Steve Jobs once said, “As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.” This quote means that he thinks individuals are inherently good, but when people are in a group they aren’t inherently good. A topic of debate among mankind for an extremely long time is if humans as a race are inherently good or inherently evil. Many philosophers have argued for inherently evil, and many for inherently good. A person’s environment and upbringing plays a vital part in changing an inherently good person to an evil person. This is evidenced by Jack in the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, and the psychological experiments.
In the novel, …show more content…
The Stanford Prison experiment was an experiment conducted by Stanford University to determine what causes conflict between prisoners and guards. The experiment found that the volunteers quickly began playing their parts, with the prison guards abusing the prisoners, and the prisoners became more submissive. This says that the participants immediately adapted to the given atmosphere of the mock prison. The experiment suggests that the environment of the prison changed the participants from inherently good people to evil people, because none of the guards showed any signs of sadistic behavior before the test. The guards’ behavior was evil, because they abused the prisoners so much four had to leave early, and the experiment was ended 8 days early. Another experiment, The Milgram Experiment, shows how peoples’ upbringing can make their behavior change from inherently good to evil. The purpose of the experiment was to discover to what extent people would follow orders from figure of authority. The experiment concluded that people will do evil things when told to by a figure of authority. This means that people will follow almost anything a figure of authority commands us to do. This shows how upbringing plays a large part in humans changing from inherently good to inherently evil, because we are raised from birth to be
In the novel, …show more content…
The Stanford Prison experiment was an experiment conducted by Stanford University to determine what causes conflict between prisoners and guards. The experiment found that the volunteers quickly began playing their parts, with the prison guards abusing the prisoners, and the prisoners became more submissive. This says that the participants immediately adapted to the given atmosphere of the mock prison. The experiment suggests that the environment of the prison changed the participants from inherently good people to evil people, because none of the guards showed any signs of sadistic behavior before the test. The guards’ behavior was evil, because they abused the prisoners so much four had to leave early, and the experiment was ended 8 days early. Another experiment, The Milgram Experiment, shows how peoples’ upbringing can make their behavior change from inherently good to evil. The purpose of the experiment was to discover to what extent people would follow orders from figure of authority. The experiment concluded that people will do evil things when told to by a figure of authority. This means that people will follow almost anything a figure of authority commands us to do. This shows how upbringing plays a large part in humans changing from inherently good to inherently evil, because we are raised from birth to be