Is human nature primarily gentle or aggressive?

Answer 1

I say aggressive.

The reason is that when things are going smooth and well, it's easy for people to be kind and gentle to each other, but when there are problems or obstacles, that's when most people show their real colours, and it's not often pretty.

There are exceptions though.

Answer 2

When God created Adam and Eve the were very gentle and peaceful, They lived in Eden with wild animals without being attacked, cos the peace within them and being sin free reached out from them to all the nature around, so a wild animal know that Adam won't kill that wild animal for food and the wild animal then do not start by attacking Adam to defend itself

This implies that the human nature PRIMARILY is gentle. BUT
as sin controls man and Adam and Eve were dismissed from Eden, God cursed earth, and cursed Adam to work hard to afford living, and cursed Eve to deliver babies in pain....

Now... everybody is sin full, interests collide and ppl are greedy so ppl gets aggressive.

Have a nice and GENTLE day :)

Answer 3

I want to hear the answer too.

in my opinion, human primarily is an empty box then affected by environemnt to become either gentle or aggressive or else.

Answer 4

aggressive, but round about the teenage years, empathy kicks in to temper it, the ability to relate or put oneself in another's shoes or we'd have remained barbarians. It's often a reason why early teens have difficulty understanding the enormity of some of their actions. Having said that however, you do see in small kids that some have a gentle nature from the very start despite their environment.

Answer 5

We are both.

We are aggressive toward people when they threaten who or what we are gentle toward. We fight to protect. If nothing threatens us in our lifetime we would have no reason to be aggressive and therefore stay gentle, however if we are constantly threatened compassion would take a back seat and no longer be our top priority, even as its the reason we would be fighting.

Answer 6

Human nature is primarily violent. It´s in our genes, in our history. On the other hand, humans also have other emotions like guilt and fear, that tend to lead us in the direction of what is good, over what is bad. Nonetheless, if you put a gun in someones hand and tell them they will not go to jail if they kill someone, chances are they probably will.
Violence is not all bad. If we were not violent we would probably not have gotten so far as a species. In the very distant future, we will probably become less and less violent as we distance ourselves from our primitive nature.

Answer 7

Human nature is primarily Paranoid.

Answer 8

With the range of emotions that we experience as well as circumstances I'd probably say a bit of both with the edge givn to aggressive. We only have to look at the world today for proof.

Answer 9

Both.

You need to know how to be aggressive in order to be gentle and vice versa.

Answer 10

Under a hood of civilised behaviour lays an animal which is at the beginning mild.
It is just a matter of overload whether animal (different animals of different qualities) will turn against environment or self.
By self improvement behaviour can stay under control.