Brief Essay on the topic of Morality- What makes a person good or bad
Many people believe in the half glass theory, They face the world as the glass is half full, Others think the glass is half empty. The same goes for the good and evil in a person. Some believe people are born basically good, just having a bad moment in life. Others believe in they are basically born evil and do good because of selfish purposes, to gain "God Points"( the belief that doing good deeds will counteract the bad and they'll have a chance at getting into Heaven. Then there are the believers of Nature vs. Nurture.
Nature vs. Nurture, in my opinion, is not a determing factor in basing a reason on why someone does the things they do.
I believe in Nature/ AND Nurture. Look at this way, people are like computers, born morally blank. THey have built in Hardware, a gene that makes them more likely to be violent, but some never become violent people. So the it falls on to what we instill in our children as they grow. Imagine it the software that's added on to the wired in hardware. Now if you fill their life with bad morals, and violence, teaching them to always be someone violent. Then the chances are more likely for them to be violent.
However, Playing Devil's Advocate here, there are people who have those genes, had the bad life, suffered the trauma, and yet they go in the opposite direction.
Ex: a child born in a dangerous part of town, a family of drug addiction, seeing violence all around him, and yet he grows up to be someone completely different than his family, than his upbringing.
The point is, there is no defining category for how people can be. To say one is born good, or to say born bad, is misleading. As I say a person is born a morally clean slate.
Their ability to process their software(using earlier analogy)
is different for each mind. We are all capable of great and terrible things.
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I am a humanist and I believe that just as we had a genetic susceptibility to being bipolar some people, although born naturally good, have a genetic susceptibility to evil. You may be interested in the famous quote by behaviorist B.F. Skinner (paraphrasing him)-'Give me a child and I will give you anything. A doctor, a lawyer, a president, and even a petty thief.
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