Are we born cruel and selfish?

Question

Do we have to be educated and trained by parents and by society to fit in?

Answer 1

You are born clean of heart and soul. What you become is the teachings of your parent, other family members, and friends. This is how we all learn to be what we are today.

Answer 2

No. People chose to become cruel and selfish. Parents do their best to train a child to be a kind person, until the child grows up and chooses to be cruel and selfish. To blame Educators and Parents is taking the easy way out.

Answer 3

We are born with conflicting tendencies. A part of us is dedicated to self-preservation at all costs, and gives people our potential to do selfish and cruel things. However, we are also social animals and have tendencies toward prosocial behaviors that can result in some great things.

Which tendency we lean more towards depends on several things. Humans genrally function according to what psychologists and economists call the "tit for tat" principle, which means we initially trust other people and will act in cooperative ways at the expense of self-preservation - that is, until we get burned a few times, in which case we adopt a self-preservation stance. I've found this to be consistent with my observations of people, as those who have benefitted greatly from the prosocial stance continue to act in positive ways, while those who have had a less forgiving life act as if self-preservation is the best that can be achieved.

We can also be trained to resist our self-serving tendencies through education and socialization; but realize that education and socialization themselves are a result of humanity's prosocial tendency, and that this implies no conflict with the "tit for tat" strategy. If people benefit from education and socialization, they will continue to support these institutions, but if the opposite occurs they may very well abandon such things.

Answer 4

Yes we must be trained to fit in.

You'll find a list of answers to your first question if you look up some of the social philosophers, and the utopian writers. Argument over the basic nature of the human character is old. If you believe the Lord of the Flies scene, then most likely we're innately nasty. If however you believe in soul qualities such as love, then most likely we're not.

People can also be trained by society to do terrible things to other people.

Answer 5

Very rarely is someone born who is innately cruel. I believe that selfishness stems from a drive for self preservation and always keeping an advantage over the competition in every sense of the word.
Most of cruelty and selfishness comes from how we are raised and educated though our genetics start us off in life with various levels of these attributed and abilities/openness to adjust them.

Answer 6

Someone said to me, "Speak for yourself. I'm not." So there's one person who's not selfish. Training helps, but I think we can learn on our own. A spoiled single child doesn't get much chance to learn from results. I think I soon saw that others as dangerous and potentially hurting myself in the process. The brain seems to arrange things in a reasonable and healthy pattern naturally as the body heals itself naturally. I see a part of ourselves that is naturally sane and reached through intuition. It's the disconnect fueled by 'reasonings' that mostly justifies and causes the disconnect. When they say our humanity, I think we really have one and the new mind shift they're promoting is to our sane side. "The Great Awakening" from delusions.

Answer 7

We are born with a blueprint for life..and from birth we move away from it..pulled this way and that by conditioning.

The original blueprint we can call the conceptual pattern..and this is pure .. it simply is...and for this to remain the same is not possible.

We all have unique inherent characteristic..we are subject to subtle and not so subtle influence..and as we live our lives we can develop what we may regard as useful or often unwelcome attributes..

The conditioning allows us to adopt protocols for living....so we are trained..and sometimes crushed this way.

Answer 8

There are so many sweet people who will never fit in to the rat race the selfishness.

we are all born inocent

Answer 9

I was born innocent society and my family made me something what I'm not and What I'm trying to find out.

Answer 10

We are born selfish and learn selflessness.
We are not born cruel, but learn cruelity.