Human Nature
 

Naive, albeit rather fun, question:

Deep down, at our core, are we more good or more evil?

I think it's a little too obvious that humans are neither ever "good" or "evil" per se. You know, like, "it's more of a case by case basis at which our individual acts can be evaluated as such". And so on.

What I mean here is "deep down".

Depending on what happened to you today, this answer might change.

Re: Human Nature
 

I am definitely more good than evil...

Why do you have multiple options as a poll?

Re: Human Nature
 

For the golden mean ******** who want to say both.

Re: Human Nature
 

What about those who want to vote "neither"?

Re: Human Nature
 

They compromise or don't vote.

Those people should vote evil.

Re: Human Nature
 

I voted evil because of this one ethics philosophy I forgot the name of but it had to deal with people doing things only for themselves, even when they trick themselves into thinking they do something for someone else.

Re: Human Nature
 

Wow! Evil is just Devil without the D, and Good is just God with another O inside. Plus Evil gets top billing here. Almost makes you think...

Re: Human Nature
 

I voted for Good as I think there is good in everyone and I like to think that aswell, even though there are some sick ba$tards out there im sure the majority is good deep down :yup:

I'm going with good... it's just the evil sick bastards who make the evening news... but I've seen a lot of good things out of people...

I don't love the dichotomy, or having to choose between these two specific words, but we're more bad than good. And I don't think it's close. I think the only way we can look at ourselves as good is if we use all sorts of common excuses wherein we compare ourselves to others, which isn't a useful comparison if we're all pretty bad to begin with.

And, of course, there are always lots of rationalizations about doing our best, or how hard it is to be good all the time, which really only underscores how bad we really are to begin with.

If we look at each thought and action really objectively, it's disturbing (but undeniable) how many of them are selfish at their core.

This doesn't mean people are not capable of good things, great things, or truly altruistic things. But the number of bad, selfish things we do overwhelms those moments of goodness with their sheer volume, and even when we do good we can find a way to turn it bad through pride, arrogance, or some other self-serving sentiment. I think the only way to believe we are good at our core is to regard those moments when we overcome it as far, far more important than the many instances in which we don't.

We can be made good, certainly, but not by any power on this earth. By ourselves, we're pretty bad.

Re: Human Nature
 

Re: Human Nature
 

oh evil is winning :(
I voted good

Re: Human Nature
 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jKpCVDZL5b.../Picture+3.png

"Gentleman, to evil."

You seem to have a clear view, so why would you hate choosing?

Some popular political and economic philosophies seem to think that selfishness is the key to a successful society. Unless you don't associate a successful society with the good (but rather with the bad or the middling???), it seems that these certain philosophies could then be called evil.

To me, we are victims of these "evil" emotions. They are like defense mechanisms that we desperately cling to in order to cope with our sad existence. Pride and arrogance apply the most here. We can't just be satisfied with doing good. We must be made to feel as if was truly good. That's why doing good when no one is watching is the most honorable of the good.

Also, selfishness is something you've mentioned several times, but what do you suggest? That it is possible to care for another, even ONE OTHER person, as much as you care for yourself? I mean, precisely as much? No matter how much you love that other person, you will always be trapped within your own existence, and see things from your point of view.

Re: Human Nature
 

Seeing things from your point of view is probably the bane of humanity. However, sometimes people give up things and become so successful at it that seeing things from "your own point of view" becomes putting others first. Now, whether it's an Eastern philosophy, "sell everything you have and give to the poor" Christianity or Gordon Geckoism, I suppose it's open to each person's interpretation and commitment how that could affect the world as a whole. Most things don't happen by accident though, so if you want to be good, I feel you have to work at it. I suppose that sticks me in the "evil" camp, but I haven't voted yet because I'm going to ponder this some more.

It's more that I recognize the nuances of it, and think that the word "evil" carries a lot more weight than I'd like. I think some people use it to describe far more heinous things. I guess my hesitance has more to do with my disagreement about how people use words like "evil," then.

I don't think it's that selfishness is the key to a successful society, but rather, recognizing the inevitability of selfishness.

Anyway, I think bad things can be harnessed and turned to a greater good in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't always make the things good. I can do something selfish that inadvertantly helps someone else, and I'm not a better person because of it. If anything, it's just another level of rationalization.

I mostly agree. Though I do think goodness is a real thing that we can produce and engage in, and that the satisfaction we can feel from it can be a genuine motivator even without people telling us how good it was. A fine line, I suppose, but I do think goodness is a First Cause, and can stand alone. It has to, if it's to exist at all.

Not on this earth, no. Not on our own. Yet that's what I believe is asked of us.

Re: Human Nature
 

Of course, now that I've thought about it some, being a parent or loving someone unconditionally does go a long way towards making many people "do the right thing".

Re: Human Nature
 

Judge Smails comes to mind...

I pretty much agree with everything Chris has said so far, only he can say it so much more eloquently than I can.

I think The Matrix had it right. The human race is a disease upon this planet. Can we change? Sure. Will we? Not a chance.

Chris, you would probably dig THIS book.

Re: Human Nature
 

Who me? Or that other Chris guy? Anyway, it does look somewhat interesting.

This book here is one of my favorites.

The other Chris. The green one, but you might like it, too.

Re: Human Nature
 

its a silly poll.

we are both

They did survive and evolve. Haven't you ever seen a lizard?

/smartass

No, but I did eat a dinosaur last Thanksgiving, though.

Here ya go:

http://loyalkng.com/wp-content/uploa...o-godzilla.jpg

Pretty sure they're endangered, bra.

Re: Human Nature
 

Next thing you know someone is going to suggest we evolved from monkeys. Heh, we're all a bunch of talking monkey's.

Re: Human Nature
 

I'm tempted to talk about how dinosaurs aren't even considered.... BITE your tongue. Chomp.

Re: Human Nature
 

Everybody knows that Dinosaurs weren't real.

Re: Human Nature
 

What's "real"?

That's because it is a VERIFIABLE FACT that God killed them because they were ABOMINATIONS and TOOLS OF SATAN

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...troytheark.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...d/verifact.jpg*

*images by Jim Pinkoski

If dinosaurs had evolved, they would have evolved into a horrible reptile empire to fight the mel gibson-like caveman for supremacy over the earth.

I meant to "not" say that dinosaurs aren't even considered cold-blooded anymore....

The Monkees, on the other hand, are realer than real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HlxtBJgObs

Re: Human Nature
 

They're only real in your Head.

Re: Human Nature
 

Hey, hey, I'm a Monkey.

Re: Human Nature
 

Harry Harrison is awesome! I recently picked up used copies of "Winter in" and "Return to Eden", looking forward to reading them soon.

Re: Human Nature
 

Oh man, this thread is sooo deep right now!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Human Nature
 

First rule of MoFo: You don't talk about MoFo.

Re: Human Nature
 

In the Hobbesian view, often described in the pessimistic sense of "evil", human beings tend towards war and chaos.

This thread is proof. VERIFIABLE proof.

Re: Human Nature
 

Calvin and Hobbs kicks ass.

http://img.myconfinedspace.com/wp-co...rs-500x375.jpg

Re: Human Nature
 

Dinosaur Comics picked a mighty day to pull this one!

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/lore-dinosaurguest.png

....and how is that evil?

Re: Human Nature
 

Because it's silly. And everyone knows that silly people are actually crazy. Crazy = Evil.

Re: Human Nature
 

I think the philosophy implies that if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, then you're part of the problem. But I'm ignorant so I'm probably wrong.

The thing I find weird is the term evil, at least outside of a discussion where there are actually sides "in charge" of both good and evil who have "real" control over those terms. If you don't believe that there are Super Beings representing something such as good and evil, it seems that those terms are the wrong terms. But I'm ignorant.

Re: Human Nature
 

see, it's that word "evil" that i seem to be hung up on. having bad in you doesn't mean that you have evil in you. does it? isn't evil on a whole different level than that?

i know i could do a much better job at explaining this, but i'm too tired.

Re: Human Nature
 

It's just a word. And words can never hurt you. At least that's what I learned in grade school out on the playground.

Re: Human Nature
 

if it's just a word, then what is the point of this whole thread? my head is spinning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzYeB0ZuXqY
Words ~ The Monkees

Re: Human Nature
 

PN has that effect on people I've noticed. I think its pretty cool though, that now I can say I know a girl who's head spins around.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_90vPWX4-bx...Hoofd_Hoog.jpg

Re: Human Nature
 

Yoda, i wanted to post that!

beware the sticks and stones though :)

doggone it. this is what came to my mind! :eek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJv5qLsLYoo

i was gonna say, ........ like.....WOW dude. ;)

Good thoughts Yoda. I agree with your original post. I don't think people are evil or good, but I think we are selfish and self-preservationist. We do good, if it makes us feel good or if other people view us as doing good. We are social beings, so we need that social acceptance.

I think our motives are selfish, but even so we can do good. Of course history is filled with violence. With intelligence comes curiosity and with that comes ambition. With ambition comes a will for power and with that the ability to do evil toward our fellow humans to boast ourselves.

Between the two I tend to go more with evil.

ok, i was gonna vote evil outright, because i dont think we're intrinsically good, but then i thought - well, we're not intrinsically evil either! :eek:

viddy said it. we are at base selfish creatures. we want whatever it takes to make us happy in our few short days on this ball.

so hate me if you must, but I'll give you my religious rundown. [You've. Been. Warned!] I will, however, for the reader's sake, try to keep it basic, and not get technical (read: biblical), so I'm going to over-generalize in a great way. If you want to get technical, by all means, but I dont want to bore.

Religious Rundown:

Us
We are neither good, nor evil. We are not intrinsically bad, nor are we intrinsically good. We just are. And in being, we crave what makes us happy, what makes us feel good. Self-gratification, if you will. This, in itself, is not a bad thing.

Super-Beings
Layer on top of that, those Super Beings that Mark_F alludes to - call them what you will, Good/Evil, God/Devil, whatever. In being, the Super-Beings personify good and evil, and exist on two sides of the moral continuum.

d/Evil
This guy represents all that is bad. Purpose being to get you to do what is bad, or to do bad things. So no. You are not intrinsically bad, it is just that you have self-gratification desires on your mind. The purpose of d/Evil is to engage your self-gratification desire to do anything/everything it wants, even at the expense of yourself, and the people around you. Thus, [as a Very Basic Example], you have people who dont really want to die, but they kill themselves with drugs, alcoholism, etc. Self-gratification drove them to kill themselves. Why? It felt good, baby! ;) [It reminds me of the theme song in True Blood, where the guy sings "I Wanna Do Bad Things to/with You!" Bad? yes. But it'll feel so good!]

Go[o]d
This guy represents all that is good, orderly and decent. Purpose being to get you to think about your actions, and tailor your behavior to behavior that will benefit you, society at large, etc. So no. You are not intrinsically good. [Necessary Technical Digression: A believer would argue tho, that we are given a piece of God's being, called a "soul." An individual soul exists in us all, and that soul will always identify with Go[o]d, and want to do the "right" thing, even if it goes against the human principle of Self-Gratification.]

The Bottom Line
There you are, plain old you, and you just wanna become/do [insert your d/Evil] because it feels good. Something inside [Go[o]d?] is telling you that's a bad idea, or at the least, its gonna hurt someone, even if that someone is yourself. You know it is. You know it will. And you dont want to do anything bad - not really. You just want to enjoy yourself. Doggone it, don't you deserve to be happy???

This is the struggle between Go[o]d and d/Evil. Make yourself happy* or do the "right" thing. Because at day's end Go[o]d is really nothing more than self-sacrifice, and d/Evil is as small as making yourself feel good, at cost.

*I do not mean to suggest that happiness is a bad thing, or that it is intrinsically wrong to be happy, or to make yourself happy. That is not my point. I mean to say that Go[o]d, or "the right thing" is often sacrificed for personal happiness, and that, my friend, is d/Evil.

Re: Human Nature
 

I'm surprised that the poll results have been so close. Evil is winning right now by only one point. It's 10 to 9. I half expected one to totally beat out the other one.

Also, the whole D/evil, GOoD thing that Mark F pointed out is really weird. I don't think I ever noticed that before.

Evil - Old English yfel, from Proto-Germanic *uƀilaz (compare Middle Dutch evel, Old Saxon/Old High German ubil, Gothic ubils 'bad, wicked, evil')
Devil - from Old English dēofol, from Ancient Greek διάβολος (diabolos, “accuser, slanderer”)

---

Good - Middle English, from Old English gōd, from Proto-Germanic *ǥōđaz (compare Dutch goed, German gut), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰedʰ- 'to unite, be associated
God - From Middle English, from Old English god (“deity”), Old High German got (a rank of deity) originally neuter, then changed to masculine to reflect the change in religion to Christianity, both from the Proto-Germanic *ǥuđa-, *ǥuđan

---

Neither appear to be related.

Re: Human Nature
 

We are including politicians in this question, right? If so, we might need to start the poll again...

Well, I suppose it's time I weighed in here.

According to Michel Foucault, our human nature is manufactured by history and power relations; there's no scientifically verifiable human nature.

To use Foucault's example, you have the early 18th century when torture was rampant throughout Europe and just 80 years later it's abolished and replaced with the timetable of prisons. Where was this sudden discovery of "human nature?" Why did people become "nice?"

Simple, discipline created our social sciences (legal system, medical advancements, psychology, etc.). As I've said in the shoutbox, discipline creates individuals. That allows for cases (study of the individuals), and that's where our knowledge of "human nature" comes from: a social construct.

Scary? You can cry later. ;)

Then again, I think that just serves to say this is a silly topic to talk about. ;)

Basically, you do good things because you're disciplined...not because you think it's "good."

Re: Human Nature
 

Some disciplined people kill a lot. Maybe not as many as "undisciplined" people, but percentagewise, I think that many people die in a war where the people in charge came up through a regimen of discipline. This is not an indictment of organized armed forces and especially veterans. I think we owe veterans more than we can ever repay. It's just that "discipline" struck a nerve. (Hell, I'm a "teacher".)

the military counts on this very thing.

Now this is actually sort of funny to me--I mean, I've personally seen young children poisoned, beatened, stabbed, and burned by their mothers. I saw a woman's body split open from her pelvic bone to her chin with a machete. I've seen people who killed themsleves and killed others, blood-soaked floors and beds and cars, brains lying in the street. I've smelled burned and rotted flesh, and I know the smell of blood. I've seen rape victims of both sexes and all ages. I've seen people get probation for what I consider major crimes and people who likely were punished more than they really deserved because they couldn't afford a decent lawyer. I've had run-ins with communists, fascists, Ku Klux Klanners, Black Panthers, and outlaw motorcyclists. I've encountered more than one mass murderer. I've associated with drug dealers and prostitutes. I've seen phony preachers, crooked politicians, and cheats of all kinds. In short, I've seen virtually every kind of criminal and the aftermath of every sort of crime out there.

And after 67 years of witnessing life on earth, I still have the highest possible opinion of people as a whole, because most of the people on this earth are good; most of the people on this earth are more likely to help than to hurt others; most people are doing the best they can and trying to support their families. Most honor their parents and love their children, and I suspect most people around the world are truer to their spouses and significant others than I've ever been.

I just don't understand how anyone can see only the bad in this world. For every killer I've ever seen, I've seen dozens of firemen run into burning buildings and policemen risk their lives to protect others, and soldiers who have stood guard on the frontiers of freedom, and politicians with principles who have tried to make things better.

I was born in the South at a time when segregation and racial intolerance was deeply ingrained in my society at large. I grew up not knowing there was any other designation for blacks than the N-word. Hell, I didn't even know for years that it was wrong or insulting to another race. I grew up in a society where toilets and drinking fountains were labeled white and colored. I've seen signs that said, "N-----, don't let sundown catch you in Vidor." I've seen Hispanic workers who were cheated and abused and called "greaser."

But most of all--most important to me--I've seen things change, people change. I've seen my kids playing in their own neighborhoods with other kids who are black and Hispanic and Vietnamese. Those same kids have been in my house, kids of nationalities and color who my paternal grandfather would not have allowed in his. I've seen mothers working with diseased and brain-damaged children to accomplish small victories that will make their children's lives better. I've seen children with skeleton forms from polio lying in iron lungs and young men and women who are quadraplegics who still laugh and have ambitions and love life despite their terrible handicaps.

Science is doing more to help and heal people than at any time in our whole history. More important, people are doing more to help and heal others. We're communicating more and better today and learning more about our similarities rather than just our differences. I know this is a better world today because I've watched it improving for 67 years, and I'm sure it will be better in the future as we become better and move beyond old fears and hatreds.

Most of all, I know there are more good people than there are bad, more people wanting to do the fair and the right thing than trample their neighbor under. I've seen people rise above themselves and above their setbacks, the triumph of the human will and of the human spirit. And I believe in that totally.

I am reading Literature and Evil by Georges Bataille and in it the argument runs counter to what you have stated. Good is that which preserves life and Evil is the destructive force. Selfishness can be life-preserving and can be a rational response to danger. Of course people are irrational and drawn to danger as well as to what is safe and therefore Good. So where do I stand...on my head naturally.

Seriously, I vote for Good but only because I like to see Good triumph. Go Team Good!

I've seen at least three really evil people in my life--not just mean or often bad, but honest to god truly evil who were to the general population like wolves among sheep. If you ever see a truly evil person, you'll never forget it because they'll make your blood run cold. But those people are as rare or perhaps more so than the "saintly" good.

The thing is we all have free will and we make choices constantly of whether to try to help those we encounter in life or to hurt them. Most of us choose to do good, and I don't think it's simply out of fear of punishment for being bad. Think of it--when you do just a simple kind act for someone, don't you feel good about yourself? And when you do someone a wrong--even if no one else knows it--don't you feel disappointed in yourself that you would be so petty? I think most of us do good most of the time because it makes us feel right and good about ourselves. And for most of us, that feeling is much better than any advantage we could get by doing something to harm another person.

Wasn't Bataille a Marxist? Besides that, his views come off very un-french-like, or perhaps the surrealists have had too much of an impact

I don't know if he was a Marxist or not but I can definitely see the influence of the Surrealists and psychology in his criticism. Didn't the French avant-garde embrace Marxism in the main?

Yea, your point would be? Discipline is fundamental in creating docile individuals, especially soldiers. If you look around at society, you will see that discipline has a very large role in creating citizens. It's just scary to think about.

And as a teacher, your position is a part of that very power relation. You are a piece of the very machine that's creating docile individuals! ;)

Re: Human Nature
 

whelp. i finally voted. and now we're tied again. ;):D

Re: Human Nature
 

I can't believe it's still tied. 11 to 11!

By the way, I voted for EVIL.

There are other philosophies--probably most of them--that go the other way. Besides, pursuing one's own best interest is not evil, especially if you let others pursue theirs. That's basically is what democracy is all about--the majority deciding what is best for them without trampling over the minority in the process. There's got to be a sense of compromise, a recognition that everything can't always go your way.

Sounds essentially like utilitarianism reworked or regeneralized in terms of "preservation". While preservation works in being less ambiguous than its emotional cousins, "happiness" and "pleasure", it clearly fails to interpret the many ethical/moral decisions we are forced to make daily that do not pertain in the least bit to life or death. While it can be argued that any decision can eventually be traced to a "location" of life or death, e.g. the purchase of an individual pair of sneakers leading to the death of an Asian sweatshop worker, the final ethical conclusion of these greater removed sorts of action must ultimately strike the observer and the subject as some kind of reductio ad absurdum. I think the most obvious location of major ethical dilemmas seeming to bear no relation to life or death are those of the romantic or sexual nature. Will cheating on your wife lead to her death? In some cases, it surely might, but what about in the cases where it doesn't? Isn't her emotional suffering enough to render your act unethical? And here I am purposely ignoring any sort of religious commandment of fidelity. All kinds of suffering occurs without any bearing on moral law. Are we to say that as long as this suffering does not result in death, it's causes are to be grouped within the good? Unless the label of the good is relegated purely for an explicit act of "preservation", at which point, Bataille's notion is extremely weak in that it glosses over what many would consider important in their lives. Thus, I prefer to relate the good and the bad explicitly to the human emotions of happiness, pleasure, pain, suffering, and the like.

Don't know about avant garde but it certainly has its place in its New Wave cinema. Historically, the French as a people have been somewhat more Marxist than even Marx himself. I'm actually not sure why Bataille's Marxism was even brought up. It seemed almost like some kind of retort as if Marxism is irreconcilable with the good? What's going on here?

I'm not sure if this is addressed to any one in particular, because I think almost everyone here has shown that they see both good and bad in people. I think every reasonable person has to acknowledge that humanity is capable of beautiful and terrible things.

I think I see why I disagree with you, however. You see a fireman run into a burning building and think he is therefore a "good" person. But that's a snippet of his life. He could be a drunk, an abusive father, or just cold and unloving. He could take advantage of his friends. He could put people down to make himself feel better. He could do that every day for a decade. Is all this wiped out by saving someone's life? Is goodness a points system wherein such an act is a counterweight to all the little things we do at the expense of others?

I don't think that's how morality works. The question is about US, and what we are at our core. That's different from the the effects of our actions. Morally speaking, though the effects of saving someone are momentous, it may say a lot less about us than the things we choose day in and day out. And you certainly can't judge a life on such a good deed, just as most of us would agree you can't judge a life by its worst failure, either.

People can, indeed, change, and it can be a marvelous thing. But the fact that they need to change to begin with underscores how bad they (we) are. If someone thinks ill of another person, but holds their tongue, that's better, but it sure isn't good. That we change and restrain ourselves at all is fantastic, but the fact that we so often have to is the most relevant thing.

I don't think this is the kind of question that can be answered with anecdotes, no matter how many of them we may have amassed in either direction. The only life we can judge thoroughly with full knowledge of circumstance is our own, and I think all of us, if we're honest with ourselves, will be pretty staggered with the number of times we've put ourselves first.

Wanting to do the fair and right thing, and rising about setbacks, is a far cry from being good at our core. Wanting to do right does not make us good. If anything, the fact that we have to want to do right so strongly in order to do it underscores how much badness we have to overcome.

Triumphing over our own flaws is a beautiful thing, but it doesn't change the fact that we have those flaws, and they are as manifold as they are numerous.

I think this confuses what's best for what's good. Things like capitalism and democracy are good because they're the best systems we have, but only because they account for our flaws and work best with human nature. But that's different from being objectively good. Better systems might be possible if we were better to begin with.

There's also a false dichotomy between "good" and "evil" here. You say pursuing one's own best interest is "not evil." But that's not quite the same thing as saying it's good, is it? It may be inevitable, or even necessary, but how can it be good when we all admire people who work more for the interests of others? If those things are good, then not doing them is bad. Whether or not you want to assign the word "evil" to it depends on whether or not you reserve the word only for atrocities (which I think is one of the reasons the vote is split, by the way), but it's definitely not good.

Re: Human Nature
 

Yoda, you're basically saying being imperfect and selfish makes us bad people, aren't you?

i don't really see being selfish as being a bad person, really. is that another way of saying in an ideal world, everyone would put everyone else before themselves, and we'd all live our lives as passive doormats?

"Imperfect" seems to imply that we just fall a bit short, and it's just about the nicest word we could possibly use to describe ourselves. I think we're so far removed from "perfect" that we have a warped view of what it would even mean to be so.

I'm saying that when people say we're "good," they're either comparing one person to another, or they're letting people off because being good is hard. It's always accompanied by a rationalization about how so-and-so is worse, or how it's very difficult to be good all the time. These are both true, but they're addressing a different question than the one that I think is being asked.

Well, technically if we all lived that way, we wouldn't be doormats, because there'd be no bad people to walk all over us, anyway. And, of course, being good does not always mean being passive.

I think being selfish is a bad thing. But I think it's so inevitable, and so impossible to avoid, that it actually starts to feel okay because we feel built for it. It's such a part of how we think -- to look out for ourselves first -- that it almost as if it's a basic human need, like hunger, which makes it feel less like a choice, which in turn makes it feel sort of okay. To my mind, this is all just another reason why we're bad: most of the time, we don't even know it.

Re: Human Nature
 

i don't think anyone would disagree that people are far, far from perfection. however, a lot of flaws come from things that are out of our control. even someone who was perfectly angelic would still have flaws, wouldn't they? or are you just talking about being perfect in terms of being good?

i don't disagree that being selfish can be a bad thing, but taking care of yourself is a human need, though, therefore, it really is necessary to be selfish a lot of the time. you've got to take care of yourself before you can take care of others, and as humans, we really aren't able to function as well when we don't have the bare necessities of life. is this a flaw, too? maybe, but i don't think it's one we can "fix".

Isn't there a concept of necessary flaws? Obviously, what you said is true, otherwise all the good people would be sickly and giving their money to alcoholics. Plus there's a difference between what others perceive you to do as good versus honest. To me, being honest is far more useful than being nice, even if most people won't ease up to it immediately. However, there's an infinite grey area here where being selfish for your own sake of mentality and just being selfish because you think you're doing it for your well being as well as how deep into other people's issues you wish to dive until you go from trying to help them to trying to change them

It isn't evil for people to do do things for themselves if they aren't hurting others by doing it. A philanthropist may be only interested in the attention he gets from the media, but the causes he gives his money to are helped, not hurt even if his motives are selfish.

Re: Human Nature
 

I wish to remove that statement from the record based on saying it while intoxicated

I think the issue here is the definition of each term, then. Something outside of our control isn't really a flaw, and taking care of ourselves isn't really selfish if it's genuinely necessary. But of course, very little of what we do is strictly necessary for our own well-being (though we lump a lot of luxuries under this heading, I think), and very few of our mistakes are completely accounted for by our circumstances.

I really think we're so screwed up that we often lose the ability to even see it. It's not unlike addiction: the first step is admitting we have a problem. I'll let C.S. Lewis say it better: "When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right." It's also kind of like Socrates being the wisest man in the world precisely because he understood how little he actually knew.

When I think about what it would take to be good all the time, I can barely get my head around it. It feels so utterly impossible that I wonder if people dismiss it out of hand as unrealistic, and use something less than total goodness instead before they even begin to see how they stack up to it. It's like we're so broken that we can only consider one shattered piece at a time, and can't even fathom what it would mean to be whole again. If it all sounds pretty dramatic...well, I guess it's because I think that it is.

It's kind of amusing, though, because I probably sound like a nihilist, when I actually can't stand nihilism. I love the order we can bring out of so much chaos, and I'm a total softie when it comes to the awesome and beautiful things we can do. I have a lot of hope for humanity, but it's largely because I think there's a lot more than humanity out there.

Re: Human Nature
 

If someone was good all the time, people would look down at him/her for either trying too hard or assuming he/she thinks she's better than them, but also looking at it from the standpoint of not caring about that (even though it's totally true), if you're good all the time, you're probably not human oh dammit I came full circle...uh rephrase if you're good all the time, you haven't learned anything about the world. Can it be wrong to be good in some situations?

I would hope there's more to things than us. However I don't know yet if it's because I want the beauty of the universe to have reason or I like the idea of being "planted" here

Re: Human Nature
 

Yoda, i don't disagree with what you said, but you know what the problem with it is? going by what you said, if you're someone who really believes all of that, it'd make it very difficult to go through life and ever feel good about yourself.

only the inherently bad people would do this ;)

Re: Human Nature
 

yes, because I hold the pessimistic assumption that the general person is "inherently bad"

I wasn't saying you or I would do that, especially you, because I might do it on a bad day

that's why being an artist is great, you don't have to worry about all that, you just comment on it

Re: Human Nature
 

Well, if you're going out of your way to try to do the right thing you can feel good about yourself, but just don't "feel too good" about yourself because then you'll be prideful and heading for a fall. It really isn't any different from anything else in life, except that maybe it's more serious and tied up with questions of morality and/or ethics which most people don't really want to examine too closely.

no, i meant, if we go through life knowing how screwed up and bad we are, and how it's damn near impossible to be really, truly good... well, it'd be like having a long-term guilt trip all the time.

actually, that right there is pretty much how i would sum up religion. no wonder i'm a non-believer.

Re: Human Nature
 

I think that also explains why there is a basically even vote. Some people see being human as something one must overcome to rise above one's nature. Others look at an innocent baby and believe that we are good and have to be taught to be "bad". The question arises then, who "taught" people to kill, rape, steal, etc? Wasn't it other humans?

I realize that is a vast simplification but it may explain the voting so far. Now, why do so many bad things happen which seem to not have to occur? You know, direct human interference with other humans. I don't want anybody to go on a needless guilt trip but this is probably why people voted "evil".

Re: Human Nature
 

Experience has a lot to do with this naturally.

I'm curious as to if this poll was renamed Animal Nature whether the votes would be different

Re: Human Nature
 

Yes. That's true. Most people don't accuse animals of being evil or having to rise above their nature. It's just humans. But some would say it's that self-awareness which separates us and makes it a "big leap" to go from "animal" to "human".

Re: Human Nature
 

Many animals are self-aware, haven't you seen a video of, say, two pandas fighting for a mate and one of them is just being a dick about it and you're like man that panda's a dick the other panda clearly had dibs, he didn't even want to fight but he did it to impress her, man it's like a mirror

Re: Human Nature
 

All I know is the people who makes the biggest deal about being good and living by moral principles usually turn out to be hypocrites.

And I'm not just talking about preachers who get caught with a whore.

It probably seems like it should be that way, but for me, it isn't. If I err to far in either direction, it's definitely too far towards pride, despite what I believe about human nature. My belief in God goes a long way towards reconciling this sort of thing. It makes the admission of badness more liberating than anything, in the same way admitting to a lie actually feels more good than bad.

People can feel they've hit rock bottom and be more hopeful as a result. I know I keep going back to the analogy of addiction, but it works really well: I imagine that first day of rehab is, in some ways, the most hopeful day an addict might ever have.

Well, if someone regards religion as a big guilt trip, then they're practicing it in a very different way than I am, to say the least. Christianity operates with the exact opposite intent: to free us from that guilt. Admitting guilt has always seemed like the best way to actually avoid it.

But religious abuse will always exist and there are many people who feel it's all about shame, if only because few religious people have given them much reason to think otherwise. I can't always say I blame them. Christians are not always good standard-bearers for Christianity.

I feel compelled to point out, by the way, that the above quote is not actually a reason religion is false; it's a reason someone would prefer it not to be true. Ditto for the idea that thinking people are largely bad is a bummer: it's entirely possible that the truth about God and/or morality is quite unpleasant. It seems quite likely, actually; what're the odds that, if God exists, His expectations of me will jibe perfectly with my own?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZmHC75FDqQ&feature=channel

OK, let's look at that fireman from the other side--you and your new wife are in a burning building, choking on smoke, disoriented, trying to find each other and an exit within black clouds of smoke. Suddenly two firemen find you and pull you both to safety. Do you really care at that moment if they're drunks, wife-beaters, racists, and embezzling funds from the firemen's union? Does any of that really matter when they've just rescued you and the one you love?

I once was covering a big fire at a railroad marshalling yard in north Houston. Fire was way out in this huge complex with rows after rows of sidetracks on which dozens of tank cars and box cars sat waiting to be hooked up and sent out. I was working my way through all the rail cars when suddenly I heard this big metallic Whang like someone just dropped a giant washtub nearby. I backtracked back under the last train I'd crawled through, and there just a few yards away in a clearing between box cars was the wreckage of a light plane that earlier had been circling close to the marshalling yard and the fire. It was a high-wing type of plane where the wings are located at the top over the cockpit which was crumpled into the ground. I started running toward it, and then I saw flames licking out of the nose of the plane to under a section of the wing. Well, aircraft usually carry fuel in their wings; fire and fuel can make a nasty explosion, so I stopped running and started trying to assess the danger vs. my strong impulse not to get hurt if I could help it. While I'm standing there, a fireman runs past me, straight to the crash, and without a moment's hesitation dived straight under that wing on his belly to try to get the pilot out. Other firemen arrived with extinguishers and doused the fire. I learned later the pilot had died instantly. But I never learned the identity of the fireman I saw dive into a wreck that I was afraid to approach. All I saw was the fireman's heavy coat and the boots and helmet--don't know if the person was male, female, young, old--nothing. But when someone starts talking about bravery, I remember that fireman diving under that wing, putting his own life in jeopardy without the slightest hesitation on just the small chance he could help another person. That still impresses the hell out of me.

Point being, people don't have to be perfect and good all the time--we're only human with all the weaknesses and temptations that entails. But based on what I've seen of people of all kinds in several countries, I still believe most people are basically good, that most will do the right thing when it gets right down to it, whether someone else witnesses it or not. Yeah it would be nice if good people were totally good, which would make it more likely bad people are totally bad, and that doesn't happen either. Yeah, people can do both good and bad, but I'm convinced most of us make a concious choice to do good most of the time. And maybe that's enough.

Another difference between us--I don't believe in original sin, that we are born basically flawed and have to struggle against our evil impulses all our lives. And my best argument for that are babies. From birth through their first 3-4 years, no baby is primarily bad, much less evil. It's like that song in South Pacific, people have to be taught from an early age to hate, to be prejudiced, to lie, to cheat, because that does not come natural to a baby. Which was the point I was trying to make in my story about growing up in a segregated southern community. I learned at my mama's knee that pie was the name of a type of desert and black people were n-----s. Like I said, for years I didn't even know there was a different designation than the N-word. When I learned there were other words and that the N-word was racist and disrespectful, I had a choice--keep on talking like I used to and like most of my relatives did, or quit using that word. I chose not to use it any more, even though friends and relatives made fun of my choice.

I didn't create segregation, and I didn't end it. But when the civil rights movement started in the 1960s, I spoke up for it and tried to set an example of a Southern white willing to sit with black people in a diner or on a bus or in a classroom. And in time other southern whites did change and our society opened to all citizens. It doesn't matter that my paternal grandfather would have been a Ku Kluxer except he was too cheap to buy a set of sheets. He's dead and gone. A new South exists today. It's not perfect, maybe not even good enough yet, but it's better than when I first got here and I'm proud of that. The important thing I think is not that people need to change or that they are capable of change, but the fact that they choose to change--and usually for the better.

We differ on this, too. I think the only way we can address this issue is through anecdotes. I can't prove to you that some babies don't have an innate propensity to grow up and do evil. I can only recount what I've seen and learned from a variety of people. As for putting ourselves first, that's not necessarily bad. Someone had to be the first to stand up and say slavery is wrong, the first to say segregation was wrong. Dr. King certainly was putting black people first, himself included, by fighting segregation, but I feel I benefitted from it, too. If I'm standing in front of you in a ticket line at the movie theater, I'm not going to feel bad because I got there first and have you jump ahead of me to make up for it. But I'm also not going to come up late and push you out of line so I can take your place, because that wouldn't be right and I choose not to do that.


Well, I've never met anyone who was good or bad to their core, have you? That's just not how it works. If we were all born good to the core, it would be easy to be good--that's all we can be. But there are temptations and injustices and all sorts of reasons out there to be bad. but most of us resist the worst of these temptations because we want to be good and we exercise our free will to do good more often than we do bad. And that's the biggest accomplishment, I think--we could be bad, but we chose not to. We conquer our temptations and do the right thing--most of the time.

Well, I just don't have the time to reply to all this, and yall are already engaged in a one-to-one, so I'm not going to interject unless I have an end-all, but I've got to point this out right now before it gets any worse:

Of course. Too bad this isn't the question or this would be the end-all. We're talking about the quality OF our core, i.e. the location AT our core. It's totally up to interpretation what you think this core is, but the one thing that the term does not allow is some sort of explicit connection to the external. Being evil is more than just your actions; it's, well, a nature. We can be evil inside and do only good things. This does not make you good. If you hate helping people but do it anyways because society expects it, you are not good. The internal mindset is what we are discussing here. As always, your anecdotes are wonderfully written and moving, but they just do not apply to the discussion precisely because they deal only in appearances.

And please don't say that we can never know what goes on in other people's heads. We know what goes on in our own, and as long as we're honest, that's all the anecdotal evidence we need.

But, in the end, evidence doesn't prove anything whatsoever. I kinda wish we would talk more abstractly here. Even bringing in science and the evolution of altruism is going a little off base for me. So what if we are "programmed" to be good? We still have free will or at least a semblance of it. Arguments from the Bible are subject to the same irrelevance. Is there something inherent in the nature of experience that leads up to believe certain things? Or do you only submit to a truth when it is explicitly written down?

That being said, I'd much sooner take rufnek's fascinating tales over this garbage about original sin.

Re: Human Nature
 

That's fine but what about the animal vs. human argument? Are animals inherently evil at their core? If I knew how to speak/understand all the various "animal languages" then maybe I'd know, but as you say planet, I only know myself (and believe it or not, I believe because I know myself that I can believe that I "know" some other humans). I also do not believe that my cat is evil (or bad) or that all my dogs were evil. But, hey planet, you started this. Do you vote for animals also being evil or is it just us because we read, write and use the internet?

OK, OK, I already know that many "animals" are able to use the Internet(s, for those who care), but I'm talking about some creature who does it because he/she/hermaphrodite wants to do it. Boy, I hope that makes sense. :cool:

Re: Human Nature
 

Animals are neither good or evil because they are unable to make moral decisions. Some people will murder, others won't. Pretty much all cats will torture a mouse until it dies. The didn't make a decision to do that. They do it because it is part of their instinct, You train a dog to attach, he will. He doesn't think about the consequences the way we do.

Certainly not. But that's irrelevant because this thread was not posing the question "do you care about the moral purity of someone who may or may not save your life?," it was asking whether or not we're good or bad at our core. In support of the idea that we are good, you offered anecdotal examples of firemen braving harm to save people. My response is simply that this doesn't tell us whether or not they're otherwise good people, and they would hardly be surrogates for all of humanity even if they were.

This is exactly what I've been talking about: "we're only human." You're saying precisely the two things I suggested that any defender of the "good" position must inevitably say: they must make excuses for our collective behavior by either pointing out how difficult it is to be good all the time, or by comparing people to other, worse people. Neither addresses the question being asked, though.

Depends on what it's supposed to be "enough" for. "Enough" to sympathize with, and sometimes enough to admire, perhaps. But not enough to be really good.

They're not really morally good, either. If anything, they're primarily self-interested. I don't blame them for this, but really, I have to imagine you know the obvious response to your argument: you certainly didn't let your children just grow up, did you, under the assumption that as long as you didn't teach them evil, they won't learn it? I'll bet you taught them right from wrong, because they simply wouldn't know it until you did. I'll bet you corrected them many times growing up when they let their own desires get in the way of what we all think of as upright behavior.

All that said, I'm not really concerned with the idea of "original sin." It brings too much theological baggage to the discussion, and I don't feel the case I'm making requires that you buy into it, anyway.

Certainly the "only way we can address this issue" is through our own experiences. We are the only people we know the full circumstances of. Everything else involves large amounts of speculation. Anecdotes show us what is possible, not what is necessarily probable, and they certainly can't answer questions like this. I doubt you would pretend to know a person's core based on either the best or worst thing they've ever done, so it can hardly be used to answer whether or not anyone -- let alone all of us as a whole -- are innately good or bad.

Standing up to segregation is putting others first -- others who will benefit from the example of a Dr. King. I'm sure his life was a great struggle that was severely unpleasant for him at times. It cost him his life, for goodness' sake. He was most definitely not putting himself first.

That said, trying to find hypothetical examples that seem to fit under the umbrella of "putting ourselves first" but don't seem wrong is missing the point. The phrase refers to genuine selfishness, not any action which might benefit the person taking it.

No, I haven't, but that's only because the phrasing here has been subtly changed. There's a difference between "to their core" and "at their core." The former implies a thorough, pervasive badness. The latter just implies primary badness. And the latter is what was asked. Actually, the initial question was even more nuanced; it only asked which we had more of at our core, which is sensible, because everyone in the discussion seems to implicitly acknowledge that nobody is completely good or bad.

But the fact that we have these temptations to conquer in the first place is what demonstrates our badness.

Between statements like this, and the earlier statements about firemen, I think I see one of the root causes of our disagreement. You seem to be taking the approach that actions are the only things that can be really good or bad. Thus, if we think something terrible about someone, but have the good sense and decency not to say it, then we've done good through our restraint. But thinking it in the first place is what makes us bad. Being polite, or having some sense of social self-preservation, is not the same thing as being good. Real goodness and badness is about what we want as much as our actions.

I have to wonder if the law, and simple conditioning, has something to do with all this. We all live in the real world, and people think awful things so often that it's not plausible or useful for us to judge each other based on thought alone. And, legally, we obviously have little choice but to restrict consequence to action. But I wonder if these things haven't been internalized to the point at which we've fundamentally linked morality to action alone, and disregarded thought as inconsequential. In other words, we've confused legal necessity with moral reality. I suspect this is a cultural blind spot that exists now, but did not before.

Re: Human Nature
 

Yeah. Animals are not (at least not NEARLY as much as humans) self-aware enough to be consciously mindful of the suffering and joy of others. Animals do not contemplate ethical decisions. They might have a built-in set of instincts that appear to be ethical or non-ethical, but I do not believe for a moment that a dog can ponder. When a dog snarls at another dog or attacks a human being, it did not do it because it wanted that other being to suffer for suffering's sake.