Are People Born Evil Philosophy Essay Example

How do evil people become evil? Are people born evil or do people make others evil? Are people inherently evil or do they simply not know right from wrong? Humans are very easily influenced, especially during their adolescent years. That's why humans are born naturally good, but their environment can turn them evil.

Most evils in the world are caused by stupidity and people are not born stupid; their environment makes them stupid. Socrates is a well-known Greek philosopher known for his intelligence, called “The father of western philosophy.” Socrates once said that evil is caused by ignorance. Socrates believed that no one does wrong voluntarily. (Pecorino) Most people do wrong out of stupidity because if these people were taught wrong vs. right when growing up, they would not do wrong. If humans during their upbringing were shown right from wrong, they wouldn’t do wrong. This is also displayed with the phrase “monkey see monkey do” if someone sees someone else doing wrong, they tend to repeat wrong, but if someone sees someone else doing right, they will do the right thing.

People are born good and loving and not evil. An article I found on GOODNET called nine reasons humans are inherently good explains all the reasons and examples of how and why humans are good and not evil. Humans crave honesty, hugs, and love (Wojno) The author provides evidence of how people crave hugs and a study to back up their claim. If humans are naturally good and crave good things, how can they be naturally evil? Humans are born with the idea of love and that only changes with circumstances. Humans crave hugs until someone else does something to make them not like hugs. Humans crave love until someone doesn’t love them right. Humans start naturally good and their environment can make them evil.y

People are not born evil; their life circumstances make them the way they are. An article called sex offender cycles, explains how people end up committing sexual assault. If neglected or abused, children are born with different brain waves, they now have a higher risk of becoming sex offenders. (White) People are not born with the idea of sexually assaulting others. The idea of sexual assault is the cause of other abuse during their adolescent years. In the article, White goes through and explains the different ways people can become offenders, and none say you are born with a function in your brain that just immediately makes you an offender. No one is born with a certain brain wave, chemical, or autonomic response that makes a person commit a sexual offense. Therefore, no one is born with those tendencies, and their environment makes them become the way they are. The article also goes through other ways a person's environment could make them an offender, such as childhood stress, isolation, and a precipitating event, which all lead back to previous assault or abuse that was previously done to the offender. 

Humans are naturally good and because of their environment, they can become evil. Humans crave love until someone loves them wrong. Wrong and evil can most certainly be inspired by ignorance because they were never taught right from wrong. In some cases, people are born naturally good, but people around them turn them evil. If people make other people evil and this trend of evil continues to get worse in the world, maybe one day the whole world might be evil, because of the influence of negative people.