes in human nature. Just as Prohibition did not eliminate alcohol consumption in the United States, so drug laws will not eliminate drug use. And, as we see from deaths by maniacal terrorists driving onto sidewalks and using knives to stab people at random, gun laws won’t prevent murders.
I suppose that it is only fitting that a writer of comedies should lay the criticism on all subsequent governments that seek to transform human nature through legislation. Our efforts have been comedies of errors. A proliferating species that occupies more and more of Earth’s surface means that somewhere and somehow some regulation or law will not affect the desired transformation. Within any society individual drives drive individuals.
Ecclesiazusae, the Assembly Women, centers on the political rise of Praxagora, a woman, and her desire to impose equality on Athenians. Think Marx. Think socialism and communism. Yes, way back then others dealt with the same problems we have today, and they offered the same kinds of solutions that some of our own contemporaries offer. That Praxagora is a woman is irrelevant. Aristophanes could just as easily have written the part for a man, a transgender, or an alien from Planet X.
Now think turmoil in Venezuela. Think Cuba. Think oppression under Hitler or Stalin. In Ecclesiazusae, as Hadas writes, “the exploiting officials whom communism was expected to reform…promptly turn up as even more grasping commissars.” Think expensive parties thrown by the U. S. General Services Administration. The GSA, the agency for responsible financial management, spent $835,000 on a 2010 “convention” for 300 government employees that included payments for alcohol, food, a commemorative coin set, a mind reader, a comedian, and a clown. Communism always seems to work for the good of the commissars whose “equality” is just a bit more equal than those they govern.
No, we’ll never transform human nature by legislation. We haven’t learned the lesson so clearly taught by a Greek dramatist more than two thousand years ago. Human nature cannot be transformed by legislation. Think about that during your next visit to the diner, the coffee shop, or some intellectual “forum.” At best, legislation can exert only a limited and temporary control over human nature.
And since Industrial Revolution, we have new “Praxagoras” proposing that technology will effect the transformation that legislation has always failed to produce, that AI, for example, will lead to Utopia. Are you ready to be transformed? What do you think?
*Hadas, Moses, Ed. and Trans., The Complete Plays of Aristophanes, Bantam Books, New York, 1962, p. 9.
One might think that after thousands of years of civilization, all our problems would be solved. We don’t have a shortage of well-intentioned people who work individually and in concert to find solutions. Goodness! Aren’t local diners and coffee shops filled with debaters? There’s a Roman Forum and Acropolis in every town. We even elect or appoint people to solve problems in big public buildings constructed and maintained at common expense. Yet, regardless of individual and group efforts, we seem to have the same problems the ancients voiced. Isn’t there some way to eliminate the ills of mankind?
It’s not that we haven’t discussed perfect worlds. And it’s not that we haven’t tried all kinds of cooperative ventures ranging from family through commune to country. It’s just that we can’t figure a way to alter human nature in general, and we can’t impose solutions regardless of the good intentions from which they arise.
We still reproduce people who grow to think imposition is the path to Utopia. We have many examples, but one that pervades city-dwellers is the repurposing of rundown neighborhoods. Revitalization comes with a cost to those whose lived the rundown. Build a new stadium; eliminate a neighborhood. Build a new office complex; eliminate a neighborhood. Build a new mall; eliminate the local barbershop. “Those who know what’s best,” often external motivators, plan the repurposing. A similar set of motivators imposes regulations and laws. Almost endless in their complexity, regulations are the product of burgeoning bureaucracies. Gordian.
According to translator Moses Hadas, a primary theme in Aristophanes' play Ecclesiazusae is that “human nature…cannot be transformed by legislation....”* But here we are about 2,500 years after the Greek playwright entertained his Athenian audiences with his insight, and we are still adding threads to the Gordian Knot of civilization, still operating under the belief that we can legislate changes in human nature. Just as Prohibition did not eliminate alcohol consumption in the United States, so drug laws will not eliminate drug use. And, as we see from deaths by maniacal terrorists driving onto sidewalks and using knives to stab people at random, gun laws won’t prevent murders.
I suppose that it is only fitting that a writer of comedies should lay the criticism on all subsequent governments that seek to transform human nature through legislation. Our efforts have been comedies of errors. A proliferating species that occupies more and more of Earth’s surface means that somewhere and somehow some regulation or law will not affect the desired transformation. Within any society individual drives drive individuals.
Ecclesiazusae, the Assembly Women, centers on the political rise of Praxagora, a woman, and her desire to impose equality on Athenians. Think Marx. Think socialism and communism. Yes, way back then others dealt with the same problems we have today, and they offered the same kinds of solutions that some of our own contemporaries offer. That Praxagora is a woman is irrelevant. Aristophanes could just as easily have written the part for a man, a transgender, or an alien from Planet X.
Now think turmoil in Venezuela. Think Cuba. Think oppression under Hitler or Stalin. In Ecclesiazusae, as Hadas writes, “the exploiting officials whom communism was expected to reform…promptly turn up as even more grasping commissars.” Think expensive parties thrown by the U. S. General Services Administration. The GSA, the agency for responsible financial management, spent $835,000 on a 2010 “convention” for 300 government employees that included payments for alcohol, food, a commemorative coin set, a mind reader, a comedian, and a clown. Communism always seems to work for the good of the commissars whose “equality” is just a bit more equal than those they govern.
No, we’ll never transform human nature by legislation. We haven’t learned the lesson so clearly taught by a Greek dramatist more than two thousand years ago. Human nature cannot be transformed by legislation. Think about that during your next visit to the diner, the coffee shop, or some intellectual “forum.” At best, legislation can exert only a limited and temporary control over human nature.
And since Industrial Revolution, we have new “Praxagoras” proposing that technology will effect the transformation that legislation has always failed to produce, that AI, for example, will lead to Utopia. Are you ready to be transformed? What do you think?
*Hadas, Moses, Ed. and Trans., The Complete Plays of Aristophanes, Bantam Books, New York, 1962, p. 9.
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