I grew up thinking that everyone is born evil. Even though I was told that people always tried to help each other, this wasn’t consistent with any of my experiences. Children would only stop bullying each other when they were told, people around me would steal from candy shops, my classmates would constantly lie and cheat. Contrastingly, I was also able to consider that some people were inherently kind – exemplified by when I felt a genuine desire to share my food with my sister (even though she is potentially the most annoying human I have ever met). This raised the idea of human nature to me – are we naturally good, or born to be evil?

In a world where it is believed that everyone is evil and immoral, people would likely trust each other less. Relationships might struggle as they would be unwilling to resolve conflict due to lack of belief and trust in the other person. In politics, voting procedures which often rely on a positive view of society would come into question: should we allow people who do not have our best interests at heart to determine our lives? On the other hand, if everyone believed everyone was good at heart, then this would likely mean more rehabilitation and soft approaches to the criminals of society, and the capacity to point blame on external circumstances as a justification of one’s behaviour, meaning most people no longer feeling accountable for their behaviour and wanting to improve.

This article explores the view that we are not born good or evil, but our society has a huge impact on shaping us to be ‘evil’.

Nature is the concept of how humans are “supposed to be from the start” – how we are guaranteed to act from the minute we are born. One perspective that was shared by John Locke is that everyone is born with their minds in a ‘blank state’: the concept of tabula rasa. Everyone’s early experiences make them who they are, and nurture determines their actions. Contrastingly, some believe that nature heavily influences our daily actions, including whether we act morally good, or immorally evil.

On the other hand, the concept of nurture regards how society teaches their children to act like, spreading influence through their behaviour. This concept is likely more about how society’s expectations change a person from when they are young and how their own personal stories and situations shape them.

So I suppose the real question is: are we inclined to a certain set of actions because we are human, or do we conduct those actions due to our upbringing?

Some believe that humans are born evil. People like Thomas Hobbes, for example, believed that because people have an infinite amount of wants but a finite amount of resources, therefore this leads to competition. For example, even if I don’t want resources (such as my friend’s snacks or a certain grade in school), I only want it because someone else has it.

This competitive nature was thought to extend past material possession to a desire for superiority. He also thought that vanity and jealousy exist only because we live with other human beings. Both these factors, which exist when we are born, made him come to the conclusion that humans are inherently evil.

Therefore, he believed that the only resolution society must make is to create a powerful absolute government to impose order, because human nature is completely savage with no interest outside one’s own.

In contrast, some people are not as negative as Thomas Hobbes. These people think that we are inherently good but shaped by society to be evil. This is what Jean-Jacques Rosseau believed – the distinction between this and Hobbes’ argument differs in root rather than characteristic.  

Rosseau thought people inherently want to serve each other and are innocent. His opinion was that we are all corrupted by negative environmental influences. An example of this corrupt society could include learning toxic competitiveness and selfishness through the taught desire to succeed.

As a result, Rosseau developed the concept amour de soi, naming it a natural and healthy type of self-love which aims for peace and satisfaction. Contrastingly, he also defined amour propre, where one’s self-love is based on vanity, reputation and seeking approval. He deduced that amour de soi is natural and what we are born to be, while amour propre is defined by others and causes competition and conflict.

In a natural isolated state of existence, he thought that humans are content with limited desires. He came to the conclusion that children should have upbringings of curiosity, freedom and exploration without being hindered and corrupted by society.

However, a counter argument to this belief are multiple experiments on ‘The Game of Life’: a simulation where civilisation could live in a peaceful society if they wanted to. In multiple different situations and worlds, these simulated people constantly chose violence. This proved that when left to do whatever they want with society, people are naturally inclined to cause violence and chaos.

But what if it’s really not that deep? What if we can just control who we are, whether we are naturally evil or not?

That’s what Plato thought. Plato’s view was that we humans are like charioteers. We have our good sides and bad sides, like a charioteer drives two horses. But if the charioteer is strong and disciplined enough, he would be able to control both horses. The charioteer is a metaphor for our reason. To rationally control oneself with both, we are ultimately free to be who we want to be.

Plato “resolves” both points through his perspective of nature. He says that we are not inherently evil or good, instead we can be either way and the only way to win in life is to be rational and smart.

I don’t personally align with Hobbes’ belief that humans being savage and evil is natural. Instead, I believe that this is societal because our recent past has taught us that being selfish and evil will lead only to survival (e.g., the stone age, famine-stricken times, the transition to agriculture), and that we are not physically evolved to be self-interested. I’m not so inclined to Rosseau’s belief either, because I have no reason to believe it – I’ve never seen any justification that humans were certainly born with a natural inclination to be good.

The reason I really do believe that Plato’s case is right to an extent is because I think everyone has some control over who they are, whether they become a bad person or not. But in conjunction with Rosseau, I strongly believe that it is a lot harder than Plato claims to control who you are in this kind of society – even if one hides behind the façade of being good, I think that we are all shaped by society to think selfish thoughts: increasingly in the last couple hundred years, society has shifted from being more communal to individualistic.