General Morality of Mankind

The way I see it, if mankind were basically evil, civilization wouldn't work. And while it might not have the best track record, overall, civilization does pretty well for itself.

 

You cant be one without the other, it is very hard for someone to think that a person can be both good and evil, you're either one of the other, its the nature of duality, ying yang/what ever you want to call it.

because even a criminal can do an act of kindness, and a saint can sin.

A good example is how we perceive people, my best friend thinks her ex boyfriend is the biggest slime/asshole on the planet, she she will never get over the fact that he is dating one of her friends (now she hates her too)

to her that ex is evil has hell and anyone whos on his side is therefore classified as bad

But to me, hes not bad at all, hes just a guy who didnt want to put up with her anymore, hes genuinely a nice person and I cant see that much of a bad side in him at all, I tell her constantly to get over it but she always has an excuse.

 

The definitions of good and evil are subjective, so the question is moot. There's not a definitive way to answer it.

EDIT: In others words, mankind is whatever you want to claim it is.


(And yes, I'm going to get a bunch of people claiming otherwise - but your claim toward an objective nature of morality really only helps to prove its actual subjectivity. The fact that another person can logically disagree with you, and present just as thorough albeit different version of what morality must necessarily be, faults your argument).

 

I love this question . I believe that humans are neither. They are naturally neutral, but differ in there enviroments.

I do believe, however, the reason for the evil of man is competition. Humans seek the idea of being important, not being just another random soul out in the universe. The entirety of all conflict of man ultimately comes down to the believe of being greater than one another. Point being, I cant be intelligent, if there arent people less intelligent than me. Women cannot be equal to me, because then I would lose my pedestal of importance.

Religion, Race, Gender, Sexuality, etc are all poison in the hands of a killer. Our own subtle differences is the reason for our pain.

 

Ah, well when you put it that way I of course agree with you (since you are assuming the subjective nature of good and evil).


When I hear the question "Is man basically good, or basically evil?," however, I read it as a unilateral statement. Perhaps the very question should be rephrased as "As per your moral compass, is mankind basically good, or basically evil?" (Yes I am that picky ).

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See, I actually don't know what you mean by that unless you present your own definitions. Sure, people can be shaped by experience - into what, though? Otherwise I don't know what an "evil" person in vyvance's world looks like .

(Which is why I prefer to simply say "it's all subjective" instead of actually answering the question, lol).

 

You might want to look up "altruism". From an evolution standpoint, it would be beneficial for the whole and themselves to be "good" instead of "evil". It's in quotes because good/evil are both relative terms. Nothing is inherently good or evil from the standpoint of nature. Good and evil are more like concoctions of the human consciousness. Anyways, that's my take on the BASIC morality of mankind.

 

As others have said, the definitions of "good" and "evil" vary from person to person, so it's a bit hard to give you a definitive answer unless you give us a standard to base our judgements on.

Regardless, I think everyone is a mixture of both. Some really good people can do evil things, while some very corrupt people have their moments of kindness or goodness, too. I think we all have a dark side and a soft side; it just depends where and how we express those sides of ourselves.

Fundamentally, I would just say that people are selfish. It's not always about good or bad. Most people just care about themselves and disregard the well-being of everyone and everything else. I'm not saying that this is true of everyone; there are some kind souls out there who do a lot of good for humanity, but in general, humankind is self-serving.

 

Well, I don't really subscribe to moral relativism, so I don't think the question is ill-posed in that way. That people disagree on moral questions just indicates that one or both parties are wrong. It doesn't mean there's no such thing as objective truth. It means that we let our self-interest, complete lack of empathy, or risk aversion (whatever the case may be) cloud our judgment so that we come to comfortable conclusions.

Where I do think that the question is ill-posed is that it assumes it is possible to make a generalized statement about the character of people. I think a pretty good argument can be made for both sides of this question, and that fact by itself bodes ill for the usefulness of the question. So here goes. If people are fundamentally good, then why the heck do we have governments? On the other hand, if people are fundamentally evil, then why the heck do governments work most of the time? Neither of these questions are easy to answer. I submit that they don't admit of answers.

I don't think that the moral axis really works to answer questions about our modern social organization. Instead, I think that as humans, we're fundamentally risk averse. There's a reason most of us are employed instead of business owners: if we get fired, we can look for another job, but if our business goes belly-up, then we are out a lot of money, and depending on our investment, that could mean everything. We pick being employed because it lessens our risk, but we pay the price of not taking all the business profit home for ourselves (or our share of it, if we are shareholders). It would better for a whole lot of us if we were all business owners, but most of us don't have the talent or the tolerance for that level of risk.

I think a similar analysis explains why we have governments. I always believed that anarchy would be better for all of us. We would all be free to do whatever we want, subject to the constraints of force placed upon us by others. However, that's precisely the problem. There are no constraints on the use of force, so we would all have to protect our own freedoms by force. Some of us are unable to do that, not talented enough to do so, or simply don't want to incur the risk. Governments were created for us by really dickish people who weren't interested in our well-being but rather their own.

Still, for governments to work, they require a certain level of buy-in. Generally speaking, the sell is "this is better than what you had before, whether it be the previous regime or the state of nature itself." Therefore, governments can't be completely awful forever. Even though governments are not an ideal set of arrangements, and they spoil the directness of dealings between honest and caring human beings, they provide a measure of protection for the vast majority of us who are risk averse.

To tie all this back to the original question, I think that we're risk averse, which is different than saying good or evil. Risk aversion explains why certain kinds of evil behavior are popular and why certain kinds of good behaviors are not done as often as they should be. Goodness comes at a higher cost.

 

Truly altruistic behaviour isn't beneficial to the person displaying the behaviour... and seeing as the evolutionary theory is all about adapting your person/your genes to have the best rate of survival, giving away your time/resources to other people without any personal benefit is well... stupid.

Anyways, I think mankind is neither good nor evil, but selfish. Nearly everything we do is for self-benefit, even if it's something that would appear helpful or "altruistic", we also benefit in that we feel better about ourselves, gain higher social standing and respect, etc. That's just an example, but you could probably come up with a "selfish reasoning" for nearly anything that otherwise seems like altruistic behaviour.

Point is, I think that good and evil is all relative to who is watching what we do and how they're perceiving our actions within the realm of our societal constructs. But ultimately we do things for ourselves and ourselves alone.

 

This is an issue I've spoken about here on the forums in the past.

I reject the notion of good and evil entirely.

As is easily demonstrated what one person considers good another person might consider evil. This proves that the concept of morality is relative to each individual.

Some might say, regardless of this differing of opinion, that an absolute moral compass exists. However, in order to believe that you must also believe that something imposes this moral compass on the universe as a whole. This requires a deity, some other type of supernatural power, or some type of intrinsic laws built into the universe itself. There is no evidence of these things.

This leaves us with nihilism. The belief that there is no morality or intrinsic value in the universe. A nihilist looks at the universe and clearly sees it as being amoral and indifferent to human actions. An act of genocide is no more good or evil than an act of charity. But the nihilist is likewise wrong.

While the nihilist is correct that the universe taken as a whole is amoral and indifferent to human actions, he neglects to include the individual as part of the universe. He sees the universe as something abstract - "out there", but the reality is the universe is comprised of everything in it - including ourselves.

Clearly, while the universe as a whole may be valueless, we as individuals are not valueless. We value certain things more than others, and those values differ from individual from individual.

It is our collective set of values that we call "good" and "evil". A value in and of itself is neither right nor wrong. It is simply a desired outcome or way of living.

Our values are created through a number of different methods; our culture has a huge impact upon our values, but so does our life experience and our biology. An alien, for example, with a different biology than our own may develop a radically different set of values that reflect its existence. Likewise, someone who grows up in a culture or has life experiences radically different than our own may also develop radically different values.

This is an important distinction and understanding, which at first may seem trivial, but it's fundamental to understanding and creating the foundation of what we consider ethics.