A few classes ago we were asked to
reflect on the question: Are humans good or evil?
It is a hard question to answer
because it is a double opinion question.
What do I mean? Well lets say we
could read someone’s mind about this and an objective translator would convert
the image they are picturing, when ask are humans good or evil, into a 1 to 10
scale (1 being evil and 10 being very good). Then the subject is also asked to
answer good or evil.
Subject A might answer that humans
are good because his threshold for good is a 4 and A is picturing humanity with
an average of 6. Subject B has higher standards and may the answer that humans
are bad. B’s threshold for what constitutes good is a 7 and he/she is picturing
humanity as a 6. So both A and B see humans as a 6 on the good/evil scale but
their answers would give the impression they have very different views of
humanity.
Now subject C and D give it a try.
They both say humans are good. But C says good because his/her threshold for
being good is a 7 and sees people as an 8. D’s threshold for good is a 3 and
sees humans as a 4. So these two people have very different views on how moral
humans are but answered the question as if they were in agreement.
Secondly, even if we agreed on a
concrete a set of metrics (i.e. crime rate, charitably, etc) so that we don’t
get the confusion I explained above. We still cannot properly answer the question
because, for example, if we say humans are good, well, good compared to what?
A question to illustrate my point is:
Is a car fast?
So the same problem as I explained in
my first paragraph applies because those answering the question might be
picturing different cars. But we can, as above, define metrics and agree on
what car we are talking about.
But a further problem arises because
what are we comparing it to, a jet aircraft, or a bicycle? And why assume we are only talking about transportation vehicles. Compared to the orbit of the earth around the sun even the jet is slow.
So if we say humans are good. Is that
because we are more moral compared to other animals? I would assume that we are
more violent than most herbivores. And less violent than most carnivores. This
does not only refer to violence for food, as many often wrongly claim that
animals don’t kill unless for food or if threatened. A lion will often kill the
cubs of a lioness not for food but just to mate with her. Do you consider this
cold blooded murder? It certainly would be if a human did it.
So maybe we should compare ourselves
to other omnivores or other apes? But still I think most of us would agree
humans, because of their more capable minds, should be held to a higher
standard.
I am going to lay out a hypothetical,
if this were true it might be the only thing that would give us a proper comparison.
What if alien species, living on a
similar world with brains with similar capacity as our own, on average go
extinct in only several generations after developing civilization because they
destroy themselves?
Compared to them humans are good.
But what if another equally capable
alien species has existed with civilization for thousands of years, like us,
but there has never been one murder in all society.
Compared to them we are evil.
Unfortunately, there is nothing (that
we know of) equal humans to compare to.
We can
say that compared to most other animals we are a very social species.
Even though I’ve tried to make a case
for why this question should not be answered with a black or white answer but rather
on a spectrum; I still am going to say that I think humans are good.
I am not basing my conclusion on actions, because like I've said we have nothing to compare humans to, but instead base my conclusion on intent/motives; so even when someone does not act morally they will usually regret it and when given the choice and answered honestly they would say they want others to be happy. They might be lazy or selfish and so they do nothing to try to
bring happiness to others but if given say power to snap one’s fingers and
improve someone’s life of wreck it. Almost everyone would choose to improve others’
lives.
I think that the majority of humans
want to help others and a small minority of people do actual want to hurt
others.
This means the norm for people is to
be good. And evil is an aberrant personality trait.
I would agree with you on several points. Except that we DO have something to compare ourselves to. As christians, we should compare ourselves to the teachings of Jesus. He laid the framework for how to act as humans and diverting from that is not a good thing.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when someone comes up to you and asks for money the Christian thing to do is to NOT give them money. Why? because you could be fueling a drug or alcohol addiction which is bad. Instead, if you have extra money, you should give to a charity that is set up to help homeless people. If you want to give more immediately, then you can take the person who asked you for money to a store and buy them some food. Jesus taught us that humans are inherently flawed, so trusting someone who is homeless with money is not the Christian thing to do because you are only giving them the temptation to spend it unwisely. Instead, give them something they are not going to spend, like food.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the answer to the question “Are humans good or evil?” is a difficult question to answer and does not necessarily have a black or white answer. In fact, in an age of increasing moral relativism it is difficult to define just exactly what is good and what is evil. However, I do think that there is a rational way to decide an answer to this question. I would like to describe an approach to answering this question that I learned in my high school Morality and Happiness class.
First, I think it is necessary to understand what motivates human action. All humans act in accordance with what they think will bring them happiness. This is similar to your point about each person having a different threshold for goodness. Each person has a different idea about what will make he or she happy. As such, each person chooses to act in ways that will bring about what they define as happiness. For instance, one person might think that happiness is the result of helping others, so he or she volunteers at a soup kitchen. In a different scenario, a person might think that getting rid of their source of unhappiness, either by killing or destroying, will bring them happiness; thus, they commit murder. Humans are logical beings always calculating what is necessary for survival and happiness. In the context of spirituality, the philosopher Boethius described happiness as “The whole and perfect possession of unlimited life at once.” However, since we live in a world of sin, there are limits placed on our happiness, and we can only experience happiness in ways that are incomplete, imperfect, and temporary in this world. Two main kinds of limits are natural limits, things in the universe are changeable and scarce, and experiential limits, in choosing one thing we cannot choose other things. But it is exactly these limits that highlight our state of Original Sin and the desire for humans to have happiness; therefore, we seek out and execute ways to obtain happiness. Since all humans can agree that happiness is sought after, I think it is agreeable that happiness is good. However, there is still the problem of moral relativism…what kind of happiness is good? If killing makes a person happy, is it good?
In order to know, it is necessary to define what good is. To do so, I will cite the Catholic understanding of good. Good or goodness refers to an objective quality of a thing or act that means it can actualize potential in whole or in part; the nature of the thing or act determines both what is good for it and what it is good for. In this context, happiness is realized when the good of thing or an act is actualized. In keeping with the Catholic tradition, humans are endowed by a creator God with a rational soul. This soul was meant to be in perfect communion with God. This is evident from the Bible narrative before the fall. The fall caused humans to become out of sync with God and in a constant state of sin. However, humans still possess this rational soul. Just by the virtue of having this rational soul, humans have the potential to be in perfect harmony with God, but we are cast down by the natural and experiential limits. Since our potential can never be fully actualized here on earth, we can never be in perfect harmony with God on earth because of sin, we act in ways that will merit “the whole and perfect possession of unlimited life at once”—heaven. This “whole and perfect possession of unlimited life at once,” or heaven, can only be obtained by actualizing our potential for perfection given to us when God made us in his own image. In doing so, we choose to make choices and perform actions based on what will help us actualize our potential for good.
(continued on next reply...)
There are several sources to use to understand what acts work toward good and what acts are made in the absence of good, also known as evil. The first source for knowledge of good or evil is called Natural Law. Another name for Natural Law is conscience. As you mentioned above, people who do evil acts often regret them—they have a conscience. If good were not real, there would be no reason to feel guilty. As a result of Natural Law, humans have created things such as the Bill of Rights in order to protect the good endowed to all humans. Other obvious sources of understanding between good and evil are any religion that any person conforms to. Each religion has its own set of morals; we have morality, which is basically that part of a person cosmology that consists of a consent-filled understanding of how one ought to be and behave in order to attain happiness. The idea of morality is a direct result of the powers of the human soul: appetite, intellect, and will. Appetites are automatic and uncritical attractions to what appears good or the repulsion from what appears evil. Intellect is our capacity to know and understand in general and specifically to the human ability to form concepts. Will is the ability to act on our own initiative or the freedom to choose. In the simplest sense, morality usually results when we satisfy our appetites through willing actions that we have determined through our intellect. To illustrate here is a simple example: A person’s physical appetite or need for food prompts him to seek food. He goes into a restaurant and realizes there are two ways for him to obtain food here: steal, or pay for it. He consults his intellect realizing that stealing is both against written law and Natural law; it is the wrong choice. Therefore, he wills to buy the food. A moral act, therefore, is an act done for a good end in a good way for a good reason with consent.
ReplyDeleteSimply by being able to define what is good and what is evil, recognizing that we should strive for good and avoid evil, and regretting evil acts all point to the idea that humans are good. Although we live in a world that is full of brokenness and sin, humans are still good because we have the potential to be in full communion with God—the Supreme Good—by virtue of our human rational soul. We must choose to live in ways that will help us actualize this potential.
To give one final example, we know that our potential for communion with God can be actualized because Jesus, both man and divine, is already in communion with God. In striving to live Christ-like lives, we can hope to obtain this communion with God also.
I hope this argument makes sense and helps illustrate the potential for human goodness. All credit for the material goes to Mr. Timothy Irwin, my Morality and Happiness teacher senior year at Peoria Notre Dame High School.
I think that it is impossible to fully label humans as good or bad. It is a question we can not answer in a black and white spectrum. I think it is a hard question to answer because there are not similar species for us to compare humans to on a basis of good or evil. Another reason that this question is difficult to answer is because everyone has a different definition of if someone is being good or evil. Yes we all have the same moral qualities that we look for in a human to determine if they are evil or not. But, there are a few stray qualities that people might put into their list of qualities to look at to determine if that person is going to be considered good or not. Like believing in God. Some might say that there is no way that a person could ever be considered good if they do not believe and have Jesus in their heart. While others might say that is it possible for a person to be good if they do not believe. Now if we throw probability into this situation then people could give their reasoning that it is more likely for an unbeliever to be more evil than a believer. The reason being that they do not care that God is watching over them or that any authority is watching over them and therefore do more evil things than someone who believes. Also people could base their reasoning on if people are morally sound or not, if they were raised with good moral standards in their home. Or a factor could be if the person grew up with parents who were divorced. There are so many factors that could come into play with this question and I do not think that we can give a straight answer. All of the examples I gave above could go so many different ways from how people see each other, if they are good or evil or how they act. Also I do not think it is our right to judge if people are good or evil because in the end God gets to decide if a person is good or evil and where he/she gets to spends the rest of eternity. He will be our judge! Maybe that is why God made it such a hard question for us to answer and maybe it is one of those things where we say God is God, you are not God, so we don’t have to make that decision.
ReplyDeleteMary, This is a great source of information. I can tell that you know Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics well. I wish I could have had a teacher teach material like this in high school. On another note, I am happy with many things in my life and the human experience that is lived with integrity and purpose. However, I gain satisfaction from exterminating ants and other insects that infest my home and jeopardize my family's and my own well-being. Both the well-being and the well-being of my family are important to me and give me a sense of happiness and purpose. I believe that many families that were raised and introduced to Nazism in the early 1900's held the belief that the Jews were an infestation that would bring harm and unhappiness to those families with the Nazi ideals. I believe that those holding the ideals of Nazism in that time felt that they were doing good for themselves and the world, by destroying an infestation of people that were believed to have specific ideologies in an attempt to destroy the infrastructure of societies. I know that a human life should not be compared to that of an insect life, but this is just an example of how far wa people would be willing to go to find happiness because of the infestation of corrupt or believed to be corrupt individuals that could potentially disturb/take away what that person finds happiness in. Are these good or bad actions intended for good?
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