Good or Evil

Are Humans Born Good or Are Humans Born Evil? Humans have been on Earth for about 100,000 to 200,000 years. We are part of the hominidae family. In other words, we are “modern man and extinct immediate ancestors of man.” We have brains and with them we are able to consider thoughts. With abstract brainwork, it allows us to categorize ourselves under “perceptive”. Everybody has a different understanding or idea about something. Most of the time, humankind will anticipate the worse instead of the best. This, which leads into the topic question, “Are humans born good or are humans born evil?” Philosopher Thomas Hobbes regarded that humans are innately evil where in fact; Rousseau believed humans is innately good. Although the question has been debated for many years by Philosophers, there hasn’t been an accurate decision till this day. In my concern, Humans are born evil. The world may be a beautiful place but those who live in it are not. Man has no true nature. Babies are not born knowing how to be good or evil. As it grows older, it is taught and influenced by their environment. What is right and what is wrong, they make that decision themselves. Although it is just a perspective, we decide what’s best for us and it is usually what will hurt others. Thomas Hobbes stated, “Their passions bring about a state of war…” What changes the behavior of mankind is due to their experiences. If a child is raised from itself, the hatred towards the people who abandoned him is great. They will not let anybody into their lives for help because it’s not like they came so far with anybody in it in the first place. To get what they want, they will do anything. This includes lying or death. An example of a person who has a background of this would be an extremist named Adolf Hitler. His siblings had passed away, along with his parents in means that he was an orphan. He was not accepted into an art school he signed up for and ended up becoming homeless for many years. His way of gaining power was playing with people’s minds and it worked. It works both ways; a baby may be brought up with care, love and discipline. But everything may backfire on those who raised the child because they will not always be around to assist. What we fill our minds with comes from what we learn in school, at home, from friends, and through our own thinking. It is natural for somebody to pick up negative things from their surroundings. Some people choose deviant behavior to fill their minds with such as, hate and destructiveness. All of this is because you are born evil and even though you learn to be nice and respectful to others that evil part of you will never leave you. So many people are tired of their lives. The number of suicide is increasing by each year. And what do you think the reason behind these are, it’s definitely not because it’s fun of decreasing population. It might be because they have been through a lot of tough times and just can’t handle this world anymore. On the other hand it may be due to the amount of people having their lives played with. However, if everyone was innately good nobody would have been in this mess in their lives, they would be living happily ever after but that doesn’t exist in this world. If we were innately good we would never learn how to be evil or selfish because everyone wants happiness and therefore there wouldn’t be all this hate, war, etc. Hobbes once said “Hereby it is manifest, that during the time man live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war and such a war, as every man, against every man… and the life of a man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” what he is trying to say is this life is a game, a game where everyone is on their own. Humans are born with the idea of putting themselves before anyone else. I agree with Hobbes that without government, human life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” And it’s important to understand human nature because you need to know what kind of government that country needs; on top of that we also need to know how the society acts and why they sometimes disagree. We also need to learn how the people need to be controlled. However, everyone has a different opinion and I think this question will never be answered.