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Yes
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Add to FavoritesThe inherency of good or evil in humans is a trick question. One must assume, since there is no moral code in the animal kingdom, that humans are neither inherently good nor evil and that morality is nothing more than a valuable human invention.
At one point, Humans were little more than advanced apes. We lived according to the food chain, wandering in small bands, left to the mercy of the environment and one another.
We fought over women, land and food as we drudged through the very slow infancy of our species. Over this stretch of time, our minds began the assent to intelligence and we slowly went about developing communities and primitive forms of government. Our morality began to grow within these primitive cultures.
It isn't hard to imagine how developing a moral code would be useful in preserving and strengthening a community. It is always preferable to not kill, rape or steal from your neighbor in that it builds solidarity and trust. One might occasionally lend a hand in the hopes that one day he or she would be repaid in some way.
In these modest beginnings we find the bud that is now the flower of our morality, our sense of good and evil.
Through moral eyes, we put qualities or draws on things that aren't necessarily good or evil. A driver who lets us into his lane during a traffic gridlock is good'. The corner of your doorframe that you constantly stub your foot against is a piece of sh*t'. When you watch a nature channel and see a lion chasing a gazelle, the lion is the bad' guy.
These assignments of good and evil put us under the illusion that we understand the world, it assists us in coping with living on a planet of chaos and injustice, the positive flipside being that we have a conscious and it prevents us from acting in a way that would negatively affect others and ourselves.
One might define good' in this way: good is anything that strengthens, preserves or enables the positive movement and evolution of our communities, countries and our species. This is an extremely broad definition, one that must be open to revision and question (I warn the reader that the process of proving the good to be good is ridiculous and tedious). Obviously, anything bad would be the opposite of the defined good.
Labeling a newborn as inherently evil is, frankly, nothing more than religious stupidity. One must safely say that they are good, that they are innocent and worthy of love, care and deserve an upbringing in the most positive environment possible.
Humanity presupposes morality; therefore it is not possible for a human to be born inherently moral or immoral. The truth is simple and devastating: humans are inherently human.
Learn more about this author, Calvin Bonk.
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No
The ability to be good or bad resides in each of us. While some people behave more bad than good we all are capable of being good or bad. For the question, Are people inherently good, we must first understand the definition of inherent. Inherent is defined by Dictionary.com as existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute, such as, an inherent distrust of strangers. This implies a permanency. While good and bad will reside in each of us forever, we will not always be good. By definition it would see as if yes we have a permanent element that resides in each of us to be good. The nature of the beast proves we also have a permanent element residing in each of us to be bad. As we go through life we are prone to do bad on more than one occasion. We call these bad things mistakes.
Good is a term typically defined by ones own moral code. There are standards however which society has chosen to live by as a whole such as, it is wrong to kill, steal, lie and so on. Yet it is the nature of the beast to do whatever is necessary in order to survive. This sometimes means we choose to do what is typically considered bad in order to survive.
Regardless of how inherently good someone may consider themselves, when someone feels backed in a corner or that their life as been threatened then one can go into a state of panic. During this time the nature of the beast kicks-in in what is otherwise known as in psychology terms as, fight-or-flight instincts. At this time the person will either run or use whatever means available to him or her to fight. These means may not appear right to others but to the person at that time it not only feels like the right thing to do but also the necessary thing to do.
A recent example of what can happen when the fight-or-flight instincts kick in is with Major Nidal Malik Hasan, otherwise known as, The Fort Hood Killer. At one time Major Hasan was known as a good person before he suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In an article written for Phsycology Today Dr. Mark Goulston wrote, Central to nearly all the people I have treated or spoken with who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the fear of re-traumatization and their efforts at any and all costs to avoid it often results in the symptoms they develop. Major Hasan feared re-traumatization and his fight-or-flight instincts kicked in. While this does not justify Major Hasan's horrific actions it does prove that all men and women are capable of good and bad.
We all know stealing is bad. Yet to a mentally ill homeless hungry person stealing may be necessary for survival. Does this make someone permanently bad? This person is just as capable of being "good" as the next person but his or her "inherently good" element is overcome by his "fight-or-flight" instincts.
A less extreme example would be when someone lies when they feel backed in a corner. Is it ever good to lie? Some people think white lies are ok but in reality no lie is ever good because when the person being lied to finds out the truth they become hurt and sometimes devastated, which in turn can kick in their own fight-or-flight instincts.
People are born both inherently good and bad however, different circumstances can bring out the best and the worst in each of us.
Learn more about this author, C.K. Matthews.
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