Are Humans Good Or Evil By Nature?

A famous philosopher Socrates once said, "the unexamined life is not worth living." With that idea, the question "Are Human Beings Intrinsically Evil?" has been asked by philosophers for many years. It is known as one of the unanswerable questions. Determinists have come to the conclusion that we are governed by the laws of science, that there is nothing we can do about ourselves being evil because we naturally are. Evil is simply the act of causing pain. In this essay I will argue that human beings are born with a natural reaction to "fear and chaos" to be instinctively evil.

The primary evidence that people are generally evil is evident by the number of wars. Most countries have experienced their share of wars. World War One was the first war that affected many countries such as Serbia, Germany, Britain, France, and North America. It demonstrated for the first time how brutal people can be to each other. This war was fought because of tension between countries for years that blew up in 1914 with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The quote, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" highlights that machines did not kill all these people, people kill those from different countries in order to further their cause and do not stop unless they are successful. World War One was also known as "the war to end all wars" obviously this wasn't true. A few years later, another war took place. World War Two demonstrated that people will kill to satisfy themselves. Hitler in World War Two was the main aggressor; he wanted to make his people, the pure Germans, the master race. He was threatened by other countries and wanted his superior to all others. When other countries became aware of this, naturally, the war began, killing people by the millions. By the number of wars, we can conclude that the natural human reaction to the threat of war and great power released human evil.

Youth cultures are evidence that even youths can be evil once they allow themselves or if they are raised in a chaotic community. An example of youths being evil "Lord of Chaos", the young boys involved were not necessarily thought to be likely to cause harm. All of these teenager were very good students. One an amazing artist, another superb math student, another a musician, all on the honour roll. So why did these boys shoot a teacher. These boys needed belonging, and when family fails youth turn to gangs and cults. The gang began to go little acts of evil: stealing, fighting. One night after one of the boys got upset with their teacher decided to bring his gang to beat him up. The teenagers were never provoked to take such drastic measures as to kill, and had no intention to actually kill. But the leader of the gang, who had a gun, shot him in an area he thought could not kill him, but it did. This did not happen necessarily because the boy was afraid, but it the heat of the moment and the chaos around him, he did. Another example of evil in youth culture is the youth gangs in California. Young men of 2 different gangs were isolated from their community. They began to make their own rules, which lead to things getting out of control. The mentality of these gangs becomes "this is how we must be to survive and that we must fight to survive". In most cases, people that have the opportunity to have a good education and raised in decent family make the choice to make their lives chaotic with violence. Others that are raised in a chaotic community do not have much choice. Youth culture are very easily influenced by their communities once they become in a chaotic community, it becomes disastrous for the community and to themselves.

Literature for many years has described human nature as being evil once they fear something or are in a chaotic situation. In William Golding's novel "Lord of the Flies" which describes horrific exploits of a group of young boys who make a transition from civilized to barbaric. Golding believes that there is an evil seed inside all of us and given the right circumstances, human beings are capable of anything. The boys' evil was described in his novel once they were left in an unsupervised society it became very chaotic. In a part of his novel, Golding describes the boys' fear of a beast. With that fear, one night a boy that was away from the group came back and was killed. The boys thought that he was the beast coming from the bushes. Golding has given us an example that people do not have to learn to be evil but are born with the natural reaction to become evil once afraid or in a chaos. Another piece of literature that demonstrates people's evil is Shakespeare's "Macbeth". The story is that witches told Macbeth that he would become king, with temptation to become king, the fear in becoming king, and the confusion caused by the witches evil became possible. With the help of his wife, he killed the people who stood in his was to become king. Literature has shown that it is possible for human beings in extremely confusing situations and with fear can be become evil.

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