Can people be "born bad"?

[MaddAdam]

Thoughts on this from the assembled wisdom of BF GD.

 

[Bluelegs]

If you believe people are born good then you should believe that people can be born bad too.

 

[MaddAdam]

If you believe people are born good then you should believe that people can be born bad too.

Fair point.

What about if you believe fundamentally that all people are born good but are only forced into crappy actions because of the circumstances they are born into?

 

[Run n Spread]

Honestly don't know. Hard to really quantify. Comes down to not only genetics and the environment but the characteristics people are born with.

In that a person's disposition and mannerisms are set from birth as part of their genetic make up. How these are influenced can then play a part to how they act. As in someone may have a brilliant intellect and keen eye for analysis. If they are treated well they may become a researcher, scientist, charity worker etc or if they are treated badly, a blackmailer or con artist.

If a person is born with physical strength and fearlessness, channel that well they may be a leader, defender of the poor etc or treat them badly they become a dictator or mass murderer.

Simplistic explanation but the best I can think of. I defiantly think people are born with a certain set of dispositions but how they act determines the person they are.

The other thing is most people won't admit to being bad. People like Hitler, Saddam Hussein and others would have probably justified their actions for the greater good.

Another thing is the motivations of people. While no doubt people are motivated by different things a lot of people are motivated by the same base desires yet not everyone will act the same way to achieve these. i.e. The want for money is not necessarily bad, it can motivate people to start businesses, work hard, make discoveries. Yet that same motivation can also lead others to kill and invade to gain something.

In summary I'll have a bet each way and say people are born with in built personalities and dispositions and influenced by their culture, environment and how they are treated.

 

[MaddAdam]

People like Hitler, Saddam Hussein and others would have probably justified their actions for the greater good.

Indeed. Most important lesson in politics I ever got.

Nobody ever gets into politics to do "bad".

 

[treefingers]

It's not black and white. It's more situational based more than anything imo. I mean would this guy have become so evil if he didn't get cancer?

 

[Bluelegs]

Fair point.

What about if you believe fundamentally that all people are born good but are only forced into crappy actions because of the circumstances they are born into?

Good is a very ambiguous idea as is evil. Everyone justifies their actions some way or another but for people to be born good they would need to be born with a variety of key traits which would be considered good by many people, things like selflessness, empathy and so on. Do you think a sociopath is born or bred? They have a psychological condition in which they simply can't feel empathy or remorse for others.

 

[MaddAdam]

Good is a very ambiguous idea as is evil. Everyone justifies their actions some way or another but for people to be born good they would need to be born with a variety of key traits which would be considered good by many people, things like selflessness, empathy and so on. Do you think a sociopath is born or bred? They have a psychological condition in which they simply can't feel empathy or remorse for others.

I'm genuinely coming round to the view that some criminals, almost always sex offenders, are born with altered brain chemistry that compels them to offend the way they do.

That said I was at the War Memorial the other day and it struck me reading the accounts of some of the actions of VC winners and the like, that these were deeply violent and most likely unpleasant men.

Similarly, you read about accounts of former roo shooters who then became snipers at the siege of Tobruk and the like. Were they so conditioned the culture and propaganda of the time they could simply switch from roos to people? Or did they genuinely enjoy killing people.

 

[I bleed Blue]

Fantastic topic DawOfPromotion

It is a very hard question to answer. But here is what I beleive.

The majority of people are born good. Infact most people will stay good their entire lives. I have alot of faith in humanity despite the attrocities that happen around the world. Unfortuanatly sometimes people find them in situations that force them to be bad, or do bad acts, this does not mean that they are bad people, but just person who has done a bad thing. For instance young child soldiers throughout Africa or the children soldiers that the Khmer Rouge are not bad people, they have just been forced to do horrible things.

Having said this, I beleive there is a very small % of people who are born bad. I guess you could almost say they are born evil. They do horrible things as children despite coming from good homes, and grow into adults who commit horrible attrocities on their own accord.

All in all I beleive most people are inheritly good, and will help their fellow man whenever they can... but there is a tiny % that are just born bad.

 

[MaddAdam]

Fantastic topic DawOfPromotion

It is a very hard question to answer. But here is what I beleive.

The majority of people are born good. Infact most people will stay good their entire lives. I have alot of faith in humanity despite the attrocities that happen around the world. Unfortuanatly sometimes people find them in situations that force them to be bad, or do bad acts, this does not mean that they are bad people, but just person who has done a bad thing. For instance young child soldiers throughout Africa or the children soldiers that the Khmer Rouge are not bad people, they have just been forced to do horrible things.

Having said this, I beleive there is a very small % of people who are born bad. I guess you could almost say they are born evil. They do horrible things as children despite coming from good homes, and grow into adults who commit horrible attrocities on their own accord.

All in all I beleive most people are inheritly good, and will help their fellow man whenever they can... but there is a tiny % that are just born bad.

Yeah, I'm pretty much down with this view.

 

[half_back_flank]

Only one in two million people are born with the evil gene. Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it and Freddie Quimby has it.

 

[Stratton_Gun]

I would say some people have a predisposition to be "bad" more than others but it would mostly come done to upbringing and other environmental factors

 

[The Speaker]

Depends how you're defining bad.

 

[LouisCK]

Assuming you're not referring to mental illness manifesting itself as "bad" behaviour, I say no. Nobody is born bad. Nurture has a much more profound impact on behaviour than nature does.

For example, statistically, being born into a single parent family and living in government subsidised housing makes it far more likely you'll be a criminal than someone born into a two parent middle class family. These people aren't 'born bad' just born into a bad situation that made it more likely they'd turn out 'bad'.

On the flipside, I think 'bad' means bad behaviour, as in criminal behaviour. And again environment plays the biggest part in how certain inherent traits might manifest themselves. Say you're born into a family that has a long history of aggressive/dominant behaviour. For generations people with these traits were shunned as they generally don't contribute much to society. However at the absolute top of society, they are basically worshipped (think Investment Bankers, Mining Execs etc) in spite of their lack of actual contribution. But if born at the lower socioeconomic side of things, these traits will often lead to more outwardly criminal or violent behaviour.

So basically, not counting for mental illness, everyone is born equal. But if you're poor its less likely society will put up with your shit, and you'll be less likely to learn how to channel your personality traits into productive (or at least socially acceptable) means.

 

[Doss]

Great topic, DawOfPromotion.

It's a question that is very hard to answer- indeed, there may not be a single correct answer. For example, you can point to some examples where, on the surface, the bad appeared to be somewhat 'ingrained'; the children of Kath Pettingill, for example, were born to a pretty bad person for a mother, and a whole series of generally dead beat fathers.

Yet just as often, those same cases can just as easily, and possibly moreso, be traced back to lifestyle, upbringing and environmental factors. How much chance do the children of someone genuinely 'bad' really have of turning out as decent people, when they're being raised in an environment where that 'bad' is a normality and they become desensitised to horrific and 'bad' things from a young age?

I'm generally of the school of thought that environment is the root cause of most cases of people being 'bad'. Having said that, some people genuinely are just born with a screw loose. Of that, I don't think there could be much doubt.

 

[Caesar]

I think pretty much everybody fundamentally wants to do good, in their own way. We're wired to be constructive rather than destructive.

'Good' is such a massively subjective concept though.

 

[nicky]

I was watching a documentary on serial killers a few weeks ago and a foresic psychologist was saying that people can be born pre-disposed to becoming serial killers and their upbringing will determine whether or not their serial killer potential will come into fruition.

It's more likely that a cocktail of circumstances, including the mothers mental and physical state during pregnancy will shape a persons development.

 

[Fluro Boots]

I agree with many of you that nurture plays a huge part in peoples development or ending up 'bad'. I also think it's been overdone in the courts however where it often used as an excuse. It seems now that just being from a single parent home gives you a free hit in the courts more often than not. In many cases i think a single parent home can be better than a home with two parents where one is an absolute deadbeat.

 

[Plugger35]

Michael Jackson was born bad, really, really bad.

 

[nicky]

Are psychopaths born that way? I asked google and got mixed results.

 

[Silent Alarm]

Here's a scenario...

A kid I went to school with was done for child pornography. And, experientially, he was pretty suss. He'd make remarks about girls that were just way over the top (things like how they should be r*ped, which was completely serious and, he thought, a compliment). Dude was farked.

His granddad was done for interfering with minors.

Me and my mates would genuinely discuss whether it was something in his DNA. Because aside from his mother's denial about her dad and her son, he was in a very normal situation: nuclear family, good suburb, plenty of friends (early on...), active... it's always perplexed me.

 

[PP34]

I think it's mainly to do with upbringing and experiences that we as humans endure early on.

 

[A Swallow]

It's an interesting topic, and quite possibly one with endless opinions and points of discussion.

The way I see it, people are born with a clean slate in terms of their ambitions and intentions towards those around them, and society as a whole. However, there is (IMO) definitely a certain set of characteristics within a person's mental ingredients from day one, that can influence how morally/logically sound their mind will develop. For example, some people could be a great deal more impressionable than someone as closely related as a sibling, and this would alter their outlook on life in a significant way compared to their more independent/self-assured sibling. People are without a doubt influenced by the context of their upbringing, but as I said two people of similar ages raised in identical environments could have even slightly different characteristics in their initial mental design, and this would form a significant divide in their level of "badness". This is all speculation of course, but this theory makes sense to me.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

Here's a scenario...

A kid I went to school with was done for child pornography. And, experientially, he was pretty suss. He'd make remarks about girls that were just way over the top (things like how they should be r*ped, which was completely serious and, he thought, a compliment). Dude was farked.

His granddad was done for interfering with minors.

Me and my mates would genuinely discuss whether it was something in his DNA. Because aside from his mother's denial about her dad and her son, he was in a very normal situation: nuclear family, good suburb, plenty of friends (early on...), active... it's always perplexed me.

What do you think is more likely, a) that he was a victim of abuse or the behaviours were learned, or b) there is some mysterious unidentified sex offender allele.

There is substantial proof, for a causal relationship between being a perpetrator of abuse and having been a victim of abuse. There is no known as yet, set of behaviour genes, nor one or multiple mutant alleles, which lead to patterns of abusive behaviour.

People can though have a genetic predisposition to certain mental illnesses, there are also other non genetic factors which may effect prenatal infant brain development. However, it is often largely down to nurture how most altered behaviours, attributed to certain conditions may express themselves.

 

[Marlowe]

I was born to be wild.