Are People Naturally Good Or Bad

Humans, by nature, are surprisingly good. Although in the world today, there is violence and hate, but being bad does not come naturally to humans. Hate is actually taught and becomes embedded in people. This can be the outcome of abuse, loss, or societal influence. In a study performed with babies, the most innocent and having almost no cultural effect, was done to solve the theory of whether people are naturally good or bad. “Their results suggest that even the youngest humans have a sense of right and wrong, and, furthermore, an instinct to prefer good over evil.” Furthermore, this proves that humans have the “ability to make sense of the world in terms of motivations, and a basic instinct to prefer friendly intentions over malicious ones.”
Moreover, humans experience empathy when causing pain or harm in any way to another person.
“The human brain is coded for compassion, for guilt, for a kind of empathic pain that causes the person inflicting harm to feel a degree of suffering that is in many ways as intense as what the victim is experiencing.” This demonstrates that people aren’t “set-up” to do wrongs, in fact it proves that human’s are caring and compassionate. The gravest infliction, being murder, isn’t just an action done for no reason. Behind it in the person committing the murder, was influenced to do so. This could be as far back as in their early childhood. Additionally, this is one of the causes behind school shooters. “pathological aggressiveness is rooted in abuse and pain”. If someone is genuinely angry at something but they don’t know how to fix that problem, chances are the solution will be violence when there is no other outlet. What drastically worsens this problem is the access of guns. “a lot of new factors, the easy availability of guns, the mass-media factor.” The male fascination of guns and violence can also be found in the video
games that they play, which are set up to get the mindset of being in the army and to prepare to be at war. This manipulates the player to think that killing is harmless, and the fantasy of coming back to life just by restarting the game will give them a second chance. This is critical because there are no second chances in real life. Essentially, these killers most of the time want the attention and everything to be “about them”. They may feel neglected elsewhere and feel as if being recognized, even for something bad, is still deemable. This connects to the wars that are going on today. But this is just like a propaganda for nationalism. Young people are exposed to this idea of helping their country in return of the honor and attention they get. To conclude, humans are good and are actually taught hate which may lead to violence and aggression. The person is not at fault for the crime- it is the influence around them, whether that be cultural, society, or other people.