One sunny morning in Cleveland, Ohio, a homeless man receives a gift of new shoes from an honorable stranger. Yet at the same time, a young man robs a bank, and an innocent woman is shot at random. Humanity has positive aspects, such as people doing righteous acts towards other human beings, but also sadly has negative aspects such as violence for little to no reason. The world seems to withhold more negative events rather than positive all throughout history. Therefore, mankind is inherently evil, but also has the capability to overcome through positivity. Mankind tends to react to most situations balefully.
According to Mark Twain’s The Lowest Animal, “man is the cruel animal (text 5). ” For instance, consider the time when man “shuts up a multitude of Jew families in a tower and sets fire to it (text 5). ” Usually people do not think of killing people due to differences, but traits of hatred and insanity can come from such a hostile and cruel nature. Man’s initial response to ample events is to act in violence rather than reconcile differences. Man “inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it (text 5),” implying that humans naturally enjoy feeling the power behind levying torture.
One should not feel in any way grateful when inflicting pain onto someone else, but rather remorse. However these actions show how inhumane we humans can be. Moreover, selfishness contributes to the evils of humanity. To illustrate, an actor takes a vocabulary test with a few other men. Every man participating earns money. Yet, the actor soon reveals to have stole “half the money the men had earned (text 1. )”, which wasn’t a part of his job. The theme of this event shows how selfish humanity initially can be. A paid actor is selfish enough to take the other articipants money, even though he is going to get money initially.
One would let the participants take their money because it’s theirs now, but rather the inherently savage nature of a human being acts out instead. Additionally, studies show that “one-in-three-western men (text 1,)” have a warrior gene, which makes them more aggressive and hostile, thus supporting the idea of human nature k In contrast, one may argue that mankind may be inherently good. There are also myriad examples showing the positivity in human nature. On the contrary, this may be due to taught values in society.
One may argue that selfless actions done for other human beings show how humans may be inherently good. An example of an action corresponding to this theme would be an opposing softball team witnessing a girl who stuck a home-run collapse with a knee injury, but instead of leaving her there they brought her around all the bases, sacrificing their victory. The girls on the opposing team say sweet comments such as: “We just wanted to help her (text 4. )” and the girl with the knee injury says how she “would do the same for her in the same situation (text 4. ”
One may think that kindness is an inherent property of humans or rather that society just teaches us how helping other human beings is the correct action to take in an event. Without a society to teach man what is morally right, man would want to do what is right for themselves so they can feel satisfied with themselves. Correspondingly, one may argue that “in most cases people will not do things to harm themselves or others (text 2)” therefore proving to be inherently good. Although this may be somewhat true, there is still a lot of violence that is present, even in today’s society.
People’s inner evils may be at a chance of increasing due to the others around them acting hostile, therefore reverting their mindsets to their original nature. As explained in Hobbes’ work Leviathan, man “acts morally only when they are sure that others are the same (text 6,)” explaining how morals are put into thought only when others use them. Without the confidence that one is using morals, it is said that humans’ “rational behaviour leads [them] to attack others (text 6,” which exhibits to how people may not do things to harm others when morals are present, but act more violent when morals are gone.
Mankind exhibits negatives and positives in everyday life, yet in reality mankind seems only to inherit the negatives and use positives in society to overcome the evils. Man has shown it’s violent side during war, it’s inhumane side during conflicts, and it’s selfish side during situations where man gets greedy. On the other hand, man tries to cover up this not so desirable trait with positivity and morals through helping other people in need for no definite prize, and not trying to hurt themselves or other people.
The nature of humanity is chaotic, yet humans can overcome their corrupt values with morals and humane values. Given these points, humanity in its true form is very dangerous. Only when humanity adds morals, the positivity of them project the decent side of mankind itself. Continuing this concept, Dalai Lama states that “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. ” Lama describes how these positive aspects are essential to living life reasonably. Without love or compassion, humanity will riot to it’s true form, disturbing and chaotic.
