I had a chat with someone about that eternal primal question boggling minds of psychologists for centures - are people born bad or good. Without taking the aspects of upbringing and society's influences into account. I am quite aware there's no empirical way of discussing shit like this, since society and our parents or other providers do undeniably have a role in shaping us into what we become later on. But lets - for the sake of the argument - exclude all these other aspects that shape a personality into a recognizable form and focus solely on the potential of an average new born homo sapiens, with no Earthly experiences to speak of . A genuine tabula rasa, and yet a forming personality. What is it thinking? Are it's thoughts pure and altruistic or selfish and driven by it's primal urges? There are three main philosophies tackling this problem: 1) man is born good and pure; this was mostly a thing of religious ideology loosely based on the idea that God designed the human based on his own image. 2) man is born evil and innately selfish; a stance put forward by evolutionists who believe a man (like any other living creature) is designed to survive the game of life, death and extinction by egotistically considering himself the centre of his own subjective universe, paying attention only to his own needs. His two primal motivations being: self-preservation & preservation of the species. In order to survive he needs to be ruthless and uncompromising, putting his own needs forward. 3) man is born completely neutral. There are no good or bad tendencies from the beginning.. Anything is possible. Existentialists go even further: they don't recognize the role of society or upbringing making a vital imprint on a personalty. "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself" - the first principle of existentialism.
Being a child of corrupt communism and later ruthless liberal capitalism, growing up in a dog-eat-dog world where back-stabbing and grotesque selfishness are almost norms of our civilization, I could hardly disagree with the second philosophy. Man is born with a tremendous potential to be bad. All that can't possibly be explained with influences of society and upbringing. This is an amusing paradox. Who brought up our parents? Who brought up our parents parents? What IS society anyway? It's the mirror of ourselves. It's a median of who we are - our collective consciousness. And it doesn't look pretty, does it? Prime evil (so too speak) is engraved in our DNA as a necessity in order for us to survive "in the wild". Instruments of evolution strive for successful survival of the species and this can only be achieved with making the species behave in a certain (productive and efficient) way. Other peers are perceived as threats or rather - obstacles which need to be overcome to achieve one's goals. A species will only stick together when faced with a common threat and then dissolve into competition again as soon as that threat passes.
That's the basic blue-print to how we work (imo). A new-born is designed with one purpose only - to survive and further it's genes. However...
... how do Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi or Nelson Mandela fit in this picture? Altruism is that one thing which can't really be explained since the essence of altruism seemingly contradicts basic human nature. It's mysterious and illogical. I see it as a decision of an enlightened consciousness which in this way tears apart the shackles of evolutionary urges. As another level of existence, that defines our personalities based on our actions which defy the basic grossly selfish and evil nature predetermined for us at birth. In other words: we're all bad by default. But we don't have to be. It gives a whole new meaning to the sentence: "we are ALL God".
So okay people... what are your ideas on the subject? Are people inicially innately good or innately bad? And no... I won't hold it against you if no one replies to this thread. Infact that's why I strategicaly positioned it in the General Section, since it's one of those questions no one ever asked, or bothered to think about anyway.
