By William A. O'Brien
Is it true that who we are is a function of where we are and who's there with us? How much does what we believe or what we're willing to do depend, not on what that little voice inside tells us, but how we read those around us? Am I a different person when I'm alone than when I'm not? How vulnerable am I to group-think?
Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No.15, challenged the common notion "that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals."
On the contrary, he argued, "all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind" deny this, recognizing instead that "a spirit of faction ... [causes] all bodies of men ... [to] often hurry ... persons ... into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity." Individuals may want to do what's right, but honor and good conscience become impotent in the face of group pressure.
One of the world's most notable "accurate observers of the conduct of mankind" was David Hume. He referenced the popular political maxim "that every man must be supposed a knave" by declaring it to be "false in fact.... Men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go to greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned."
James Madison, in a quite revealing 17-page letter to Thomas Jefferson in France, reported on the Constitution completed just over a month earlier in Philadelphia. In it, he derided the power of factions to elevate the extremes of self-interest over man's innate moral sense.
Religion, he acknowledged, has proven itself ineffective in checking negative human behavior, however much believers might wish otherwise.
"The conduct of every popular Assembly, acting on oath, the strongest of religious ties, shews that individuals join without remorse in acts agst. which their consciences would revolt, if proposed separately to them in their closets," he wrote.
In a side of Madison few have ever seen, let alone commend, we see him acknowledge (Federalist No. 55) "a degree of depravity in mankind" that warrants attention, but counter it with optimism because it is offset, "[by] other qualities in human nature that justify ... esteem and confidence."
Madison was especially eager in No. 55 to warn of those determined to persuade us "that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another."
The thrust of his message? Beware of those who would knowingly call attention to his mention of man's depravity, but conveniently overlook the more positive context in which it was used.
Ditto for those who surreptitiously use frequent condemnations of faction in the Federalist papers to make the implausible leap from the mere evidence of self-interest in man's cognitive make-up to the dishonest conclusion that it must always dominate his behavior.
Hamilton challenged "this supposition of universal venality in human nature" [Federalist No. 76] as well, alluding to delegation of power as evidence "that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind, which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence."
Despite persistent denial from those with a political agenda that demands otherwise, most of America's founders endorsed a view of human nature more complex and far less negative than that of the knave most often presented.
Thomas Jefferson, for example, explained that "Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was ... formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right & wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality."
Jefferson recognized that this moral sense, always there, could be overwhelmed by reason, especially when it was honed and developed.
"State a moral case to a ploughman & a professor," he wrote. "The former will decide it as well, & often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules."
Here, Jefferson tells us, is the source of man's inclination to rationalize, to master cognitive skills that transform wrongs into self-serving rights. It's the kind of learned behavior that our higher education system and professional schools polish to a fine sheen. In the process, man's innate sense of right and wrong is driven deeper within him. Conscience might never totally abandon us, but less and less can it surface the more "educated" we become.
Most can accept this idea of man's innate goodness from Jefferson. Anyone who'd claim that "all men are created equal" and blessed with "unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" had to have his head pretty high up in the clouds anyway.
That the Hamilton and Madison portrayed here are so totally unfamiliar to us is the real issue.
The maxim of man-as-knave is as alive today as it was in Hume's world. That so few question it explains why Hume remains a total unknown.
Like Thomas Hobbes in "Leviathan," Hume blamed over-emphasis on the dark side of human nature, the belief that man could have "no other end, in all his actions, than private interest," for man's desire to seek the strong ruler. It served to legitimize political power.
A like mind-set about man's nature has become maxim in today's economic world to drive contemporary capitalism and the consumer mentality that sustains it.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes warned us more than a century ago in his Lochner v. New York dissent (1905) that, "a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory." In fact, that is exactly what we have allowed to happen.
It's hard to deny the validity of the Pope's concern in Laudato Si, that man's total fixation on economic development and the self-interested values that drive it as unquestioned confirmation of man's nature, bereft of any moral dimension whatsoever, does indeed threaten the planet.
It's even more difficult to not question the degree to which scholar-enablers, in pursuit of corporate patrons and grants, demean their professional integrity in their sweep through America's past for evidence to sustain what they are paid to find.
Not only have we taken the founders' words out of context to promote a narrow, self-serving economic agenda, we have consciously suppressed evidence from these same sources that would refute it.
Publius, the voice of Madison, Hamilton and John Jay in The Federalist, has been cherry-picked and compromised in order to promote a particular view of human nature; the sources cited above that suggest something quite different rarely make it into our textbooks, classrooms or media.
Is the conservative uprising against the Common Core educational standards merely the latest example of an ideological determination to keep America's young on track for entry into an illusory, sheltered world we continue to insist that they embrace? Or worse, unwittingly to deny them skills they'll need for success in the real world that awaits them?
And what of the Donald Trump phenomenon? What particular chords in the American electorate is he touching? Might The Donald really not be a phenomenon at all, but simply a glib demagogue, able to tap into the unrealistic dream of American exceptionalism that many believe was stolen from us?
Might the perspectives presented here be, in Madison's words, "the power which knowledge gives?" Let's hope so.
William A. O'Brien, of Beckley, is president of Training/Arts, Inc. and executive director of the Virtual Center for Study of the Constitution and Civic Responsibility.