Visions of Human Potential; or, One Factor in Why People Disagree

When you disagree with someone, it can be very insightful to find out what is the root cause of your disagreement. Is it that you have fundamentally different values? Fundamentally different ideas about how the world works? Different beliefs about the facts of a situation are? In this post I’d like to explore two different fundamental worldviews that affect how people think about morality and politics.

Here are two ways you can think about the potential of humanity:

Constrained vision: People are inherently subject to certain limitations, particularly selfishness and egocentricity
Unconstrained vision: Selfishness and egocentricity can be transcended, and are not inherent characteristics of humans

There is clearly a spectrum here — few people have either a totally constrained vision or a totally unconstrained vision of humanity. But I think this framework is very useful for understanding a lot of moral and political disagreements between people. Your vision about humanity’s potential drives a lot of your assumptions about how people interact and how they ought to interact.

Here is an assortment of examples of how I see this framework being applied to different groups of people:

Someone who thinks that strong social systems are needed in order to make people behave well is more likely to be using the constrained vision (e.g., Hobbes). Because people are inherently very egoistic, we need laws and social norms to keep us from acting solely out of self-interest
Someone who thinks that people would live in harmony if only we could get rid of the social institutions that warp our incentives, like capitalism, are using an unconstrained vision (e.g., Rousseau). Egoism isn’t inescapable, but a society that encourages selfishness causes people to become much more self-centered
If you are using a constrained vision, you might be more likely to advocate for incremental changes to existing economic and political systems. Since people are inherently greedy and shortsighted, a perfect system will never be possible, so we might as well improve the one we have
If you have an unconstrained vision, you might be more in favor of completely overhauling the current western capitalistic system. A different way of structuring society has the possibility to be much much better than the one we have now and to free us of the greed and selfishness that are imposed on us by capitalism
Christians tend to have an unconstrained vision, which fits well with teachings about hope, and the power of grace to help us overcome our weaknesses. Because of original sin, people behave selfishly, but it is possible to overcome this egoism through the grace of God
Broadly speaking, those with an unconstrained vision are more idealistic about what humanity can achieve, while those with a constrained vision are more cynical

What I like most about the constrained/unconstrained distinction is that it describes a fundamental difference in worldview that can help illustrate why people have disagreements about moral matters. I might think that everyone should stop eating meat because of the harmful effects that raising animals has on the climate. And you might think that Americans as a whole will never stop eating meat because it tastes so good, so there isn’t really a point to being vegetarian because the overall meat-production system will not change.

In this instance, it’s helpful to know that I have an unconstrained vision of people’s capacity to overcome selfishness, and you have a constrained view, because that informs our opinions on whether people ought/ought not be vegetarian. These visions are fundamental assumption about humanity that affect how we view the world. They don’t completely determine our views, but they do explain at least part of them. And greater understanding of the people you disagree with is always to be cherished.

My ideas about are paraphrased from ideas described in the book A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell.

@Maggie, sorry I didn’t write about coronavirus, but here’s an article about it that’s better than anything I would have written.