It occurs to me that there seems to be a big difference between how I think about "human nature", vs. how a lot of other people do.

When people bring up "human nature", whether their view of it is correct or not, they almost always do so from a perspective of "this is how human nature will ruin any attempts at improvement".

Whereas I think of it as "this is how traits of human nature can be relied upon to shape a culture that lasts and perpetuates itself". Which seems to be a much more useful interpretation to me?