If we remove all the unnatural elements from human social life what are we left with?

First we have to ask what is natural, and what is the character and meaning of human nature and nature itself? Here is where political philosophers have disagreed.

Contrary to modern liberalism, social evolution has not displaced biological evolution, far from it. Simone de Beauvoir was simply mistaken in saying “man is not a natural species; he is an historical idea.” This Marxist spinoff set radical feminism off on the wrong course, and modern cultural philosophy as well.

There is a biological origin to cultural behavior defined best in the science of sociobiology, which has the most accurate definition of human nature at this time. Human societies are not merely a bunch of independent individuals as defined by libertarians, or a bees-nest of anti-individual altruists.  Group-selection leads other forms of selection in human interactions, as recently affirmed by E.O.Wilson. 

As often repeated in this blog, human nature consists of gender differences, age-grading, marriage-making, hierarchy, ethnocentrism, religion-making, group-selection and other typically traditional traits. Cultures can operate for a time with behavior that goes against human nature, with such experiments as Marxism, but culture is always eventually pulled back by the biological and genetic leash of real human nature to cultures that better reflect real human nature.

Answering the question “what is human nature” in this way leads to family-oriented, kin, ethnic, and group-oriented small states and regions, with as much independence as possible, which are in cooperative competition with other similar formed states, protected by a light federalism. The United States and its original Constitution could actually be workable in this most natural human configuration.

I believe this the best environment for human nature to flourish, but it also is deepened by being grounded in the religious foundation of the evolution of life to Godhood in the cosmos.