Humans Are inherently Evil. (Philosophy)

[AkazilliaDeNaro]

To expand on the title.
Humans are inherently evil.
Just as darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat.
Evil is the absence of Good.
As the famous saying goes, "All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing."
If that is so, then Evil is the baseline for emotion and it takes energy to become a good person, while it takes nothing to be evil.
Restraint is required to reign in impulses, while nothing is required to just do as you wish, and so Chaos is the absence of Law.
In which follows Evil is the absence of Good.

This is my philosophic theory, Humans are inherently Evil.

[Jay R]

If so, then every good, decent, or polite action from any human is a triumph over our nature.

And isn't it wonderful that we can surpass our nature so often?

[Eldan]

Well, for such a question, we must always start at the beginning.

How would you define "evil"?

[Traab]

Well, for such a question, we must always start at the beginning.

How would you define "evil"?

Evil is what you want to do. Good is what the government lets you do. /nod

[Forum Explorer]

Yes, Eldan raises a good question. What are you defining evil as?

Because if nobody did anything Evil wouldn't rule, nothing would. And evil (depending on your definition) can require a lot of energy.

[Tzevaot]

First of all without society we are nothing but mere "true neutral" animals.

Society is what create concepts such as good and evil.

Take little kids for example. They are pure and innocent. They will learn to make fun of the different, be a racist and steal things from others.

[Coidzor]

Eh, seems a bit incomplete if you just go "Humans = Evil," and don't really have anything after that.

[Aedilred]

Burke's line isn't an argument that humans are innately evil. It's that evil agency will inevitably triumph unless it is opposed. It takes only a small number of evil people to do evil if everyone else lets them do so unchallenged.

In D&D alignment terms, neutrality would still be the default (although really they might be divided in any which proportion, even a Good majority) but whichever alignment is most activist is likely to prove most influential. So if Good rests on its laurels and doesn't interfere, Evil will triumph not because it commands a majority, but because it's the only alignment actively seeking to perpetuae itself.

Even Hobbes wouldn't make an argument that humans are fundamentally evil, I don't think, only that they're fundamentally selfish, and that they need to be managed properly to stop that from degenerating into anarchy.

[Grinner]

First of all without society we are nothing but mere "true neutral" animals.

Society is what costure concepts such as good and evil.

Take little kids for example. They are pure and innocent. They will learn to make fun of the different, be a racist and steal things from others.

I would contest every one of these assertions. Everyone is egotistic. It's perfectly natural, since we each have only one pair of eyes with which to see, one pair of ears with which to hear, and one mouth with which to speak*. Beyond that, it's difficult to say anything definitive.

Consider this, though. Have you ever been approached by a beggar? They'd give you a sob story, and you wanted nothing to do with them. Still, it was clear that if you gave them money, they'd leave you alone. It would have been cheaper and just as simple to tell them to piss off, though. So what did you do? You gave them money, right? Consider how you felt at that exact moment. All you really wanted to do was to get rid of them, but why did you choose to give them money? Were you afraid of disappointing them? Were you afraid of what they'd think, what they'd say? Why was that? You didn't know them, and you sure as hell wouldn't ever see them again. So why did you give them the money?

My idea is that most people are afflicted with an innate sense of compassion, perhaps as a check on our egotism. So yes, moral values tend to be largely culturally-driven, but who decides what that culture is? We do.

Also, you clearly don't remember elementary school. Children are monsters. I find most adults are much better behaved.

Edit: On second thought, it would be prudent to take the Bystander Effect into account. Perhaps this innate compassion is more of an innate conformity?

*Strictly speaking, that's not entirely true, but I think you get the point.

[McStabbington]

I would contend that anyone who thinks children are good and decent until society corrupts them has never been around children for very long. Children are some of the most malignant little trolls humanity has to offer, precisely because they have neither learned, nor have the physiological development to be capable of, good on any more than an extremely sporadic and haphazard basis. The ground state for little kids when you leave them alone for any length of time is to do two things in close sequence: one, form a tight little social heirarchy for their own protection, and two, start systematically pushing the weakest and least sociable kids out of the herd as sacrifices to their own fear.

But that doesn't really answer the question.

It occurs to me that whenever anyone asks this question, what they inevitably focus on is the "evil" part, when what they should focus on is the "inherent" part. I don't know what exactly you mean for something to be part of its "inherent" nature. Given standard temperature and pressure, a rock's normal state is to be a cold solid. Increase the temperature or pressure enough, however, and a rock will liquify, then turn to gas, then to plasma. In the same way, even if you accept that a human starts out to be "evil" (although I would classify it more as "short-sighted", "selfish" and "cowardly" rather than outright "evil") it is also true that humans are both capable of overcoming those ground states and becoming incredibly noble and virtuous creatures, and routinely do so. It strikes me that "inherent" is short-hand for some kind of original position that we start our discussion from, but nothing about one original position is any more "inherent" than another.

[Mauve Shirt]

"Good" and "evil" are so subjective it's not even funny.
I think if you took away society's rulings, a human being would (still) be self-serving (and those he loves, probably, but that's still selfish) and generally work to further his own ends. Perhaps at the expense of others, which society tells us is "evil". So yeah, I would agree I suppose, if serving yourself in exclusion to all those who aren't, in a word, yours, is evil.

Children don't develop empathy until 6 or 7. At least on average, that's when they determine that others suffer and that they personally can cause the suffering of others. Morality can be instilled earlier.

[Zrak]

As the famous saying goes, "All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing."
If that is so, then Evil is the baseline for emotion and it takes energy to become a good person, while it takes nothing to be evil.

Aside from the fact that being famous doesn't make any given quote a particularly tenable thing to hinge your argument on, the quote does not even really work in the way that you're using it. The idea is not that evil triumphs when nobody does anything, but that evil triumphs when good people do not stand up and oppose those actively doing evil. The case could as easily be made that good would triumph were evil to do nothing, it just doesn't make for as inspiring a quote.

Restraint is required to reign in impulses, while nothing is required to just do as you wish, and so Chaos is the absence of Law.

This isn't really true, either. Doing what you want requires a lot of things, most notably motivation. Imagine someone who smokes cigarettes; he has run out of cigarettes and wants more, but it is late at night and all the stores around him are closed. Resisting his impulse to smoke might require restraint, but indulging it would require a fair amount of motivation. In the end, he may end up not doing what he wants not because of his restraint, but simply because of his indolence.

In which follows Evil is the absence of Good.

Only if one's impulses are inherently evil and restraint is inherently good. I would contend that this isn't really the case. How many people have the impulse to stand up for someone they see being picked on, but don't do so because they restrain themselves for ultimately selfish reasons?

[Aedilred]

Aside from the fact that being famous doesn't make any given quote a particularly tenable thing to hinge your argument on

Equally, just because a quote's being famous doesn't mean it has any inherent validity, it doesn't give it any inherent invalidity, either. And taken both in and out of context, and given who it's from, I think it's worthwhile, even if Burke's stance on some areas of political theory are denigrated these days. It's so overquoted it's not even funny, but such is the fate of the memorable, especially on the internet. Repeat, repeat, repeat ad nauseam... and then repeat it again to be sure.

Of course, you still have to interpret it correctly, which I don't think has happened in this premise.

[Zrak]

Equally, just because a quote's being famous doesn't mean it has any inherent validity, it doesn't give it any inherent invalidity, either.

Oh, of course not. I just meant that establishing a premise as true requires a little more than quoting a famous saying, even if the saying is interpreted correctly.

[TandemChelipeds]

Chaos is the absence of Law.

[citation needed]

[Zrak]

I also didn't really see how Evil being the absence of Good follows that, even if we accept it.

[SiuiS]

Evil is what you want to do. Good is what the government lets you do. /nod

You qualify The Government as good?

[The Glyphstone]

You qualify The Government as good?

Aaaaaaand let's stop this line of discussion right here, shall we?

[Mx.Silver]

For something that's ostensibly meant philosophy, there doesn't seem to be much of a logically valid argument going on in the OP. It relies entirely on unjustified analogies and a reading of a quote that is questionable at best.

The comments made that you haven't actually defined what constitutes evil, while fair concerns, are not something you're in a position to worry about; even if we were to take the existence of defined and objective standards of good and evil as read, you still have not made an argument for why humans are inherently evil. You've attempted (not succeeded) to argue that evil is the absence of good, but you haven't actually connected that conclusion to your original position.

I also didn't really see how Evil being the absence of Good follows that, even if we accept it.

That would be because it doesn't. Neither does 'chaos is the absence of law' directly follow-on from 'Restraint is required to reign in impulses, while nothing is required to just do as you wish'.

[Razade]

*Snip*

This is nothing new and it certainly isn't your theory (which it's not a theory) or at least it's not yours as you came up with it or if you did you're by far not the first. It's called the Malice of Absence Argument and it's been rolling around for at least 20 years in various forms. Probably earlier than that. You've substituted some terms around but it's almost verbatim the argument even down to the "Darkness is the Absence of Light" nonsense.

[SiuiS]

Aaaaaaand let's stop this line of discussion right here, shall we?

Aye, sorry. I thought about blue text or maybe a superscript TM but figured the idea would be obvious enough to not need it.

This is nothing new and it certainly isn't your theory (which it's not a theory) or at least it's not yours as you came up with it or if you did you're by far not the first. It's called the Malice of Absence Argument and it's been rolling around for at least 20 years in various forms. Probably earlier than that. You've substituted some terms around but it's almost verbatim the argument even down to the "Darkness is the Absence of Light" nonsense.

No need for such hostility. Spontaneous generation does occur; it's entirely possible OP came to these thoughts through their own meandering. That others have thought these things does not make the concept any less worthy or consideration.

Not that I give it credence, mind, but not for the reason of originality.



I posit that at a basic animal level there are mechanism which prevent actual evil from being mainline. Psychologically, physiologically. It's one thing to be a jerk, even an antisocial thug, but evil? Evil is hard. It's not as simple as not being good. Evil takes passion, commitment or inertia. Evil takes gumption.

[Zrak]

That would be because it doesn't. Neither does 'chaos is the absence of law' directly follow-on from 'Restraint is required to reign in impulses, while nothing is required to just do as you wish'.

Huh, yeah, I hadn't even thought about the fact that the law/chaos thing was supposed to follow from impulse thing, probably because I was too hung up on the impulse thing being totally untenable.

[factotum]

I'd have to disagree with the entire basis of the OP. Yes, darkness is the absence of Light. This does not mean Evil is the absence of Good. To deliberately avoid any real-world examples, let's go with the Smoke Monster from Lost--it wasn't sitting there passively being malevolent, it was actively lying, cheating and out-and-out murdering people in order to further a plan that had been brewing for a couple of thousand years. Human evil follows the same pattern.

It's entirely possible to be passively evil--sitting there and giggling while the orphanage burns to the ground, for instance--but that isn't how most people we consider evil roll.

[Mystic Muse]

[citation needed]

Well, one could easily say entropy is the opposite of order, and that chaos and law are synonyms, but it's more that chaos is the opposite of order than the opposite of law. Anarchy is the opposite of law.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Humans are inherently selfish some of the time, but any claim that humans will primarily always act in their best interest is provably false.

Humans can't be inherently evil, because evil is a group of behaviours that have been deemed to be negative. The very concept of evil makes humans good even if humans act more evil than good on average.

Of course if you do silly things like say celibacy = good and intercourse = evil then you'll end up thinking humans are inherently evil, but that isn't humanity's problem its yours.

Take little kids for example. They are pure and innocent. They will learn to make fun of the different, be a racist and steal things from others.

That's basically a constructed concept. There's no such thing as 'pure' and children are cruel without needing to learn. An innocent child has to learn to steal only in that he has to learn that taking things without consent is stealing. Children can take things from each other fine without needing to learn anything.

Stealing can be good, or at least selfless, sometimes (I don't really mean in a Robin Hood sense, more in a "I'll take away my suicidal friend's knives and sleeping pills until he's feeling better" sense). Property is just undue attachment to physical objects anyway and that crosses over to greed and envy at its extremes.

You've substituted some terms around but it's almost verbatim the argument even down to the "Darkness is the Absence of Light" nonsense.

If light and darkness actually had anything to do with good and evil then sunburn would be saintly and parasols would be a insult to existence.

It's entirely possible to be passively evil--sitting there and giggling while the orphanage burns to the ground, for instance--but that isn't how most people we consider evil roll.

Its also possible to be passively good.

If you think good has to be active, you might accidentally slip into the idea that being passive is evil and being active is good and therefore doing something, no matter how foolish, will inherently be better than doing nothing. Sometimes staying out of a problem is better than complicating it by meddling.

Well, one could easily say entropy is the opposite of order, and that chaos and law are synonyms, but it's more that chaos is the opposite of order than the opposite of law. Anarchy is the opposite of law.

Anarchy, chaos and entropy do not mean the same thing, order and law do not mean the same thing. Law doesn't even mean the same thing as itself and neither really does chaos or anarchy.

Just throwing around confusing terms does not help. Of all those terms, only entropy really has a meaning because its a scientific term defined in scientific laws.

[Razade]

If light and darkness actually had anything to do with good and evil then sunburn would be saintly and parasols would be a insult to existence.

We're in agreement. The Malice of Absence Argument is utterly devoid of merit. I almost called it casuistry and sophistry, but I didn't want to be to harsh. But that's more or less what this "philosophy" is.

[Asta Kask]

To expand on the title.
Humans are inherently evil.
Just as darkness is the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat.
Evil is the absence of Good.
As the famous saying goes, "All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing."
If that is so, then Evil is the baseline for emotion and it takes energy to become a good person, while it takes nothing to be evil.
Restraint is required to reign in impulses, while nothing is required to just do as you wish, and so Chaos is the absence of Law.
In which follows Evil is the absence of Good.

This is my philosophic theory, Humans are inherently Evil.

I don't know, following my impulses often takes a lot of energy. Whipped cream is not cheap.

[Mauve Shirt]

If light and darkness actually had anything to do with good and evil then sunburn would be saintly and parasols would be a insult to existence.

This is going in my extended sig if you have no objections.

[Scarlet Knight]

Thus hand whipping your own cream is good, store brand in a tub is neutral, and corporate branded whip cream in a fluorocarbon container is evil.

At least now we have a definition!

[aspi]

As others in this thread have suggested, I would argue that humans are inherently neutral since humans are inherently - and at the most basic level - animals.

Everything beyond this is what society - and growing up in a society - adds to it. Good and Evil are just parts of our behavior which we as a whole find more or less desirable and thus try to emphasize or discourage. There's no kind of human action toward another human being to which you couldn't find an analogous action in the animal kingdom. Murder, nurturing, theft, support, maiming, caretaking - it's all there already and in the big picture it cancels out to neutral. The problem is that "canceling out to neutral" still means that there's a rather large chance of something bad happening to you personally, and this isn't a desirable state for a society to live in. So we pick the more desirable aspects, label them as good and encourage them, while we label what's less desirable as evil and discourage it.

This of course varies from society to society, which is why something that you or me would find extremly evil might be perfectly acceptable someplace else. Essentially, it's the same argument that could be had for right and wrong, except at the extreme ends of the spectrum, since evil generally equates to extremely wrong and good to very right (although obviously not necessarily in terms of law).