Should Society Push People to Act Against Their Instincts?

This is a loaded question, and it is loaded for a reason: historically, governments that pushed people against their instincts did so for bad ends.

Bans on homosexuality. Enforced monogamy through law, economics, and institutional pressure. Sexual regulation of every kind. And on the other side, the communes — free love, the attempted abolition of jealousy — which imposed structures contradicting basic instincts and worked only partially, jealousy being deeply ingrained.

Given that record, the obvious conclusion is: never work against human nature.

I held that view when I was younger, and I now think it is wrong.

The Counterexample

There are cases where we deliberately override instinct and are glad we did.

Pension saving is the clearest. People do not naturally save for a point forty years away — the instinct is not there, and it could not have evolved, because for most of our history nobody survived to need it. So government effectively compels it, through mandatory contributions and tax structures that make the alternative painful.

This is straightforwardly working against human nature. And it is good. Nobody seriously argues we should stop, and the countries that do it badly have visibly worse outcomes.

So the rule cannot be "never."

The Confusion Underneath

The reason the question feels so uncomfortable is that two separate issues have been fused.

One: should we work against human nature? Two: what is our system of government like?

We watched governments legislate against our interests, and concluded that overriding instinct is inherently wrong. But the objection was really to those governments. We were disappointed by the system, not by the principle — and we generalised from the failures of the institution to a claim about the technique.

Consider theocracy, which supplies most of the historical examples. A theocratic state has a genuine conflict of interest with its population: it wants control, and nothing serves control like strict sexual laws. Everyone breaks them, so everyone can be indicted whenever convenient, and political dissidents can always be prosecuted on other grounds.

That case tells us nothing about the general question. It tells us that a government hostile to its people will use any tool available, which we knew.

The Test Case That Resolves It

Here is the example that clarified this for me, and it is deliberately trivial.

I would not want a government to pass a law forcing me to exercise. That would be intolerable, and I would resist it.

But in a direct democracy, if we collectively decided that insurance companies could charge higher premiums to people who do not exercise, I would vote for it.

I want to be pushed to exercise. Especially when I do not feel like it — that is precisely when the pushing is valuable, and precisely when I will not do it myself. My instincts on a given evening are not aligned with what I actually want for myself over years.

It sounds like a conundrum: I want to be coerced. It is not. Consent is what distinguishes the good case from the bad one, not the fact of working against instinct.

The Principle

So the answer is not "never override instinct" and not "override it when we know better." It is:

Overriding instinct is legitimate when the people whose instincts are being overridden chose the arrangement, knowing what it would cost them.

That is a demanding standard. It rules out most of the historical cases, which were imposed. It permits pension mandates, which command broad support. And it explains why the same intervention can be tyranny under one system and self-management under another — the intervention is identical, and the consent is not.

Which is another argument for deciding these things directly. The distinction the principle turns on is exactly the distinction that representative government blurs.