Man inherently good or evil?

[Cky3]

Any thoughts or opinions on the subject?

[bocablkr]

[ QUOTE ]
Any thoughts or opinions on the subject?

[/ QUOTE ]

Both.

[Cky3]

Well i'll post something later tonight when im outta school. maybe it can pick up then

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
Well i'll post something later tonight when im outta school. maybe it can pick up then

[/ QUOTE ]

You need to start by defining good and evil.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Well i'll post something later tonight when im outta school. maybe it can pick up then

[/ QUOTE ]

You need to start by defining good and evil.

[/ QUOTE ]

Evil (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=5661882&an=&page=0&v c=1).

[Marko Schmarko]

Good.

[guesswest]

Is there such a thing as good and evil without a perceiver? (man).

I say no, which leads me to believe man would aggregate in the middle since it's a balance scale we've devised.

[AceofSpades]

I'd say that man has an inherent basis to act in his self interest. The good and evil part follows from empathy levels, and belief systems.

[guesswest]

Agree with your general point there ace, except I don't think 'evil' actually has much to do with self-interest, at least not in the sense of personal gain, which is how I take you to mean it.

Obviously it's semantics, and evil is a fuzzy word. But when you ask people about 'evil' acts as oppose to 'bad' or 'immoral' acts, a lack of self-interest is a common theme in how people differentiate them.

By which a mean an action is 'bad' or 'unethical' when it's perpetuated in self-interest or for personal gain, but seems to become 'evil' when there is no such link. Logic being I think that however destructive an action taken in self-interest is, we can at least 'understand' the motivation - 'evil' is things like torturing puppies for pleasure etc, that we just don't 'get'.

[DrewDevil]

People act according to perceived self-interest most of the time; they also act altruistically at times. Whether the altruism is really self-interest or not, I leave to the philosophers.

And in acting according to perceived self-interest, people are capable of both the greatest good and the worst evil.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

You da man /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[Exsubmariner]

As others have said, I agree that man is simply self interested. There are those who percieve that helping others achieve their self interests is of benefit to themselves. These people are thought of as good. There are those who perceive that thwarting the self interests of others can be beneficial to them. These people are thought of as evil.

[Sharkey]

If self-interest is knowable, then one can choose to act against it. The reasons for doing so can include the benefit of others.

[DougShrapnel]

[ QUOTE ]
If self-interest is knowable, then one can choose to act against it. The reasons for doing so can include the benefit of others.

[/ QUOTE ] Of course, to act against it must be some sort of self interest of it's own. If you have no interest in acting against your self-interest why would you do it?

[bunny]

I think evil - my evidence, such as it is, being the fact that people need to be taught to behave well from an early age. I think you are taught ethics and the value of being good but instinctively (by default, if you like) act selfishly (which I think is evil).

I dont subscribe to the view that people always do what they want. Also, I believe ethics and morals have a real existence. Obviously, without those premises I probably wouldnt hold the above view, but without them I dont really understand what the question is about.

[Cky3]

In my opinion man is evil. The reason that sticks out to me most is not that we look out for ourselves its that being "evil" is just easier and we are a lazy species. When one reaches out to the community in my opinion the majority of the time it is with a goal in mind. Whether it be needed for college, awards, court etc. Rarely do we find truly "good" people (Mother Theresa, Ghandi etc.) Talking about it in philosophy at my high school so.

[TheWillMo]

What the bagel man saw (http://www.freakonomics.com/article2.php)

Summary: Professional numbers analyst quits his job to become a bagel seller. Every morning he delivers baskets of bagels to city businesses along with a sign listing prices. He returns every night and collects the uneaten bagels and the money basket.

Over 20 years he accumulates some pretty impressive records. People paid for their bagel 89% of the time over those 20 years, a figure which probably comes as a surprise to those with a dismal outlook on human nature.

Some explanations:
*Man has a natural inclination towards honesty, even when cheating is very unlikely to be caught.

*Society shapes people to be more honest (to be bigger wusses?)

*At $1 each, stealing a bagel just isn't worth it to all but the cheatingest people. It is still a cost, however, and an economist would say there has to be a counterbalancing incentive towards honesty (see first 2 explanations)

[guesswest]

Evil (http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/Evil.htm) - with a focus on reconciling evil with theism. Pretty good show.

[guesswest]

And RE the bagel thing. My local shop used to do a similar thing with newspapers, keep them all on a rack outside and have a box to drop money in. Sometimes, when I didn't have any cash on me, I'd just take one, but only because other days I'd put 3 or 4 times the actual cost in the box - I'm confident that, at the very least, on average I paid up in full.

I can't remember the price, but it was a weird price that you needed multiple coins for - I often wondered if they actually made more than 100% as a result, because of the frequency with which people would round up for lack of change.

[TomBrooks]

Good.
Evil is learned.

[Darryl_P]

[ QUOTE ]
Is there such a thing as good and evil without a perceiver? (man).

I say no, which leads me to believe man would aggregate in the middle since it's a balance scale we've devised.


[/ QUOTE ]

Correct answer!

Some like to think that all the man vs. man violence in the world is either an indication of man being inherently evil while others feel it's some sort of experimental error that can potentially be eradicated if people turn to God, become ACers, become more logical or whatever.

Regarding it as a given and setting your good-evil scale to put the average of all of our experience somewhere in the middle is the only way to give proper meaning to the concepts.

Any other approach is fuzzy thinking IMO.

[cambraceres]

Man is inherently dynamic, in belief and in body. What men will do in one situation or another is individual specific. Tendencies do arise, and these can be extrapolated upon in a careful fashion. Ignoring the explicit definitions of "good" and "evil", and simply assuming them to be what is and is not in line with social norms of the age, one can see that the complex web of human interaction contains all shades of this scale. Humans are infinitely adaptable creatures, and through the neccessary machinations of life, one may tend toward one side or the other of the aforementioned scale. This does not make that person specifically evil. The marked tendency to do ill as a matter of course does, but that is more a trait of that individual rather than man at large.

[ZenMasterFlex]

What is good and what is evil? That would help.
This question is all about standards.

If Murder and Rape are the only evil things, then I'd say we all have the capacity, but only a small % are evil.

If Masturbating is evil most of us are doomed.

If Harboring an impure thought is evil, then we all are.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
Regarding it as a given and setting your good-evil scale to put the average of all of our experience somewhere in the middle is the only way to give proper meaning to the concepts.


[/ QUOTE ] Can you rephrase this and/or elaborate? I don't understand it.

[moorobot]

Even in a capitalistic economy, which rewards and otherwise encougages selfishness to an unbelivable degree, while Some people are selfish all of the time (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showprofile.php?Cat=0&User=7524&Number=5678015&Boa rd=scimathphil&what=showthreaded&page=&fpart=&vc=1 ) , and everybody is selfish some of the time, it is not even close to the case that all people are selfish all of the time.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
it is not even close to the case that all people are selfish all of the time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Take a psychology class.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
If Harboring an impure thought is evil, then we all are.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey, all my thoughts are pure. Especially the dirty ones.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

it is not even close to the case that all people are selfish all of the time.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Take a psychology class.

[/ QUOTE ] The only way you are even close to right here is if we define selfishness in the way that you define it, in which it includes altruism i.e. people 'get a high' from helping others. It is useless definition in terms of predicting or explaining behavior.

When I and economists say 'selfish' or 'self-intereste' that means that people are not paying attention at all to the consequences of their behavior on others e.g. they do not get a 'utility boost' from helping others.

[Silent A]

I'm in the "neither good nor evil" camp. As others have said already, we're inherently self-interested and what we perceive to be in out self-interest is mostly a product of evolution. But total self-interest is not the optimal solution for a group of people living together (I'm talking about the environment we evolved in 100K years ago, so don't bother with any AC rebutals). We therefore also evolved instincts that encouraged honesty in ourselves and others. I personally don't believe that the feeling of guilt most people experience when they consciously cheat is a learned behaviour. Instead, it is probably a natural instinct that most cultures nuture. What's also clear from studies is that almost all people are extremely sensitive to cheating by others and we will quickly gang up to stop cheaters.

So for me, human nature is to search for the optimal balance between individual self-interest and communal honesty. It's when we see other people lean heavily to one side or ther other that we start to talk about "evil" and "good".

Oh, and I think all of what we call "evil" falls under the sphere of "self-interest". The previous poster who brought up the person who totrures puppies for pleasure should realize that wanting to experience pleasure is a form of acting in one's self-interest. Although I'd conceed that we do tend to refer to things as evil when we perceive an extreme disconnect between what the doer gained and what the victem lost.

[moorobot]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm in the "neither good nor evil" camp. As others have said already, we're inherently self-interested and what we perceive to be in out self-interest is mostly a product of evolution.

[/ QUOTE ] Our genes are self-interested hence we have altruism, morality, recioprocity etc. A self-interested gene does not automatically create a self-interested creature: cooperators do better than hermits or misantrhopes. Hence Richard Dawkins book "The selfish gene", among other recent books by evolutionary theorists which try to explain altruism etc.

[guesswest]

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and I think all of what we call "evil" falls under the sphere of "self-interest". The previous poster who brought up the person who totrures puppies for pleasure should realize that wanting to experience pleasure is a form of acting in one's self-interest. Although I'd conceed that we do tend to refer to things as evil when we perceive an extreme disconnect between what the doer gained and what the victem lost.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it's self-interest in a literal sense, but everything we do is this kind of self interest just by virtue of it being a choice. The subject is clearly torturing puppies because he gets something out of it, perhaps pleasure - but this is very different from say, mugging an old lady.

The difference is that the latter is a means to an end whereas the former is an end in itself - the mugging has some seperate utility. We tend to, IMO, be more prone to suggest the word 'evil' when the motivation is the action itself, or when an individual seems to be just 'acting out' their personality type - even the most horrific acts we normally call 'bad' or 'immoral' when there is a clear utility to them, but rarely do people use the word 'evil'. I have no justification for why that would be or should be the case, it's just a phenomenom I've noticed a lot since the distinction first occured to me.

And this has changed a bit in the last few years anyway, as people have started twisting the word for social/political purposes - eg Saddam is 'evil' now, but never was back in the 90s. 'Awesome' is another word like that.

[Sharkey]

[ QUOTE ]
... everything we do is this kind of self interest just by virtue of it being a choice.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all.

There are interests beside yours, and there’s nothing preventing you choosing to act on them. These interests exist independently of you.

A self-interest for someone else could be someone else’s interest for you. You could decide the world would be a better place if an interest of another took precedence over all self-interests, and then act accordingly.

[guesswest]

I'm not arguing that this is a very useful conception of self-interest, but I think you've misconstrued what's being said in defence of that argument where it occurs.

It does not mandate that you can't do things for other people or to the detriment of yourself - it's arguing that even if you choose to do something self-damaging or generous it's 'you' that has chosen to do it, so that action is your will manifest. Basically whatever interest you assign, it is necessarily self-interest because it is self which assigns it. At a very fundamental linguistic level the only way you could fail to act out of self-interest (the trivially true kind) is if you were you and not you at the same time, it's an entrenched contradiction.

[Borodog]

Very well put.

[HLMencken]

[ QUOTE ]
Any thoughts or opinions on the subject?

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no such thing as inherently good or inherently evil.

[Sharkey]

[ QUOTE ]
Basically whatever interest you assign, it is necessarily self-interest because it is self which assigns it.

[/ QUOTE ]

That doesn’t quite follow.

The self in “self-interest” is the beneficiary, not the author, of the interest. The self who creates an interest will always, by definition, be its author. However, that does not imply that the self who creates an interest must also be its beneficiary.

[guesswest]

Again, you're confusing interest with benefit. This is a tremendously complicated subject and I'm not going to attempt to summarize it here, not least of all because I don't fully understand it myself - but this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality) and this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology) might be a good starting point.

[Sharkey]

Neither webpage does anything to define this idiosyncratic use of the term interest.

[guesswest]

It's not idiosyncratic - it's a common and widely accepted standard to differentiate 'self-interested' from 'self-beneficial' in philosophy of mind, for exactly this reason. There are other reasons too.

[Sharkey]

Please define “interest” as you use it when claiming that all choices are based on self-interest.

[guesswest]

It's an intentional link, which is why I linked you to a blurb on intentionality. 'Self' is the origin and x is the target, the motivation in getting to x is 'interest'. Wherever that link is completed x is a target of self-interest and where x is an action, it's a 'self-interested' action.

Edit: And to repeat what I said a few posts ago, I think this is a largely useless understanding of human motivation since it's a truism. But I do believe it is at least that - true.

[Sharkey]

Thanks for the thorough answer. A follow-up question:

Is it possible for one’s choices to be influenced by interests that are not self-interests?

[guesswest]

That's a huge question - I'm not sure.

In the very specific way you phrased it the answer I'd say has to be no. Other interests 'become' self-interests in order to be something you act upon, you internalize them. But I recognize that's not the spirit of the question and I wouldn't want to make this issue purely semantic.

To that end I'd want to rephrase it as something like 'is it possible for interests that are not self-interests to become self-interests?'. That seems to make it a classic internalism vs externalism issue - I'm the latter so I say yes, but not for any reason specific to the question at hand. I really don't know how to approach the question truthfully, I'd be interested to hear from anyone that has a view on this.

[Peter666]

Man is inherently horny.

[hmkpoker]

[ QUOTE ]
Man is inherently horny.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well said /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[moorobot]

Not after seeing this post and Hmk's location at the same time.

Nature and nurture are important, I guess.

[ALawPoker]

Good and evil are relative terms. Man is inherently neither.

[T-God]

[ QUOTE ]
Good and evil are relative terms. Man is inherently neither.

[/ QUOTE ]
Aye. Man is man. That's about it.

[Prodigy54321]

[ QUOTE ]
Man is inherently horny.

[/ QUOTE ]

the only right answer

[siegfriedandroy]

First you must define 'good' and 'evil'.

[siegfriedandroy]

Clicked on the blog, but wasn't sure where the relevant info was. My eyes are bad (had a cornea transplant recently) so don't feel like reading through.

What do you mean by 'relative'. I believe ultimately, absolutely and objectively, 'good' and 'evil' both exist out there in the great platonic sky...and throughout our universe as well. Everyone reading this thread ultimately knows that some things are truly 'good', and others the opposite. If you dispute that truth, you are lying to yourself.

[siegfriedandroy]

wtf does this mean?

[siegfriedandroy]

this is jibberish, in my view...

[Andrew Karpinski]

There is no such thing as inherent good or inherent evil, these are subjective terms created by man. So, no, we are not born good or evil, because good and evil do not truly exist.

[Full Metal]

[ QUOTE ]
There is no such thing as inherent good or inherent evil, these are subjective terms created by man. So, no, we are not born good or evil, because good and evil do not truly exist.

[/ QUOTE ]
They already defined what is considered good and evil in this thread so there is no reason to answer in the existential. Furthermore, giving such a vague obvious answer is fucken lazy, put some thought into what you say, read through the thread before hand, you're not forced to give your 2 cents in every thread when you have nothing productive to say.

[diebitter]

Rousseau thinks we are inherently good, innocent, sunny and happy.

Hobbes thinks we are naturally brutish and petty i nature.

I call: during the week, Hobbes. At the weekend, Rousseau. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[cambraceres]

Jesus hates you

Maybe it was obfuscating, but Jesus [censored] hates you.

Cam

[JOEL_]

Good or evil is, as in poker, a depends situation.

We are not born good or evil, we are just born.

[Chips_]

[ QUOTE ]
Is there such a thing as good and evil without a perceiver? (man).

I say no, which leads me to believe man would aggregate in the middle since it's a balance scale we've devised.

[/ QUOTE ]

But I think if good and evil is a scale we have devised then we have devised it so that the majority of us are good. I think most people like to think of themselves as good rather than evil.

[RagnarPirate]

A moral code is meaningful only to a falible conscious being with free will. A rock is not good or evil. An angel (if one existed) is incapable of making errors and therefore has no use for a moral code.

Man is inherently capable of good and evil choices because of his conscious free will and falibility. He must determine what is good and evil and then choose to follow his moral code or perish. A rock is not capable of good or evil acts. And angel would be inherently good (incable of evil by its nature).

[RagnarPirate]

See my other comment. Good and evil do exist for all conscious, falible beings. Our nature is the that we have the ability to perform both good and evil acts. Rocks do not.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Man inherently good or evil? Any thoughts or opinions on the subject?

[/ QUOTE ]If Man was indeed a violence-loving animal, an inherently evil creature, then there would be no hope for mankind. We would be doomed to end up in flames, as our powers to destroy increase.

But we have realized, for some time now, that it is actually the horrific, monstrous, impossible condition that Man finds himself in which makes him lash out in rage against other creatures, and especially fellow humans.

[Andrew Karpinski]

Good and evil are creations of man; abstract ideas that are fundamentally meaningless.

[bearly]

well said............b

[lautzutao]

You're assuming there's a good or evil to begin with...

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Good and evil are creations of man; abstract ideas that are fundamentally meaningless.

[/ QUOTE ]Why do you call them "meaningless"?

When a mother zebra loses all its kids to a lion attack, the mother zebra might get upset for a little while but then will go on with her life as if nothing happened. This is certainly not the case with the human animal. When a human mother loses all its kids to a terrorist attack, she is almost always extremely devastated.

To every human, acts of evil (or good) carry a very specific and tangible meaning. Their effect is not abstract at all. And, yes, they are "human creations" as are all abstract concepts.

[Andrew Karpinski]

Cyrus :

They are meaningless because they are not real. Good and evil are whatever we see fit to define them as; there are no objective standards for it.

[Carl_William]

Karpinski,

Then everything you say is also meaningless -- so why do you bother to say anything if it is just so-much random meaningless sound waves or meaningless English alphabetic characters -- just so much entropy -- like a feathered propeller.

[Andrew Karpinski]

Carl : Why do I say anything? Because I lack free will.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Then everything you say is also meaningless

[/ QUOTE ]

No. If morality is meaningless, that doesn't imply everything else is also meaningless. Unless you define meaning as being based on morality in which case your argument is tautological and not really an argument at all.

[moorobot]

if something is meaningful morality would follow from that thing(s) being meaningful. Unless you distinguish ethics from morality in some way.

For example, all morality really starts with the premise that 'people matter' or 'beings with characterstic X matter'.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Good and evil are creations of man; abstract ideas that are fundamentally meaningless. They are meaningless because they are not real. Good and evil are whatever we see fit to define them as; there are no objective standards for it.

[/ QUOTE ]I beg to differ.

Morality is as artificial as a skyscraper. Without Man, neither would exist. But Man brings both to the world. A skyscraper might be affecting the physical world, as well as human society, but it is of no more lasting consequence to the cosmos than human morality. (This premise,, of course, depends on Man's ability to affect the cosmos: I'm assuming less-than-godly powers for Man; let's say that whatever Man does, will most probably have only "local" effects. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif)

But human morality is tangible, albeit changing. Very recently in human history, it used to be one's sacred duty to kill one's child (e.g. to please the gods, as the priests ordained); nowdays, killing one's child or any child is an abhorrent and criminal act.

Morality is abstract in the sense that it is a human construction and cannot be understood through the senses. But it is real. Abstraction does not imply non-reality. (Besides, /images/graemlins/smirk.gif the more Man understands the world, the less able Man is to define Reality!)

Arguments to the contrary quickly descend to pure relativism, where, yes, whatever you or me are saying is meaningless. The absence of a "real" point of reference means for relativists that everything has equal value. (Mike Caro came up with the witticism that "At the beginning, everything was even money" and some people thought he was saying that at the beginning every probability was actually .5)

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
if something is meaningful morality would follow from that thing(s) being meaningful. Unless you distinguish ethics from morality in some way.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do, but that's incidental.

[ QUOTE ]
For example, all morality really starts with the premise that 'people matter' or 'beings with characterstic X matter'.

[/ QUOTE ]

Many moralities don't start from any such premise, including my own. What matters to me is relevant to my personal morality, but that's a long way from what matters universally.

Everything has meaning based on its context, so while it's true this kind of argument implies that nothing has any "ultimate" or "divine" meaning (because such a meaning would indicate a morality), there's no implication that nothing has any meaning. Meaning doesn't have to be ultimate.

[CityFan]

Okay: Does man naturally set out to do harm to his fellow man?

Yes and no. If we believe in natural selection, an instinct to look out for oneself and to COMPETE with others for food, shelter or a mate is obviously a very valuable trait, and those lacking it will ultimately be unsuccessful - so evolved man must have an inherent tendency to be violent towards his fellow man, at least when it becomes necessary.

However, another valuable trait is the instinct not to NEEDLESSLY harm others, because those that do so will not be accepted by the rest of the species - they will make themselves the target of the violent tendencies of everyone else.

Logically then, natural selction implies that man strikes a balance between self-interest at the expense of others, and self-preservation by obeying the rules of society.

Sadly, I see no reason to believe that the ideal balance for the procreation of the individual - which we might expect man to eventually reach - is remotely linked to the ideal balance for the survival of the species. It's quite possible that man could become too violent a species and fight his way to extinciton, or alternatively become too passive a species and become too weak to survive.

[quinn]

[ QUOTE ]
Good.
Evil is learned.

[/ QUOTE ]

Evil.
Good is learned.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
If we believe in natural selection, an instinct to look out for oneself and to COMPETE with others for food, shelter or a mate is obviously a very valuable trait, and those lacking it will ultimately be unsuccessful - so evolved man must have an inherent tendency to be violent towards his fellow man, at least when it becomes necessary.

[/ QUOTE ]Violence against felllow men comes under various disguises. Underneath it all lies the horror of Man at the predicament he finds himself in: carrying a capacity for full consciousness of self, being thrust into a world of terror. All cultures are systems of death denial. all cultures are constructed as sublimation of the horror of corporeality.

Killing a fellow man renders to us the illusion of immortality: "I kill you, you die, I live!"; "I might die but I will die for our Immortal Cause - ergo I'll be remembered and part of something immortal". We do not dread death itself as much but what we know deep down to be the fate for the vast majority of humanity, if not all of it: that our death will be insignificant. Dying for something that supercedes mortality, eg liberating enslaved Bozonia from the tyrant Ztonians, sublimates this horror.

I'm saying that it's not an "instinct" at all that drives us to kill each other but the realization of our condition.

...Hey, maybe it's about time we move beyond the horror and reconcile our mind to human fate. It's been, what, some three hundred thousand years of massacres.

[AAAA]

the people who are very creative at getting pleasure from things that most would consider altruistic are the truly good people IMO. martyrs are very boring as far as i can seel.

they can actually be evil...as much as is possible. IMO, evil is usually just a poor choice that is a perceived self interest gone awry and for anyone who read course in miracles it is usually done out of fear.

[CityFan]

Here we encounter the boundary between biology and psychology. The "realisation" that may or may not take place in the mind is fascinating to a psychologist, but I still think it has to be seen as the manifestation of a biological "instinct" for self preservation and competition.

If some people are needlessly violent, that could be seen as a psychological failure, or it could equally be seen as an overactive (and therefore faulty) competitive phenome.

What I am saying is that both are the same thing, viewed from a different point of view.

As an atheist, I try to understand the human being as an organism; one that has reached its present state by a process of natural selection. That's the best model available to me and the best paradigm I have for understanding the human condition.

Starting from that premise, while I think it's perfectly valid to study and discuss pyschology - both from an abstract and a biological point of view - I also think we should try to understand human behaviour by considering how the mind has evolved to its present state. Why do human beings behave in a certain way? Because that is the way that gives greatest chance of survival and procreation.

If we refuse to think about ourselves in that context, then as scientists or philosophers we're guilty of a great hypocrisy in choosing to ignore an obvious tool for examining the human mind, just because it might make us feel uncomfortable about our place in the world.

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm saying that it's not an "instinct" at all that drives us to kill each other but the realization of our condition.

...Hey, maybe it's about time we move beyond the horror and reconcile our mind to human fate. It's been, what, some three hundred thousand years of massacres.

[/ QUOTE ]


How many people actually think in those terms? And if so, when did this happen to humanity? Certainly much less than 300,000 years ago. Or has someone been watching and keeping the score sheet all this time.

Then again, perhaps we are all bio-chemical automatons with the illusion of free will.


Life is nothing but the competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. -Bertrand Russell

[RBO]

There is nothing good or evil save in the will

[CityFan]

[ QUOTE ]
There is nothing good or evil save in the will

[/ QUOTE ]

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
While I think it's perfectly valid to study and discuss pyschology - both from an abstract and a biological point of view - I also think we should try to understand human behaviour by considering how the mind has evolved to its present state.

[/ QUOTE ] Behavioral genetics is your field.

[ QUOTE ]
Why do human beings behave in a certain way? Because that is the way that gives greatest chance of survival and procreation.

[/ QUOTE ] Not only that. What gives an animal greater chances of survival and procreation could have been easily fulfilled by Man as soon as Man established hegemony over the other animals and the environment. But we see activities way beyond those needs. We see (biologically) unnecessary slaughter and destruction. We see to-the-death-fighting between humans over a random geological formation (proclaimed as Holy Land) or some dead man's relics (interpreted differently by human tribes), et cetera. How to explain such phaenomena? Biology throws up its hands in desperation and explains only the "technical" apects of them, i.e. the brain's functionality, the role that sense play in our decisions, etc.

The search for an explanation lies within the mind's workings, as we learned from the work of the early 20th century pioneers of psychoanalysis, i.e. Freud, Jung, et al - and it lies beyond human sexuality as we subsequently learned from the students of those pioneers, i.e. Rank, Brown, Becker, et al.

[CityFan]

The Holy Land is more than just a random geological formation; it is a feritle river valley in the midst of a desert. Such places have always been fought over.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
Why do human beings behave in a certain way? Because that is the way that gave greatest chance of survival and procreation.

[/ QUOTE ]
FYP
Evolution is not forward looking. In a changing enviroment there is a good chance that most individuals of a species are not optimally adapted. In considering the biological influences on behaviour, we are looking at what was successful in the past. How far into the past is still open and different aspects of our behaviour may be tagged to different past periods of development.