If Flamingos Were Hell-Bent on World Domination...

There are three imponderable questions which I'd recommend to anyone having a bit of trub getting to sleep:

1. Are we alone in the universe?
2. What would chairs look like if our knees bent the other way?
3. Is human nature inherently good, or inherently bad?

The first, I expect science will be able to answer all in good time, though it makes for rich speculation. The second is deceptively complex - the longer you dwell on it, the more difficult it is to answer. The third however, is much more complicated.

It was a question posed in one of those psychometric tests at an interview once and I thought long and hard as to whether it was a yay or a nay, ultimately deciding it was a yay (though this may have been influenced by the fact I was trying to impress a prospective employer who I didn't want to think of me as a suspicious pessimist). Having since re-examined it though, I think I stand by this decision, though only just. I'm not entirely sure if makes me an optimist (not a label that's been often levelled my way), or just naive.

It obviously depends what you mean by "bad" as to strictly layer Darwin over the top would tip the scales in favour of us being inherently selfish given that natural selection demands a high capacity for self-preservation. Wildebeest for example will cheerfully amble around munching grass while their anguished (and less-fleet-footed) mate gets mangled by lions little more than a few feet away, in a kind of nonchalant "Phew, it wasn't me this time..." manner.

However, with the possible exception of Caroline Quentin, we are not wildebeest. Uncommonly high intelligence and millennia of 'civilisation' have seen the development of qualities such as compassion and kindness, and allowed the natural day-to-day survival requirements to be muted. Other qualities have come to the fore, like the ability to reason and to sit down and negotiate.

In fact, thinking about it, the reason we can sit down at all is due to evolution giving us knees which flex forwards, which brings me neatly back to Question 2. Thank God Flamingos aren't blessed with human intelligence and are more than happy to pootle around ankle deep in water eating mud. The world would quickly descend into anarchy.