Are humans essentially good, needing only support or encouragement for their development, or are they essentially self-seeking…such that an economic system is wise to build on this selfishness and make best use of it?
All opinions welcome!
I think it is a fallacy to assume that being good and being self-seeking are antagonistically opposed to each other. A truly effective self-seeking behavior tends to find and value social connectedness and support societal modalities that make it possible for everyone to have fun with maximum freedom and some rules to ensure our mutual safety and well-being and so on.
Defining “good” is in fact most easily accomplished by identifying it as the result of global self-seeking. In the absence of such a definition, most people end up with tortured definitions about what is good for “society” (as if “society” existed in the absence of its individuals), or formulaically as obedience to a set of mandates and strictures.
Aw, ya big killjoy!
actually I agree. Looking at “self-serving” though, if your own interests are immediate and you have little care for your own welfare (perhaps an oxymoron), then there is a schism between that and “good.” Then again, we could define good in terms of the global environment. Though it is not impossilble to live harmonioously with nature (where’s my tree?), the argument could be made that if we offed ourselves like billions of Jim Jonesites, the world would be a better place, and that would be, good.
Even “self-serving” can be put to scrutiny. Are you who you think you are? What if your only interest in life is the happiness of others, even at your own detriment? Is that good?
A related question (well, I think it’s erlated): emotions and rationality - do they actually serve the same purpose? Whatis the result of their integration?
Current crime statistics might suggest a NO response.
but crime statistics are an extension of self-serving folks
Sorry… I’ve got that Monday morning feeling… I’m not sure what you mean. Can you explain please?
pax
Alright, I’ll stop being facecious. I was just screwin around. I just love the argument that this whole discussion has EVERYTHING to do with our interpretations.
Caesar, he is old, and his brain is adled; pay him no mind
I think part of the problem (as previously stated) is coming up with a universal “good”. But that can be addressed by acknowledging that “good” in the moral sense is an abstract, subjective concept that blah blah blah blah blah…sorry slipped into pedantic jackass mode there.
It seems to me, keeping in mind I have no formal training, and I am kind of dumb, that humans as an animal employ an altruistic opportunist strategy, like many animals. I think that basically people are self serving with some exceptions. I may sacrifice myslef for my daughter, but she is carrying on my genes. I may volunteer to help those less fortunate, but that is to make my world a better place and make me feel good. (also some of those less fortunate are hot, and if you can interest someone who is less forunate than yourself in a sandwich for booty exchange then its a win win for everybody)
But that isn;t really what the OP was looking for I don’t think. That being the case; People are Bad. Myself included.
I would say that humans are essentially self-seeking.
It is the way of life through natural selection.
I have always felt that humans are neither…or both. We have free will. BUT, I think many end up being self serving, at least most of the time. Being selfish is the “easy” route. As such, people tent to choose it more often. Let’s face it, there is often no “reward” for being selfless or good.
In answer to the thread title, I’d have to say, “yes.” We’re both.
In recent years especially, with the rise of “public choice theory,” we’ve come to assume human beings are innately, uncontrollably selfish, and we’ve seen a rise in ugly selfishness that has lead to the collapse of social programs, and, in Canada at least, health care, etc. In other words, by assuming we are selfish, we have made society more selfish, and we’ve even made it harder to be selfless.
But by assuming human beings are only good, we blind ourselves to our weak spots. This is why so many altruistic movements, both religious and political, transform into violent ideologies.
I think the best path is to strive for the good, while being vigilant that our selfish side doesn’t escape our control and become destructive.
I don’t think we can come up with a definition of good that’s universal, because context is such a major part of things. The same act can be an act of kindness in one case, and of cruelty in another. Attempts to pursue a moral code rigidly usually mean sacrificing the good – obeying the “letter of the law” and not its “spirit,” for example.
I think human beings are far better at understanding “evil” than “good” – most of us know an atrocity and a great injustice when we see it. Attempts to approach the “good” are usually attempts to distance ourselves, as much as possible, from “evil.”
Strict moral codes are as likely to justify atrocities and injustices as they are to help us avoid them.
I’ve heard this argument. It’s not invalid, but I have two problems with it.
Firstly, it is true that helping society helps us, and makes us feel good. Does this mean it’s selfishness? Perhaps. But it’s a whole other level of selfishness that holds benefits for the whole human race and gives us a sense of humanity. This is so obviously better than short-term, destructive, self-interest that we need to make a distinction. Which means that if the word “selfishness” encompasses all human behaviour, it is no longer useful for describing the petty behaviour we associate with the word. That word then becomes so stretched, like a pulled sweater, it becomes useless. We simply have to come up with another word to fill the now-empty space.
Second, it doesn’t describe certain rare acts throughout recorded history of completely self-sacrificing, altruistic behaviour. Take the example of Jean Moulin, the French bureaucrat who decided he would rather commit suicide and die in obscurity than live a life of relative ease collaborating with the Nazis. He would not be around to enjoy any benefit for society this act secured, and judging from his description of the event later (he survived – the Nazis found him unconscious, and rushed him to hospital) he was more confused than happy, and I doubt slowly slitting his throat with a shard of glass felt particularly pleasant. He wouldn’t have even become famous if he’d died then. Where is his selfish motive?
This thread comes from two places, one it comes from the good act of wishing to enlighten oneself and others through discourse on a particular subject. Next it comes from a selfish place that wants to wrap understanding up in nice little neat packages that make give them limitations of category, with either one file or the other, when the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Next it relies on two fallacies. One that Selfishness is inherently evil, by putting it in opposition to good. Next that good and evil are inherent constructs and not just constructs set up to neatly codify the rules for society. If something is good then you do it as much as you can, if it is evil you never do it because it harms society.
Good and evil are so misunderstood through many years of religious dogma of every faith on the planet. Some influential writer at some point wrote down what he thought about something that was a bug up his ass, and then it was read by others who were likeminded, oftentimes in a similar situation to what he was in, and found that the agreed with what he said “Or discovered the inherent truth”, that what the two, five or ten of them had a bug up, their asses was wrong, therefore evil. Since these people all had a level of influence people believed that their opinions somehow held more weight than anyone else’s and thus the bug, became evil, and in natural obsessive compulsive fashion we spent the next few millenia trying to remove it.
Now trying to remove this bug is an inherently selfish act. You are trying to make yourself feel better by not “being evil”, however it is not necessarily an evil act, and not necessarily a good act. It is just an act. People weigh their reasons for acting, and as they are limited to their own understanding of the world, no matter how much empathy, compassion, and understanding they may be capable of. They still see through their own eyes and hear with their own ears, and color it with whatever particular shade their retina is. Now, this is inherently selfish, because they are a self, and they are acting on what they perceive to be the best possible course of action, for whatever reason.
Selfishness and Evil are not Synonyms. Therefore Good and Selfishness are not antonyms. We cannot escape selfish reactions, because in the end it is the self reacting. Therefore selfishness is not an evil attribute.
However, as good and evil really depend upon what society says, then something may be considered good at the time and later considered evil such as the crusades. People are neither good nor evil, they are just people, they all exist in that gray no man’s land between good and evil, because in the end good and evil are just adverbs.
Erek
You make some good points Hamish, now let me passive aggressively respond to them.
That wasn’t completely what I was getting at, I didn’t mean that it was selfish to do those things, I just meant they are more “practical” than “good”. I think when we are talking about being self serving we are talking about the “petty” kind, not just the “practical” kind, I was more addressing that “practical” self serving can actually look morally “good”. (gotta love quotation marks).
In any case my over all point was that all though I have a moral compass rooted in emotion and intellect I can’t ignore the fact that I have them, in part, because of the way my species evolved.
Monsieur Moulin is a product of that too, just as he is also a product of his upbringing. (I would guess a strong moral code, combined with a fatalistic streak may have been part of that) Part of me responds to stories like that with a well of emotion and what I can only describe as pride in humanity. How great is our potential when people like him have walked the earth? Or the firefighters and police on 9/11 (or any other day for that matter) who put themselves in harms way for their fellow citizens. But we have to keep in mind that for people to act in such a way it had to be an effective evolutionary strategy, just as my emotional response to it is part of that strategy.
I am NOT saying that we can’t tell the difference between the guy who backstabs his coworkers and the person who donates to charity because in some way both of them are self serving. I AM saying that both of those behaviors are rooted in effective methods of passing on your genes.
We call one good and the other bad because one set of behavior has a potential to harm us and the other to help us. Once again let me reiterate that this does not mean that I see the two behaviors as identical just because you could make a “letter of the Law” argument for that.
So what am I saying…If I have to pick between people as Good or Bad, I pick Bad. The reason for this is that I see the average behavior of your average person as sitting a little more on the dark side of the arbitrary line I draw in the sand that is my moral code. I would defend my wife and child, and probably (not sure) my country, to the death because that is my moral code, but I also know it is basically just my genes and my environment that created that code.
Just for the record if we all lived in villages of 300 people or so I bet my world view would have us slightly on the light side. But then my moral code would probably be significantly different too.
But his act can still be considered entirely selfish since he presumably went though thought processes before trying to kill himself and justified it. He may have felt that he “couldn’t live with himself” if he aided the Nazis. He may have felt that having that on his conscience for life was worse that not being alive.
Actually I believe that everyone is entirely selfish and every single act is due to persieved personal gains. Even the most extreme acts, such as sacrificing ones self can be justified, as in the case of Jean Moulin. Another factor to take into account is perceived benefits in the afterlife. (If I make a small sacrifice now, I get eternal happiness! - sounds like a good deal!)
Paddle.