Our concept of human nature is certainly limited, partial, socially conditioned, constrained by our own character defects and the limitations of the intellectual culture in which we exist. Yet at the same time, it’s of critical importance that we have some direction, that we know what impossible goals we’re trying to achieve if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. That means we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge while remaining very open to the strong possibility, overwhelming probability that we’re very off the mark.