What is your response to the "People are naturally greedy" argument?

From a neuroscience standpoint,

1) Human nature arises from our minds

2) Our brains are made up of neurons which fire action potentials and create pathways in response to events, experiences.

3) The pathways from events / experiences give rise to consciousness (the mind) and our understandings of reality, within this consciousness is our social contract, norms, and our ideas of human nature.

That said, we don't completely understand the mind, we can't possibly have an objective view of human nature till we do. Which means, there is no objective argument - that I know of - for human nature.

There are different studies/explanations showing human beings being naturally cooperative, or selfish and self-interested. We have no reason to believe either or are the norm, we can see examples of societies existing within our contemporary world that have different degrees of selfishness to collectivism.

For this reason, there is no reason to believe a highly collectivist society could not exist. It may not be perfect or without selfish action, but really if people were raised indoctrinated into collectivization, that would ultimately lead to that social norm being ingrained in the human mind through neuronal pathways and become our norm.

/r/communism101 Thread