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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
Yes will, there IS a human nature. We are living beings, not unlike gorillas, lions, bears, hippos, or any other living breathing mammal on the planet. Your desire to seperate humans from the animal kingdom by virtue of a brain not withstanding, we are still animals. As humans, we have a self preservation gene. We have predatory genes. We have DNA that directs our selves towards the desire of things that the will to do what we want to obtain those. Evil acts CAN be part of this makeup of the human gene.
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Okay, this is a bit off the mark. I don't think Will meant to separate humans from the animal kingdom. He's well educated; I'm sure he knows we're animals. But to say we are unlike the zoo you listed and to simply lump us together as animals and call it "nature" is an oversimplification. We have genetic traits passed onto us that might explain much of our behaviour, but that isn't the end of the story. Society and our unique developmental histories play huge roles in our behavioural patterns. Evolutionary biologists have been studying this for years.
The problem with discussing "human nature" is that it gets far too glossed. As we've seen, we immediately jump on DNA, genes, etc., while overlooking much of the long history of behavioural study (the latter of which, consequently, makes up a much greater body of work than the former). To call the sum of our actions an exclusive result of our genetic makeup isn't going to get us anywhere if we are to understand the deplorable acts people commit. It's much more complex than that. The behavioural sciences have been grossly overlooked so far in the thread. Our greatest efforts to prevent and deal with the crimes we most fear are rooted in these. Genetics is a factor, but I think it acts only as a baseline to certain research and applied studies related to human behaviour (that is, if it's going to be of any actual use).