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What role does the environment play in the child's personality development
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People: Good or Evil Many people in the world believe that everyone is either born good or evil. There have been many discussions about this topic that still go on today. Along with the beliefs people are born good or bad are also the belief that people are born with a blank slate, meaning that their environment plays a role in how they turn out. If people are born good, then they are born with a natural affinity towards kindness. If people are born to be bad, then they will possibly be selfish and greedy. If people are born with a blank slate, then choices overtime and environment will decide what they turn out to be like. These three perspectives on human nature have been in discussion for many years, with no real conclusion. Good as …show more content…
If we feel like people are inherently good, then we give people the benefit of the doubt believing that no matter what happens at what one point they were good, and can get back to that. If we believe people are bad, then there are low expectations and they can only get better from there without disappointing or letting anyone down. These views do however believe that everyone can become good with enough hard work. The blank slate theory is a way to see both views and taking them into consideration. Blank slate allows people the possibility to become either good or bad based on their environment and changes over time. The way people start out is not as important as to who they become. If they can successfully live in a way that does not intentionally hurt other people, then whether people start as good or evil does not matter as much. While this topic may never find a conclusion, it is always very interesting to hear the different takes on human nature and hearing the reactions of many people. If they can successfully live in a way that does not intentionally hurt other people, then whether people start as good or evil does not matter as much. I hope that one day there may be a clear picture about human nature presented and people can understand more about influences that could make good go bad or bad become
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
Through the progression of William Golding's Lord of the Flies and the article, “Are Humans Good or Evil” by Clancy Martin and Alan Strudler, a multitude of undeniable evidence is provided to prove that humans are in fact inherently wicked. In Lord of the Flies, a human being’s savage nature and primal instincts are effectively portrayed through the development of Jack, the lead hunter in a group that gets meat for the boys. Little Jack Merridew, who seems to be nothing but a naive and obnoxious chorister, becomes one of the most malicious and violent boys on the island. Jack's wilder side shows itself the most when he goes hunting. Making one his first kills brought such exhilaration, satisfaction, and pure bloodlust, that it drove him to insane limits,
Born to be Good? A timeless question that continues to stump psychologists. Are humans born good? Do we learn evil traits or are they imprinted into our minds as we come into the world? In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written in the early 1800’s, this same question comes into play.
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.
The question “What makes us who we are?” has perplexed many scholars, scientists, and theorists over the years. This is a question that we still may have not found an answer to. There are theories that people are born “good”, “evil”, and as “blank slates”, but it is hard to prove any of these theories consistently. There have been countless cases of people who have grown up in “good” homes with loving parents, yet their destiny was to inflict destruction on others. On the other hand, there have been just as many cases of people who grew up on the streets without the guidance of a parental figure, but they chose to make a bad situation into a good one by growing up to do something worthwhile for mankind. For this reason, it is nearly impossible to determine what makes a human being choose the way he/she behaves. Mary Shelley (1797-1851) published a novel in 1818 to voice her opinions about determining personality and the consequences and repercussions of alienation. Shelley uses the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to make her point. Rousseau proposed the idea that man is essentially "good" in the beginning of life, but civilization and education can corrupt and warp a human mind and soul. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (hereafter referred to as Frankenstein), Victor Frankenstein’s creature with human characteristics shows us that people are born with loving, caring, and moral feelings, but the creature demonstrates how the influence of society can change one’s outlook of others and life itself by his reactions to adversity at “birth”, and his actions after being alienated and rejected by humans several times.
“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” (Eleanor Roosevelt). This is just one of the infinite examples of how human nature has been explored by so many different people. Each and every human is born with the capability of making their own choices. The decisions that they will make in the future will determine how evil they are viewed by others. Although one’s nature and nurture do affect their life, it is their own free will that determines whether or not they are evil.
Whether human nature is fundamentally selfish or altruistic is a question that challenge lots of researchers back in the time, and even today. Some people, such as Thomas Hobbes, claimed that man 's nature is basically evil and selfish. However, Joseph Butler, a philosopher, disagreed with this idea. For him, goodness consists in having what he calls the ‘principle of reflection’ govern and control our passions. People always want to know the true, but there is no answer for this question, so we have to find it out base on our knowledge and beliefs. It is important to know what is our true identity when we were born. In my mind, no one is perfect, everyone has the dark-side in themselves. People cannot deny that there is no mistake have
In viewing 12 Angry Men, we see face to face exactly what man really is capable of being. We see different views, different opinions of men such as altruism, egoism, good and evil. It is no doubt that human beings possess either one or any of these characteristics, which make them unique. It is safe to say that our actions, beliefs, and choices separate us from animals and non-livings. The 20th century English philosopher, Martin Hollis, once said, “Free will – the ability to make decisions about how to act – is what distinguishes people from non-human animals and machines 1”. He went to describe human beings as “self conscious, rational, creative. We can fall in love, write sonnets or plan for tomorrow. We are capable of faith, hope and charity, and for that matter, of envy, hated and malice. We know truth from error, right from wrong 2.” Human nature by definition is “Characteristics or qualities that make human beings different from anything else”. With this said, the topic of human nature has been around for a very long time, it is a complex subject with no right or wrong answer. An American rabbi, Samuel Umen, gave examples of contradictions of human nature in his book, Images of Man. “He is compassionate, generous, loving and forgiving, but also cruel, vengeful, selfish and vindictive 3”. Existentialism by definition is, “The belief that existence comes before essence, that is, that who you are is only determined by you yourself, and not merely an accident of birth”. A French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, is the most famous and influential 20th - century existentialist. He summed up human nature as “existence precedes essence”. In his book, Existentialism and Human Emotions, he explained what he meant by this. “It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will be something, and he himself will have made what he will be 4”. After watching 12 Angry Men, the prominent view on human nature that is best portrayed in the movie is that people are free to be whatever they want because as Sartre said, “people create themselves every moment of everyday according to the choices they make 5”.
Consequently, the actions of Adam and Eve have opened the doors for the two types of evil we see today, moral and natural. “Natural evil is the consequence of moral evil” (Elwell,...
One of the most persistently asked and perpetually unanswered questions in psychology is the question of morality. What is it, how does it develop, and where does it come from? A basic definition of morality is “beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior” (Merriam-Webster). Based on the definition, the question then becomes even more complicated; How do people decide what is right and what is wrong? Research has examined this from many different angles, and two distinct schools of thought have emerged. One centers on the Lockian idea of children as blank slates who must be taught the difference between right and wrong and what it means to be moral, while the other espouses a more Chomskian perspective of a preset system of basic rules and guidelines that needs only to be activated. So what does this mean for humans and humanity? Are we born tabula rasa or are we born with an innate sense of good and evil? For those researching this topic, the question then becomes how to most effectively theorize, experiment and interpret human morality.
Noted psychologist Jerome Kagan once said "Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form" (Moore 165). The debate on nature versus nurture has been a mystery for years, constantly begging the question of whether human behavior, ideas, and feelings are innate or learned over time. Nature, or genetic influences, are formed before birth and finely-tuned through early experiences. Genes are viewed as long and complicated chains that are present throughout life and develop over time. Nature supporters believe that genes form a child's conscience and determine one's approach to life, contrasting with nature is the idea that children are born “blank slates,” only to be formed by experience, or nurture. Nurture is constituted of the influence of millions of complex environmental factors that form a child's character. Advocators of nature do not believe that character is predetermined by genes, but formed over time. Although often separated, nature and nurture work together in human development. The human conscience is neither innate from birth or entirely shaped through experience, instead, genetics and environmental influences combine to form human behaviorism, character, and personality traits that constantly change and develop throughout life.
A person's ability to develop is due to two factors, maturation and learning. Although maturation, or the biological development of genes, is important, it is the learning - the process through which we develop through our experiences, which make us who we are (Shaffer, 8). In pre-modern times, a child was not treated like they are today. The child was dressed like and worked along side adults, in hope that they would become them, yet more modern times the child's need to play and be treated differently than adults has become recognized. Along with these notions of pre-modern children and their developmental skills came the ideas of original sin and innate purity. These philosophical ideas about children were the views that children were either born "good" or "bad" and that these were the basis for what would come of their life.
Throughout our lives we have all been influenced by our environment and other outside forces. Our environment may change the way we think, act and behave in life. Since we are all products of our environment, it comes to no surprise that we, as humans, tend to behave in a society the same way others around us behave but at the same time we strive to find who we really are (Schaefer 73). Since birth, humans have always analyzed the world around them. With each day that passes, humans take in more and more information from the outside world. The information which humans obtain through their environment subconsciously influences the decisions people make throughout their daily life (Neubauer 16). On the other hand, our genetics also play a vital role in determining what type of person we are and what will we become.
Humans are experience based creatures, we learn from our mistakes, kids are not born with their knowledge. Blank slate, means that people can be whatever they want to be, they have no
Are human beings born to be good? Or are we naturally born to be evil? A person’s nature or essence is a trait that is inherent and lasting in an individual. To be a good person is someone who thinks of others before themselves, shows kindness to one another, and makes good choices in life that can lead to a path of becoming a good moral person. To be a bad person rebels against something or someone thinking only of them and not caring about the consequences of their actions. Rousseau assumed, “that man is good by nature (as it is bequeathed to him), but good in a negative way: that is, he is not evil of his own accord and on purpose, but only in danger of being contaminated and corrupted by evil or inept guides and examples (Immanuel Kant 123).” In other words, the human is exposed to the depraved society by incompetent guardians or influences that is not of one’s free will in the view of the fact that it is passed on. My position is humans are not by nature evil. Instead, they are good but influenced by the environment and societies to act in evil ways to either harm others or themself.