Posted: November 8th, 2022

Human beings can be said to be both good and evil

Human Nature

Human beings can be said to be both good and evil. These human tendencies, are based on the prevailing conditions. Therefore it is a situation where human beings know which side of their bread is buttered. If the prevailing conditions favour their selfish interest, then that is their best option no matter the effects on other human beings. As long as they themselves are okay the conditions on others is not something that they have to worry too much about. Thus they are egocentric. Despite this premonition, humans are innately good.
In “Are Humans Good or Evil”, philosophers Alan Strudler and Clancy Martin have varied views on the nature of human beings. Clancy sees them as good while Strudler has a varying opinion with his opinion being that people act to be good when the conditions are favourable with them acting more right than wrong. Clancy gives an example of how a normal person would feel if they saw a child falling into a well. In which he concludes that such a person would feel distressed since he or she was not in a positon to save that child. Which leads him to conclude that humans are not willing to see others suffer. Despite this, human beings have sadistic tendencies such as jihadists who kill innocent lives. This makes him conclude that we are good and evil. With our being good being a normal state of well-being and evil being an exceptional trait.
Alan Studler is of the opinion that there are certain human tendencies that are worrying. They include actions such as those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Hitler to Pol Pot who torment fellow human beings with acts of cruelty that include killing, rape among other acts that are evil. In his article he makes further reference to the activities of Oxfam in helping save the lives of people. People acknowledge the efforts of the organization but in real sense are unwilling to contribute since they don’t trust the efficiency of the organization. Despite this if they had an assurance that their money was put into good use it would not cause them to have a change of heart. Since we are callous to some degree. Since we are more concerned with our own selfish interests and the suffering of others is something we most often don’t love being associated with. These are egocentric tendencies.
In the same light, being good is a condition that depends on the prevailing conditions. When the conditions are favourable to us, we tend to be good and kind to other human beings but in scenarios where the conditions don’t work in our favour we tend to discard our good tendencies in total disregard of the feelings of other people.
In “Combat” Lt Col. Dave Grossman and Loren W Christensen writes about the truth of human behaviour in situations that are deemed to be life threatening. The author takes a look at the various psychological traumas and side-effects of war on soldiers. They include physiological responses to extremely stressful situations, combat psychology as well as post-traumatic stress disorders that affect the normal functioning of the bodies of these soldiers. Many view soldiers as extremists who are ready to fulfil the wishes of their commanders. Consequently, they are viewed as trigger happy and willing to go to great lengths to see to it that they eliminate the enemy. The author shows that this is actually far from the truth since such soldiers are affected by the scenarios they find themselves in resulting in stressful conditions as well as mental breakdown. This shows that human beings are good but they are forced by circumstance to do evil.
The conclusion from the two articles is that human beings are good and they are only forced into evil by circumstances or conditions which in some cases are beyond them such as the scenario of soldiers. However in some circumstances they are forced to become evil as a result of their own doctrines and believes for example jihadists were not born evil but their evil nature arises after subscribing to doctrines that promote such behaviour. Moreover, human beings have egocentric tendencies since they are more concerned about themselves rather than other people.