It's not that I don't believe humans have a "nature" - we certainly do, but it is malleable and socially constructed (which is far from saying it's arbitrary)! Then again, what do we mean by "human nature"? It's not really a question that's brought up in anthropology classes, because "nature" and "natural" are extremely loaded words for a profession that has to live with the legacy of "naturalized" racism that was perpetuated through large chunks of the last couple centuries, which has led us to be very leery of making any kind of claim towards humanity's "natural state," divorced from social context. If you like my description of "human nature" as an insistence that humans have a special unique status, and the particular "human nature" of a society as the way in which that society enacts their understanding of that special status - well, that's closer to thinking of "human nature" as something like Bordieu's habitus, i.e., the human experience is constructed through repeated social practice and performance. So it's not that humans "want to believe" (ha) they have a nature - by dint of being a social human being, they have one automatically. When I say that "human nature and society are mutually constructed," I really do mean that you can't have one without the other.
So I reject the idea that seeing "behind the curtain," or recognizing that my idea of what it means to be human is socially contingent, somehow requires me to embrace nihilism as a way of life. There's no inherent contradiction between accepting that human nature is malleable, and living fully as as member of a particular society. So I'm not entirely sure what your last question even means - can we build an entire society that rejects the notion that human beings have a special status? I think that's a contradiction in terms, not possible. On the other hand, I think we can certainly sustain a society built on the notion that human nature is socially contingent, a society that values an understanding of the historical and social circumstances that led to its current consensus (or lack thereof) on "human nature." And I think that having this understanding is what will lead us to make sound policy judgements, and lead to a reasonable consensus on the meaning of words like "marriage" that most people can live with.
We have laws against people being murdered, but the reason we have those laws is that we came to a general consensus, within a particular social and historical context, that murder should never happen, and we made the law as a social contract to ensure that it stays that way. Granted, murder isn't currently at stake in the "culture wars" (whatever that actually means), but the process is the same: observe the social and historical context, formulate a policy decision that is consistent with that context, and if necessary codify it into law or contract.
I think there's a conceptual difference between Hume's dismissal of religion as unreliable but nice, and the idea that social structures are malleable. I doubt that mythology "worked" for him at all - but I equally suspect that overall, the society in which he lived worked reasonably well for him. So though religion can't do for someone like him what it does for the masses, I would argue that his understanding of social structures leads to him find a much greater meaning in the secular aspects of human life than perhaps the "naive masses" can achieve - exactly because he understands the range of possible human societies, and appreciates the complex interactions that created the society in which he lives.
no subject
So I reject the idea that seeing "behind the curtain," or recognizing that my idea of what it means to be human is socially contingent, somehow requires me to embrace nihilism as a way of life. There's no inherent contradiction between accepting that human nature is malleable, and living fully as as member of a particular society. So I'm not entirely sure what your last question even means - can we build an entire society that rejects the notion that human beings have a special status? I think that's a contradiction in terms, not possible. On the other hand, I think we can certainly sustain a society built on the notion that human nature is socially contingent, a society that values an understanding of the historical and social circumstances that led to its current consensus (or lack thereof) on "human nature." And I think that having this understanding is what will lead us to make sound policy judgements, and lead to a reasonable consensus on the meaning of words like "marriage" that most people can live with.
We have laws against people being murdered, but the reason we have those laws is that we came to a general consensus, within a particular social and historical context, that murder should never happen, and we made the law as a social contract to ensure that it stays that way. Granted, murder isn't currently at stake in the "culture wars" (whatever that actually means), but the process is the same: observe the social and historical context, formulate a policy decision that is consistent with that context, and if necessary codify it into law or contract.
I think there's a conceptual difference between Hume's dismissal of religion as unreliable but nice, and the idea that social structures are malleable. I doubt that mythology "worked" for him at all - but I equally suspect that overall, the society in which he lived worked reasonably well for him. So though religion can't do for someone like him what it does for the masses, I would argue that his understanding of social structures leads to him find a much greater meaning in the secular aspects of human life than perhaps the "naive masses" can achieve - exactly because he understands the range of possible human societies, and appreciates the complex interactions that created the society in which he lives.