Are Humans Innately Good or Bad?

[Monk Of Reason]

Do you think that human beings are good at the core or bad? I know these are the loosest possible terms. I do that to give a more open discussion on what people consider to be desierable traits within others and undesierable traits. To each it may be different and perhaps depending on those traits it will affect your decision on what the innate nature of homo sapian is.

 

[Me Myself]

At core, we are Good to ourselves and this manifests in different ways given different people, enviroments and experiences.

 

[Poeticus]

Namaste,

Very, very, very, very bad.

I am the only good human being there is! Muahaha!

M.V.

 

[Sha'irullah]

Rotten to the very core

 

[dgirl1986]

I consider that we are neither innately good or bad. When we are born I believe that we are equally both, our life, environment and biological influences can determine which way we end up swinging.

 

[Monotheist 101]

Depends on how you define Good or Bad..

Is being selfish considered being Good to ourselves? or is it Bad because it's inconsiderate of others?

 

[Sunstone]

I don't think it's either useful or particularly meaningful to discuss human nature in essentially moral terms. And I think it's especially absurd to discuss human nature as if we were somehow not hugely complex things, but rather we were so simple that it would be meaningful to summarize us simply as overall either good or bad. Of course, I've often enough heard people ignore the intrinsic insanity of it and go right ahead with their claim that we are one or the other. But I think that claiming human nature is good, or claiming human nature is bad, is the most superficial of all possible ways to look at human nature.

 

[Breathe]

From my own experiences living in an socially, economically deprived area and dealing with its local inhabitants. We have a high crime rate here, too. (And low religious rates; just thought I'd throw that in there to upset a few people who believe in the atheism = less crime claim.)

I think we're bad. Slightly bad, not all bad. We can do feats of altruism.

But, our own selfishness and aggression, as well as becoming dicks to those weaker than us, is inherent and apparent.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I don't think it's either useful or particularly meaningful to discuss human nature in essentially moral terms. And I think it's especially absurd to discuss human nature as if we were somehow not hugely complex things, but rather we were so simple that it would be meaningful to summarize us simply as overall either good or bad. Of course, I've often enough heard people ignore the intrinsic insanity of it and go right ahead with their claim that we are one or the other. But I think that claiming human nature is good, or claiming human nature is bad, is the most superficial of all possible ways to look at human nature.

While I agree and I adressed this in the opening post these sorts of threads end up flowering impressive arguments from both sides and I have yet to see this thread in the last few months I've been here. It might be to simplistic but that is the point of being able to add in your own parameters to define within.

 

[Knight of Albion]

They are 'open to persuasion' either way....

 

[Knight of Albion]

Through motivation and good example anyone can be inspired to great acts of good..

The Beauty within :flower2:

 

[chinu]

Do you think that human beings are good at the core or bad? I know these are the loosest possible terms. I do that to give a more open discussion on what people consider to be desierable traits within others and undesierable traits. To each it may be different and perhaps depending on those traits it will affect your decision on what the innate nature of homo sapian is.

Good or Bad for.. Whom ? you are asking.

 

[Sunstone]

While I agree and I adressed this in the opening post these sorts of threads end up flowering impressive arguments from both sides and I have yet to see this thread in the last few months I've been here. It might be to simplistic but that is the point of being able to add in your own parameters to define within.

I have no quibble with either the entertainment value of attempting to answer the question, nor with the possibility that some attempts to answer the question will flower into impressive arguments. Besides which, I think you are perfectly within your rights to have started this thread -- even though I am fairly convinced a strictly straightforward answer to the question would be painfully superficial. So I'm really not calling "superficial" the thread itself, nor necessarily all responses to the question it asks, but only strictly straightforward answers to the question it asks. Of course I would be pleasantly surprised if proved wrong.

 

[illykitty]

I'd love to think most of us are on the good side... But I think it's not as clear cut as good or bad. There's so many factors that come in, like society, family, environment... Things influence us and I believe there's inner traits that people possess that are or aren't encouraged (for example empathy or selfishness).

 

[InformedIgnorance]

Given that I do not believe in a truly objective morality but rather a subjective morality (potentially based on an objective framework) I do not believe humans are innately either. Even according to my own moral framework, humans are neither innately good nor evil, as it is their effects on others (intentional, unintentional and subsequential) that imbue the individual with a value (partially cumulative but perhaps inordinately by outliers in terms of significant impacts).

 

[Gjallarhorn]

All beings are by nature selfish, and selfishness is typically considered bad, so I guess bad.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Neither and both. Humans are innately human; good and bad (in a moral sense) are completely a matter of opinion.

 

[Ouroboros]

Do you think that human beings are good at the core or bad?

Neither. We have good and bad sides. Some have more good and some have more bad, but in general, most of us are in between (maybe slightly more towards good though... hmm...). Besides, what we constitute as good or bad is very subjective and individual, so a person might consider him/herself good but someone else consider same person to be bad.

Another side to it is that we mostly consider ourselves to have good intentions, but mistaken, even when we do bad things, i.e. "I screwed up, but I'm a good person and I didn't mean to screw up", but we consider other people to be evil natured when they screw up, "that guy is a bad guy because he screwed up." (Called attribution error, if I remember right)

 

[DallasApple]

I think they are innately good.Most of them.

 

[Sunstone]

I think one thing I've noticed is sometimes overlooked in these discussions of human nature is that is an important sense in which human nature is not exactly what we're born with. The human brain is born "scarce half made up". It takes another 21 to 22 years from birth to completely form. And various human characteristics are not "wired for" until the brain has reached certain stages in its development.

Consequently, it can be misleading to look at an infant and see its behavior as indicative of human nature. For instance, I've heard several times over the years from various people that humans are naturally selfish -- as demonstrated by the fact a new born is selfish. The argument is made that our true nature is best shown at or near birth -- before nurture takes over and "corrects" nature. But that's a poor argument because certain human characteristics will, all else being equal, develop in the course of time. An example would be our capacity for compassion. It seems to develop around the age of seven in most of us. So, at earlier ages, we might appear to be organisms who naturally lack compassion and who must learn it. But in fact, any normally developing human will naturally learn it when his or her brain begins to get wired for it at around the age of seven.

Just a thought.