Is man basically good or evil?

Good and evil are loaded words that have as many definitions as there are people in the world. But I’ll define “good” here as a tendency to build and befriend rather than to destroy and fight.

Well, there was nobody to teach the “original” hypothetical good person how to behave, so I would say that behavior trends toward constructive and prosocial. When a group of organisms develops the idea of a social hierarchy, alliances and ingratiation occur. People may not always do “good” things out of selflessness, but they do them nonetheless.

EDIT: can you please explain your tags for this question?

New York because a lot of people are there.
Man and Women is obvious
Human behavior is obvious

I think ppl are basically good, unless there’s a chemical imbalance in the brain. It’s the things/ppl around ppl that influence their decisions. They way they are brought up…their surroundings and the core system that gets ingrained in them.

Man basically is. Anything beyond that is defined by their culture and beliefs. I think man basically is in tune with the prevailing culture surrounding him and accordingly lives by those rules, which is, in a way, “good”.

@deaddolly & EmpressPixie – Great answers thank you

I think we are basically good. I think our efforts can be interpreted as bad but the efforts behind them can be well meant, for instance if someone rubs us the wrong way.

I also think that often if someone is “evil” you can find an unnatural or unusual occurrence or reason for it somewhere.

Without good, there would be no evil. Without evil, there would be no good. Humans are inherently neither. Our choices are what make us either one or the other. Also, the scope of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ depends on whether we are either. We could be making good choices to benefit ourselves but hurt the collective or vice-versa.

Free will is both wonderful and wretched as a human is both good and evil.

Take a class in “moral philosophy.” You’ll learn the perspectives of tons of philosophers on both sides of the spectrum (some who claim man is basically evil, some who claim man is basically good). If the class is worthwhile, you’ll probably have some good discussions and reach no conclusion.

jcs007 – I agree.

Neither. Good and Evil depend upon individual perspective. What is good to one may be evil to another. Without a common set of rules to measure by this cannot be answered.

I contend that Man is selfish. Selfishness leads to improved fitness.

Man is basically egotistical – not good or bad (or what tekn0lust said)

I was taught at an early age by parents and the Unitarian church that man is basically good. (But I learned at Goucher College that women are definitely better!)

I’m going to have to go with good, or at the very least neutral.

@dandy lurve for you! Women are better!

LOL when u say man i assume that you including woman as well into the context. I think we are born good. When you look at a new born baby, he/she is so pure, no worries, no pretentious behaviour or whatever negative element. The moment the baby enters into the world, he/she is affected by his/her surrounding. That’s where things start to change. Unfortunately, the evil/bad elements is often more tempting and frequently absorbed by our mind. In conclusion we are born to be good but we tend to go to the wrong side therefore we must be taught to walk on our original path (good) again.

@mea Naw….men are the evil ones. lol

Man can be both good and evil, and often is both at the same time.

I have heard it said that we are all born with original sin. If this is so, I must say that man is inherently evil.

I’d say that a lot depends on the environment to a certain degree.

If we use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and then consider that the environment in which a person is raised will also provide a certain level of attainment for each stage.

Biological/Physical needs – here we are basically selfish creatures that will do what we need to do for our own survival, but will only encroach upon others if our own resources are limited. Basically, Good

Safety Needs – here is where we tend to go overboard. in our attempt to protect ourselves from perceived threats we have a tendancy to get carried away and create barriers between ourselves and those around us. Sort of a Necessary Evil as long as it isn’t taken to extremes.

Belongingness [sic] and Love needs – here we show our heart. definitely Good

Esteem Needs – here the ego takes over again and we attempt to take from others in order to build ourselves up. This is where wars and disunion really reside. mostly Evil if we are boiling it down to a dichotomy.

Self-Actualization – unless the person has been corrupted by the earlier processes, this is where most of the positive force for change comes from in the world. Definitely Good

People who skip these steps are sometimes worse people than those who have gone through the full process. To use a cliche, spoiled rich kids that haven’t been forced to care for themselves may go overboard when dealing with belonging or esteem issues.

If we want to use the Id/Ego/SuperEgo as our example, this is a good image.
Funny how the Ego looks like a penis. very Freudian.

Our behavior is judged by others. Each individual uses their own standards for determining where others fit in the goodness scale. I guess you could define evil as the bottom one percent, or bottom tenth percent of people on a scale that averages all people’s opinions. This is all hypothetical, of course. No way to do it in reality.

However, that, essentially, is how I believe it happens. We all do that, and communicate our ideas to each other, and so there is a de facto assessment system, even though no one defines it in a way acceptable to all people. For example, some people put abortion on the evil side, and others see it as a good thing. Some people think invading other countries is evil, no matter the motive, and others think it is good if you are “liberating” the country from its own evil.

What I’m saying is that good and evil are relative concepts, no matter how hard various religions try to pin them down. The only issue is where we draw the line. One in one thousand people are evil? One in one hundred? One in one hundred thousand?

Then you have the issue of why people behave in a way that others can label as evil. Upbringing? Choice? Something else? And then the one hundred thousand dollar question (hmmm, not very much these days!): can they be reformed? Most people in the US seem to believe that evil is incorrigible, and our only option is to lock them away or kill them. The rest of the world, to a greater or lesser extent, doesn’t agree, and believes in reformation. Personally, I find the American attitude towards “justice” to be reprehensible enough that I think it is at a point that verges on evil.

Maybe we’re more “geevil” than anything else. Or “eevood.”