Nature Leads to Villainy?

Perhaps a good next step is to explore the meaning behind this blog title. Other than going with the obvious reason that the name was available.

The more complete context is included as a subheader above, and lo and behold this is a quote from Mark Twain. It is from a short piece titled “The Mysterious Visit”. The yarn is quite a catchy little story that Twain wrote in response to the national income tax that was put into place on August 5, 1861.

It is not unusual that the person who thinks that he has a situation in the palm of his hand suddenly finds that events are not as they appear. Twain as the narrator describes how he uses his conversational prowess to find out about a new businessman in town. He steers the discussion to the topic of his own business and income to try to draw the gentleman into conversation about his monetary history so that Twain can deduce his pursuits. The plan backfires when the businessman turns out to be the tax assessor, but Twain uses his own wiles to come out on top in the end.

The quote appears at the beginning of the story, and is most easily interpreted as Twain sizing up his adversary. The statement seems to reflect the thought that all people are flawed, but there was nothing to suggest that this man was flawed more than the rest.

So the implication is that all people are villainous. It is not a point for discussion, it is an understandable fact. Twain after all wrote into Tom and Huck the natural urge to do those things that were not right. The battle came when they tried to conform to society and do the things that they thought they should, or if they disagreed with what society had laid down as the “correct” path. If it was natural to do the things that were bad, was it really so wrong? After all, one can’t go against nature!

If paying taxes was the right thing, then the initial impression that the tax assessor was an honest man would have been correct. But this is not an honest man, so taxes must be wrong too! Society said that taxes needed to be paid, but it was entirely unnatural to do so.

Now this is not a piece on how taxes are villainous, we can leave that to those who are against big government.

Is nature the problem because it causes humans to be naturally villainous? And why does nature so frequently go against social normality?

For today we will just call nature the villain. Nature brings out the innate villainy in humans.

Social norms or nurture could certainly take the prize next week, we’ll see.