The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.
My child's first word was "more," but and it's all about, "I want." "I'm going to tell you what I want and what I don't want." It's about my desire to express my preferences. And that is really innate.
There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.
I think that sexuality is the part of human beings that is closest to nature. And nature is dangerous somehow, yes, if you put nature against civilisation, nature is definitely a threat.
No living being is held by anything so strongly as by its own needs. Whatever therefore appears a hindrance to these, be it brother, or father, or child, or mistress, or friend, is hated, abhorred, execrated.
Human nature craves novelty.
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water...If I find in myself a desire, which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
No man is born without ambitious worldly desires.
Nature has endowed us with needs; among them are some that she leaves to our own activity to satisfy. Abundant as are the gifts she has bestowed upon us, still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to be dissatisfied.
Who you are and what you know when you are born is everything that you need to know to thrive. You are born with a sense of self and a sense of wanting self to feel good and the mechanisms to bring it about.
No living being is held by anything so strongly as its own needs.
When I was four, I just wanted to drive, I collected toy cars. Where does that sort of thing come from? In hindsight you go, 'Oh, liked it because of this.' Maybe it's just the wheel.
We have built into the constitution of the human race the habit and desire of taking, as divorced from its natural precursor and concomitant of making.
