When one considers "human nature" one brings into play the terms "good" and "bad" as if these two things were not created from our perspective. Nietzsche put it best when he said;

"What is good? all that comes from power. What is bad? all that stems from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing."

Taking the idea of human nature seriously we must admit that there must be a totality which is known as human nature, rather than a few characteristics here and there. If human nature has set qualities and pre-determined qualities then we would expect this; A predictable, easy to understand (relatively) pattern of activity and a set idea of how a human reacts in whatever situation. We do not see this applying to the whole human species. What we see are many ways that humans react, interact and live their lives. When a family member dies there is no one set law or firm expectation to how the human would react. Some will get angry, some sad, some perhaps relieved, and others would bottle it up inside. This is because of our extraordinary psychology. This is where human nature lies. It is not in how a human acts or how a human lives that defines human nature, it is our unique and sometimes bizarre way of reacting and thinking in a way unique to each person. Human nature includes a vast spectrum of qualities that vary between individuals, and that is why there is no one set "human nature" except perhaps the fact that our psychology is prone to be so different from one person to the next, Among maybe one or two more observations.

one quality of humans that is concrete in nature is sex. This is More along the lines of genetics than anything else but it would be wrong of me not to mention it because after all, sex is the single most powerful drive in a human. It fuels around 80% of our actions. And sex forwards our species development (evolutionary development, mind you) on this planet. So as you can see this idea of human nature is layered; We have the genetic human nature, the psychological human nature and the emotional human nature that all overlap with each other. The last two are so important here because even though our genes are set and we are here to reproduce, our psychology and emotional response are so differed! The primary drive of a human does not create a uniform "nature" throughout our species, and that is why we are so unique.

Learn more about this author, Samuel Lacks.
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