What is the scientific explanation for why we have an almost evil-like nature? When we tell my girlfriends little brother not to touch something, he will almost always go back to the exact thing we tell him not to touch. He is very much aware that what he is doing is wrong, yet he seems almost compelled to do it. I am very much aware of the christian viewpoint, but what is the scientific explanation? Is there a satisfying explanation?
That sounds more like curiosity than evilness. Humans are, by nature, very curious animals.
In some instances I could say sure, they are just being curious. But an example is when we tell him to touch something he has already touched plenty of times. He knows what the outcome will be. He just simply wants to do it because we tell him not to. He knows its wrong, yet he still does it even though he knows what will happen. Why? Its a very common thing that I am sure you have seen.
It doesn’t have much to do with being evil. If the thing not to touch was fire, I bet he wouldn’t do it. He wants your attention and that’s the easiest way he knows to get it. All kids want attention, it’s how they grow and learn. Take it easy on the evil rubbish eh?
If he simply wanted attention, why would he do it behind our backs? I am not implying that he is “evil”, I am simply curious 
as to why we all have these natural desires. We just do because thats what nature is, is not really all that satisfying of an answer.
You mentioned evil first.
The scientific understanding of human nature is driven by the theory of natural evolution. We evolved in a particular environment, and our brains & bodies are designed by our genes to survive in that environment. Any universal human behavior is best though of as an outcome of this. There are endless endless threads all over the SMDB on different aspects on this, you can browse for a couple lifetimes. I suggest you frame questions in the form of: Why would this kind of behavior be advantageous to a human’s survival in our evolutionary beginnings in the natural world? That calls for a broad understanding of what the behavior you’re seeing is, and what environment humans evolved in.
That is not -the- answer by any means, but thinking about it in that way will get your pretty far.
Picture yourself as an organism in an environment whose sole purpose is to survive and procreate.
The real question is, why would we ever listen to someone?
What is in it for us?
Clearly we are socialized (and probably have genetic predispositions) to go along with some amount of authority, like mom-lion teaching little-lion how to hunt. If you look at the world from the perspective of individuals trying to selfishly survive, I think it makes sense that people will do whatever the heck they feel like. But if you think we are, by nature, supposed to follow the rules imposed by our particular culture, I think you will be mystified by many actions.
Okay so this is what I get from what you are saying. We have been fighting for our own survival for so long, that we naturally make our own decisions now and dont necessarily want anyone to tell us what to do. Kinda stretching it. I need to do more research on this and also see how it relates to how teenages often times do the exact opposite of what their parents tell them to do.
Let’s bring in more examples.
What if I tell you not to think about sex.?
What if I tell you not to think about a Duran Duran song?
Remember now, -don’t- think about them.
How long do you think you’ll go before you have dirty images in your mind, with a Duran Duran soundtrack?
I agree, ‘evil’ is a very particular scenario in which the person is purposefully doing something to hurt someone else for the abstract pleasure of seeing others hurt. And even in this case, it’s the person’s intention or behavior that is evil, not the person themselves. No person as a whole can be realistically summarized by a one word identifier.
It may be that he likes the attention, mixed with curiousity mixed with it just being fun to do. By making a big deal out of it you make it seem ‘important’ and therfore more desireable. And what he is doing isn’t ‘wrong’ per se. It’s defiant certainly, and also ‘rude’ and ‘inconsiderate’ and perhaps it could be ‘dangerous’. It’s important to teach children to behave a certain way NOT because it will make them a “bad person” or a “good person” but because 1) their actions have consequences some of which are beneficial and some of which are detrimental and 2) some of these consequences affect how other people feel.
There are lots of laws that people disobey because 1) they don’t feel the law is just and therefore needn’t be followed or 2) sometimes disobeying the law has personal benefits and these outweigh for the individual whatever consequences there might be for others. In either case the reasons are usually selfish, not malevolent. And often the law isn’t just.
The point is, the kid is probably just selfish and 1) doesn’t understand the consequences 2) hasn’t been taught proper empathy or 3) you guys are not being fair and he knows it.
I think **jack **hit on something key here: defiance. Humans do need to break free from their parents, and a certain amount of innate defiance would seem to be a reasonable thing to expect. If we never did anything different from what our parents told us to do, our culture would stagnate. Stagnation may, in some instances, be a good survival mechanism. But the human way of surviving generally does not involve stagnation.
I think that the OP can be better explored in Great Debates.
Moved. samclem GQ moderator
Forget about culture. The need to defy parents and other authority figures is more basic than that. If you never assert your own independence, you’ll never attract a mate and produce offspring.
Evil? Come on. It saddens me to hear such nonsense.
Humans are, if anything, LAZY
look at what fingers do on the piano
there are so many beautiful and loving things happening throughout the world-
it’s sad that our media only sees evil, training and confusing wonderful people that would choose a handle like Trust to question his/her nature
If we are innately anything, we are empty vessels- growing to choose a side, and others who doubt the other side, simply do not matter, let them go their way
That is an assumption, that our nature is evil. Christians may believe in original sin and the fallability of man but Buddhists (as a counterpoint) believe in the idea that humans are by nature compassionate and only angry when the objects of our compassion are taken away from us. I don’t agree with either, I take something more in the middle that we are capable of good when we view ourselves and others as individuals but evil when we view ourselves or others as objects instead of indivduals. I don’t believe that our nature is by nature evil though. Well over 98% of my interactions with people have been either neutral or good.
What you’re describing is something along the lines of reverse psychology and testing boundries, not evil. In all honesty, the fact that something that minor comes across as evil is testament to how non evil humans are capable of being (if this is what we feel is evil). Tell him its ok to touch whatever and he’ll probably lose interest.
Don’t think of an elephant. A big, pink elephant holding an umbrella and dancing on a tightrope. Whatever you do don’t think of that.
If he is really doing it behind your backs you wouldn’t know about it and we wouldn’t be having this discussion, right? What is he touching? It must be attractive in some way, unless you made it attractive by telling him not to touch it.
Dogs start out doing the same thing, until they are trained not to touch something they shouldn’t. Are they evil? I don’t know how old this kid is, but don’t bet that he is totally rational yet.
To further what Voyager has said, it’s hard to make that sweeping “evil nature” declaration on the basis of what you’ve said. How old is your GF’s brother? What are you telling him not to touch? What is his personal situation; is he looking for attention because he is not getting it from family?
Many questions to discern why what he does is bothering you, but the "evil’ broad brush stroke seems overblown to my mind.
Our brains might be said to be biological computers which output decisions based on prior inputs and innate cognition. Statistically, there must be variance in these decisions: the probability of everyone thinking and doing exactly the same thing is negligible. “Evil” is a linguistic tag applied by some computers to the outputs of others in order to bring to bear some kind of peer pressure to eradicate those particular outputs in future, or else.
And who made you the arbiter of all that is right and wrong? A compression wave propagated from your larynx to his eardrum. His biological computer decoded the communication and input it to his decision process. That his final output was not what you expected should cause you no more puzzlement than your chess computer making a surprising move.
If we only did what others told us, there would be no innovation. There would thus be no fire for him to touch in the first place.
Wow this thread went a whole different way than I expected it to. Let me clarify some things. The reason I referred to “evil-like” was because I made the assumption that that would be the most commonly understood way of describing what I am talking about. By referring to the christian viewpoint, I thought that it would have clicked right away since this is a extremely common thing. I was obviously wrong. How I first became curious about our nature was from my girlfriends and my rabbit. He will constantly chew up on the floor the exact spot we tell him not to. The reason I did not bring up the rabbit, however, is because there are many more flaws associated with talking about this animal example imo. The intelligence does not relate to us as much and also I am simply more curious to our human nature. For this reason I brought up the closest example off the top of my head of my girlfriends brother. It really could have been an example from almost anything. I am not bothered one bit by how he touches things or anything at all. I genuinely was just interested in why he did it so that when I have kids I better understand them. I also understand how I came across as being angry towards him but this could not be further from the truth. I have also realized that what works for some people doesnt work for others. I personally know that I have very terrible qualities that I am capable of. Its in this sense that I am referring to evil. With this knowledge, without trying to sound conceited, I am probably one of the best people I know. The evil I am referring to came from this quote
9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
I hope that makes more sense.
Another thing I am noticing is how quite often this board reacts negatively to anything even close to sounding religious. I was never raised going to church so with the exception of somewhat “weird” religious people on tv, I have only discussed religion with the most genuine, logical thinking people. Its quite obvious that this is not always the case with others.