The Nature of the Beast

There's a story about a certain mammal whose species I cannot remember now and a scorpion going across the river. The scorpion goes on the mammals back promises not to sting him, if he takes him across. In the middle of the river, the scorpion stings the mammal and they both drown. Just before they do, the mammal asked the scorpion, why the ****** did you ***** bite me you stupid ***** *****? (Kids always get the abridged version of that quote and I have very good information that the said mammal was from the Balkans region). The answer the scorpion gave was pretty simple: “It’s in my nature.”
That got me thinking when I was reading a book that, among others, deals with slavery. I am wondering whether the hierarchical structure of our society is such because it’s efficient and it is developing as the methods of production develop or whether it is in the nature of an individual to simply want more than their neighbor, regardless of everything else.
Why does it matter? It matters simply because I refuse to take the nature of the beast as an excuse for a lot of attempts of enforcing our will on others. And even if we are a species who are bent on world domination and have fun and fits of manic laughing while doing it, it’s still not an excuse. It is an excuse if you’re a bug. There’s more to being human than to being a bug though. Then again I could be just the naïve mammal who took the beast across the stream. I’ll think about this…