Our Natural natures!

I see human behaviour as a necessary product of cultural artifice. I do have enormous difficulty in trying to bridge the conceptual and psychological gap in seeing human behaviour as being "natural" in any way - and when the notion of being "natural" is wedded with a sense of morality, I have even more difficulty in understanding, than usual.

I can't, for instance, understand arguments that go along the line of "such and such a people's inalienable right to the land." I am completely without capacity to understand an argument for women's rights based upon any supposedly inherent characteristics of women (not their "nurturing capacities", not their "inherent pacifism", nor their practical need for childcare facilities -- nothing!) I am equally unable to respond to any argument that goes: "Patriarchy should rule over you, boo!"

To me, human behaviour, if it is one thing, is artifice. There is nothing whatsoever about it that is natural.

And more and more, I find myself at odds with those who think differently.

They look askance at me, as if: "Why didn't you do such and such? Such behaviour, from you, would have been more natural?"

(It is an attitude particularly pernicious in the contemporary workplace -- where some authority is trying desperately to mould you into an entirely different form. The ideology of "naturalness" is always the instrument for doing so.)

The ideology of naturalness is not just a disciplining mechanism for those who won't conform, but is also a self-justifying mechanism, used by those who don't want to consider the world in a more complex manner. To them, all impositions from the outside are immoral, on the basis that they are felt to be supremely unnatural.

But anything new -- any new skill, the engagement with any new idea -- is at first experienced as unnatural. It is only after time -- sometimes many years -- that the new behaviour starts to feel like second nature. At that point, it feels "natural" -- although it is still the same as it was originally: pure human artifice. It's just experienced differently.

I saw a woman on TV last night -- half human, half cabbage -- raising a typical moral objection about having to change. The psychologist urging her to do so lacked "interpersonal skills" and "respect", she pronounced. Never mind that she was being urged to change for her own good. It was more "natural" -- hence, in her system of values, more moral -- to bumble along as well as she already knew how to do. Moral condemnation was to be reserved for those urging for change. (It was they who were offending against the "natural" order!)

I cannot understand this point of view at all, and never will do -- but I concede that it is pretty good rhetoric (and admired and respected by left and right alike).