Is_Man_Good_or_Evil

Joshua Foster-Mueller In the novel Lord of the Flies William Golding debates the true nature of man. Golding clearly expresses his opinion that truly man is evil. In his writing he portrays the evil of man when left in the right circumstances. He believes that although sometimes man can be good are true evil nature will always come through eventually. Although Golding has a strong point, many people insist that humans aren’t evil but just make mistakes. And what about all of the good things that humans do for each other such as volunteering, donating to charities and civil service. Some people even dedicate their life to not being evil such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. although these men did change the world they were both killed without personally completing their movement. However there are many examples to support Golding’s point of view because evil has existed since the beginning of human documentation through wars, human sacrifice, torture, rape and many other examples. Examples of human evil still even exist today such as serial killers and rapists.So even though sometimes there is good in the world evil always presides and that is the point Golding tries to make. However what defines good and evil, where is the line to be drawn and who draws it, but no matter what when man is degraded to his very core evil starts to show, even in the best of us. Paragraph 1 Talk about what has created our definition of good and evil today how it’s influenced how it was created and how it’s different around the world and why Relate to Chinese views Buddhist views and then state why these views are like they are today and that this is how it effects our view on good and evil Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 was one of the most evil men in recent history and shows that when man is in the right conditions their true evil shows through. However often Hitler is thought of as an extremist and this is not the case. Hitler is held responsible for the mass extermination of 6 million Jews though it was more than just Hitlers fault it was for these killings, it was the fault of all the German citizens that supported him and even the rest of the world for not intervening sooner to avoid this heinous genocide. Although Hitler war largely responsible for the Holocaust it was as much of the world’s fault as it was his, because the world did nothing to intervene until it had already begun making the rest of the world no better than Hitler and no less evil. But what conditions cause man to degrade to the point that there true evil core reveals itself' Philip Zimbardo a influential psychologist of the 20th and 21st century set out to discover what will degrade man to his core and whether that core is good or evil. The way he set out to achieve this goal was by simulating a prison environment with volunteers as both the guards and prisoners. Although the study had to be cut off early the results where astonishing. The volunteer guards in the study quickly took advantage of their power over the prisoners forcing them to do physical labour, blasting them with fire extinguishers and even revoking there right to defecate or urinate. In the beginning it was only the prisoners who misbehaved that got these treatments, but soon it didn’t matter anymore and punishments became random. When any restrictions or laws are not prevalent and man is in a position of power his core begins to degrade and as proved by Philip’s study “The Stanford Prison Study” the true core of man is evil in the right conditions. Although man is good in most conditions their true core is evil. Which in turn makes man evil no matter how he tries to mask it. Golding's view of man is that, under the right conditions man is evil.