The real nature of human beings often becomes the topic of public and scholarly debates, partly due to the fact that different notions about the true nature of people often become a means of political and other types of manipulations. The humanistic discourse that has come to the fore in Western countries relatively recently emphasizes the good nature of human beings and argues that certain positive features, such as kindness, tolerance, love and understanding are embedded in human character from the very birth. However, a more critical view on society shows that humans usually tend to act selfish and hostile, which is supported by many philosophical thoughts and social theories, as well as by the analysis of current models of human interaction.
Many prominent philosophers in their works addressed the problem of the sinful nature of human beings. For instance, Hobbes perceives people as aggressive and violent. According to Hobbes, scarcity is the power that reinforces human initial predisposition to aggressive behavior, and this premise is evident throughout his book ‘Leviathan’. More specifically, Hobbes argues that people are prone to self-advancement, and are usually regulated by their egoistic desires and passion (21) only in case when there is a scarce of some resources. It is, however, a debatable statement, given that very often not the scarcity, but the desire for a possession of a bigger number of resources leads to the aggressive and selfish behavior, and this part is omitted from Hobbes’s work.
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"Are Humans Innately Good or Sinful?".
Hobbes goes further to stress a focus on the fact that government is to protect human society from the destructive and negative consequences of their selfishness. Another prominent social philosopher, Karl Marx, presents a similar opinion about the sinful nature of human beings, which, according to him, is reinforced by capitalist society. The concept of betrayal in Marxist writings presents the outcome of human predisposition to act in a selfish and egoistic way. It is argued that Marx and Engels see the proletariat experience as something improper and not ethical, yet very ‘human’. In my opinion there is a concerning topic of human nature given the time they spent discovering and analyzing this topic. I think that we could agreed with Marx. However, the role of individual and the society is a complex matter, which is to be approached, besides others, from the point of view of social mobility. The level of legitimation of social inequalities and their acceptance by greater part of the society is related to the distinction between social inequality and social stratification.
The concept of social inequality is related simply to the different expressions and situations created by social inequality among people. Social stratification is stable and institutionalized form of social inequality of people. It refers to the existence of separate social groups and strata of people who have approximately the same social position. Those layers therefore differ in their approach to power, the material resources and have different social prestige. These social strata are gradually shaping common interests and consciousness of their members. Members of a particular social group share a common lifestyle and embrace similar values and standards of conduct and gradually create layers of subcultures. According to the possibilities of social mobility we can distinguish open and closedstratification systems. Open stratification system are the ones which allow vertical movement between different social individual layers relatively easily. Closed stratification systems conversely permit transmission between different strata of society allow only rarely. An example of a relatively open system is the class stratification of people in modern industrial society. An example of the stratification system are closed caste in Indian society or system of apartheid, which until recently worked in South Africa. In the open systems the prevalent social positions are the result of personal qualities and abilities of members of the community. In closed systems of stratification we find social position rather as predetermined through historical ties, which are connected to individuals often already at the moment of their birth with only a small possibility of the change of an individual to change his position throughout the course of life.
The analysis of global society today shows that human beings are driven by their desire to make economic profit and have access to different types of public resources. This ideas highlighted in the book Profit over People by Chomsky. According to the author, modern global economic system was established as the result of the Western victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union (Chomsky, 1999). As a result of this establishment, today the neoliberal economic system serves the needs of the powerful minorities that through a number of different methods, such as military invasion, public opinion manipulation etc, exploit and control the majority that has very little, if any, access to resources. Needless to say, this approach to the analysis of economic relations resembles the classical Marxist approach.
According to the author, the leading role in this process of exploitation is played by the United States where the actual power is not in the hands of population, as it is popular to think, but in the hands of different financial groups that control the two major political parties or power groups. People are thus prone to exploit and oppress if they are given such an opportunity. The theory of scarce resources is one of the possible explanations why people are initially sinful. Resources are always scarce, and those social groups that are in the position of domination benefit in multiple ways from the privileges that they gain as a result of their exploitation of the subordinated social categories and their better access to public resources. There is thus very little chance that one day the dominant group will give its power and freedom to those who are oppressed. Through the lenses of critical theory, because of the phenomenon of empathic fallacy the chances of the dominant group making a contribution to the establishment of equality decrease. More specifically, expecting empathy from the oppressor is not likely to lead to any real consequences because people in general tend to develop empathic feelings only to individuals with similar social characteristics.
Even today, when global society manages to exist, at least seemingly, without the massive acts of violence and intolerance, it constantly faces the problem of wars and military violence. War often shows the true nature of human beings. Enemies are dehumanized during war, and causing enemies’ pain and death is the ultimate goal. The value of human life is depreciated. Men lose their agency in terms of controlling their own bodies, given that their bodies are now the property of the nation, not their own property Herbert metaphorically refers to war as the ‘meat grinder’ (Herbert), where the bodies of the predominantly poor individuals lose the symbolic value that is attached to them, and become the puppets in the hands of more powerful individuals. Hedges argues that during war human decency and tenderness that is attached to them as a result of their socialization process are crushed, and people become objects to use or kill (Hedges 364), which is the behaviour that they are naturally predisposed to. I think that societies that perform mechanical solidarity are based upon cohesion based on homogeneity of individuals, who are related through education, religion and work as well as lifestyle.
This type of solidarity functions rather in traditionalsocieties. Organic solidarity on the other hand, is derived from interdependencies that come from specialization of work and from complementarities between humans, which is precisely what happens in modern industrial society and it is a type of social cohesion which is based upon dependencies between people. The development of modernity and the attempt of the modern society to create order, replace one type of solidarity with another one, through procedural rationality, social stratification dividing of labour into more fragmented tasks and taxonomic categorisation (Bauman, 1972).
Modernity, as seen on the examples above, thus has brought progress in the technological and rational conceptualization of material well-being but may have actually become more primitive due to aggressive simplification of complex processes between individuals (Bauman, 1982). Trust, confidence, capacity to work in collective group efforts rather than individual, fragmented and atomised units, which belongs to the basic precondition of human condition, may have been actually reduced and limited with detrimental consequences.
I think every war or civil uprisings caused a lot of material and humans losses. Stay away from intolerance, violence, and jealousy from what other have is the best way to preserve the human value.
Some people might argue that there is a lot of evidence that demonstrates the fact that people tend to be kind, generous, and caring sometimes. This view is also supported by some of the philosophers. While Hobbes perceives people and initially ‘animalic’ aggressive, violent, and hostile, Locke sees human beings as essentially good, as well as ready help, and to sacrifice for others. However, the in-depth analysis of the generous behavior of individuals shows that it is also very often motivated by self-interest. For instance in Guldbrandsen book “Stealing Africa: Why Poverty.” He tries to refute a misconception that argues that Western countries are being generous when providing African countries with financial, as well as other types of aids. More specifically, as shown in the documentary, the profit that multinational companies make from the exploitation of natural resources of African countries is ten times bigger than the financial assistance Africa receives.
The evidence above shows that human beings are initially exposed to sinful behavior. This view is supported by a number of philosophers and the detailed analysis of human interaction. It is important to note, however, that the fact that humans are innately sinful does not suggest that people should act accordingly. However, the role of society as a shaping environment to human nature must be taken into account. There are numerous social mechanisms of controlling people’s selfish, hostile and revenge-motivated behavior, such as ethical norms, criminal codes, social values, without which human society would not be able to exist. These however do not mean that human nature is shaped according the these structure. They just permit, in certain conditions, to provide environment that supports or reduces certain traits of character. Thus, the understanding of the sinful nature of human beings not only does not give any permission to individuals to act accordingly, but also encourages them to put more time and effort into becoming better individuals to produce a functioning society, despite the apparent challenge.
