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Do you believe that humans at their core are evil?

what is evil?

Needlessly malicious? No, not most. Selfish? Yes. Wouldn't really call it evil, though.

I don't think they're inherently evil nor good. I think they're born in a neutral way and that a lot of different factors corrupt people.

Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance or pragmatism

If I were to pick, I'd say humans tend to lean towards "good". Most "evil" comes from stupidity and weakness rather than ill will.

To me human nature is the definition of evil. I despise humanity endlessly and only wish it the worst.

Humans created the word evil to describe actions that other humans had done. Not all humans are evil, but only evil can come from humans.

Well has anything outside of the human realm and divine beings we were supposedly made in the image of done anything that could be considered evil? When a dog saves someone we attribute that to the dogs good nature, when a dog kills someone we usually blame the owner for creating that monster. Even things such as tigers and lions, they are considered good if they aren't killing someone and just in their natural state if they are. So while good can come from the outside, evil only comes from within humans. I don't think that really means anything but maybe someone will think its interesting.

>>2841 Very true. People who can make their way honestly often do, but those who can't cheat.

I'd say humans aren't bad, they are just stupid. I might be biased, cause I've read A Report on the Banality of Evil but that's how I see it now

Evil is a construct. It has no intrinsic value, as it is merely a tool of the user. Humans are not evil at their core, because evil is just an opinion, a description that someone else made up to try and encompass another being in a convenient package. A futile attempt at putting into words what cannot be spoken. Evil is a spook. Good is a spook. You must learn when to use them to make you stronger, and when to put them away to improve relations, nothing more.

>>2821 No. >>2849 Shut up.

>>2839 This. Most of the bad soykaf in the world is just fuarrrk ups in one way or another, but we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. Even instances of callousness are usually just people failing at compassion. But most is not all. There are some real soykafs out there. >>2845 Yep, and I can understand it at the lowest levels, like when people steal a loaf of bread, but then there are others with twisted world views who feel that they really need something superfluous and so they cheat to get it. >>2849 K. There's not really much more to say about this. We know. I doubt any but the most religious would assert that good and evil exist outside our minds but that doesn't change the discussion. We chose our own values. You seem (not that I can really tell from 3 lines on an imageboard) to have implicitly chosen self interest. Good for you but, for me, good is the end and self interest is just a tool towards that. You cannot help others if you cannot help yourself.

Which part of the human is the core? Is it the liver? (On a more serious note, I think humans default to true neutral, neither malicious nor altruistic.)

People are programmed to be narcissistic at their core, because that is what we need to do survive. We had to provide for ourselves mainly when we lived in the primal times. The narcissism mainly lives in our unconscious, so the question is if all people are inherently selfish fuarrrks or are they not because it's something that we all have in us and we can't control it. The former one is a very unhealthy and nihilistic view of things. The latter one somehow seems wrong to me. It's a pick your poison situation, really.

>>2873 Who programmed them? Evolution? Evolution doesn't program, it just does. All the time animals develop useless traits, only useful within that animals social constructs. "At their core" (whatever that means) the babirusa has horns that grow through its own skull and have no use in fighting or hunting or anything besides attracting a female and establishing dominance. Altruism is far more useful than that even, in whatever instance it was birthed, a narcissist will keep around somebody who is highly altruistic for obvious reasons. If we were narcissistic at our core, all the quicker altruism would spread. If you don't believe that, an altruistic person is going to take better care of their children. You can pull the whole nothing we do is selfless but then why even bother arguing.

>>2880 Altruism is the result of evolutionary favorable dopaminurgic pathways in the brain. It is inherently selfish, down to its biological substrate. Your analysis is correct, people who believe themselves to be altruists are extremely helpful allies, but they are not to be trusted fully. If they cannot be honest with themselves, how can they be honest with you? I would rather work more closely with a selfish person who is honest, than a dishonest "altruist" who may pave the road to hell with their good intentions.

>>2882 I don't really care what you do I was just making a point that people by nature aren't narcissistic, or at least we don't know that to be the case for sure.

>>2883 also your first point is just the same soykaf I said at the end. if you are going to look at it that way selflessness doesn't even exist and theres no point in arguing about this

>>2880 People are narcissistic by nature. The only other entities we are physiologically forced to care about are our offspring and mates. Everything we do, every single good thing or altruistic thing we ever do is just our unconscious selfishly manipulating us. People who care about other random people have something broken in them, some inner complexes or pathologies that cause them to take care of other people as if they were expecting that, in return, the other people will take care of them, for example. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be redpilled or blackpilled, people call me an altruist and I enjoy helping other people but there is still the little annoying truth that scratches the back of my mind that the motivation for being nice to people is purely of a narcissistic and selfish nature.

>>2882 >"Everything I don't like doesn't exist" Keep your moral relativism to yourself fam also, off topic, stop sliding

>>2891 again it's not like im saying you can't think that, but I already adressed that. on top of that another lainon said the same thing to me and i responded to him. theres no room for discussion when you say that, so why bother. you are already stating "even things perceived as altruistic are just selfish". Therefore any example i give of altruistic behavior you just would say is selfish deep down. plus you aren't even elaborating on why that is true, you just are saying it is.

>>2895 >>2880 >What is a Genetic Algorithm Evolution does in fact program, and analogs to "evolutionary programming" are used in computer science to drive optimization toward a selected fitness function. In the wider context of non computational nature, you will find that the fitness function is determined stochastically by the environment organisms exist in. If you go to a time before the existence of organisms, we can move the discussion to that of any reactive agent. Individual molecules with a dipole moment. Even among molecules, certain pressures exist that drive the development of the wider system toward some state. Some molecules farther from a heat source may crystallize into larger more complex molecules, or those closer to a heat source may pick up sufficient energy to break and reform their bonds with some others in their environment. This alters their "fitness" for the environment and will eventually result in their extinction, continued propagation, or even thriving. There is no reason to assume that humans have been programmed to be narcissists. But they are certainly selfish. It is important to know the difference between selfishness and narcissism, one refers to concern for the self, self interest, the other refers to a more pathological condition that implies dependence on outside validation and simultaneous despise of the admirers. More importantly, without some form of precise mind reading technology that has the magic ability to objectively measure the mental content and state of individuals, it is physically impossible to know for certain that any action is beneficial or otherwise to anyone outside yourself. Thus, altruism, by definition "the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others." is impossible as defined.

>>2900 It does not program, and computer models are evolutionary simulations. If evolution programmed we could predict accurately how things will evolve, and in addition seemingly useless or poor evolutionary traits wouldn't exist. A computer simulation will never give an animal a big fancy headdress or tail, unless that is predefined to be desirable. This is exactly what i'm trying to say, acting as if evolution is some sort of program that always acts in favor of survivability of said animal is false. It usually does, but its not a program that always does. Due to the complexity of the brain and how possible it is on a level that complex for invisible changes to take place, to act as if selfishness even was favored is no certainty. Selfish people tend to be very successful in todays society, the elite also aren't having a ton of kids. Its just as likely that those more selfless were seen as more attractive to a mate, or by some sort of chance crosswire, it was a byproduct of some other developed connection that was beneficial to survival. I'm not saying this is for sure the case, just saying that there is possibilities we can't even imagine when it comes to why a certain behavioural trait was evolved. Even more so in brains like ours.

>>2902 > A computer simulation will never give an animal a big fancy headdress or tail, unless that is predefined to be desirable. Ah... That's exactly why it "gave" them headdresses and tails. >acting as if evolution is some sort of program that always acts in favor of survivability of said animal is false. It usually does, but its not a program that always does. This is... hinting at something deeper but just really bad thinking. It does always favor survival. Or more accurately, it's random, and whatever has an advantage survives. If your tail gets you killed more often than it gets you laid, you die off. But, if something has been developing for millions of years, it's probably either useful or was last millennium. Sure, there are flukes. And the people that get those don't get to pass on their genes as often. >I'm not saying this is for sure the case, just saying that there is possibilities we can't even imagine when it comes to why a certain behavioural trait was evolved. Even more so in brains like ours. I'll agree with that I guess. It's hard to speculate about short term evolutionary history.

>>2904 Thank you for addressing both my weaker arguments and the better ones. a lot of people would just take the first things I said and be like your an idiot thus everything you say is wrong therefore why bother adressing that and get really aggressive which I kind of did I guess. My last thing was mainly what I was trying to say. I guess evolution is sort of a program but I meant more that its more complex and that many things produced through evolution don't appear to be useful for survival. Sometimes things which appear detrimental remain or at the very least as I said are linked to something useful.

It is a big mistake to assume that evolution selects for self interest. Evolution is about ensuring that your genes live on and you share the vast majority of your genetics with every living human. There are plenty of animals that will forgo breeding entirely in order to increase the likelihood of survival of their relatives.

>>2898 >theres no room for discussion when you say that, so why bother. you are already stating "even things perceived as altruistic are just selfish". Therefore any example i give of altruistic behavior you just would say is selfish deep down. plus you aren't even elaborating on why that is true, you just are saying it is. the primal part of the unconscious driving our everyday actions isn't enough of an argument?

>>2913 but it's booooring, like we can't add anything to your thingie, because it is presented as complete and absolute reality. And those kinds of models often go -very- wrong

>>2915 just because >(you) can't prove me wrong doesn't mean nobody else can prove me wrong. I am just stating the facts. Humans are, at base, animals and thus we behave in animalistic ways and our, even if sophisticated and morphed by society, actions are motivated by the same animalistic nature. Your argument is : omg you're saying it as if it were the absolute truth Well then try to prove me wrong instead of just whining about it. I don't like the reality that everyone is just a self-serving animal but sadly it's the only plausible explanation we have if we don't count the whole god and satan argument. Also please explain >add anything to your thingie

>>2924 >I am just stating the facts So you agree there is nothing to argue about. You also aren't giving any explabation as to why thats the way it is, other than evolution lol. When several people have pointed out you have no real way of knowing that we didn't evolve to have a sense of altruism. All you can say to that is that that evolved sense of altruism is also self serving. In which case there is nothing to argue about. Nobody can prove you wrong in your head, end of story. You simply define anything that is not self serving as ultimately self serving. So yes there is in fact nothing to say to you, unless you can define what you would call a truly altruistic act. I don't think you will or can, you don't think it exists.

>>2924 you have your thingie, your model of reality. And you present it like it's absolute and complete truth. Like set of axioms which Are True Because They Must Be True. We can't add anything to your complete model. What if you are wrong? What if your axioms aren't really there? We can't even try to abolish your model. And you know how much science hates models like that. You know, since it tries to make a theory and then bring it down. This is scientific method, no good scientis would say "this is truth". Of course, we are here to discuss fun things. Your thing is no fun for me, because I can't poke holes into a monolith. Shouldn't it be about asking questions instead of stating facts?

>>2930 you are dissing me for not asking questions and simply stating my views of the world without allowing anyone to try and poke holes into it. Yet you are just sitting there, pointing out discrepancies in my view of the world and you're not trying to challenge it and try to 'poke holes' into it. There is an established belief that "altruism" is narcissistically based; if we act nicer towards stronger people, they might protect us from a predator later on, et cetera. Give me a good logical reason to not believe in the fact that altruism isn't just based on self-serving tendencies, and I will consider changing my world view, but the only thing you are giving me right now is the criticism of the way I view my world and how I present it, yet you haven't presented yours at all. I am in no way obligated to deconstruct my views of the world and explain them to you, if you are not willing to do the same, bub.

A little off-topic, but I've never understood the "altruism evolved because people hope to get special tretment back" thing. If humans really started out entirely self-interested, why would they feel the need to return a favor?

>>3047 we are tribal animals, and like other tribal animals, we require cooperation between us in order to survive our original hunting style was to chase and tire out animals or run them towards cliffs/water, and this only works with a decent size hunting party we lack the ability to defend ourselves against many predatory animals at night on our own, but with a watchman + men ready to wake up quickly and fight we do very well tribes which could work well together tended to fare better than tribes with lots of infighting, since we really are pretty squishy and weak without technology and strategy look into stuff like the cooperative eye hypothesis and theories surrounding the development of our capacity for the theory of mind a huge part of our evolution was learning to work together to defend our tribe

>>3047 i forgot to mention, think of it this way if you're going to go out into the wilderness by yourself and try to survive, what do you think your chances are compare that to trying to survive with 5 other guys who hate you and each other now instead, imagine trying to survive with 5 other guys who are willing to cooperate with each other your chances would be a lot better in the last scenario

No. Human nature doesn't exist. People act the way they learn to act.

>>3049 Is that not altruism? Just because it ultimately stems from something evolutionarily selfish, if its not consciously selfish can it be called selfish? That implies intent I think, maybe you disagree. This is my problem, its just as easy to define that genetic urge as being selfless, as it is to say it an extension of selfishness. We evolutionarily developed selflessness. If you say no selflessness is just us fulfilling an evolutionarily developed reward system that in the past increased our success and survival, I could say "Yes thats what im talking about, selflessness". Would you say selflessness is when you don't EXPECT a reward for giving something to someone? In that case planning out and say giving someone a gift, you aren't expecting a reward for that consciously. You just do get a reward mentally. I think the fact that someone could go their whole life not knowing they do get rewarded for selfless acts is proof they are selfless. They never expected to be rewarded. If you say its not being rewarded I don't think the descriptor for that is what people talk about when they say selfless. Someone who gives but is never given anything back or loved for it is more like a slave or some would say a loser sadly. I think most people see selflessness as I said as giving and never expecting to get anything back. If they give a lot but just happen to be rewarded for it thats not really because they are selfish.

Yes. I am quite sure that we are, and that anybodie's intentions to "make things better" is nothing but vanity

>>3052 Oh, I agree with you, I think that at our core humans are basically neutral and have the capacity for both good and evil I was just providing an example of how innate selflessness and altruism could have come about from evolutionary progress I don't think the fact that there is a evolutionary advantage to being altruistic towards your own people lessens the impact or value of that altruism If the weather is nice, you could take it as a sign that the world is a good place or you could talk about air pressure and humidity, you would be right either way Its really a question of naturalism vs transcendentalism in a way, is the causality of things what matters or can things have meanings beyond themselves?

Humans are by nature both corrupt and good. corrupt, not evil, per se. They want to do good in a cold universe but at the end of the day neccesary evils turn us cold and unfeeling. On top of all that, life is essentailly a series of Prisoner's Dilemmas, which really mixes poorly with the "essentially corrupt" part.

Robert Anton Wilson made a case for Triune brain architecture theory corresponding to Freudian psychology, the Reptile Brain being the Id, the Old Mammalian brain corresponding to the Ego, and the New Mammalian brain to the Superego. So the oldest part of the brain, the first to evolve, is only capable of territorial violence and self-preservation, the next is a social construct on top of that, but only the last part of the brain is capable of altruism and enlightenment, although the second brain often fakes it.

This topic was kind of the theme of William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration- the novel and the movie based on it. It was a sequel to The Exorcist, which posed the question, does evil exist? Well, TNC posed the question "does good exist?" and the military psychiatrist protagonist was confronted with the astronaut from The Exorcist, who challenged him to give just one example of a truly selfless act.

Set your definition for evil prior to starting the thread. Do I believe humans are evil from an objective sense? No, evil isn't real in that aspect. Do I believe humans are evil, as in, antithetical to everything I personally believe in? Absolutely.

>>3056 > If the weather is nice, you could take it as a sign that the world is a good place or you could talk about air pressure and humidity, you would be right either way Inuit people for example are known to adore and cherish weather which you and I would find inhospitable. Even "good" weather is a matter of perspective.

>>2821 good and evil are the unquantified poles of a dichotomous sense of morality. I believe that human being are animals that exist regardless of such things, but that their day to day interactions are highly influenced by this evolutionary noise.

At the core of humans is godliness. It was obscured by original sin, and unfortunately most people fall for Satan's trickery.

People are the sum of their actions. There is no core. People might do evil things and tell themselves it was for the greater good. But those people are deluded. Like all the fuarrrked up soykaf the CIA wanted to do like blowing up Americans and then blaming it on Cuba, or what they did do with MKULTRA. They probably went home to their families and thought they were just doing what 'needed to be done' while trying to not think about what if someone did the same to themselves and their family.

>>3383 A definition of good and evil I've heard that makes a lot of sense is that good/moral behavior is that which everyone can apply all the time forever, while evil is behavior that eventually fuarrrks the system bad enough that you can't do it anymore. So for example, murder is evil because if everybody was murdering people all the time eventually there would be nobody left to murder. This is a fairly objective definition that resists relativism, and I think there are definitely people that fit into both categories to varying degrees.

>>3451 So "good" would mean "preserving the current system" ? What if don't like the current system ? For your example of murder, what if I want mankind to disappear ? I'm not saying that it's not a good definition, just that I don't really see how it >resists relativism What I really like about it is that it implicitly recognizes that acting "evil" can sometime be useful (murdering the person threatening you), but can never become a routine thing.

>>3452 The rules you derive from that definition are complex and most importantly practical. If you can change the system to make it even more repeatable then you may have discovered an even more moral system, but that is rare. Revolution is bloody and usually you end up in a worse place than you started, so it makes sense you need a really good justification. >murdering the person threatening you That is not murder in its general definition. If nobody defended themselves more people would get hurt, so defending onesself is moral good.

>>2882 >Altruism is the result of evolutionary favorable dopaminurgic pathways in the brain. It is inherently selfish, down to its biological substrate. I disagree. Your argument here is that altruism is selfish because people feel good (get extra dopamine) when they perform altruistic acts. This isn't necessarily true. You can perform an altruistic act without any positive emotions being attached to it, and even with negative emotions resulting from it. I, personally, have been in several positions where I actively chose to do something that has brought me great emotional pain for the benefit of another.

>>3483 Would you have felt even worse about yourself had you taken the "selfish" route? Sometimes there is no good choice, so you have to take the least bad one. Maybe that is even the more common case, with good options being the exception.

>>3483 From a cultural anthropology standpoint, altruism is inheriently selfish. On the one hand you gain favor amongyour peers for performing good deeds, on the other, you bing about the preservation of a species at the expnse of up to self sacrafice, even though if you do survive, you establish favor, and by preserving the herd so to speak, you ensure a sufficeint number of mates to preserve your lineage. That would be the biological standpoint. Now to the societal standpoint, since humans have evolved to live with and around other humans. nobody likes a loner who is not a team player, because we have been conditioned to not do so. that's where some altruism may conflict with conscious and selfish actions: >I don't want to give up a portion of my paycheck to the fund for starving children, because I want the money to myself, but it seems wrong to not do so because it is selfish of me (so says society) I can provide citations if you want (im not going to go fins all of my books right now, and no they are not on google) as fot the question from OP >Do you believe that humans at their core are evil? humans are neither good, nor evil, as those are societal constructs to define inherently selfish and non-selfish actions. an organism by itself is programmed to act in its own self interest. If the ituation warrants that the self interest of one is supperior to the interst of the group, then that becomes the default behavior of the organism. an example that we can use would be psychopaths, and sociopaths. a psychopath is inherently programmed to be narcissistic and Machiavellian, traits which we typically associate with bein "evil". but in perspective, this particular type of individual a. acts with himself in mind above all else and b. will manipulate others to achieve this goal. As a result, psychopaths are deemed "evil" or "broken" by society, as they are not particularly team players, unless it serves their own self interests. in a similar fashion, sociopaths can also sometimes act in self interest. However, the difference between psychopaths had sociopaths is that one is different on a biological level, while one is different on a psychological level. sociopaths may exhibit traits that make them appear evil, mainly because they all too frequently are idealists who take a cause to an extreme. this may act in the interests of others as they commit to personal crusades, but they can also result in mass murder because of a paradigm that views it as a "necessary evil" in which the belief of the individual being valued over the societal belief has caused action to be taken that acts against the well being of of greater humanity. Some terrorists are commonly viewed from the perspective of sociopaths tendencies, because they act on the firm belief that their way is the best way of achieving an overall greater goal for mankind (i.e. "showing others the way" through their acts) this is often in media misconstrued to them all being homicidal maniacs and psychopaths, but a good number of terrorists are perfectly sane individuals who act on a different world view or ideological basis than their opponents. these charts may appear to contradict, but they must be taken in context, the behavior category in one is contextual to criminal behavior, while the other is the overall nature of the individual. also, these were not the best charts I could find, just ones I thought were relevant to the discussion

>>3518 >humans are neither good, nor evil, as those are societal constructs Social construct does not mean "arbitrary" and certainly not "does not exist". A lot of people believe this but it's just not true. Social constructs develop through a mechanism analogous to biological evolution, and if the construct is useful enough it will even be adapted for in our DNA through sexual selection.

>>3493 I'd have probably felt better and it would have been more convenient for me to take the selfish route. >>3518 >From a cultural anthropology standpoint, altruism is inheriently selfish. On the one hand you gain favor amongyour peers for performing good deeds Not always true. Anonymous altruism occurs often. "An anonymous donor has....", "a stranger ____, then left. I don't even know their name," etc. When nobody knows that you did something, you gain no favor for doing it. >on the other, you bing about the preservation of a species at the expnse of up to self sacrafice, even though if you do survive, you establish favor, and by preserving the herd so to speak, you ensure a sufficeint number of mates to preserve your lineage. Preserving the species by self-sacrifice is selfish how? Selfishness is, by definition, concern for yourself, not for your species. >nobody likes a loner who is not a team player, because we have been conditioned to not do so. Nobody? Don't speak in such absolute terms. There are people who prefer loners to extroverts. >that's where some altruism may conflict with conscious and selfish actions: > >>I don't want to give up a portion of my paycheck to the fund for starving children, because I want the money to myself, but it seems wrong to not do so because it is selfish of me (so says society) This presumes that everyone's reasoning for donating money is to not be selfish because society has taught them that it is selfish to not donate money and that being selfish is wrong. Again, this is not always the case. More often than not, nobody knows that you've donated money to some cause, so society cannot judge you for being or not being selfish and there are people who don't think that it's wrong or selfish to keep their money instead of donating it, but who still donate money. Further, there are people who are not concerned with whether or not they selfish, but still donate money. Your argument makes a lot of assumptions about human behavior and motivation that do not hold true for everyone.

>>2821 Evil? No Selfish, yes. People are likely to act in their own self interest nearly always. It just so happens that many times what is best for the group is also best for the individual, this is the only real reason for selflessness.

>>2822 literally this I don't believe people doing '''''''bad things''''''' are doing bad things from their perspective. They wouldn't do it if they had nothing to gain from it

>>3518 nigga I ain't gonna read all that soykaf without sources give me a TL;DR

>>3802 Not him, but those charts are drek. Psychopath and sociopath are both outdated terms for ASPD. Just google the DSM V entry for Antisocial Personality Disorder to get a decent idea.

>>3803 >>3800 >It just so happens that many times what is best for the group is also best for the individual, that's a really bad shortcut, do you want communism? that's how you get gommunism

soykaf wrong quote sry

No. Humans are not evils. We are simply omnivores with an advanced survival instinct with the predilection to produce philosophy about natural phenomena. we still have a lizard brain. We still engage in xenophobic behaviors broadly due to the same survival instinct. Etc. Culture and thus it's morality is simply the lens we analyze this impulse to survive. Then we get caught up on how we survive.

I would say they are inherently self serving, take that as you will.

>>2821 I believe most humans are animals. Some try to transcend their animal nature. Meaning that they have some semblance of ethics. These people are rare and let's not forget, they're animals too. Just don't forget that you're dealing with predatory beings that evolved in a very violent environment and you'll be mostly fine.

>>5407 Pretty much every person living today has a system of ethics, it's absurd to believe that rare.

I used to think so. Now I don't. I realize humans are just indolent. Many things come to mind but as I've been debating people about religion and politics my first immediate thought is about how people like to be told what to do and believe rather than work it out themselves.

Certain "people" are pure evil. Synagogue of Satan. This isn't a meme, research it.