If you think men are basically good....?

Question

Then why do children need to be taught right from wrong. A room full of children unsupervised is soon chaos.

Why do men with unchecked power soon resort to grievous evil?

Are not all men, left to their own devices and desires, self centered, self serving and self preserving?

Answer 1

Men are basically whoever they wish to be. People decide whether to be self-centered or not. A truly good human would want to help others at all costs. To me, that is the definition of a hero.

Answer 2

Do you mean people? I think it is a natural tendancy for people(children) to be lazy and selfish etc. and we have to work hard and empathize with others not to be these things, children don't know how to do that yet, that is why we try to teach them and also we have to try to protect them from their own devices. Because of their lack of knowledge and curiosity, they get themselves into situations that need adult supervision. Men (or women or anyone) with power usually resort to evil because of their arrogance and selfish desires but I wouldn't go as far as to say every person with power does this because I do not know this for certain. We are all very selfish and more so than most of us notice or are willing to admit. I know that i personally am pretty selfish and it is scary to admit when other people do not think that they are selfish but when you look at all the people in the world striving for success but not really willing to help other people be successful, they are selfish. ( If there are non selfish people out there, I would like some help being successful, I can't even get a decent job because my resume sucks)---but anyway charity doesn't count because that is usually out of selfish motives too.

Answer 3

I'll tell you what. I'm going to give you a super long quote from my favorite book that seems to best answer this question.
"Nothing (a demon) could think up was half as bad a humans could think up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley (the demon) found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millenium, where he felt like sending a message down below saying "look, we may as well give up right now, may as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and the whole lot and just move up here, there's nothing we can do to them they don't do themselves and they do things we've never even thought of, often involving electrodes."
-AND-
" "It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."

I personally, think that everyone has both sides too them, and what exactly makes someone choose one over the other I do not know. Take two children in the exact same circumstance as being beaten regularly by their parents. one will grow up to be an abuser, while the other may grow up and never hurt a soul. If we had the answers, both would grow up mild mannered, and nothing would be left to chance. But then we'd be playing God, wouldnt we, and that opens up a whole other series of questions.
sorry for the huge answer.

Answer 4

There's nothing truly wrong or evil about any of those qualities. If you were about to be killed or have your hard earned successes set astray, would you not try to preserve them? It'd seem to me more of common sense than evil. Children need to be taught right from wrong, because right and wrong are points of view, and as responsible figures for them we need to teach them how to properly function in society. Unchecked power resorts to evil as you put it because we're still only human, There's natural checks and balances in everything, if one was left unchecked, of course things would get thrown off balance. There'd be no north pole of the magnet without it's south pole. It's the diversity that creates the creativity and essence of what it is in actuality. If it weren't possible to be evil, good would not exist. And I believe that'd be a far worse contrast than having niether good nor evil, don't you think?

Answer 5

no. all men are not self centered.

self centered people do evil things.
people who have reached to the level of working to help other living beings don't perform evil acts.

Answer 6

Haven't you ever noticed the extreme sensitivity they have for fair play? Good does not prevent choas. (mob law).
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Nothing is wrong in that if it serves the common good. Witness the US Constitution.

Answer 7

so does that mean that us women are basically good? whew, it's a good thing you have us around