Theorizing instinct as socially produced can accidentally naturalize existing social conditions.
Evidence
Placing the importance of biological considerations and of early childhood experiences alongside the importance of social considerations and post-childhood experiences meant giving women the chance to wrest their self-images from the shackles of patriarchal definitions. … Fromm’s assumption that instinctual structures were produced by the conditions of existence led him to demonstrate that the prevailing conditions of existence would continue indefinitely because they were embedded in instinctual structures. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 292
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The twist that a liberatory premise (instincts are socially formed) can harden into a claim that existing conditions are permanent because they are now embedded in instinct itself — a genuine paradox worth sitting with.
- XREF: connects to: Human status is socially learned like language, not animal instinct — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 62; Humans rationalize arbitrary customs as rational or biological after settling on them — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 117; Evolutionary psychologists see the human mind as many domain-specific evolved instincts, not fewer — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 72 (+10 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Human status is socially learned like language, not animal instinct — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 62; Humans rationalize arbitrary customs as rational or biological after settling on them — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 117; Evolutionary psychologists see the human mind as many domain-specific evolved instincts, not fewer — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 72 (+10 more)