Human beings are clever creatures. This is proven in everyday life, but they also have a horrible side. People aren’t necessarily evil by choice, but rather are, whether they want to be or not. Certain traits can cause this change in other people. Without these traits, humans wouldn’t be as bad as they are now, but because these traits do exist, humans behave without truly thinking of the long-term effects, or of the affect they have on other people’s lives.
Tris’s mom couldn’t have said it better when she said, “Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again.” This statement sums up how humans are perfectly. They are good for a period, and then things start to go downhill. They begin to do things they normally wouldn’t, and say things they don’t really mean. Before long they are completely different people, just because somebody wronged them, whether it was on purpose or by accident. Effects of being wronged are as follows: desperation, greed, jealousy, resentment, fright, distrust, and many others.
Desperation leads to “bad” creeping in faster than most traits. The definition of desperation is, “Recklessness brought on by great urgency and anxiety.” In fact, it often leads to the other traits that cause humans to be bad. If a human is desperate, it causes them to have bad judgment, and they act out of their normal ways of behavior. Most of the time, they are put in a case of desperation because of another human. Humans wrong each other a lot, sometimes deliberately. Other times, it is unintentional, but either way, it happens. Anxiety clouds judgment, making people act in ways that are frowned upon in society. These acts of despair cause others to be hurt, and make the person...
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...to change anything about their lives. Humankind is used to having things the way they want it, no matter what, even if they are hurting the ones they hold closest.
Humanity has a major flaw. It allows humans to be good, and live lives that seem perfect, and then all of a sudden it snatches the rug out from under their feet, causing a series of tumbles that throws humans into a pit. This pit is the pit of evil. It has all of humanity’s worst traits in it, and when people fall into it, they try to hoist themselves out by latching onto other people, even if they pull them down with them. Humans are good, until the bad creeps back in and poisons them. When that happens, humans cause all sorts of mayhem, but through it all, they somehow survive. The human race will always be bad, and that is the truth. It will stay like this indefinitely. It’s humanity’s greatest flaw.
Are humans natural born sinners? Are we content with our self-indulging human nature? Flannery O’Connor shows us through her stories that the worst quality in a human is selfishness. Through grotesque characters, O’Connor demonstrates the common theme of selfish human nature to display the ability it has to ruin/drive people crazy and that people only look to religion when they are desperate.
Mankind is innately evil. The allegorical novel, The Lord of the Flies, allows for little interpretation about human nature. William Golding depicts the idea, “evil is an inborn trait of man” (Golding). Throughout the novel the children who have crash landed on the island begin to uncover their savage nature. Although all of the children somehow succumb to a heinous behaviour, Jack, Ralph, and Roger become most noticeably corrupt. Ultimately, it becomes clear that malicious intent is intrinsic in mankind.
the known consequences and find their feelings of love for other humans ultimately lead to their
Instead the environment we are raised in will change who we are and how we act. In the short story “The Half-Husky” by Margaret Laurence, Harvey is a prime example of this - as a child, he was very innocent and lacked a suitable understanding of the environment he was in, but as he grew up his aunt began to complain about how much of a nuisance he was in her life (complaining about no one wanting to date her because she already had a child). Growing up knowing that you are not wanted must be extremely difficult, because your life may seem without a purpose. Harvey - being raised by an aunt who does not want him - began to not want anything to do with other people. He began to model what his aunt did to him to other people, eventually reaching Nanuk and Vanessa. Nanuk is a dog, but not much different from Harvey as a pup Nanuk was very innocent, but once Harvey started torturing Nanuk by poking him with a stick, getting pepper in his eyes, and even setting him on fire! Nanuk became very cautious and aggressive around other people, the environment he was originally raised in with Vanessa was one with a lot of care, but once he was introduced to Harvey he went from extremely innocent to overly aggressive. Humans are not inherently good or evil, but are susceptible to change through their experiences in their
It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This is where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be.
...reate stories and go beyond nature. These stories themselves are often the motivation for what we determine to be evil upon examining an alternate story, but we do not have a choice about whether or not we tell stories at all. That is in our nature. Alternately, without our stories we would not experience good and beautiful.
In a Man 's Nature is Evil, men are depicted as evil since birth. Hsün Tzu declares that "Man 's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity" (Tzu 84). He speaks about how men are born with fondness for certain aspects of life such as profit, envy and beauty. Consequently, obtaining these aspects would lead to a life of violence, crime and recklessness. According to Tzu, men are born with a pleasure for profit. However, this need for riches will cause a man to have conflicts and altercations in his life. This is due to the fact that man will have such a great urge to obtain profit in life that he will go to all means necessary, including violence. Man is also born with envy and hate; it is not something he is taught. The internal struggle these two attributes have to offer will once
The Road is a phenomenal example of how raw human nature shapes peoples’ decisions. It addresses the behaviors of people neither informed nor controlled by a social order. In the essence of The Road, people’s actions are highly dependent on the person’s basic needs. A lack of basic human needs often results in the more disturbing view of human nature. (Gilbert pg. 43) Betrayal, suicide, and cannibalism are all examples of behaviors that human nature can bring out of people.
When anyone thinks of the word “evil” they do not think it is within themselves. In reality, without a structured and well-followed society, people are apt to follow their own corrupt desires and neglect the thought of consequence. In the allegory, Lord of the Flies, William Golding reveals that man’s selfishness and sinful nature will be unmasked when the structure of a society deteriorates.
The cruel nature and intentions of people can either hurt or harm individuals or it can bring about resilience and determination. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee revealed that humans often have other motives in life; some are born to be evil in nature, some are naturally innocent and then there are some that are born to protect the innocent. Lee utilized a variety of symbols and themes that correlated with each other and thus had the ability to create questions in the minds of the readers. Are humans calculatedly cruel or is there some moral good in each of us? The impiety of a few can create a movement, imprison the innocent or reveal the sincerity of others.
...on to the love of their family and friends, and at other times lashing out. If there is one thing this paper has taught me, it is that I have not even began to realize what having it bad really means.
Humans commit many acts of evil towards each other. Some well-known examples are Hitler killing the Jews during the Holocaust, spouse abusers, and infamous serial killers, like John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy. Another example is Satan worshippers in Russia stabbing four teenagers 666 times and then proceeded to eat them (Haywood 1). Another example is a woman and her boyfriend beating her 1-year-old son with belts...
The results of committing evil acts have such a powerful effect on the human mind, that it is eventually destroyed by it.
The play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, shows human nature to be greedy, self-involved and vengeful. Claudius is driven by his greed to commit murder. Polonius is always looking out for himself, currying favor at the expense of anyone in his way. Hamlet thinks only of vengeance from the moment he finds out about Claudius murdering his father. Human nature has been all of these things, but it has also evolved through the ages. We can be base and cruel, but we can also show great compassion and kindness.
...ing, it is safe to say that humans are not by nature evil but instead, they are good but easily influenced by the environment and society to act in evil way and do such evil things. You choose the road you want to take; either it’s the bad road or the good road. We are all born to live a life where we will be faced with good and evil things. We were not born to be an evil or bad person, but as you get older you make that choice. What do you want to be remembered as: the good or the bad person? Choose to be good over being bad because the rewards to your family, your friend, and yourself will always outweigh the bad.