humans are born naturally violent. kindness is a learned behavior. what are your opinions?

Question

i am doing a debate and i am against this statement.

however, i need contentions to back me up so please help!

i need to convince my class that we arent born naturally violent. how do i do that? :/
i also need some sources and my info cant just be based on opinion.
please help >.< ill love you forever

dude seriously
you guys are like awesome.
i love you guys so much haha



did anyone read
lord of the flies or animal farm here?
i want to incorporate some parts of those books in my debate
but idk how >.<

Answer 1

I think that humans are born kind, and learn violence from the media, abusive family members, or the kids at school. Look back to your childhood. Was your first inclination to hate the world and conspire against it? No. As kids, we believed in the good. We didn't get war, or why people hate eachother. To kids, the violence in the world doesn't make sense. Death, hatred, enemies.... Just didn't make sense. We believed in the good, the kind. We believed in sharing our cookie withthat girl with no friends. We believed that it didn't matter who we sat beside on the bus, because we were all the same anyway. We didn't start discriminating, hating and hurting until we learned from the world how to hate, and discriminate, and hurt. If no one showed us how to prejudge and hurt eachother, I believe we'd be living world peace, not wishing for it.

Source wise... I can't help you there. Though, you can quote me :P (joking)

Answer 2

Well, I would ask for proof. They would need overwhelming statistical evidence. Then they would have to prove which one was natural and which was learned.

If kindness is learned then it is unnatural as opposed to violence which is natural. If violence is natural and kindness unnatural then violence would be something that society approved of but kindness would be the oddity.
Why does society feel so much better about kindness?
It is violence that is unnatural and rejected by society.

Even animals aren't born naturally violent. Cubs of predators don't become violent until they learn about fear. Many cubs are not be afraid of humans until their parents act afraid or threatened. They're very trusting until they learn otherwise.

Violence is always reactionary. Violence is used to control or is employed during fright.

So the claim that someone is born violent is the claim that we are born afraid or power hungry. Many children don't learn fear until later in life.

It's too big a generalization.

Also, a question for them is why learned behavior is less important than natural behavior.

Babies are naturally trusting, and distrust is learned. What does that mean to them?

Answer 3

There is nothing more innocent in this world then when a baby is born. All babies are born innocent, it's the parents or caregivers that that raise the child for to a child they absorb their surrounding, imitate anything they see someone doing. If they are given love and patience then they will grow up to return it as an adult.

Answer 4

That wildness is the characterisic feature of Age of Darkness.

Ancient Europeans wrote about Ages of Man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man

There are also many other references to various
types of world ages or Ages of Man in Hopi
(worlds), Mayan (suns) and other cultures of
antiquity. Giorgio de Santillana, the former
professsor of the history of science, mentions
approximately thirty ancient cultures that
believed in the concept of a series of ages and
the rise and fall of history, with alternating
Dark and Golden Ages.

More details of these Ages are available in the
Yuga concept of the Hindus. The present age
is known as Kali Yuga (age of darkness).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuga

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Yuga

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/iml/iml11.htm
http://www.crystallotus.com/Lemuria/04bbTheAges.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/AgesOfWorld.html

There was no violence in the Golden Age. People lived
in harmony with nature and with one another.

Answer 5

I know nothing about philosophy, but I believe this quote from C.S. Lewis "You can be good for the mere sake of goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong--only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. In other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness."

Answer 6

Everything in us is taught , usually in formative years 1 to 7 .
Stick a kid infront of violent movies in those years and he`ll become like that ,
Stick a kid infront of cartoons,he`ll want to play all the time .
I stick my kid infront of Mozart dvd`s and the stockmarket , He want to make money .
If the class doesnt agree , Kick em in the head and chuck em out the window ,

Answer 7

I think we're born with some of both. Sometimes violence helps in survival, other times kindness does. Imagine as a father or mother, you would be kind to your children. But if your family was threatened, you would be prepared to use violence if necessary. I think they're both hard coded into us.

Answer 8

I disagree. Human are social animals and as members of a social group we are naturally inclined to cooperate rather than to fight with each other.

Answer 9

complete wrong, we are a species of higher understanding and protective of our young (look at the oldest living monkies and they all protect their young who are never never never NEVER violent while young)

look up some early work of socrates on his comparison between greeks and the spartans (warrior tribe) and look up some evolutionary snap shots/info of the decrease in size of medulla oblingata (i think i wrote that wrong, lol) in our evolution.

Answer 10

If such is the case, I am not a human.