Can a Person be Intrinsically Good or Bad?

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing well! I can definitely say I’ve genuinely been doing great lately. Sometimes it’s the smaller things that make you realise you’re doing better, like I’ve been able to make my bed every morning after waking up or that I manage to get my work done without procrastinating. I also managed to tidy my room and when I tell you that a clean room literally made me feel so much lighter, I actually mean it. Despite having done a few tests and still not getting as much sleep, I’ve just been feeling less burdened lately which is the best I’ve felt for a really long time.

Good and Evil?

I mean I know there are infinite questions I could ask about good and evil, like who gets to decide what is good and what is not? Or would good exist without evil? The main question here is probably what actually is good and evil?

The google definition of good is “that which is morally right; righteousness” which isn’t really the most ideal seeing as it lacks some description but the essence of good is morality. I guess different people get to decide their own morals although we as a society have a standard of morals which people generally tend to also believe in. For example, it wouldn’t be moral to just go and kill a random person.

In philosophy we were learning about types of evil and different theodicies but the main part was that there are t types of evil. There is moral evil which is when humans action or inaction causes there to be problems, I say problems but I literally mean things like genocide, and there is also natural evil. This is stuff like natural disasters, for example, a tsunami could fatally injure and kill many people and many could be left homeless or without resources. Would a whole town deserve that kind of fate? For the purpose of this question we will probably be looking more at moral evil seeing as humans can’t cause natural disasters (only make them worse but that would also be classified as moral evil).

Human Characteristics

As we all know from biology, multiple traits which make up our personality and who we are, are passed down from generation to generation. Like, if your family has a history of anger, it will be quite unsurprising if you also pick up that trait. Things like anger, anxiety, personality disorders and much more can be passed down from different generations but can things like innate morality?. I guess a lot of a person’s morals and life in general are influenced a lot by the surroundings and morals of the people around you. In the moment of performing an action, a person has free will and their choices can be influenced by the way they were brought up. Things such as good and evil are not really traits which can be passed down so does that mean the choices we make determine whether we are good or bad people? I think that because good and evil aren’t traits, our choices do determine how moral we are as people.

Can a Person be Intrinsically Good or Bad?

Scientifically, a person could have the potential to be born a “good” or “bad” person because if certain traits are carried out throughout a family’s history, it will be likely that a newborn baby will also have these traits. I remember studying the biological approach in psychology and some extra reading that I did had an example of a family study that was conducted. Long story short, if your family has a history of committing crimes, then there is a high likelihood that you also have the capability to commit that crime, it was something to do with some chemicals in your brain and genes but if I am going to be honest, it took a long time for me to understand the scientific paper haha.

In ethics we also looked at the murder of James Bulger. It was basically these two 10 year old boys that had kidnapped a 3 year old boy and killed him. We were discussing different factors which caused the boys to act like that in terms of free will. One of the boys grew up with a narcissistic mother and the other one had many siblings and also grew up in a toxic household which many of the siblings tried to leave. Social influence (another topic we studied in psychology) plays a really large role in situations like this but can it really justify their actions? Not everyone who grows up in families like this goes out and plans a murder at the raw age of 10.

This again brings us to the question of can a person be born good or bad? Despite the scientific side stating that your genetics can cause you to be a certain way, I don’t believe that a person can be born good or bad. I think that people can make choices in their life which determine whether they are good or bad but when you are born, even though you have different chances of being a certain way, I don’t think that a person can be born as a good or evil person. We are simply just here, no person can be 100% of anything and especially right when we are born without having any opportunity to make choices or experience life. Even if someone is the greatest, kindest, most moral person you know, it is still impossible for them to be 100% good, you could use the example of yin and yang. In every bit of bad, there is good and in every bit of good, there is bad. Therefore, I don’t believe people can intrinsically be either good or bad because we are both, some people just struggle to maintain the balance sometimes and I believe that imbalance can be caused by psychological factors.

I hope you guys enjoyed this week’s post!! I think I might have gone a bit off track at some points but in all honesty I am very tired. Anyways, I hope you have a great day and week ahead, see you soon, love you guys <33