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Try not to hate me but that's what I've done. (Except for the"Alps" part.)
Oh, we don't hate you...in fact we're all planning on showing up on your doorstep with luggage. Hope you made enough dinner! p.s. I like my steaks medium-well.
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Re: the OP. Sigh. I know I already answered this thread. But I was thinking about it and the idea that we see one another as "fundamentally" evil really makes me sad. Even if you believe this from a religious POV - i.e. original sin (or whatever your belief may be) - doesn't thinking of each other this way make things worse, not better? It's a chicken or egg thing. I truly believe that *overall* (psychopathy being an exception...and that is inherent...but inherently sick, IMO) people hurt because they were hurt. That's *not* an excuse. It's a reason. It's still punishable - on earth at the very least (and if only to keep the person from hurting others). But I do NOT believe we're all born with dripping evil radiating from our baby eyes or something.
When we're children, if something negative happens to us - even if it wasn't by design (say, a parent died, or we had some kind of an accident) - we internalize it. Children are self-centered; that's by necessity. (They're very helpless. If they didn't focus on themselves and scream for their own needs they might not survive, at least from a biological perspective.) We either see something specific as "wanting" to hurt us, or see something vague and out there somewhere as "wanting" to hurt us, or we see ourselves as deserving of hurt, or all three.
Whether or not there really is "original sin" or something similar, I have yet to look into the eyes of an infant and see anything Damien-esque in there. I don't believe we are all "inherently evil" from the perspective of wanting to hurt just because hurting is fun and awesome. If there's a God, whatever his plan is for us or even if there's no plan at all, how can it ever make things better to think of ourselves as evil at our very core? Doesn't that start us out behind the 8 ball, at a place we can never really recover from so why try? Why don't we ever try to understand why people do bad things? Because very often, at the root, there's a reason. (And again, NO, that doesn't mean no consequences, just that rarely...again, IMO...do awful, harmful acts literally come out of the blue...from nowhere except a core of: "I LOVE to hurt people, it's great, I was born this way.") (ETA: A notable exception, again, being psychopathy, but someone already noted that above.)
I don't say this as a sheltered person who never had to experience the receiving end of what most of the world would consider evil, BTW. I won't go into details because I don't want to share, but I wanted to make that clear. Nor am I a perfect ball of glowing golden forgiveness. But during those times that I want to be fair...I can see the horrors that led those who trampled on me to hurt. I feel there is nearly always some sort of reason, even if it's not an acceptable reason (i.e. it caused them to do harm).
Humor translates badly over the internet. And some people do indeed hate those who are able to realize their dreams and live the way they want, not the way "society" tells them. It's called envy.
Humor translates badly over the internet. And some people do indeed hate those who are able to realize their dreams and live the way they want, not the way "society" tells them. It's called envy.
I am 64 years old and spent most of my adult life looking up wistfully at the poverty line. But I have never felt envy.
I'll say this- little children have to be taught to do good, they know how to do bad naturally.
I disagree.
1. Children know how to be curious about everything naturally - without realizing which of those things could hurt them/others.
2. Children know how to be stubborn...because they are not yet mature enough to see the bigger picture; to them, "now" is "now" and everything "now" is of ultra importance.
3. Children know how to be self-centered naturally. Again, this is down to self-preservation, when diluted to its source. (IMO.)
4. Children have immature minds and emotions, and react in ways that we, as adults, see as overreaction and frequently mystifying (i.e. the child who throws a blue-faced tantrum because the green beans on her plate touched the chicken).
Children need to be taught safety and societal rules (for the given society they're in - this is changeable from locale to locale) but not to "do good"...in fact children do "good" in many ways "naturally" (or biologically, to cement ties, perhaps?), i.e. "share" their cereal milk with the cat, hug one another and other things we see as very sweet. Where they have to be taught to "do good" boils down more to encouraging them to mature and look outside themselves - something that happens in a societal species anyway but does need stimulation in order to happen properly - and to keep control of their emotions, yes.
Sure, all this combined makes them look like little demons to us but NONE of the above, generally, is down to inherent evil or even inherent "lack of good". Your child is not battling you over bathtime because she enjoys watching your spirit crumble or something.
I don't think we are fundamentally evil any more than we are fundamentally good. We have the capacity for both, and we make choices.
Our species does have some negative tendencies that can lead to evil behavior-- the urge to take what belongs to others/take more than what we need and thereby cause others to have less, and our repeated habit of dividing ourselves into "us vs. them" come to mind.
I don't think we are fundamentally evil any more than we are fundamentally good. We have the capacity for both, and we make choices.
This. Because different circumstances call for different actions.
Let's take, for instance, stabbing someone. That HAS to be evil. Right? But what if a person is trying to choke my child to death? If I have a stabbing/bludgeoning/otherwise harming instrument of any kind at my disposal - kitchen knife, Shake Weight, I don't care what it is - you can bet I'll be using it. Not due to evil intent but to keep evil from happening (the death of my child at the hands of someone with murderous intent).
What about speaking out against adults? Some may see that as "evil" in a child, particularly if it seems very disrespectful. But if a child is "all good" from some empirical standpoint or whatever and *can't* speak out against adults, she can't speak out against the stepfather who's molesting her.
And so on.
Whether these things are biological or came from God or both, the definition of "evil" is obviously quite slippery as it will change from circumstance to circumstance and without any capacity to harm, in a given situation we might perish.
I don't think we are fundamentally evil any more than we are fundamentally good. We have the capacity for both, and we make choices.
Our species does have some negative tendencies that can lead to evil behavior-- the urge to take what belongs to others/take more than what we need and thereby cause others to have less, and our repeated habit of dividing ourselves into "us vs. them" come to mind.
Precisely. People are fundamentally conflicted between selfish desires and the overall benefit of our society, beginning with the family.
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