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Hatred from TV screens, aggression on the streets, disputes up to the desire to kill each other … At the same time, we sincerely consider ourselves good people. Are we delusional?
The question of the nature of good and evil—not for the first time, of course, in our recent history—is once again becoming frighteningly concrete. The level of aggression in society is going through the roof – just turn on the TV or go to social networks, and you find yourself as if under a current.
If the good in us is so easily frightened away, if we give up positions of hatred, intolerance and hostility without resistance – what is it worth? Maybe it is not rooted in us? Maybe this is just a thin film covering our true, animal nature? Or do we choose to serve good or evil according to circumstances, and we have no initial inclination to either good or evil?
At first glance, the answer must be disappointing. The Holocaust, the Stalinist camps, the genocide from Cambodia to Rwanda immediately come to mind… What refined sadism and cruelty, what boundless ingenuity with which a person inflicts suffering on others!
How can we say that kindness is a natural quality, if it is enough to look at what is done at recess at school?
How can one not recall the work of Darwin on the survival of species or Konrad Lorenz on the natural history of evil? How to ignore the Freudian theories about the unconscious desire for life and death, how not to believe the conclusion of the philosopher Hannah Arendt about the banality of evil?
It is not surprising that in the XNUMXth century, as Erich Fromm noted, after the First World War, Hitler and Stalin, Coventry and Hiroshima, thinkers began to emphasize the human propensity for evil. However, new research is trying to refute this view. Thus, the American anthropologist Douglas Fry, based on data from evolutionary biology, archeology, and primatology, argues that aggressiveness does not exist in human nature, on the contrary, it has a “peaceful potential”.
Similar views are held by positive psychologists. How gladly would we choose this hypothesis! But is it possible? We asked experts to help us figure it out.
“Yes, we only resort to violence because we don’t have a better option.”
“The binary opposition between good and evil is an exaggeration. A person has the potential for both. But the possibility of kindness and empathy is more important than the opposite. One-year-old children who are just starting to walk are already able to help an adult who cannot open any closet door of their own free will.
The areas of the brain that are responsible for satisfaction and reward are activated when we show generosity. On the other hand, the zones responsible for disgust and rejection are involved in our reaction to injustice. Thanks to mirror neurons, we feel the pain of another. In human relations, violence is behavior “for lack of a better way.”
Take wars as an example: it is easy to refute the claim that people get involved in them of their own free will. We have an aversion to killing, and if we do have to kill, it usually leads to guilt. Therefore, in order to harden people, one has to use conditioned reflexes, drugs, alcohol, submission.
What exactly is inherent in man is a passion for action and thrills. Both are sometimes mistakenly associated with violence. But when teens who are addicted to video games are encouraged to play active games that generate a lot of emotion, but without violence, they experience the same, if not more, satisfaction. Yes, there is a taste for violence, but only among sociopaths, who make up 1-2% of the population. Man to man is not a wolf.”
“Yes, we have a good start. Just like evil”
Alexander Uskov, psychoanalyst, member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA)
“In psychoanalysis, there are different views on this matter. There are theories proceeding from the fact that a person is naturally kind, but he is “spoiled” by a difficult life experience, a lack of love in childhood, experienced frustrations and hardships. However, with the caring, empathic, understanding attitude of the analyst, he can somehow realize his natural kindness, recover, that is, become less destructive towards himself and other people, experience less pain and suffering himself and inflict others.
But there is also another large and influential body of theories that assert that both principles are laid in man – both good and evil, in each of us in their individual proportion. And the question is precisely how it is possible to overcome or mitigate anger, hatred, destructive instincts, which are explained not only by the fact that a person was mistreated in childhood, loved little and cared little about him, but also by the fact that, first of all, they are natural quality of man as a species. I share this approach.
Biological heredity, as well as life experience, can push a person towards good or towards evil. But there is also an existential personal choice that each of us makes – do I take the side of good or the side of evil? We deal with this issue throughout our lives. For each of us, the potential for good is open, just like the potential for evil.
And a person can never be sure that he has finally taken the side of good, because at any moment he can slip into the side of evil, destruction, violence. What’s more, we can’t never do evil deeds at all. These are not always obvious, conscious things. Sometimes a person dresses his destructive instincts in an attractive shell, disguising betrayal, violence, deceit with love or care.
Therefore, we need constant internal work in order to understand this and understand what we are actually doing. Such a rethinking occurs in the course of psychoanalysis. We again and again return to some events or experiences, re-analyze what they meant to us and what they led to. And a person suddenly sees something bad, even terrible, where he did not notice before, or, on the contrary, discovers something valuable, good in his traumatic experience.
This does not mean that there is no clear line between good and evil. Absolute criteria exist, although they are not always easy to define. At least everything that is connected with a violent death, with violence as a restriction or deprivation of freedom of another person, with lies and deceit in various forms – this is what is absolute evil.
And yet we have a desire for goodness. After all, good in a sense is synonymous with life. Life cannot be started, maintained, developed without the desire to create, preserve, protect something good from destruction. And as life goes on, it means that the desire for good overrides the desire for evil.
“No, but we have an intuition of goodness”
“I think that by nature a person is neither good nor evil. He is on the other side of good and evil. He is neutral, as neutral, in relation to the norms of human morality, God. Circumstances, upbringing, love, shown or not shown to a person in childhood, already determine his views, attitude towards others and the presence of what Nietzsche called “human, too human”, that is, selfishness, envy, bitterness, self-interest – qualities that limit a person on the path of goodness. But we have free will – the freedom to choose between good and evil, and conscience – the intuition of good, what Kant called the moral law within us.
The possibility of change, improvement is always there, at all stages of the life of each of us. Even having committed an act that torments the soul, a person retains a chance to change, to be reborn. And this is the true inherent good, the absolute good. And then it all depends on how a person manages his life, what he will do in the time allotted to him. Socrates repeated that the main event of human life is death. No one can escape the answer to the question: why did I live my life? Am I scared to die?
Good, in my opinion, is not the person who is oriented towards authority, fear of punishment or expectation of reward for his act, but the one whose choice is determined by responsibility to himself, his loved ones, his time. And the criterion here is not external success or the approval of others. Alone with himself, a person is always truthful, and each of us knows whether he acted in accordance with the truth that is embedded in him, or against it.
Aristotle has the concept of “entelechy”, meaning the desire of everything that exists in the world to realize its essence. Each of us has our own entelechy – the meaning of life. Does what I do bring me inner harmony, happiness to live? – this is the criterion of goodness. Kindness is the ability to support another without imposing your personal experience of suffering and ups, it is the skill to trust another, helping him to become himself, to realize himself as much as possible in life.
“No, a person is not born, but becomes”
Evgeny Osin, existential psychologist, associate professor at the Faculty of Psychology, National Research University Higher School of Economics
“Good and evil are ethical categories. They cannot be applied to animals, and in the same way our biological nature – the animal in us – is beyond good and evil. We are born with biological needs that demand satisfaction and predispose us to behave selfishly. However, among them there is also a need for intimacy, for the satisfaction of which care for another person is necessary: the baby, having not yet learned to speak, already reacts to the cry of another and calls his mother to help someone else’s child.
Can this be called good? Rather, there is a basic predisposition in our biological nature that can develop into a drive to do good. And it is not so difficult to drown it out: suffering, psychological trauma, lack of attention and care in early childhood – and a person can grow up incapable of caring for both others and himself.
Our nature is not only what is inherent in us from birth: a person is not born, but becomes. Erich Fromm wrote that many of us die without being born to the end, without becoming human. You can speak and write good words about kindness all your life, but never become truly kind yourself, even with such a desire. Relationships and meetings make each of us human.
In the course of life we meet many people, from each of whom we learn something: to love, to enjoy beauty, to distinguish truth from lies, to do good. When we meet someone’s good deed where we did not expect, it always touches us, reminding us that there is something more in a person: there is a power in us that can change the usual course of things and make the world – even if not for long, even if only here and now – the place in which we would like to live.
The kindness of others encourages us to think: “What can I do to make someone’s life better? Am I doing enough? The answer to this question is not so easy to find. The philosopher Merab Mamardashvili said that good is not content: the same act in different situations can turn out to be both good and evil.
We need to make an effort to see what will be good right here and now, in this situation, in relation to this person, and courage to do it. Because real good is always going beyond expectations, rules, habits and obligations. Like any creative act, a good deed requires courage.
And this our ability to do good is based on faith in human nature. If we believe that people are basically kind, worthy of love and support, if we treat them like that, then by our attitude we help them change, become kinder. If we believe that people are inherently evil, we sow mistrust, which does not help to become better – neither to others, nor to ourselves.