Serena_V

well, without education there would be a higher chance for him to be bad because he's vulnerable to other people's influences, and they say bad thing are always easier to learn

dusio

So, if we don't have anyone to educate us - we become bad..., or rather we stay bad...

kavita01

Jus admit we like being bad.....in different ways

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dusio

Oh we do like it... Too much, but yes, we love to be bad to the bone. It gives us a lot of pleasure, I guess.

To be good we need to learn how it is, to be bad, we don't have to learn anything. It's more natural for humans to be bad, than to be good. That's why we need religion, morality, law. If there was nothing upon us...

JimiLe

This a very difficult and confusing question. I read all the posts and found many excellent points. It's a very important question because the answer will largely determine how to create a succesful system of ethics.

I used to be a Nietzsche scholar. His answer was that good and evil are relative to the values you pick. But he did say that man was something in between a beast and something that could be much much more.

In Towards a Genealogy of Morals, he said that man only became civilized because of centuries of conditioning. In the past, punishments were extremely severe because becoming civilized is a gradual process.

But that does not seem to get to the very bottom of the question. I think that when we ask if people are good or bad by nature, we are really asking something else. "What can I expect from other people?" That's very important to know in our day-to-day lives.

If people are bad by nature, we have to watch people very, very closely. It would be dangerous to really trust what people say. Also, we would have to assume that others would cooperate with us only if they saw a clear advantage in cooperation. And we should watch for betrayal at all times.

If people are good by nature, then we can relax a little. It would mean that others by nature would want to work together and be able to trust each other. Of course, we must remember that life puts us all in difficult situations.

Consider the person who doesn't believe in stealing. What would they do if their family was starving? Would they steal or let their family die? If they stole to feed them, would they be a bad person? We can see that things can become more complicated as we look at other situations.

I know I got confused and frustrated with the entire subject: there didn't seem to be any clear answer. But, perhaps I was asking the wrong question. Perhaps, there was a hidden assumption that I had overlooked.

The question assumes that people are good OR bad by nature. That everyone has the same nature. What if that is not correct?

What if there are those who by nature only consider themselves, and see everyone else as "a means to an end?" Such people would see life as "a war of each against all": everyone looks out for themself and say "too bad for anyone else." It's a "dog eat dog" world where "nature is red in tooth and claw."

Clearly, there have philosophers and many people who see the world exactly that way. We run across extreme cases of this all the time. We call them "sociopaths." They have no conscience, and the only reason they ever feel is because they got caught.

On the other hand, there is an opposite type: the "cooperators" -- people who think in terms of "Us" instead of "Me." Their philosophy of life is "We are all in this together."

This also suggests there would a third type of person: the "undecideds." At times, they would consider others, and at other times they would think only of themselves. It certainly seems that many are this type.

This post is already rather long. So, I'll just say that I have found that proposing 3 different natures of people fits the way people act, explains the historic difficulty with this sort of question and, so far as I've been able to determine, provides a foundation for ethical systems that work both in theory and in practice.

What do you think?

--Jimi Le