——Thinking
about "Dante's Journey to Hell" Aside from production technology and plot design, "Dante's Journey to Hell" is a very in-depth movie—— At least it makes me think deeply. In this short essay, I want to talk specifically about my thoughts on the theme of "human nature" after watching the movie, and I hope the readers will not hesitate to be correct.
One: Perhaps the so-called "human nature" did not exist.
The protagonist of this movie, Dante, fully demonstrated the complexity and change of human nature: the Crusades made Dante cruel and bloodthirsty; the blind faith in the gods made him degenerate , Indulge, lose his loyalty to Beatrice and his purity; the life of guarding the prisoner makes him irritable and irritable. But on the other hand, his love for Beatrice is still fierce and firm, and he still has compassion for the people who suffer in hell, and he will feel very regretful when he recalls the mistakes he has made.
But, is his humanity really changing? According to common sense, the nature of human nature should be constant. So an explanation we can say is that in fact, loyalty, betrayal, kindness, cruelty, peace, and violence, these human characteristics have long existed in his heart, but they show different characteristics under different circumstances. The second explanation I think is: there has never been any universal abstract human nature at all. He is just responding to the environment with its physical or physiological nature.
The first explanation is not new, but the second explanation is not much sought after. Why can't it be understood this way? In the early days of mankind, we had no fangs and claws to stay together in order to survive. The size of the group and the health of group members would affect the survival of everyone, so we began to care about the disease and pain of our companions out of our personal interests. Just like human beings’ interpretations of many other behaviors of their own “beautiful name”, we later put a moral aura on this “caring”, called “sympathy and compassion,” and they became the so-called humanity. Elements, and "cruel, indifference" was created as its opposite, with the purpose of facilitating description or praising the human nature of "kindness and sympathy." With the passage of time, this kind of moral consciousness is deepened and strengthened by us, and we even forget that this is just a beautification of our ancestors' behavior. We forget that when our ancestors struggled to survive alone, when they were not in the group and did not rely on others (this situation assumes existence), these so-called moral principles did not exist, that is to say, the so-called human nature is just A kind of sociality, and human "nature" is a biological animal.
But does the assumption that "universal, abstract, and innate human nature does not exist" really makes no sense? "Human nature is a kind of sociality, formed in the development of society" has no value to modern society? No, absolutely not. The development of modern society has brought us a lot of convenience, but at the same time it has also created a kind of retrospect to the "original state" mentioned above. We are becoming increasingly dependent on society, but becoming independent of other individuals. However, because of the stability of the social supply system, our dependence on society can almost always be satisfied. These social supplies have become less and less worrying, so this dependence on society is becoming less and less easy for us to make moral choices ( The manifestation is the construction of our human nature). The estrangement of personal relationships and the guarantee of social dependence enable us to go back to the "original state" in a certain sense. But the trouble comes. Individuals scattered in the original state have no humanity at all. What we see is only survival, only our own animal needs, so modern society also has no morals at all, and it has become only naked desires. Human nature is becoming more and more lacking, while animal nature is more obvious.
Perhaps the above process is still in progress, but we have to beware of this development trend. Of course, the premise is that you partially agree with the above hypothesis and the theory based on the hypothesis-I think it still has a certain explanatory power.
To deal with this kind of crisis, we must rebuild social relations, lead people from the network terminal to the real world, and strengthen the interaction and communication between individuals and between individuals and society.
2. The environmental dependence of human nature.
In addition to using the above theories to explain the detrimental consequences of contemporary society—social crises caused by humans going back to the original state, I also want to point out that it is precisely because of the so-called "moral" sociality or " Hypocrisy", its effect depends on a certain social environment. When the movie's protagonist Dante lives in a peaceful country, he enjoys the company of his lover and shows a peaceful and kind side; and when he is on the battlefield, his bloodthirsty side is revealed. The famous Stanford prison experiment also proved that the environment has a decisive influence on people's performance of good and evil. The organizer of the experiment, the famous psychologist Philip Zimbardo, concluded: "A good environment allows bad people to do good things, but a bad environment allows good people to do bad things." In order to bring out the good side of human nature, we need to create good things. surroundings.
Although I have come to the conclusion that "human nature" does not exist, I do not want to and cannot deny the existence value of various human nature hypotheses. They have certain guiding significance as simplified and stable understanding hypotheses proposed by people. But we should also innovate and put forward other theories. So since there is no universal humanity, or to take a step back to say that modern society is increasingly lacking humanity (mainly referring to the good aspects), then what adjustments should be made to the system design? I think the main points are as follows: 1. Pluralistic theory of human nature replaces the monolithic theory of human nature. Don't take people as a simplistic understanding. 2. The concrete theory of human nature replaces the abstract theory of human nature, focusing on people's thinking and choices in a certain field and a certain time and space. 3. Within a certain limit, make assumptions about human nature with reference to animal nature. In many cases, it is necessary to make bad assumptions about human nature; 4. Through the improvement of the social environment, through educational means to cultivate "human nature"-since human nature is acquired and malleable . 5. Promote the positive and positive aspects of human nature to play a role by creating a good environment.
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