Is Human Nature Naturally Good Or Evil Essay

Throughout humanities's relatively short time on Earth, the question of whether human nature is naturally good or evil has been a seemingly unanswerable one. It would be simple to posit that the principle flaw of humanity lies in our Jekyll and Hyde nature, our capability to display both our goodness or evil at any time, but this is not true. The greatest flaw of humanity is its propensity for evil, violent and amoral behavior that has been ubiquitous in human society with acts of “good” interspersed only at points where it serves our own progression. This is because human nature is inherently violent and evil, and the implementation of educational systems, laws, and religion in an attempt to change human nature have been ineffective at every juncture. Even the incredible scientific advances made by human kind have been a practice in futility, the best of which have made life easier, but the most significant of which have been …show more content…
In this case evil was accepted as the norm, and one of the most famous examples is the writings of Hannah Arendt on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi colonel and primary organizer of the Holocaust. Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” when writing about Eichmann because, to her, he seemed to be a normal man who was just following orders and showed no fanaticism towards Nazism or the Jews, just a blind obedience to his superiors with no regard for how much suffering he was responsible for. Although the term “the banality of evil” has become an intellectual cliché, there is still a modicum of truth to it relating to human nature. Evil is not found in profound acts, it is something that so permeates our everyday lives that one becomes so accustomed to it. And if evil is so commonplace that the realization of this fact is novel, it would follow that evil is one of the foundational characteristics of