The needs of the Slave Owners

"It is simply a matter of historical fact that the dominant intellectual culture of any particular society reflects the interest of the dominant group in that society. In a slave owning society the beliefs about human beings and human rights and so on will reflect the needs of the slave owners.

In the society, which is based on the power of certain people to control and profit from the lives and work of millions of others, the dominant intellectual culture will reflect the needs of the dominant group. So, if you look across the board, the ideas that pervade psychology, sociology, history, political economy and political science fundamentally reflect certain elite interests.

And the academics who question that too much tend to get shunted to the side or to be seen as sort of ‘radicals’.”

 

Gabor Maté

On Human Nature

In a society that is predicated on competition and really, very often the ruthless exploitation of one human being by another, the profiteering off of other people's problems for the purpose of profiteering,  the ruling ideology will very often justify that behavior by appeals to some fundamental, unalterable human nature.

So, the myth in our society is that people are competitive, individualistic and selfish by nature. The reality is quite the opposite.

We have certain human needs. The only way that you can talk about human nature concretely is by recognizing that there are certain human needs.

We have a human need for companionship and for close contact, to be loved, to be attached to, to be accepted, to be seen, to be received for who we are.

If those needs are met, we develop into people who are compassionate, cooperative, and who have empathy fir other people.

The opposite that we often see in our society is in fact, a distortion of human nature, precusely because so few people have their needs met.

So yes you can talk about human nature, but only in the sense of basic human needs that lead to certain traits if they are met and a different set of traits if they're denied.

Dr. Gabor Maté