It is perhaps the most basic view we hold that has an impact on so much. Human nature. Are humans basically good or do they essentially suck? This is essentially the starting point for many views and arguments. Was Hitler just poorly raised and lost his true nature or was he born "bad"?

Is there such a thing as evil?

Personally I think people are essentially products of their environment and influences on them from others. It takes a village and all that. Having said that I would also say that some things come from our nature. By that I mean we have certain survival instincts that might steer us towards "bad" behaviour.

So are serial killers and mass murderers totally good people who got messed up. I think that is hard or impossible to answer but it is perhaps a combination of things including perhaps damage or missing parts of the brain. I find this topic fascinating and would ramble on longer but I have kids climbing all over me.

i-baster wrote:

Yes in my opinion a few people are born with a tendency or personalty more carnal and evil acting toward others in speech and actions more so than others, then as they grow their environment can make them better or worst, it's just like some people are born nice and this shows in kindergarten, before they even understand life

i-baster wrote:
I would say its almost all nurture with a tiny bit of nature and ongoing environmental nurture even well past childhood.
Todays events for example are making people get seriously pissed off and mad at a lot of whats going on and thats a very simple example.

If there was no need to have a 9-5 job slavery doing something you hate to barely make ends meet then you already eradicate most motive for crime. You're then left with a much smaller percentage that you can look at and analyze for some kind of ingrained 'evil' or something they've picked up along the way.

You also have to bear in mind there are other aspects to the nature vs nurture argument than merely pre-disposition to evil.

Its more common to associate athletic ability with nature than nurture for example although there are nurture factors here such as exercise, food intake, enjoyment of it etc etc.

Epigenetics is the important thing to understand.




Be warned, Stefan Molyneux is very good in many respects, however he is an anarcho-capitalist who I strongly disagree with when it comes to economics on many issues.

I'm all for people having the right to forcibly defend their property, and part of their property rights is the right to travel, to move goods
about, and to make deals with those who are willing to make deals.
Freely competing groups without territorial monopoly can uphold justice and defend people. Enforcement should protect person and property, and not redistribute others wealth for profit.

jim.com/anarchy/

Then if one helps another to help themselves, what kind of anarchy does that make someone.


andyh wrote:

I mentioned serial killers because I think that their existence causes many people to believe in the negative with regards to human nature. Is evil something that just exists and has always existed? Was there ever A time when such a thing didn't exist?

We can only go back so far in any detail but most of what we read with regards to history is war slavery and murder. So human nature it could be argued has always had tendencies towards evil or certainly selfishness/ self preservation. On the other hand you can argue that the violence and the like are really only perpetuated by a minority.

I like the Emma Goldman quote about human nature.

The Apprentice wrote:
My issue with anarcho-capitalism is simply this- the game is already rigged. You cannot start a game of monopoly with 1 player who has 200 billion dollars with the other players having 200 dollars.

The only way it works is to go back to day 1....quite literally and I don't see that being fruitful somehow to force on everyone.

AC basically believes that the only motive in life is self serving profit, it completely discounts love and co-operation which are the basic initial needs we have as infants, if we are not touched as babies then we die.

The whole video here is more recent than ZMF (zeitgeist 3) which addressed the very same topic with scientists explaining epigenetics in exactly the same way.
It surprises me that SM is willing to address it now and make such a good video because he is explaining away capitalism lol..

Perhaps he'll change or is in the process of doing so, if so great.

i-baster wrote:
Or perpetuated by a very early paradigm created by a minority.
Its worth noting that in the past the environment was if anything even more stressful than today, and we were ofc completely unaware of all this.
The environment favoured ruthlessness.

My type of anarchy would be a Mayan type Anarchism, every 52 weeks the debts would be wiped clean, anyone trying to exploit others for profit would be dealt with in the most severe ways.

It would be a world where everybody would have do whatever they were best at, and to have the right to protect their wares in any way they could against a theif.

This would detter all exploitation and create self awareness and a real scence of being and others.

Today you mention work and wares and most people automatically think slavery, until that is, its them on the hard and fast with no way of getting out of any given situation.

Every time we make and save there are smiles, for the loss to the slave master and the freedom over the poor having to live to work for me, that probably won't make scence to many.


andyh wrote:

The Apprentice wrote:
There's no mention of any starting scenario or level playing field here App.
Debts IMHO should not exist at all, in fact anarcho-capitalism expressly forbids debt, either you trade or you don't because you don't have money for it. This isn't really on topic though and we should be discussing nature vs nurture.

ibaster has brought up an interesting topic and Molyneux's video makes no mention of capitalism and is quite accurate in this instance and indeed he is accurate in many other videos.

Somehow expecting anarcho-capitalism to come about though without pointing at Somalia is quite laughable, I can only hope that he's changed his mind in this regard. Humans are capable of incredible levels of co-operation and common sense if they are given the initial setting for it, its the initial setting that is all important IMHO and proof of the pudding is in the eating so it needs to be demonstrated to work.

What I envision to work has never been tested or demonstrated afaik.

i-baster wrote: Cool question, I think humans and many mammal species are social animals, most the stuff we do that's deemed "good" is beneficial behaviour to social groups, sharing, compassion, charity, etc, that's not to say our behaviours are exclusively "good" or beneficial to other social groups, species or even our own species at large (one might say at this point other social groups have often served as a good "enemy" to unite our own social groups), but you can see how behaviours that are too destructive to the social group are deemed "psychopathic", Evil etc, you might say this progression of a more universal application of positive behaviours is part of human civilization, from animal to man, nationalist to internationalist, labourer to technician etc.

I see many people moralizing over bankers and politicians, rich people and the monarch I don't see it personally, these people are just either particularly good or particularly bad at the role they play, they never devised the game, they never made the world the way it is.
Which brings me to your point re:environment, I do think it's important, it's not the only factor at play but is pivotal as we judge from an environment ourselves, and imo we have to take into account the moral basis of that position, ie does some middle class new age lefty have any basis for judging human morality in a slum town in Uganda, people want to eat they aren't gonna starve when guns are more easily available than a services career do you have any insight to human nature if you look exclusively at post Agricultural Revolution Human history, ie Civilization, or does that represent a cultured form of Barbarism with it's own set of moral values, moral imperatives etc, moral justifications of class warfare etc

So I like to read about Anthropology and the development of modern studies on the sciencce of mind, afterall, mind is the tool which enables us to consider whether the actions of a wolf are more applicable to the situation at hand than the actions of sheep or koala bear.
Here's a link that describes Humans as "Ultra Social" human interaction, our social heritage, our development as social, compassionate, cognitive, communally minded individuals are the basis of any moral distinction of behaviours:
evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/resear...earch/theory-of-mind

I think since the Neo-Lithic revolution loads more rules were invented, the Babylonian codes of commerce were the first I think, there were all these rules and regulations instituted to justify power, domination of resources, control of labour etc, so then you have the Jews and Moses who was the first Trade Unionist come along and show how that was all wrong and unfair, there should be no middleman in creation.

Guevarista wrote: They absolutely did, this is mainstream history. I think you make some interesting points about human nature being dependent upon circumstances, though.

I very much believe that we don't know what human nature is because we've never lived in a healthy human culture, consequently many of the negative sides of human nature we see are merely a result of, or predicated upon, this culture, rather than being indicative of any intrinsic nature. Although I do believe that the environment is the primary determiner of human behaviour, there is quite good evidence that several aspects of our behaviour and the way we develop are innate.

This is another subject that we'll never, ever get to the bottom of using conventional scientific methods because it's too complex. We will never know what human nature is, or whether it even exists, or get to the depth of human psychology, I doubt the human race will last that long. Note that no other animal asks what it is...it just is.

wake_up_bomb wrote:
Excellent post.

wake_up_bomb wrote: WUB NO HUMAN INDIVIDUAL MADE THE WORLD THE WAY IT IS!

Guevarista wrote:
Group, as in 'they'.
The ruling class from tribes to feudalism to nation states and govt.
The same basic paradigm of competition and separation has remained.

I Kind of agree there andyh, but Labour forces did as much for Ancient Egypt, if not arguably way more than the ancient Pharoahs.So another part of this would be the personal transition from passive spectator to active agent, from productive for the forces of capital, money, to productive out of choice because we are all naturally productive of non-commodified, though sometimes marketable, things, ideas, feelings, friendships etc

Guevarista :
I see what you are saying that a person born today has the world already in place but we can make informed decisions regarding our situation. We can stop to help a person or perhaps not invest in something that will fund genocide. I think these are less to do with human nature though and more to do with outside factors. The system itself is set up to make people productive financially. So a person becomes a trader or whatever to make money. There might well be other factors but if you didn't get money to kill or be somehow a part of it then we would see a much different world.

Guevarista wrote:
Depends if you produce something of actual worth or if its just wasted energy.

andyh wrote:
Apologies for wandering in and out of topic, no I never mentioned a begining because your model of anarchy and my model movements are one and the same in many ways, in that all things we are capable of making and have made are of worth, in that they deprive the theif and benefit a common need in others, we are now living the nature of the very idea, and the way we like doing things has nurtured many others into actions they know works, if they just see it materialise.

In and out, hope that helps, basically re-skill, re-nurture, nature of this beast follows.

andyh wrote: Just quoting this post to hopefully move off page one and that horrific picture of a foetus.

The Apprentice wrote:
Correct.
What I fail to see is bothering to assign any token value to anyones work, nor for that matter should it even matter
Everyone should be able to do what they want to do for nothing in return other than the appreciation of the community be it large or small and that all needs should be available and plentiful anyway. In that respect token value has little meaning and therefore money and profit has little meaning, only pure experimentation both scientific and artistic.

This is approaching utopia but is still yet to be utopian btw.