As a child I was taught that people were born with “original sin,” a kind of indelible stain on one’s soul that could only be cleansed by the torture and death of a pure victim. I had no knowledge of — or obvious part in — this “original sin,” but apparently that did not matter. I was born tainted with guilt. Although I was also taught to follow the Ten Commandments, confess my sins, and pray for forgiveness, my own salvation — and escape from the eternal torment of hell — could not be gained by such acts alone. This was a little too subtle for a child to grasp, but faith, I was assured, could overcome all obstacles, even logic.
Later I learned about John Calvin’s more direct insistence that humans have no freedom to affect their own salvation. It doesn’t matter whether they love or hate: humans are predestined to be saved or damned. If an omniscient supreme being knows all of our decisions in advance, the idea of human free will seems irrelevant. The evangelical notion of a single individual act of salvation resembles predestination in its assertion that all are inherently sinful and require salvation, that salvation is something you cannot affect, and that, once saved, your certain destination is Heaven. This bifurcates humanity into two distinct groups — one damned, one save – without any incursion of human choice. At least some forms of Christianity, I began to sense, rest on a belief that humans are essentially depraved, selfish, evil. Are we?
A counterpart to this belief is the idea that humans are naturally cooperative and kind. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who deeply influenced the course of the French Revolution, believed that, by nature, human — once rid of their masters — are kind and want only freedom and equality. But if humans are essentially good, their goodness is not based on any choice or action. They can’t help it: it’s their nature. If humans are driven by inherent virtue — or for that matter, inherent depravit — there is no space for freedom to choose. Yet that freedom, many believe, is actually the most essential human quality. If we are capable of both kindness and cruelty, why has the doctrine of humanity’s innate selfishness so deeply inscribed our world?
Today we swim in an ocean of private enterprise. Its stability depends on the belief that all people are essentially selfish, that all want more for themselves, and that other humans are opponents. Since all are essentially greedy, we might as well get what we can, push as high up in the hierarchy as possible. This situation can be softened by systems of community, such as families, townships, local economies, perhaps even countries, but these pockets of cooperation still swim in a sea of competition, but now opponents appear beyond our circumscribed pockets. And the ocean of free enterprise works like an acid constantly dissolving the dikes protecting such islands of cooperation.
Without coercion, without an overarching political power, would humans turn on each other or turn to each other? Most of us, I fear, assume that innate human selfishness would lead to bloody chaos and that humans require a master to protect them from each other. Is this abridged notion of human possibilities written into our biology, or did we create it? If humans require a master, how can they be free to take part in democratic decision-making? To be under the control of inborn depravity or kindness means one cannot choose freely. Our nature becomes our master.
If we live in a world undergirded by the fantasy that humans are naturally selfish, perhaps we can imagine another in which acting selfishly or kindly is a choice, not only at the individual level but also in our collective efforts to structure our political, ecological, and economic realities. If we are, by nature, neither good nor evil, we can choose — individually and collectively— to embrace freedom and the responsibility it demands. This would mean no longer blaming our problems on nature or outsiders and recognizing that the current order is not entirely determined by nature or things outside of human control. Our freedom is indeed circumscribed, but we are responsible for what is within our control. We have used our freedom to create an order that denies our freedom. We can change it. To embrace freedom is to accept uncertainty. This requires the kind of courage that may get one evicted from Eden, but it is also — this side paradise or perdition — our path to hope.
Patrick McGreevy lives in Greenfield.