Human Nature

WASHINGTON -- This indicates just how out of joint the times are: Human nature is startling news.Asserting that there is a human nature has become a radical political act, which today's feminists stigmatize as reactionary. This troubles Danielle Crittenden not at all.A 35-year-old writer and mother of two, her new book, "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman," is written with the verve and wit she brings to editing the Women's Quarterly of the Independent Women's Forum.

"The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order," by Francis Fukuyama. Free Press. 343 pages. $26.Out in the deep waters of contemporary times swims a group of social scientists waiting to catch the next big wave of social change to surf into shore. Francis Fukuyama, author of the best-selling "The End of History and the Last Man," thinks he has found one in what he identifies as a moral decline of Western and developed Far Eastern countries from the 1960s to the beginning of this decade, to be followed by a moral "reconstitution."

For Matt Carman, being able to read means never complaining that there's nothing to do.Matt, who recently turned 10, is in perpetual motion, spending a good portion of his time caring for his pets. He is the proud owner of five horses, five goats, two dogs, three house cats (and barn cats too numerous to count), 30 chickens, 30 guinea pigs, a handful of hissing cockroaches and one lizard.His father, Dr. Donald Carman, runs a veterinary practice in Carroll County. His mother, Debbie, is a homemaker who manages the family's small farm -- with Matt's help.

It's over, nobody wins" is a verse from a Sinatra ballad about a love affair gone sour that one could apply to America's intellectual love affair with Freudian doctrine. What W.H. Auden once described as a "whole climate of opinion" proved, with experience, to be an ideological blunder typical of this century, producing more victims than victories.Oxford's Isaiah Berlin, in a powerful essay on political ideas of the 20th century, saw it all coming in 1949 when he identified a crucial shift from 19th century views about human nature.

That the Seattle SuperSonics fired George Karl wasn't surprise, considering the team's recent playoff failures. Yet, until a week ago Friday, the Sonics were talking about signing Karl to another contract.It appears it was Karl's mouth -- and not his inability to win -- that got him fired.Just before Karl was fired, the New York Post's Peter Vescey wrote a column that recounted a conversation between Karl and team president Wally Walker about contract talks that were about to begin. Walker had asked Karl specifically to keep the conversation under wraps, and felt betrayed.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- In the dozen seasons between Ray Miller's managerial runs with the Minnesota Twins and the Orioles, the truism never changed that the best managers always plan at least two innings ahead. With only 12 days remaining before the March 31 season opener against the Kansas City Royals, Miller is thinking six months ahead.The defending American League East champions arrived in camp facing few unknowns. As proof of an uneventful spring, they have created none for themselves since.

BOSTON -- My neighbor and I meet at the corner and exchange September greetings. She is dressed for this new year with a briefcase in one hand, a tugging schoolchild in the other.''Well,'' she says ruefully, pulled already in two directions, ''back to the real world.''We are home from vacation. The seaside house that she rents every year has been boarded up. It will linger in her mind over the long workaday winter as her sunlit Brigadoon -- the place where it is always August and her wardrobe is always a T-shirt.

PARIS -- Last month Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a striking talk to a Woodrow Wilson Scholars' Center audience, describing the cultural factors at work in economic behavior, speaking in particular of their influence on the Russian economy since the Soviet system collapsed.What was noteworthy about this speech was that Mr. Greenspan found the notion that cultural factors are an important force in the economy a novel idea.Mr. Greenspan is not a foolish man, and if this idea was a new idea to him, that surely is evidence of a huge and crucial professional deformation among Western economists, too often educated to ignore all but a narrow range of materially or mathematically defined factors in an economy's functioning.

WASHINGTON -- Few American books published in 1909 are still in print. One of them has never in 87 years been out of print and its influence on American governance goes marching on. Herbert Croly's ''The Promise of American Life,'' a manifesto for the Progressive movement, is this century's most influential book on American politics, and now it is again newsworthy.It is because last year Lamar Alexander co-edited (with Chester Finn), and contributed to, a collection of essays published by the Hudson Institute.

In a provocative interview in the current New Yorker, NBC Sports researcher Nicholas Schiavone reveals that the old "nature vs. nurture" argument is what fuels the network's Olympics coverage.In more than 10,000 interviews over six years that helped NBC mold the kind of coverage people want, the network found that while what Schiavone considers the three elements of human nature -- "think, feel, do" -- apply to both sexes, men and women use them in different ways."I think it's partly the genetic code, but I think that society also encourages the two different perspectives, because they are complementary -- the emotional dimension and the rational dimension," said Schiavone.

Evil never sounds as good as it does in a Verdi opera. This dark side of human nature gets a particularly tuneful and theatrically gripping workout in Rigoletto, which moves with brutal speed toward a tragic tangle of blind love, vengeance and self-sacrifice. If you go Rigoletto will be performed at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow and five more times through April 13 at the Kennedy Center, off Virginia and New Hampshire avenues Northwest, Washington. Tickets are $45 to $250. Call 800-876-7372 or go to dc-opera.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Sixteen years ago, I tried to answer a perennial question about American politics: Does the United States look more like the country predicted by Thomas Jefferson or by his rival, Alexander Hamilton? Jefferson asserted that ordinary people with sufficient education and virtue can govern themselves wisely, that liberty is the natural desire of all mankind, and that the world's monarchs and dictators would ultimately be overthrown. Hamilton, on the other hand, claimed Jefferson's view was folly, based on wishful thinking, because human nature itself precludes the kind of wisdom necessary for self-government.

On my way to Rod Laver Arena, I see something on the street that catches my eye. It's a restaurant, called, no joke, "Lord of the Fries." Why in the world would an Australian fast food restaurant chain try to link itself to William Golding's famous novel about shipwrecked boys and the destructiveness of human nature? Are patrons only allowed to order "fries" if they're holding the conch? Are these "fries" cooked by a giant replica of Piggy's glasses? If you order "Pig's Head On a Stick" as a side to your fries, are you forced to come to terms with your loss of innocence?

WASHINGTON -- "Road rage" is now an official disease - intermittent explosive disorder, the shrinks call it. According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, about 16 million Americans suffer from IED. Inadequate production of the brain chemical serotonin leaves victims unable to regulate their moods properly - and thus, their behavior on the nation's crowded highways. But is IED really a malady? Or just the natural expression of a heavily overtaxed fight-or-flight mechanism that has been intrinsic to human nature since time immemorial?

A Changed Man Francine Prose Harper Perennial / 421 pages / $14.95 Prose's satire concerns a purportedly reformed white supremacist who wants now to lend his services to a human rights organization. Prose "delivers a well-crafted, ironic and insightful tale of the darker side of human nature," we said last year.

AFTER SERVING in the Air Force and in public service for nearly five decades, I have learned a few things about how people in politics use what is best in human nature to promote a sense of unity and purpose among their constituents and their countrymen. Unfortunately, I also have seen how people in politics use the worst elements of human nature not to better their country -- or even themselves -- but to hurt, or even destroy, others. We are seeing far too much of this in American politics these days, and this may be worth noting as the candidates for president embark tonight on the first of their three debates.

THE GUY WAS selling ice for $15 a bag. We're talking plain old frozen water here, not diamonds. Although, in August of '92, just after Hurricane Andrew ripped across greater Miami, there wasn't a whole lot of difference. In those days when the power was off, the roof was gone and the heat was sweltering, a man with ice could name his own price. So I am distressed, but not particularly surprised, to hear that days after Hurricane Charley hammered Florida's Gulf Coast to ruin the tattered region is confronting a plague of a different sort.

Virginia Henry, a retired schools speech and hearing technician who spent more than five decades as a community volunteer, died Sunday of complications from diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. She was 82. Born Virginia Knox and raised on Calhoun Street, Mrs. Henry, who was buried yesterday, was a 1939 graduate of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church School at Madison Avenue and Whitelock Street. After attending Oakwood Adventist College in Huntsville, Ala., she later earned a certificate from the Community College of Baltimore.

Who's hot The Phillies have won 12 of 14, picking up 5 1/2 games on the Braves in the NL East in 10 days. Who's not Jarrod Washburn of the Angels has given up 13 homers over 30 2/3 innings in his past five starts. Line of the day M. Cabrera, Marlins LF-3B AB R H RBI HR 6 4 4 4 2 He said it "It's human nature to want to play for a winner. My own ties here make me optimistic that it could be done here." Mike Lowell, Marlins third baseman and Miami native, told he wouldn't be traded this season On deck Roberto Alomar is expected to join the White Sox today against the Twins.

HOW CAN WE fathom the stupidity that was required to set a Rhode Island nightclub on fire, killing at least 95 people? Low ceilings, a touring band unfamiliar with the place, a packed dance floor - and someone actually thought fireworks was a good idea? Does this set some sort of new Olympic standard for negligence? The horrible truth is that the devastating fire at The Station in West Warwick, R.I., was - through and through - the consequence of ordinary human nature. People enjoy crowds.