Are people intrinsically good or evil?

Question

Which nature is more dominant? Why or why not?

Answer 1

I believe everyone is a clean slate when they are born. I think its their environment and parents who shape them into who they are as they get older. As humans, we are all self-centered but it's the parents responsiblity to teach them the right and wrong in life and to have respect for others.

Answer 2

In general, good. There's certainly cases where, nature or nurture, somebody ends up bad, but for the most part, people generally aren't evil per se. Some folks do evil acts, but most of the time, your average person maintains a life of mediocre acts - little things like cutting someone off in traffic, not tossing spare change into the charity bucket, etc. And, honestly, I think half of that comes around from the way we live. Society's gotten away from a community/tribal structure, everyone's got to have their own (insert consumer item here), folks don't know their neighbors (and don't care to)... there's no real connections, so people don't feel a motivation to be good to each other. Re-form those connections, and you'll see the good nature rise dominant again.

Answer 3

Man is filled with the capacity to do both good and evil. Which quality is dominant depends on many factors, far too complex to be stated here. For the sake of simplicity, think about this. Man has, in his psychological make-up, two separate elements. One is the Godly or good side. This is what many refer to as the spirit, although even that term has variables which lead to confusion and misunderstanding. The other side of man is the satan, flesh, the "bad"side or opposer side. These two are constantly at odds with each other. It is the way we all were built.

Now, which one man decides to feed is the one that will dominate. That is where free will comes into play. It is your choice on which way you want to go.

The spirit feeds on the deep concepts of life, truth, knowledge, justice, fairness, love, and equity and the like. The flesh side feeds on all the things that are plentifully available in this world - sex, lust, money, power, excesses in eating, drinking, drugs, and the pursuit of foolish, worthless things.
Between perfection - total spiritual enlightenment and total depravation spans the full spectrum of human kind.

If you do not feed your spirit, and let the flesh side of you dominate (which happens by default, by not feeding your spirit) you will find your will power will become weaker. If you try to feed your spirit, doing good things for your mind and heart, and striving to do right, your will power becomes stronger.

In other words, it is harder to do good, be good and stay good, than it is to be devilish, evil or just plain bad. But beware, in this world, there are those who would want you to believe that much of what is truly evil is actually good (Like an illegal war against a country that offered no threat). And the opposer or enemy (The actual meaning of Satan) inside of you is going to do everything to prevent you from being good. That's human nature.

Answer 4

I think that given a choice, most people will choose good over evil, but it totally depends on the situation. If someone was expected to give up something of value for someone they'd never met or heard of before, I think they'd be hesitant to comply, but if you put the fate of the world in the hands of any random person, and they could choose to preserve it or destroy it, I think most would preserve it.

Also, it's hard to pin this one down, because different people have different perceptions of good and evil. I think the best standard for this is the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which really summarizes most of the Ten Commandments.

However, I'm afraid that there is a lot of selfishness in this world. I think good is still dominant, but I don't think it's a given that it will stay that way forever. I hope it will, though.

Answer 5

Intrinsically good. We are born wanting only happiness, and until we begin developing concepts of ego and possession those concepts of wanting happiness and not suffering extend all around us. However our families, cultures, societies and media soon go to work on modifying our brainwaves and concepts like possession, dominance, materialism and ego are introduced and fed to varying degrees.

The good news is that, with practice, we can return to our blessed natural state of being. But most of us have a lifetime of messaging to "un-do" before we can return to spontaneous happiness for self and others as a way to live every moment.

Answer 6

Evil only exists when there is no goodness, we live a life of duality. Just like there is no darkness as the sun is always shining. There is only darkness (evil) when we have turned away from the sun/light (goodness). You can sit in the shade (darkness) of a tree, only because the tree is an obstacle between you and the sun (light / goodness). We can apply this same analgy to people and their behaviour, if they are close to God then there is goodness (light) The same applies to goodness or Godliness, when we have turned away from God then there is darkness and evil, and thus no goodness. The obstacle that hides us from God is our karmas, not only karma that we have created in this life, but that from past lives too. We all have God inside of us - God is light - karma is like a black cloth - so if you take a bright light bulb and cover it with layers and layers of black cloth (karma) you eventually will not see the light (goodness). Get rid of the karma and you will see the light - karma being the obstacle that hides us from the light and keeps us in darkness. I hope this has helped. Blessings - Barry

Answer 7

Environment is the key to this I think. If I were born into a place where I had to kill or be killed, or steal for food, or any type of gang environment, I could be called "evil" when the truth of the matter is that as a human being I needed to acquire certain skill sets to survive.

Those born into a community that survives by helping each other, as most of us in the US are, we are taught that being "good" is the norm, because it helps maintain control over society without rampant killing sprees or bloodshed in general.

Any human born anywhere could fall into either category. If you raise a child to hate someone of a different race, to them killing or harming that race is "good" where the other side sees it as "evil" due to differing perspectives.

Answer 8

I believe that people are intrinsically good. Light always rules over darkness and casts a beacon to light the way in the dark. Good always wins in the end over evil. This is how it is meant to be.

Answer 9

Good is dominant. If evil (and by evil I mean a natural tendency toward theft, murder and other destructive behaviors) was dominant in a society, the fabric of that society would soon unravel and that society would disappear.

Answer 10

i think evil is an unusual extreme.
i think people are intrinsically selfish and bad because we are naturally inclined to ensure our survival. and since we live with other people, our survival is in direct competition with that of others'. so there is an unavoidable conflict of interest.