Two Axioms of Human Nature

1) The human organism is a botched job

Natural selection does not aim at perfection, just sufficiency for certain conditions, but humans insist on living in conditions which the species did not evolve for. These conditions fall under "civilized" life, away from natural selection which enforces a crude, blind rationality. We are enabled for these social conditions by a big and powerful brain which takes a long term to develop and a lot of energy to maintain. This makes us totally helpless and dependent on others for a long period of our lives, which protects us from the influence of reality (natural selection) and so we are able to concoct the most fantastical notions about our origins and our importance. Social life perpetuates this infantile condition and disposes us to the fantasies of others for survival.

HL Mencken
"As animals go, even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. Few other brutes are so stupid or so cowardly...most of all, man is deficient in courage, perhaps the noblest quality of them all. He is not only mortally afraid of all other animals of his own weight or half his weight- save a few debased by artificial inbreeding-; he is even mortally afraid of his own kind- and not only of their fists and hooves, but even of their sniggers. 

"No other animal is so defectively adapted to its environment. The human infant, as it comes into the world, is so puny that if it were neglected for two days running it would infallibly perish, and this congenital infirmity, though more or less concealed later on, persists until death. Man is ill far more than any other animal, both in his savage state and under civilization.

"All the errors and incompetencies of the Creator reach their climax in man. As a piece of mechanism he is the worst of them all...Alone of all animals, terrestrial, celestial or marine, man is unfit to go abroad in the world he inhabits. He must clothe himself, protect himself, swathe himself, armor himself. He is eternally in the positon of a turtle born without a shell, a dog without hair, a fish without fins.

"No doubt the imagination of man is to blame for this singular weakness. That imagination, I daresay, is what gave him his first lift above his fellow primates. It enabled him to visualize a condition of existence better than he was experiencing, and bit by bit he was able to give the picture a certain crude reality...This body of imaginings constitutes his stock of sweet beliefs, his corpus of high faiths and confidences- in brief, his burden of errors. And that burden of errors is what distinguishes man, even above his capacity for tears, his talents as a liar, his excessive hypocrisy and poltroonery, from all the other orders of mammalia."

Our botched nature politically is due to the fact that we are fundamentally selfish when it comes to advancement of ourselves, our genes, and those like us through the worst means of deceit and violence, and yet are intensely social beings. Altruism works best among competing groups so this selfishness is self-defeating. And yet is is the unavoidable result of the fact that we do not limit reproduction to one pair of male and female as the wolf does or to one queen as the hymenoptera do. We put our children above others and develop different lines of descent; we don't all have the same nest, after we spread around the world.

Thomas Hobbes described the problem thus:

It is true, that certain living creatures, as Bees, and Ants, live sociably with one another and therefore some man may perhaps desire to know, why Man-kind cannot do the same. To which I answer, 

First, that men are continually in competition for Honour and Dignity, which these creatures are not 

Secondly, that amongst these creatures, the Common good differeth not from the Private; But man, whose Joy consisteth in comparing himselfe with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent. 

Thirdly, that these creatures, having not (as man) the use of reason, do not see, nor think that they see any fault, in the administration of their common business; whereas amongst men, there are very many, that thinke themselves wiser, and able to govern the Publique, better than the rest; and thereby bring it into Distraction and Civill warre.

Lastly, the agreement of these creatures is Naturall; that of men, is by Covenant only, which is Artificiall

Because we are not hive minds, because there is disagreement, there is the need for ethics not just through appeal to rational interest, but by convincing others to adopt our like and dislikes. All for the purpose of facilitating social life. Politics is going to a problem because of our flawed nature. 

“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.” Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene

“Precepts for living together are not going to be handed down from on high. Men must use their own intelligence in imposing order on chaos, intelligence not in scientific problem-solving but in the more difficult sense of finding and maintaining agreement among themselves. Anarchy is ideal for ideal men; passionate men must be reasonable. Like so many men have done before me, I examine the bases for a society of men and women who want to be free but who recognize the inherent limits that social interdependence places on them." James Buchanan

2) Humans aren't created equal

"We need to get rid of our liberal preconceptions. Men are not born equal, this is something which has not yet got through to the politicians." Dr. Francis Crick

Genetic heredity selects particular traits which influence how tall, intelligent, or extroverted/introverted we are. Probably at least half of an individual's nature is due to genetic influence. Humans don't really believe in equality unconsciously as we have a preference for people who are like us physically, even as infants before socialization sets in. This is adaptive for the propagation of our genes, we favor those with genetic similarity. Much is made of the need for diversity and genetic variety, but the drive for homogeneity is probably more powerful. People can enjoy radically different lifestyles at a distance but not in their space, because of the inborn territorial imperative.

All humans are equal in the sense of identity because we are a species, which means no matter how dumb or defective someone is if they fit the biological definition of reproductive isolation/common descent then they are as human as we are. But this equality is totally different than the social/political sense of equality in which every individual is of the same value as every other within the species. Species is itself a hierarchical classification which falls within genus which in turn falls within order. The species Homo Sapiens of the genus homo of the primate order. Within each rank there is profound differentiation which is why some people get understandably upset with the notion we're primates. Well we are, but in a abstract way removed millions of years from even the higher apes who we don't breed with. 

"All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death." Jean Calvin

But I learned it best from John C. Calhoun

"Taking the proposition literally (it is in that sense it is understood), there is not a word of truth in it. It begins with “all men are born,” which is utterly untrue. Men are not born. Infants are born. They grow to be men. And concludes with asserting that they are born “free and equal,” which is not less false. They are not born free. While infants they are incapable of freedom, being destitute alike of the capacity of thinking and acting, without which there can be no freedom. Besides, they are necessarily born subject to their parents, and remain so among all people, savage and civilized, until the development of their intellect and physical capacity enables them to take care of themselves. They grow to all the freedom of which the condition in which they were born permits, by growing to be men. Nor is it less false that they are born “equal.” They are not so in any sense in which it can be regarded; and thus, as I have asserted, there is not a word of truth in the whole proposition, as expressed and generally understood.

"All men are not created. According to the Bible, only two, a man and a woman, ever were, and of these one was pronounced subordinate to the other. All others have come into the world by being born, and in no sense, as I have shown, either free or equal.

"But it is equally clear, that man cannot exist in such a state [of nature]; that he is by nature social, and that society is necessary, not only to the proper development of all his faculties, moral and intellectual, but to the very existence of his race. Such being the case, the state is a purely hypothetical one; and when we say all men are free and equal in it, we announce a mere hypothetical truism; that is, a truism resting on a mere supposition that cannot exist, and of course one of little or no practical value.

"Nor is the social state of itself his natural state; for society can no more exist without government, in one form or another, than man without society. It is the political, then, which includes the social, that is his natural state. It is the one for which his Creator formed him, into which he is impelled irresistibly, and in which only his race can exist and all its faculties be fully developed.

Such being the case, it follows that any, the worst form of government, is better than anarchy; and that individual liberty, or freedom, must be subordinate to whatever power may be necessary to protect society against anarchy within or destruction from without; for the safety and well-being of society is as paramount to individual liberty, as the safety and well-being of the race is to that of individuals; and in the same proportion, the power necessary for the safety of society is paramount to individual liberty. On the contrary, government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state, which, as I have shown, is the natural state of man — the only one in which his race can exist, and the one in which he is born, lives, and dies.

"It follows from all this that the quantum of power on the part of the government, and of liberty on that of individuals, instead of being equal in all cases, must necessarily be very unequal among different people, according to their different conditions. For just in proportion as a people are ignorant, stupid, debased, corrupt, exposed to violence within and danger from without, the power necessary for government to possess, in order to preserve society against anarchy and destruction becomes greater and greater, and individual liberty less and less, until the lowest condition is reached, when absolute and despotic power becomes necessary on the part of the government, and individual liberty extinct.

"liberty is the noble and highest reward bestowed on mental and moral development, combined with favorable circumstances. Instead, then, of liberty and equality being born with man; instead of all men and all classes and descriptions being equally entitled to them, they are high prizes to be won, and are in their most perfect state, not only the highest reward that can be bestowed on our race, but the most difficult to be won — and when won, the most difficult to be preserved.

Let us have liberty and equality in accordance with social development, always with the consideration that such ideals emerge from a certain way of life and are not the natural state of human existence.