Are people intrinsically good or evil?

[dennilfloss]

Deep inside, are people fundamentally good individuals who often get corrupted by their environment (e.g. peer pressure) or are people basically hedonistic, egotistical sadists who need to be tamed by societal rules and conventions just to prevent an explosion of anarchy, sex and senseless violence?

You be the judge...

(For those who don't already know, I don't do the poll thingy.)

I'm The Slime (Frank Zappa)

 

[thebestMAX]

Yes

 

[Electric Amish]

I think everybody has some evil inside. Maybe 20% of people actually let it rule them.

amish

 

[Czar]

EVIL EVIL I TELL YA

 

[vi edit]

Evil is a pretty subjective term. Selfish may be more appropriate. Anywhoo, yes, I do unfornately believe that we are born with evil in us. It is up to us to decide how much of that evil is displayed.

 

[JellyBaby]

Is a Wolf pup good or evil? An ant? It's all in the upbringing/life experiences. A select few might have abberations that lead them toward the Dark Side (I can't imagine Raspewtin winning any congeniality awards).

But what stymies most of us is the simple fact that people can act both good and evil, depending on the time of day. That's when I role-play I prefer the True Neutral Alignment. Only problem is finding good +3 weapons that do double damage vs. tailgaters.

 

[Stark]

Few people are "mostly" evil. They are usually discovered and killed by the rest of the population (see viper's link to the Fish story).

Society demands that people are mostly good. God demands that people be perfect. Because no one is, He has given mankind several covenants in which they could attone for their wrongs, the last coming with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

[Viper GTS]

Evil.

Do babies have to be taught to be selfish, violent little bastards when they're two?

Viper GTS

 

[Elita1]

I think both. We all have a selfish, darker side and a good side. I guess environment and what one learns influence which side will develop more; however, I think that once a person is able to make choices and understand the meaning of responsibilities and consequences for their actions and decisions, it can go either way. A good person could go really bad or a bad person could become good.
That's the one thing that's interesting about human beings. They can always change.

 

[Michael]

I firmly believe that people are inherently good. I haven't seen or experienced anything that has caused me to change my mind.

Michael

 

[Elledan]

Upbringing is important, but the structure of the brain also plays a role, a lobotomy, for example, can turn a nice, very social person into a real a$$hole.

It's thus partly in the genes, although there's no such thing as an 'evil'-gen.

 

[Missus]

NO...

 

[StageLeft]

I believe that people are inherently selfish. Some manifest it in different ways than others, hence the distinction between saying "that person is selfish" and "that person isn't". I believe that everybody is inherently selfish; there are just different ways of acting and these acts determine whether somebody would call you outright selfish or not.

 

[whooosh]

EVERYONE is evil, suppressed by the environment/people. Deep inside we constantly ask ourself, what life would be if we can do anything we want?

 

[JellyBaby]

<< Do babies have to be taught to be selfish, violent little bastards when they're two? >>

Viper, speaking from your own experience? j/k

Selfishnes <> evil. Violent behavior though, is. Gotta stop dressing up young Timmy in pink baby clothing...then he'll mellow out.

 

[toph99]

people are whatever they want to be. if someone chooses to be 'evil' then it's their choice. just IMHO

 

[GrimReefer]

some people are naturally good or evil. Im evil.

 

[StageLeft]

And what do they make that decision based upon? Their genetics and environment. I don't think it would be immensely hard to show that nobody has any true decisions and we're all just the result of nature and nurther acting together. Who knows though, its a pointless topic to really get into because the last thing a person needs to know is that fate totally controls them. Whats the point then?

 

[Namuna]

Ahhhh, the Nature vs. Nurture argument.

My Philosophy, BOTH. It's Nature AND Nurture.

Some of us are born with dispositions toward good or toward evil, that in combination with how we're brought up and our social environment dictates the outcome of whether we're 'good' or 'evil'.

But there's also natural balance; for every Jeffrey Dahmer, there's a great Doctor.

 

[Comp10]

I believe no one is born evil, but rather we are all born ignorant and willing to accept what society tells us, be it good or evil. Hence our largely evil society is going to produce largely evil behavior in the majority of people born into this world. Evil is not some magical force, but rather is simply a state of ignorance in which a person is being counter productive to all life including their own (whether or not they realize it).

 

[Moonbeam]

I think this is about the most important question there is and answering it isn't easy. There's a fundamental paradox involved. If people are born good, where did evil come from. There are religious answers to this and I'll leave those to the religious. I see this question purely in psychological terms. I'll just abreviate how, firstly to save my time, and secondly, because the nature of the answer is not something that people want to know anyway, so I'll just be wasting my time.

What would human consciousness be without language? There would be no knowledge about things, only the direct aperseption of reality. There would be only the eternal now, undevided, endless, as fully reflected by the human brain as possible. There would be no unconsciousness and no split, no self divided agoanst self.

All that is the result of language which makes comparison possible. This is good that is bad. I am good you are bad, you must be punished for being bad, taught molded controled, intimidated and threateded for this or that kind of act.

Again, since the capacity to feel the pain of blows and the sting of words is undefendable at first, the pain we felt was the maximum we could feel. To survive we split, we deny that we are guilty, do anything not to be the evil one. We learn to despise evil and in doing so learn to hate what we really are, the wrongly accused.

The reason that people are evil is that they hate their original self, the one who could have become God. Thus, while there is no evil, the feeling that we are evil makes it true.

Bottom line, we are born good only to be made to feel we are evil as quickly as possible. I guess the one good thing about the denial of these facts are that we aren't really evil anyway, but it would be nice to really know it.

 

[Thorn]

Neither, but we become what our will makes us into (be it good or evil, or a mix of both). People are a product of their environment.

 

[Bakwetu]

ALL people are both good and evil, I have no doubt about that. Letting yourself be either is a question of upraising, personal development, expendable recources you have etc. Basically most people today seem to be rather selfish, due to living in too large a population ( i.e large cities), which unevitably means alienation and egoism. However, humans are social animals, and a high amount of seemingly altruistic behaviour is found in all societies. Altruism is dependant on a small scale population however, where some degree of social control exists.

 

[bluemax]

I have no doubt in the many sources that say we are inherintly evil. NO doubt. We lie, cheat, steal even to the smallest degree.
We have to fight and claw at our inner nature to do ANYTHING that isn't selfish and greedy or to cover your own tail.

If you see a $100 bill just lying on the street, your first instinct is &quot;MINE!!&quot; as opposed to, &quot;Oh no... I wonder who this belongs to? How will I get it to them?&quot;

Anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves. It's very fortunate, however, that with good parenting (not a TV) and practice, we can become more skilled at &quot;being good&quot;.
We wouldn't say, &quot;nobody's perfect&quot; if it could be done without the most inhuman amount of effort.

 

[Raspewtin]

I have thought a lot about this. The only conclusion I can come to is different people are motivated different things.