Human Criticism: Determinism, And Existentialism

Throughout history, philosophers have been questioning about the human nature. Are humans originally good? Are we originally bad? Are humans born in a blank state, tabula rasa as John Lock referred to it? Many theories have been produced that try to explain the human behavior. Those theories can be categorized under two main ideologies: determinism, and existentialism. Determinism is the idea that humans do not have free-well, and that all their decisions are determined either by the nature of human species or by the nurturing humans receive from the environment. The first type of deterministic theories argue in favor of human nature; namely, humans are predetermined by their genetics and natural evolution to act in a certain way. These theories

First, a flourishing economy can never exist without security and protection from a higher authority. Only a strong state with a strong military can stop the aggression of some humans on the rights of others. Jared Diamond in his famous book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, argues that the strong militaries with advanced weapons were among the main factors that enabled the Europeans to dominate most of the world during the imperial era. Moreover, military power will not only protect economies but will allow them to flourish either by violent or non-violent means. For example, the European imperial powers enriched their economies through the extraction of raw resources from the colonies and then selling them in the origin country and the colonies’ markets as well. A more specific example is the British East India Company that had its own army to help protect and market their goods in India. Second, military power comes before ideological power for two reasons. Unfamiliar ideologies have been suppressed and killed either by oppressive governments or by the common society that usually resist any change in the status quo. This has been the norm throughout history, and is still the norm in many countries today, until the last century that allowed a relative free sharing of ideas and opinions. Accordingly, most of today’s ideologies, including religions, would never have survived without the support of military power. Ideologies die if left in books, and they blossom only if there are enough people who have enough military power and are willing to sacrifice their lives for those ideas. In addition, this part of using direct force may be used to establish the foundation of the ideology only. According to Ibn Khaldun, people, consciously or unconsciously out of fear or out of glorification, usually tend to imitate and follow the