If our propensity to make malicious judgments is bred in the bone, so to speak, are we then forever prey to the logistics of egotism, a kind of genetic Machiavellianism? Again, as with everything, it depends on where one sits. If one sits in the posture of an unbending human nature, here is what one might expect to see. Norman O. Brown, in a book titled Love's Body, asserts that the only way to get beyond the natural contradictions of existence is in the time-honored religious way: to project one's anxieties onto a god-figure, to be healed by an all-embracing and all-justifying supernatural beyond. In the case of our culture, the "time-honored religious way" is Christianity, with its own version of human nature, original sin. If humans are intrinsically evil and can only be redeemed by accepting God's grace, then one's path is fairly clearly marked: work not to be evil by doing those things that bring God's grace into your account. One's basic evilness will never be changed, but one may lay up some treasure in heaven if one can keep ahead of the devil. This dependence on a being outside time and space, with that god's promise that if one follows the proper path, one will be absolved of the tragedy of being restricted by time and space, is a powerful draw for people because it anesthetizes the loneliness and pain of being human. There is, after all, a purpose to it all.
Yet many find this an insufficient or unpalatable answer, seeing as how it requires accepting an unproved hypothesis, the existence of God, and a deterministic view of life which jails humans inside an unredeemable nature. Life is far too unpredictable,and humans far too complex, they say, for the "time-honored religious way" to be of much help in understanding life. Yet these same people will often merely substitute religions, putting in the place of the evil of human beings an equally undemonstrable belief in a foundational goodness in people or in an energy flow in the universe that has some sort of "rightness" to it, as in the phrases "Everything happens for a reason" or "the universe is giving me a sign." This goodness and cosmic sentience are just gods by another name, that is, illusions (or, more charitably, myths) crafted to soften the obduracy of our animal fate to live and then to die.
I don't have a strict answer to the question with which I began this series of essays. The more I read and think and write, the more it seems to me that, by themselves, grand-scale "solutions" to the problems posed by human life under the regime of modern capitalism carry within them the seeds of their own destruction (with which Marx would agree) unless there are also changes on the cellular level, so to speak, at the level of the door being held or not held open for the stranger behind you. At the same time, an increase in courtesy and forbearance will do nothing to stop the rapacious logistics of the capitalist enterprise, which require large-scale transformations through collective resistance and rebellion, even to the point of violence and revolution.
Given these kinds of intractables, my vision for the betterment of human life is, by design, sloppy, rough-edged, of unsmooth velocity and insufficient proofs. It begins in our materiality as creatures, in evolutionary biology and inevitable mortality, in Billy Joel's lyric that "we will all go down together." It is based in science, that looping and magnificent investigation of our materiality, especially when it concentrates on such things as sustainable architecture and renewable design. It is in a personal ethic of doing-with-less and a disciplining of capitalist/consumer desires. It is in the practice of knowing more about my fellow creatures because invidious and murderous judgments of others come out of ignorance; as the Dalai Lama says, "Judging another harshly usually means that you don't have enough information." It is in the effort to stop taking myself so seriously but also, at the same time, know that my life has meaning only if I live it in a meaningful way. It is in the practice of a fierce humility, a humorous enragement at human folly, coupled with intense involvement in at least one political and social effort at transformation connected to an organization or a movement larger than myself and that makes me forget myself. (Improving the schools would be a good place to start since their curriculum of standardized ignorance is part of the reason why things are in such bad shape. Working to pass living-wage ordinances would be another.)
In short, creating a better world is a messy mix of fighting the bastards who hold the power over our lives and, at the same time, fighting the inner bastards that drive me towards an alienating individualism (and looking for the links between these inner and outer worlds, those nodes where these two worlds reinforce each other on feedback loops). And then trying to convince others to do the same through education and example and, if need be, through force of arms in revolution. (Why not? Those who rule are not going to give up their power without a fight.) There is nothing clear or guaranteed about doing it this way. But I think it is honest and in accord with the nature of the living that we are doing in this culture. In the end, all one can do is what one can do.