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Okay I have a question for all you wisen people out there. ( I hope I formed that sentence correctly, if not, oh well). Well in what of my favorite shows/books ever they pose a question and i have been thinking alot about this question lately because I decided that I wanted to try my hand to paper and it is a very big part of it all. But the question.
Are people born wicked? Or is wickedness thrust upon them?
Please keep in mind that many people believe the following statement
Some are born great, and others have greatness thrust upon them
So if the greatness statement is true, then therefore, wouldn't the opposite also?
Mattie :-/
There's a kind of a sort...cost
There's a couple of things get...lost
There are bridges you cross you didn't know you'd cross until you've crossed
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ChowanFarmBoy
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Toe is in the water |
Registered: January 1970
Messages: 93
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In my opinion people aren't born good or wicked, and they're not born nice or evil, and they're not born great or not-so-great.... but people sure as hell are born either smart or stupid. And lately, stupid seems to be gaining. At least in my school.
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YOu know I actually agree with you. I think that peopl are born people. And the SOCIETY that they ar born into is what defines what is good and what is evil. I don't think you or I were born great or born evil. I think we were born. And with a combination of the choices that we made through our lives and the way that society interperts and views those choices is what defines good and evil.
There's a kind of a sort...cost
There's a couple of things get...lost
There are bridges you cross you didn't know you'd cross until you've crossed
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marc
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Needs to get a life! |
Registered: March 2003
Messages: 4729
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People are born just the same way as a painting.....
it can be dark, scary, all evil....
or happy, bubbly and fun......
The paints are nothing but collor added to a blank canvas.... and the attributes a persin developes at he/she matures are just the same....
just additions to the canvas.....
but its important to remember that no color can not be painted over... and as a hideous painting can be made to into a masterpiece, so can a person if he is willing to accept the new colors.
Life is great for me... Most of the time... But then I meet people online... Very few are real friends... Many say they are but know nothing of what it means... Some say they are, but are so shallow...
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Excellent analogy Marc. And as you paint the new masterpiece upon the uglier colors beneath, don't be surprised when the old colors want to bleed through. We must never allow ourselves to give up and slide back into old ways of thinking or acting - thinking that change may be a lost cause. Judicious applications of touch up paint may seem a constant necessity - but is entirely worth the effort. Eventually it will require fewer touchups and the masterpiece will prevail.
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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Marc is correct......When I started college I was considered very dangerous, even the football players stayed away from me. I hated people with a passion. Because of my family I didnt know how to care or love others or even myself. My Mark painted me over with new colors. He took away my hate and anger. Timmy and Marc know what I used to carry in my pocket. Most of all Mark taught me to love myself and becasue of that I learned to love and care about others. If Matts reading this, I wasnt evil nor was I ever an evil child, I was never given nor taught how to love.It took the patients of a Saint to make a masterpiece out of me. We are not born evil or good were neutral. then we are taught.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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Hi Mattie and welcome back to the forum. It's encouraging to read that life is easier for you now.
Let me try to answer your question from the point of view of my religion (I'm Jewish).
The traditional belief is that in every person there are two basic tendencies, which we can call the "good tendency" and the "bad tendency". (Many moderns suggest that these "tendencies" can be compared - or even equated - with Freud's "Id" and "Ego".
The idea is that we are all born with the "bad tendency" ready to go. The "good tendency" is something that we have to gradually acquire through education and practice. It is assumed that a person should have developed their "good tendency" to an extent sufficient to make them responsible for their actions by the onset of puberty (traditionally at the age of 13).
Our task in life is to ensure that our "good tendency" is in control as much as possible.
I realise that "good" and "bad" can not be absolutes; in traditional Judaism what is "good" and "bad" is defined by God's commandments in the Torah, as explained and developed by the rabbis throughout the generations. (This means that "good" and "bad" can change for Jews over centuries as we become more sophisticated or think that we understand the meaning of a commandment more clearly.)
I have answered your question is some detail because I would imagine that it is rather different from other responses you might get.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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Let's forget about the doctrine of original sin which will not appeal to the atheists.
I think humans are born with a propensity to good or evil which can be modified by nurture. Those with a propensity for good are represented by such people as Mother Theresa.
It is easier to think of those born with a propensity to evil: Damian in 'The Omen', but that is fiction; Fred and Rose West - mass murderers; the grandson of a friend (10) whose mother was on drugs while pregnant with him , later widowed, and now his mother has remarried he has to get used to a newly arrived step-brother and is now developing psychopathic tendencies.
Read 'Der Richter und sein Henker', available in English as 'The Judge and his Hangman', by the Swiss author Friedrich Dürenmatt for a philosophy on innate evil.
Hugs
Nigel
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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When has anyone ever seen an evil baby, or a good one for that mater. Its what happens to us as we grow that determins good or bad.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
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That is just sentimental. Who's ever seen a baby that's an international athlete, a spaceman, a businessman? But the capabilities are already there.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13798
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I think we all have a propensity to achieve what we are genetically programmed to achieve. It is unlikely that I would ever have been an Olympic track and field athlete, for example. My body is not designed appropriately for that.
But then we get into the "nature versus nurture" argument.
We don't know how little baby Adolf was raised, nor what his family history was, but I think you can bet that he thought at the start of his political career that he was doing good. He probably was, back then, but it changed.
How about little baby Saddam? He was raised in the arrogance of being important. What happened to make him a xenophobic monster? And young Slobodan, too?
"There are no bad dogs, only bad owners." Unless the dog is somehow mentally defective I agree absolutely with this statement. I do not see any difference in humans, here, especially when humans are being trained. You can train a dog to attack; you can train a human to attack. Each associates some sort of pleasure with the attack because that us how they were trained.
Is this a wider question? Do you mean "Can a person be made to be homosexual?" If so I say that a person can be trained to enjoy homosexual sex (not hard if the sex is enjoyable), and trained to believe that they are homosexual if caught at the right age, and trained not to enjoy heterosexual contact. But that is homosexual activity, not orientation.
Back to your question: "I was only obeying orders" is an example of people needing to survive, and thus taking the path laid out for them by authority, one that would have killed them if they had disobeyed. They were not evil themselves, just surviving by killing others who had no reason except race or sexuality to be killed. They had been trained to perform evil activity.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I don't think that there is really such a thing as "evil". I mean this in the same way as there isn't any such real thing as "dark" (merely absence of light) nor "cold" (merely absence of heat). In the same way, there is only "goodness", or lack of it ... though "evil" is a convenient everyday shorthand term.
And, for all of us, goodness is a tender plant: it needs much cultivation (by others when we are small, by ourselves later on). It can lie dormant for many years before springing into life ... sometime feebly, sometimes with great strength (I don't believe any human is beyond reformation ... if I were feeling religious, I'd say "redemption").
Of course, being human, we can never be "perfectly" good ... and no human is I think ever totally without goodness (though some have come very close) - like absolute zero, it's a point it's possible to approach but never actually to reach.
So, are some people born with less goodness than others? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure it really matters: some plants grow better in acid soil and some in neutral soil, and likewise the goodness within each infant can only flourish if it receives the individual treatment that suits it best.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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