Man: Inherently Good or Inherently Evil?

The Great American Think-Off is a public debate that has been going on for twenty years. Each year a topic is chosen and people are asked to submit their arguments in 750 words or less. Two pro and two con advocates are selected and they go to New York Mills, Minnesota to debate the subject.

This year’s topic was “Man: Inherently good or inherently evil.” Readers of Hell on Earth, a love story—and you know who you are, are well aware that everyone on Earth has some bad trait or they wouldn’t be here in the first place. But that doesn’t make them evil. So I took the inherently good side of the argument.

I didn’t get chosen as one of the four finalists but this was my entry. Feel free to comment or offer your own opinions.

Mankind Is Inherently Good

We question the inherent goodness or evilness of mankind not because we have questions about his general construction but because we observe his deeds. If mankind only performed good deeds nobody would ever question his goodness and if he only performed bad deeds no one would even suspect that he might be inherently good and simply behaving badly.

But because man does perform random acts of evil, his inherent nature is continually questioned. Ironically, this ongoing self-inspection is the unlikely answer to the question it presents; but before we get ahead of ourselves let’s look at why man performs evil deeds.<

Humanity, being a part of nature is subject to all of its laws. The basic tenet of this evolutionary track that our whole universe has been traveling on is that everything eventually wears down.

The expansion of the universe at some point will slow down and eventually begin to collapse. Mountains will wear down and the sun, as all suns do, will implode. Black holes will get bigger and, in time, suck in everything that isn’t nailed down.

Does this make nature inherently bad? I don’t think so. Friction and gravity are simply facts of life, neither good nor evil, but just as sure as our sun rises in the east, this deadly duo will eventually be the death of us all.

That is the inherent nature of nature.

It is the reason that man gets sick, is sometimes born with imperfections, and eventually dies. It is also the reason he does evil deeds. Degradation, in all forms, is not only a curse of existence but also a precondition for existence. But degeneration is not synonymous with genesis. We are not born evil but, as we progress, the evil we do surely becomes the metaphysical embodiment of friction and gravity at work.

Man started from a single cell possessing no personality and no significant traits, good or bad, and at each stage evolved to become more advanced.

Over the course of time mankind acquired traits, both on a universal level that made him unique from other species and on a personal level that made each man a singular entity within his species. Some were good, some bad and yes some were evil. But these traits an individual might possess cannot be described as inherent or representative of the whole human race because they are acquired, logical or illogical responses to the world we live in.

As mankind advanced, a need for institutions—religions, governments, economic schemes, and social structures arose. Why do these institutions that are founded on sound principles to fill legitimate needs not always work out well? Basically, it is because the rules of nature also apply to those things man creates.

These institutions aren’t direct by-products of the Big Bang.  Molecules didn’t somehow come together to create Catholicism or France or Capitalism or Democracy. These are creations of the second-order fashioned by not evil but certainly not perfect humans and thus even more prone to imperfection.

Just as individuals may break down quickly or in some cases come off the assembly line already defective, the institutions mankind creates will break down even quicker and in many cases start out defective—not evil but defective.

The number of evil men who have created institutions that have appeared to be evil from day one and have brought pain and suffering into the world pales in comparison to the number of leaders, writers, painters, doctors teachers and simple good Samarians who have brought good to the world. Mankind can take credit for devising institutions as best he could but should not be held accountable for them breaking down, as this is the nature of things. 

What is most troubling for mankind is that man will ultimately come across as good or evil by how well he functions within these structures he has created and as these institutions break down, as they surely will, they will reflect badly on mankind.

As Shakespeare noted, the evil that men do lives after him, the good is oft interred with his bones.

It is mankind’s obsession with the evil that men do within the institutions he has created—evil resulting from independent actions that clearly go against accepted norms—that causes him to questions his own inherent goodness.

It is through this noble act of self-examination that man ultimately and decisively confirms his inherent goodness. For the simple act of thinking he is “better than that” proves that inherently he is.       

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